Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2011. Steve Jobs is described in the present tense, though he died in October 2011, and Warren Buffett’s “50-year” career refers to that time.
When we can’t manage to do something, we tend to think that the person who did manage it was very lucky, and that we’ve been very unlucky. What’s more, lately I keep hearing that all of today’s great business leaders and millionaires got where they are purely through luck.
It doesn’t matter that they spent hours drawing up business plans, studying markets and building up their knowledge, or that in some cases they sacrificed their family life to get a project off the ground… in the end, all that counts is that they were lucky.
And there I am on my sofa, watching the news on TV and those shows that keep us up to date on celebrity gossip. How unfair, after all the effort I put into complaining about my current job, that along comes some Amancio Ortega or Steve Jobs who gets touched by the “magic wand” of luck.
Fate wasn’t on my side. That’s why I’ve never got anywhere in life. And to think I waited, doing nothing, to see if someone would offer me a chance to be somebody. I don’t want to take risks, but I do want to be the next Bill Gates… it’s just that I wouldn’t want to miss the football match tonight. Better leave it till next week.
I don’t even need to learn about finance, let alone the basics of how business works. When “destiny” walks through that door, I’ll be ready to receive the luck it brings me, even though my last lottery ticket didn’t win… God, what bad luck.
I know that to start my own business I’d have to leave my current job, where I work 10-hour days for €1,000 a month. It isn’t much, but it covers my mortgage and lets me go out at weekends. I’d like to be rich, but could someone give me the formula for getting there without working too hard and, ideally, without taking any risks?
Now let’s be frank… luck doesn’t exist and destiny isn’t written. The only thing written in our destiny is that one day we’ll stop breathing and pass on to some other, unknown life. That’s why we have to fulfil all our dreams in this life, in case we don’t like the next one.
If you have a dream, fight for it. Nothing in this life is free, and if you want something you have to go out and grab it. Along the way there will be risks, obstacles, bad times and better times, but that’s life in any of its forms. If it weren’t, everyone would succeed.
Life is a constant battle, an endless struggle in which only the fighters move forward. The lazy believe in luck and the fighters believe in effort, and that’s why to this day nothing has been written about any lazy person: so far, they haven’t achieved anything. Engrave this phrase in your mind:
“If you sit around waiting for something to happen that will change your life, the only thing that will happen is that life will pass you by.“
Here’s an example of luck:
In a game of darts, some people throw and miss the centre of the board. Then someone comes along, throws three darts and gets a better score. Someone in the room says, “What luck.” The lucky thrower replies, “Funny thing: the better I aim, the luckier I get.”
The founders of Google were lucky. Warren Buffett has spent 50 years “betting” on the stock market and the colour he picks always comes up. Steve Jobs: people may say he went days without sleep, that he was a born fighter who never gave up, not even when he was fired from his own company, which he got back years later, but in the end it turns out it was all a matter of luck. Donald Trump was luckier than anyone, to the point that he lost his entire fortune and ended up more than $1 billion in debt, only to be a debt-free millionaire again five years later… HOW LUCKY!
And to think I worked myself to death studying to pass exams, when all I had to do was wait for them to pass themselves thanks to luck.
Toss your coin from that sofa where you while away the hours, and when it comes up tails, console yourself that you’ve had bad luck and all the other winners have had lots of good luck.
Without getting into whether good or bad luck exists, one thing has been shown: there’s a remote chance that luck exists, but it’s only available to those who work hard to find it.
Further reading
- If you’ve never failed, you’ve never lived: on success and failure
- Motivational quotes and proverbs
- The secret of success: you need a good accelerator, good headlights and good steering
Featured image: Richard Matthews, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
