Preface to “Lucky Stories”

This is a preface to a book I haven’t even written yet.

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When successful people refer to the importance of luck, they’re not claiming they didn’t work hard or that they don’t deserve their accolades. They are referring to luck as a seasoning on a well-prepared meal. You can’t make a meal out of salt, but no meal would be complete without it. That’s luck.

But a lot of people shy away from the word when explaining their path, because they think it will cheapen their success. After all, luck is random and hard work is objectively true and noble. Why give credit to things you can’t control? The ego wants to take credit for the whole thing. “Of course I did a good job, and of course I did it all by myself with perseverance and hard work,” the ego claims. But luck knows better.

I have had a very lucky life. But that doesn’t mean I’ve been on the couch eating bon-bons and hoping good things magically fall in my lap. I’ve worked hard, like we all have. But I see it as a fundamental act of self care and awareness to remind myself to feel gratitude for luck. For example, if I send out 100 applications and only 1 leads to a job, how can you not feel appreciative of those odds? The 100 applications was my hard work. The 1 response was luck.

So this is a collection of stories of my life that centre around the magical powers of luck, serendipity, and relying on others to do things I can’t do alone. In these stories, you’ll see me working hard, like we all do, but you’ll also see that hard work alone can’t come close to explaining why things work out the way they do. Other things are always in play.