Aren't you lucky?

One of my colleagues recently earned himself a brilliant new job. You know you sort, great salary and package, world of opportunity etc.
This reminded me how often such things are put down to luck, basically good fortune beyond our control.
I get the same with my fitness and a number of other things, told I am lucky to be the way I am, capable of the things I can do, have the things I have.
The thing I hate about the ‘Aren’t you lucky?’ question is people assume you simply landed like that or into this wonderful situation by sheer chance, without any effort or sacrifice.

Take my colleague. Why should someone, so much younger than me be able to get a job earning much more with more prestige and opportunity than I could hope for? Simple, because he has worked his rear off to get it and has a love of the work I would never match, and will never try to. It wasn't luck or chance that got him the role it was excellence earned over years of study and commitment I and others haven't bothered to give. I envy him of course but I made different choices and know I am where I have worked to be, so rather than being jealous of him I am happy to see him earn the fruits of his labours.
The irony is he tried training with me for a short while, though I think when he said he wanted intensity 10, he may not have realised where my version of 10 is. He wondered how I could do the things I did and often asked, I would tell him this was practice, there is of course no small measure of ignoring that little voice saying ‘this is stupid, stop it.’ In the same way as I envy his new job I think he envied my ability and would probably like the build this has made me. Also in the same way he understands that this has been the result of many years of commitment and work he’s been unwilling to put in, not some blind luck.
We both have something the other doesn’t and would like, but are smart enough to know that is because of the things we have prioritised in our lives, and the sheer volume of work we have put into our respective success.

There are cases of sheer luck, lottery winners etc. who get something amazing by sheer chance. Consider that many of them go bankrupt, and you see that even a sudden glut of money is not the happy ever after you might assume. There is a certain amount of right place, right time in the world; I met my wife because we were in the same place at the same time that was the only lucky part. Others have been there at the beginning of a company that has done well and been carried upward by sheer momentum, rather than having to work their way up the hard way, they are the extreme exception.

Another person I remember inherited a large stately home with immense grounds, straight out of a Georgian romance novel, and a mountain of debt to go with it. His family home had been bought with money his family hadn’t been earning for generations. The soft option could have been to sell up and live well on the leftovers having paid off his debts but he decided to take a risk. He mortgaged his family home to the hilt, buying up and renovating property in London then mortgaging them to the hilt as well until he was earning enough from rent to provide him an income.
A few years later there was a housing slump and many lost their homes. He came close to bankruptcy on a number of occasions but managed to make money enough to avoid this or beg bank managers to give him time.
By the time I met him there had been a major boom and another slump and gradual recovery that became another boom afterward. He had sold some of his properties to developers, still owned a number of whole streets in very affluent areas and had only transient debt that many businesses have. His family home was debt free as was a house he’d bought in southern France all of his cars in both countries and his truly luxurious life.
He wasn’t lucky, he made a difficult choice and saw it through. If he’d gone bankrupt it would have been a disaster for him. He had a first class education but no experience of working anywhere, so jobs would have been hard to find.

Even the pro-footballers earning millions for being glorified thugs on expensive playing fields aren’t there by luck. The miniscule percentage making that kind of money are only there after working at it from the time they are out of nappies in a world where millions are trying to do the same. For the record, I am not a football fan, watching overpaid thugs, ‘professionally’ fouling is not my idea of entertainment, but I am in the minority.

Many look at the end result and how well people are doing and declare them as lucky. In virtually all cases chance has played very little part, hard work, commitment and sacrifice have been the rungs on the ladder.