“ You did the best you could in that moment.”

Jon Favreau (Part 2), Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show

~ 2:03:10 mark

Context
Kevin and Jon discuss how so many unpredictable tiny little things (that you can’t control) have to go right for a movie, tv show, etc to actually succeed:

Pollak:
So you get to a place of, “let’s just do the best work we can” — in television especially, it’s almost a lottery, to get the right time slot, to get the right lead-in, to get all those elements lined-up. And so the same thing has to be said about big-time box office movies…

There’s a zeitgeist that’s happening at the exact moment in time, where we’re READY for Robert Downey to come back and blossom!

Favreau:
And it just happens… and you can’t force it when it’s not and you just say “thank you” or “we’ll get them next time”.

It’s like poker — it’s a game of chance but yet the same people end up at the final table quite often.

Pollak:
And the reason it’s a game of SKILL is that you want to get your money in correctly and that’s what I meant about “you did the best you could in that moment.”

Favreau:
You’re putting yourself in a position to succeed and that’s all you have control over. And if the system breaks apart, if the soufflé does not rise, if the people do not show up when you open the door… you can’t control those things.

You have to learn to concentrate on the things you can control and it’s amazing how much it’ll affect the odds in your outcome. But if you start getting mad that you flipped a tail instead of a head… what are you beating yourself up over?