In Thinking in Bets, author and retired poker player Annie Duke believes that good poker players and good decision-makers are comfortable with uncertainty in the world. They accept that they’ll almost never know how things will turn out.

“Instead of focusing on being sure, they try to figure out how unsure they are, making their best guess at the chances that different outcomes will occur,” she writes. “The accuracy of those guesses will depend on how much information they have and how experienced they are at making such guesses. This is part of the basis of all bets.”

From this perspective, Annie suggests taking a more considered approach to when outcomes don’t unfold as we predicted or would have preferred. You’re not 100% wrong.

One key is to learn from the experience, and to examine the outcome to see if there are any insights or factors you can learn that might improve your reasoning the next time you need to make a decision.

The other is to accept that no matter how good your decision is—or how bad—sometimes factors that are out of your control have a greater effect on the outcome. “Luck” is just a word we use to describe these factors. 

Perhaps it’s assuring to remember that life is probabilistic; if you get to make enough decisions, and you learn from each outcome and improve your decision quality, your outcomes should also improve. At the same time, any given decision could turn out in a way you don’t expect.