"The worst thing that can happen in your first trip to Vegas is to win," as the old saying goes.
It also turns out that "beginner's luck" is real -- if you survey gamblers, a statistically significant portion of them did win early despite their lack of skill.
But is it because Lady Luck smiles on beginners?
Or, more likely, is it survivorship bias? People who go to Vegas and promptly lose $1000 are far less likely to fall in love with cards than someone who goes and promptly wins $1000 with no skill.
Nobody likes to lose. Losing feels terrible. But if you're embarking on a long journey with serious character flaws, you want to hope your character flaws get punished (and thus shown to you) early in the journey, while you're still in sight of friendly towns and cities.
The fact is, you can thrive with a long list of character flaws and ineffective ways of operating -- but it always serves as a drag on long-term success and thriving, and risks blowing up at a particularly bad time.
While setbacks and reversals feel bad, be grateful whenever you get a chance to fix your errors. Feel very bad for people who rack up successes in spite of operating in a broken way -- the further you go down that path, the harder it is to turn back, and the harder the inevitable fall becomes.