I had a conversation about luck awhile ago with a mentor. One point he said stuck with me. He said he didn’t believe in luck. At first, I thought this was a little strange. I mean, everyone gets lucky at some point. Maybe you found a $20 bill on the sidewalk? Or you won the lottery. Wouldn’t that be awesome?
Then, I started thinking about it. Most of the lucky scenarios I thought about weren’t one-in-a-million things, like winning the lottery. That’s just chalked up to chance and probabilities. Instead, most of these scenarios, that I perceived as lucky, were really career and life achievements. They were things like landing my current job (which I love), getting an unexpected huge spike of traffic on one of my blog posts here, or even just having the guts to try something new and realized I succeeded.
That’s not luck. That’s hard work and pure sweat equity. I’ve probably been selling myself short a lot. Especially lately. How did I come to this conclusion recently? It’s because I’m notoriously known for being my own worst critic. If I don’t feel like I’m living up to my high expectations for myself- especially if someone else notices- I take it really hard. And probably not for the best, very personally.
Maybe instead of being so quick to chalk up my “big wins” to some element of luck, I should think about all that it took to achieve this milestone. It takes skills, knowing the “right people” and being at the right place at the right time. All of these factors matter a lot more.
