For people with systemic issues, there’s little hope apart from the short-term. Give a lot of money to someone who spends compulsively and is in debt and pretty soon they’ll have spent compulsively and been returned to indebtedness. But if you’re free from these issues, a little luck–or a lot of it–can make you into the thing you know you are in your head, because the only resources you lack are external. From Joe Drape’s New York Times article about Conor Murphy, a racehorse stablehand with a hunch–five hunches, actually:

“GOSHEN, Ky. — Last spring, Conor Murphy was a hired hand who spent his days galloping racehorses, combing knotted manes and shoveling manure in a stable in Berkshire, England.

Mr. Murphy, 29, knew his horses well. He was able to tell which ones were on their toes and which ones needed a little more care. He also knew his way around a betting window. On a hunch, he bet $75 on five of his favorites. It was the sort of desperate stab that only a man who loves horses would make.

But he won — big. His $75 bet paid more than $1.5 million, enough to put down the shovel and become his own boss.

Now he lives in Kentucky, training horses for some of the most prominent figures in racing. On Saturday, he will be at the Kentucky Derby, rooting for Lines of Battle, a horse owned by one of his clients.

“Pure luck,” Mr. Murphy said of his life-changing wager. His past year reads like something out of a movie script, and his big bet has become the stuff of lore for gamblers from the backsides of American racetracks to the training yards of England and Ireland.”