Rameil Hormozi Blog

Hope is defined as “the general feeling that some desire will be fulfilled”.

People will maintain hope in something, regardless of how irrational it is, mainly because they desperately desire the outcome. If the conditions are right that is. These conditions typically are:

1) The outcome concerns them, not others. There is a quote, I forget it exactly, but it’s something along the lines of: we deal with the facts, only when they concerns others. It’s easy to point out the obvious to someone else. Ever found yourself standing behind a person playing a poker machine, shaking your head in disbelief while they contemplate gambling just one more time. Ever felt like screaming out “take the win you fool, you’re going to lose it all!”. We all have. At the same time, it has worked the other way. YOU have been the gambler, thinking: “if I just get one more spin, I could win this!”

2) The outcome is something we value. No one takes chances over things that don’t matter. For any particular event, there appears to be an inversely proportional relationship between rationality and the significance of that outcome. In most cases, the realistic probability of the desired outcome is irrelevant. If it’s possible, if there is a chance – even a 1% chance – people are willing to ignore all evidence indicating the obvious. The probability of winning the first division prize in the lottery in Australia is 1 in 8,145,060 to be exact. Does this fact matter to the millions of people who spend $30 on a lotto ticket week in week out for 60 years? Not when the significance of that one HIGHLY improbable win is so high.

Most gamblers know they will, in the long term, lose money. So putting your money into a machine and expecting to win in the long term seems, to most people, irrational. In fact, every poker machine in the country is required by law to display a sign the reads: “Your chance of winning the maximum prize on a gaming machine is generally no better than one in a million”.

I use gambling as an example, because that is precisely what irrationality amounts to: gambling. Every time you ignore the facts in the hopes of acquiring the improbable, you are gambling. You are also forfeiting the probable. It may not be as pretty as your “vision”, but it’s reality. Perception is not always reality, sometimes reality is reality.

Everyone is irrational concerning one part of their lives or another. The question is: Why?

I’ll discuss that in the next post.