When I was just an interviewer at a market research company and I got promoted to supervisor, I heard my co-workers whisper, “She’s so lucky!”
And throughout the next 6 years when I was promoted 5 more times I heard the same thing.
When the office I worked in closed down and I was offered a higher paying job with benefits and fabulous hours only 3 days later (without even putting in a resume) lots of people told me I was so lucky.
When I quit my job to work for myself full time people in real life and online line repeated that thought: “You’re so lucky”!
And when I was in university and aced all my essay exams fellow students thought that luck had something to do with that.
I AM NOT LUCKY!
I get upset when people call me lucky because to insinuate that luck has anything to do with the successes I’ve had is to ignore the fact that I’ve worked so hard to achieve those things.
According to Dictionary.com luck is:
–noun
1. the force that seems to operate for good or ill in a person’s life, as in shaping circumstances, events, or opportunities: With my luck I’ll probably get pneumonia.
2. good fortune; advantage or success, considered as the result of chance: He had no luck finding work.
3. a combination of circumstances, events, etc., operating by chance to bring good or ill to a person: She’s had nothing but bad luck all year.
4. some object on which good fortune is supposed to depend: This rabbit’s foot is my luck.
Do you notice some of the key words there? Chance, a force, circumstances.
Luck is what happens when you get a job because you know someone, even though you don’t have the skills to do the job yet. Luck is what happens when you put no work into an essay exam and still ace it. Luck is what happens when they pull your name out of a hat to decide who gets the promotion.
I did not use luck to achieve my successes.
- I had a good work ethic.
- I made it clear that I had goals and wanted to reach them.
- I spent time thinking about how to reach them.
- I studied.
- I made it a point to learn how to write an essay exam properly.
- I networked.
- I displayed skills, knowledge, and thinking abilities.
My abilities and my hard work are what helped me reach the successes I have had.
Yes, I do sit on the computer playing Farmville and laughing at LOL cats some nights. But a lot of my “non-working” time online is spent learning things. It is spent asking questions, finding sites that can help me, making connections with people that I can learn from. I’m not “working” but I’m working at being more prepared to work.
Luck is something that is out there in the universe — I do believe that.
But calling someone lucky when their successes are a direct result of their hard work is just rude.
So, please, don’t call me lucky!
