A woman in her fifties came to see me. She wanted a relationship. She hadn't had one since she was a teenager—a devastating breakup that she never quite recovered from. But now, decades later, she was lonely and wanted connection.
The problem, as she saw it, was that she'd lost her chance. She'd been a model in her twenties. Now she was fifty-three, and who would want her now? The odds were against her. The statistics were clear. She was too old, too out of practice, too far from her peak. Her window had closed.
I asked her to run some numbers with me.
When she was twenty, how many men out of a hundred might have been attracted to her? Given her background and appearance, she estimated maybe one in five, one in six. A fairly high rate.
And now, at fifty-three? She grimaced. One in two hundred, maybe. Much, much lower. A dramatic drop-off. Further evidence, she felt, that her situation was hopeless.
But then we did the actual math.
The Functional Equivalence
Let's say there are roughly ten million adult men in Australia in her age range. If one in two hundred might be interested in her—her pessimistic estimate—that's fifty thousand men.
How many does she need for a successful relationship? One. Well, let's be generous and say she wants options. Let's say she needs six good candidates to actually meet, date, and choose from.
Six out of fifty thousand.
Now compare this to her situation at twenty. One in five or six interested out of, let's say, half a million men in her dating pool at the time. That's roughly 80,000 to 100,000 interested parties.
Six out of 100,000 versus six out of 50,000.
Here's the insight: these are functionally equivalent. She doesn't need 50,000 men to want her. She doesn't need the ratio to match what it was in her twenties. She just needs six good ones. And there are fifty thousand possibilities.
"Six out of ten million and six out of fifty thousand are functionally equivalent. You don't need everyone—you just need enough."
How Our Brains Default to Averages
This is a thinking error that derails people constantly. Our brains default to averages. We think in terms of general probabilities and population-level statistics. And then we apply those averages to our individual situations in ways that don't make sense.
The woman was thinking: on average, fewer men are interested in women my age than in women in their twenties. This is probably true. The average matters if you're running a dating app and need to forecast revenue. It matters if you're a sociologist studying mating patterns.
But for an individual trying to find one relationship? The average is nearly irrelevant. What matters is whether there are enough interested parties in the total pool. And at any reasonable threshold, there almost always are.
This applies far beyond dating. Think about job hunting. Maybe you're in a field with a lot of competition. Maybe you're older than most applicants, or have an unconventional background, or are looking for something specific. The odds, on average, might seem discouraging.
But how many jobs do you need? One. Maybe a few options to choose from. If your field has 500,000 positions and you're in the top 80% of applicants for only 5% of those positions, that's still 25,000 possible matches. Twenty-five thousand places where you'd be a strong candidate.
You don't need all 25,000 to work out. You need three or four real opportunities. And the math says they exist.
The Age Bias Example
I work with a lot of young professionals who worry about age-related biases. They feel like organizations have a preference for people with more experience, or—depending on the field—for people who are younger and cheaper. They look at the average hiring patterns and feel discouraged.
But again, the average misleads. Yes, maybe on average, some organizations prefer candidates in a certain age bracket. But you don't need every organization. You just need a few that value what you offer.
There's a researcher from Harvard, Ellen Langer, who did fascinating work on cognitive aging. On average, cognitive function declines between thirty and eighty. This is the depressing statistic we all internalize. But what's less discussed is the variance within that average. There are plenty of eighty-year-olds with higher cognitive function than the average thirty-year-old. Not most eighty-year-olds—but plenty of them.
If you focus on the average, you see inevitable decline. If you focus on the variance, you see possibility. The question becomes: what can I do to be in the group that doesn't conform to the average?
Standing in the River
There's a relevant metaphor here. Imagine a bear trying to catch salmon. The salmon are coming upstream, and if the bear stands in the right place in the river, they'll literally hit it in the face. The bear doesn't have to chase them down. It just has to be present in the right location.
Compare this to a bear sitting in a cabin, sharpening its hooks. That bear might have excellent hooks. It might spend hours perfecting its technique. But if it never stands in the river, no salmon will appear.
This is how opportunity works. You can increase the probability of a good outcome not by improving the base rates—which are often out of your control—but by increasing the surface area you present for luck to find you. You stand in the river. You make yourself visible in places where opportunities flow.
The woman who wanted a relationship hadn't been standing in the river. She'd been in the cabin, convinced the river had dried up. She wasn't wrong that the ratio had changed since her twenties. She was wrong about what that meant for her actual chances.
"Our brains default to averages, which derails us. But you can change your personal odds by being in the right places at the right times. The average is someone else's problem."
The Reverse Interview
There's a related principle that applies to job hunting specifically, but the underlying logic extends elsewhere. Most people are so busy trying to prove they're right for an opportunity that they forget to evaluate whether the opportunity is right for them.
They're auditioning when they should be interviewing.
I tell people to master the art of the reverse interview. When you're talking to potential employers, partners, collaborators—whoever—don't just try to impress them. Try to figure out whether this is actually what you want. Ask questions that reveal the truth about the situation before you commit.
This serves multiple purposes. First, it protects you from accepting something that looks good on paper but will actually make you miserable. Second, it actually makes you more attractive to good opportunities, because confidence and discernment signal value. Third, it helps you avoid wasting time on things that were never right for you.
The person who's desperate for any opportunity radiates that desperation. The person who's curious about whether this specific opportunity is a good fit radiates something else: the confidence that they have options, that they're choosing rather than just hoping to be chosen.
The Irrelevance of the Average
When you think about your chances at something—a job, a relationship, a project, an opportunity—ask yourself: am I thinking in averages?
Averages tell you about populations. They tell you what happens to most people most of the time. But you're not most people, and this isn't most of the time. This is you, right now, with your specific situation.
The average is useful as background information. It might tell you that this will require more effort than you initially thought. It might tell you that most people fail at this, so you should be thoughtful about your approach. But it shouldn't tell you whether it's possible for you specifically.
Because the math almost always shows that there's enough. Enough opportunities, enough potential partners, enough organizations that want what you offer, enough people who'd be interested in what you're creating. Not most people—but enough people. And you only need a few to work out.
Increasing Your Surface Area
The practical question, then, is how to increase the surface area you present to opportunity. How to stand in more rivers. How to be visible in more places where what you want might be flowing.
This doesn't mean scattering your energy randomly. The bear doesn't stand everywhere at once. It stands where the salmon actually run. You need to be strategic about where you show up.
But the point is that showing up is more important than improving the base rates. You can't make every organization suddenly want someone with your profile. You can show up consistently in places where organizations that already want your profile are looking.
The woman I mentioned earlier—after we ran those numbers together, something shifted. The problem wasn't the math. The math was fine. The problem was that she'd stopped showing up. She'd concluded that the odds were bad and therefore withdrawn from the game entirely.
Once she understood that fifty thousand possibilities existed, the question became different. Not "is this possible?" but "where should I stand in the river?"
That's a much more useful question. And it has much more actionable answers.