I've been playing blackjack, and in particular, I've been card-counting. What I've learned is that to be successful at card counting you have to be okay with losing just a tiny bit less than 50% of the time. You're going to have loss after loss with wins scattered throughout. But if you have confidence in your abilities, you'll know you're playing a game with a positive expected value, and in the long run, you'll be up significantly.
I think that's a pretty good analogy for what you need to do to succeed in life: seek risky opportunities wherein the probability of loss times the magnitude of the loss is less than the probability of gain times the magnitude of the gain. This will mean that you'll be beaten up badly for long stretches of time, even when you're doing everything right. However, if you have the confidence to continue even when all is going awry, you'll win in the long run because most other people don't have the guts to handle the vicissitudes.
