What is more important in becoming successful in life, luck or hard work? Many people would say, “a bit of both.” I would argue that luck has a minimal part to play in creating success and that, “I was unlucky,” is often an excuse for lack of hard work. This may sound harsh, but often a lot of enjoyable, idealistic planning goes into a dream project but not enough realistic hard work.

Consider hard work. It involves setting a goal and practically working towards that goal. It requires actively doing something: studying, persisting when things are difficult, searching for solutions, following up leads, respecting time schedules, overcoming challenges and financial awareness. It includes having respect for yourself by taking care of your health in order to have energy to work towards your ultimate goal. It demands reliability, respect and rapport with others in order to encourage cooperation. It involves self discipline in body and emotion and sometimes a forgoing of “things I would rather be doing”.  Hard work is something that you decide to do. Hard work means you have control over your actions so that you can see those actions taking steps towards your goal. Being in control is rewarding!

Consider luck. Luck is something that happens to you. Luck can be good or bad. It happens when you roll a dice. It happens when your number comes up in the lottery. Luck is not determined by you. Luck is determined by mathematical statistic. It can happen once in a blue moon. Luck is unreliable. No one can predict what luck they will have in the future. It’s exciting when you have good luck, you can rejoice. It’s disheartening when things go wrong but there’s no point saying “I was unlucky,” and feeling depressed and out of control. That is unrewarding.

I like to think of “bad luck” as an opportunity.

Consider the word opportunity instead of luck. When something that seems like “bad luck” happens to obstruct the successful flow towards our goal we can see it in two different ways.

We can say, “That’s bad luck,” and let disaster happen. Or we can say, “This is an opportunity to take control, put in some hard work to overcome this unfortunate situation and turn it into SUCCESS!

Have you found that hard work and persistence have helped you to overcome what some people would call “bad luck”? Have you found that the harder you work, the luckier you become?

It would be interesting to hear how you overcame your unfortunate situation when you thought all was lost. Did you see it as an opportunity to work hard and did that hard work turn disaster into success?