Some people will swear that life is just a coin toss. You either get lucky, or you don’t. They point to the lottery winners, the overnight successes, the viral stars who seemed to catch lightning in a bottle. It feels unfair, doesn’t it? Like some invisible hand sprinkles fortune onto a chosen few while the rest of us fight for scraps.
But here’s the part that stings a little: you can’t get lucky if you’re not lucky. And by “lucky,” I don’t mean born into wealth, beauty, or brilliance. I mean something different. The kind of lucky that comes from being prepared enough, brave enough, patient enough, and resilient enough to spot opportunities when others miss them.
Think about the person who lands an amazing job offer seemingly out of nowhere. Was it pure chance? Maybe partly. But behind that moment, there’s usually a trail of late nights, ongoing skill-building, awkward networking conversations, and small risks taken long before luck knocked on their door. What looked like luck was really a bridge built over time.
Real luck is a little like rain. You can’t control when it falls, but you can carry an umbrella. You can plant seeds in advance so that when the rain finally comes, something grows. Most people, though, walk through life without planting anything at all. Then when opportunities appear, they see nothing sprout and assume they weren’t lucky.
I once knew someone who dreamed of being a musician. He had talent, no question about it. But he never recorded his songs, never shared his work, never showed up to open mic nights. Years later, when a local producer discovered new artists in the very same city, he sighed and said, “If only I had been lucky.” The truth? He wasn’t unlucky. He just never gave luck a chance to find him.
That’s what people miss. Luck doesn’t knock on locked doors. It doesn’t break in. Luck shows up when you’re already moving, already risking something. When you’re in the room, the conversation, the practice session, the uncertain project. If you’re waiting at home for fate to deliver happiness on your doorstep, you’re not unlucky—you’re invisible to the very thing you’re waiting for.
Of course, life will still throw curveballs. Some people are born into advantages they didn’t earn. Others face obstacles so steep that every step is uphill. That’s reality. But even then, there’s a pattern that can’t be ignored. The people who eventually call themselves lucky are usually the ones who positioned themselves again and again, even when nothing seemed to be happening.
So no—you can’t get lucky if you are not lucky. But that phrase doesn’t mean you’re stuck. It means your life won’t change if you sit on your hands. It means you can create your luck by showing up, by preparing, by continuing when others quit.
Because here’s the sneaky little truth: what we call luck is often just persistence meeting timing. And the more chances you give yourself to collide with timing, the luckier you’ll look to everyone else.
So don’t wait to get lucky. Make yourself lucky. Start planting the seeds, start walking into the rooms, start building when nobody’s clapping. Do it long enough, and one day, people will shake their heads and say you were just born lucky.
But you’ll know better.
