Perhaps you’ve heard of Murphy’s Law, the idea that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. But what if you turned that on its head and completely reversed it? Literally. Spell Murphy backward, and you’ve got “Yhprum,” leading to the idea of Yhprym’s Law instead. And yep, it shows that a more optimistic version of the odds is equally possible and usually a lot more enjoyable.
Nicole Hunter, who goes by We Who War Within (@nichunterreal online), shares this idea in an Instagram reel. She reminds her audience of Murphy’s Law and then shares, “But Murphy has an opposite. And I like him better. It’s called the Yhprum’s Law. And it basically says that anything that CAN work out, will.”
How many things go right?
She continues, “At first it might sound ridiculously optimistic, but there’s actually something really interesting underneath. Think about how many things in your life right now that are actually working out that you take completely for granted. You’ve also probably survived situations that you’re now convinced you shouldn’t have.”
We’re given examples. “Systems that look impossibly complicated work! People suddenly meet each other at the exact right moment. An idea that fails ten times and then suddenly…it works. Sometimes things don’t fall apart. Sometimes they hold. That thing that you thought was impossible…just…works.”
‘What if this actually works?’
She adds an important note. “Yhprum’s Law is not about pretending everything is going to go perfectly. Your brain naturally has the ability to prepare you for everything that could go wrong, while completely forgetting to account for everything that could go right. Yhprum’s Law asks, ‘What if this actually works?’ And I like that a lot better. What if this actually works is a question worth asking more often.”
Hunter didn’t coin the term. Harvard professor and political economist Richard Zeckhauser originally wrote: “Sometimes systems that should not work, work nevertheless.” He, along with colleagues Paul Resnick, John Swanson, and Kate Lockwood, wrote the paper “The Value of Reputation on eBay: A Controlled Experiment.” The idea was to try different marketing techniques, which, as predicted, worked exactly as expected.
Falling into place
In a piece for Scienceholic.org, science writer William Tsa explains that success is as possible as failure. “Yhprum’s Law encourages a belief in favorable outcomes by chance; it suggests that systems can fail and succeed beyond our expectations. In other words, it asserts that in the universe’s complexity, things can fall into place just as much as things can fall apart.
In science and technology, Yhprum’s Law appears in the accidental discovery of medicines. Think of the many tales of scientific breakthroughs that came from accidents, from the discovery of penicillin in a contaminated Petri dish to the creation of the pacemaker. It supports the idea that scientists and creators should prepare to fail and remain open to accidental success.”
He adds that the notion, as originally conceived, works in business too. “In business, Yhprum’s Law can influence leadership and decision-making processes. It allows managers to gain knowledge from unforeseen events and use them for their benefit. Additionally, people who embrace Yhprum’s Law tend to have a more optimistic lifestyle, where one is encouraged to try new things with the mindset that they might just work out well.”
Perception is key
Hunter’s post has tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of comments. Many are simply thankful the algorithm brought them this half-full perspective. One compares some of Hunter’s language to poet William Yeats, writing, “Nice inversion of Yeats’ ‘The Second Coming.’ ‘Sometimes things don’t fall apart. They hold.’ Yeats: ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; more anarchy is loosed upon the world.’ The echo (and reversal) of Yeats is especially effective.”
One Instagrammer jokes, “My golden retriever lives off this idea.”
Another adds, “Perception is the key to the reality we expect and experience.”
‘The Serendipity Mindset’
There might be something especially relevant about that last comment. Dr. Christian Busch, PhD, author of The Serendipity Mindset, discusses how perceiving good fortune can lead to greater fortune. On his site, he describes: “Modern life is full of chance encounters, changing plans, delayed journeys, human errors and other mishaps. But what if we could use such unpredictable events to our advantage? The Serendipity Mindset reveals a science-backed approach to turning the unexpected into ‘smart luck.’”
