On many occasions, life becomes akin to a game of Lotto Housie – you cant work hard or think positively to win the game – you have to be lucky.
Look at the world around and you will find that two persons with comparable skill-sets, temperament and ambition levels, end up being successful and \”not so successful\” in life.
Well yes, once people becomes successful, they rarely talk about how random lucky events shaped their path to the heights. It essentially seems to diminish the halo surrounding the hard work they did. They will project their success as nothing but inevitable, they construct narratives to explain it, they search their memory banks for details that are consistent with successful outcomes. Since a vast majority of successful people are also talented and hardworking, they can connect their success with the long hours they clocked, the many difficult projects they worked on and the formidable opponents they vanquished.
But don\’t you think luck is important in careers
Many a times in organisations, there are sudden resignations and Lady Luck smiles on a few. We all are witness to the desperate hires eventually becoming honchos, the ones who got early promotions because the more deserving colleague had to step back to take care of ailing parents, the ones who got powerful Godfathers
In the Chartered Accountancy domain, there are rank-holders in the Final exams ( AIR 1-50) who are often treated as \”wonder kids\” by conglomerates – Enticing Leadership Programs with fancy salaries await them ~24 lacs p.a. for freshers. I recently met someone who had got Rank 50 and made it to the process, only to get selected by dint of the GD / PI process. I asked \”What if you scored 1 marks less ? No shortlists for Rank 51. Yes, came the honest reply – I was lucky
You just read a super article on the impact of Brexit on the world economy, went inside the interview room and Bingo !! that was the first question – you mesmerized the interview panel
Suppose, in the year 2015, you randomly met someone for 2 minutes in a social events, get connected on Linkedin and in the year 2018, you are looking for a job. You contact them and to your utter surprise, they remember you vividly and offer you a job. Of course its the reward for social networking & for having the courage to ask a stranger for a favour but then its also luck
The iconic teacher-pupil relation between Chanakya & Chandragupta was initiated when Chanakya randomly chanced across Chandragupta playing the game of royals with his cowherd friends at village. Impressed by his arguments, Chankya decided to make Chandragupta to avenge his insult by Dhananand, the Nanda ruler. Wasnt a stroke of randomness involved here
There have been people who have got into Investment Banks , who have been given the chances to be co-founders of successful startups – on the basis of newspaper ads –
Of course, I am in no way wanting to diminish the importance of all that goes into success but I sincerely believe luck is quite important
What do you think ?