LUCK

Despite the supernatural connotations historically attributed to the concept of luck, the meaning of this word in today’s parlance has evolved into a more secular one, indicating the natural randomness of a phenomenon or occurrence, something that is independent and free of any direct causes.

Marxists, postmodernists, as well as many atheists, have come to embrace this new meaning. These particular intellectuals make up the larger portion of modern academia, and they use the concept of random luck to illustrate the notion of human determinism, in other words, the non-existence of free will, which they claim to be an illusion.

An indication of the adoption of this new definition among these thinkers can be seen in the rising popularity of phrases like “blind luck”, “mere luck”, and similar others. This effort to de-couple agents from their actions, and producers from their product, became spectacularly evident to the masses on July 13, 2012, when then president Barack Obama addressed a large group of business owners in Roanoke, Virginia. When referring to their business achievements, he famously told them “you didn’t build that”. He elaborated on his statement by explaining that business owners take advantage of favorable pre-existing conditions and infrastructure that was built by others. This line of thinking also implies, as Obama stated many times throughout his presidency, that “luck” is a major factor to success.

Now, as a business owner myself, I take great offense to both of those statements, especially when they are uttered by someone with such a huge audience as Obama. This is because I know that I did indeed “build that”, and those favorable pre-existing conditions and infrastructures were paid for with my tax dollars and built by other entrepreneurs like me. Obama certainly “didn’t build that”, as clearly evidenced by his resume. But you cannot say the same thing to a group of business owners, who are the very financiers, producers, manufacturers, service providers, and distributors of everything that makes up our current standard of living, including infrastructure.

This is why I stand on the opposite side of those deterministic ideas, and I stand firmly on an even newer definition of the word luck, one that is gaining perhaps more popularity than both the first and second definitions: luck is “when conditions are favorable to the achievement of an individual’s specific goal or intent”. This third definition of luck not only states that the individual has to have a “specific goal or intent”, but it also implies an obvious and indispensable third ingredient called ability.

It is this third ingredient upon which I have focused the content of my website: ability. Here I set out to provide much needed information that will enable some of you to formulate effective methods to pursue the acquisition of the skills and abilities that will prepare you to take full advantage of those manifestations of “luck”. Which brings us to the fourth and more complete definition of the word luck: “Luck is the convergence of preparation and opportunity”. It is also extremely important to clarify here that opportunities are not temporal phenomena, but spatial ones. This means that you do not “wait” for opportunities, you seek them out.

At any moment in time there exist an unfathomable number of opportunities, perhaps different than those found at other moments in time, but nonetheless equally full of potential. Opportunities are not always visible to everyone. It is often the case that the specific set of skills that you possess will determine which opportunities you are able to see, because when you master a certain skill, you become keenly aware of the ideal conditions in which those particular skills are best utilized, and thus better equipped to detect those ideal conditions.

And finally, perhaps the most exciting fact about this entire subject, is that each opportunity is a portal to many more. At first you may see no opportunity at all. But some of you will not be discouraged, and will persevere in your quest to acquire new skills, and rehearse them. Then one day, you may see one. Perhaps only one, but nonetheless a true opportunity, right there in front of you. Then, once you seize it, a few more will reveal themselves to you. That is exactly how it works: good decisions coupled with skillful actions open up more options for you to have, and better choices for you to make. And WE are the ones who gladly start to roll the snow ball. Always.

That is why we refer to ourselves here as “Luckmakers”: because, as you know…

WE MAKE OUR OWN LUCK