The End of Luck

I’ve met a lot of lucky women lately, only they’re not. When they tell me why they feel so lucky what I hear is how hard they worked, how smart they were, how determined, untiring, able to see another door when one closed, another path when the one they were on got swallowed in an earthquake.

“Persistence, Persistence, Persistence,” my mentor James MacGregor Burns used to say. I see that in ‘lucky’ women, but I also see an insistence on giving credit everywhere but to themselves. It reminds me of the way girls I coached in soccer would say ‘sorry’ on the soccer field, when they had nothing to be sorry for. They were just playing the game, and usually playing it well when the ‘sorry’ moment occurred. Rather than remorse, they needed to feel power, pride, accomplishment. So it is with luck. We women need to trade it in, and claim our accomplishments as extensions of our best selves. That old saying, “you make your own luck,” really means that there’s no luck at all.

So the next time someone compliments you, and you say, ‘Oh I was lucky,” don’t. Say, “thanks, I worked hard for that.” Claim your place in the world for what it is, the culmination of all the actions, decisions, set-backs and step-forwards that got you where you are.