Is it always luck?

The wheel of fortune does not have to be spinning for us in order to succeed in life. Perhaps we can be successful if we have the confidence to be the right person, at the right time and the right place…

It would be quite silly to ask anyone if he or she wants to be lucky. Many of us would love to be lucky, to get something we don't have, to have fate on our side and for things to work for us. Nature has given us limited resources that we try to share and somehow survive. We work hard to accumulate certain resources and we sometimes get lucky and get more than we have worked for. I wish my friends a good luck when going for an interview, just before an exam, or when they are trying to undertake an extremely hard task. I consider myself to be very privileged and lucky to be in an institution like Harvard. We associate daily occurrences and success with luck, and from getting good jobs to winning lotteries, luck plays a role that is hard to deny. So, I will not waste your time talking about something that we seem to be well acquainted with, but rather I would like to discuss about the control we have in defining our fate and making our paths. There is luck, but maybe we might be better off not depending on luck but by creating opportunities for ourselves. Maybe we might not have to wait to win a DV lottery or the jackpot, or wait for the right thing to happen for us to get where we wish to get to. That is a side I would like to argue for in this article.
Some of my friends recently got very competitive job offers, and even though they are qualified to do the job, most of the other applicants were as good or even more qualified than my friends. This is something we hear about quite often, where there are fewer job placements than the number of qualified jobs seekers, and the few lucky ones get the jobs they want. Somebody was at the right place at the right time. Does that sound like luck to you? Of course it could be luck. It is possible that the employer and applicant might have something in common, or the job seeker could have bumped into the employer on the streets randomly and had a good conversation beforehand. This could make the employer favor a certain candidate. There are a lot of possibilities for someone to be at the right place at the right time unintentionally. But, - a big "but"- someone could intentionally be at the right place at the right time. How is that possible? Well, this would mean using some creativity and mostly common sense.
If I am applying for a job and I know that there are nine other people applying for it as well, then I would have a 10% chance of getting that job. It could be worse, but 10% is not good at all. I would believe that everyone else meets the requirements for the position, in terms of academic credentials and work experience. So, if I were going to get that job, I would need to stand out and make a huge impression. I could sit down and think of the other qualities I have that make me a better candidate, and try to prove to myself why I am the best candidate for the job. Then I could go do intense research on the company I want to work in, know how it functions, talk to the employees, try to understand the market it is working in, and try to find out gaps that it is missing in the company that I may be able to fill. Before meeting the employer, I could try to find out as much about him/her, where they have worked before, what schools they went to, where they grew up. It is possible that we might have gone to the same school, or liked the same sport. The aim is to find as much common ground between the employer and me. Every time I meet the employer, I would consider that encounter as a mini interview, because the earlier I impress the employer the easier it is for him/her to choose me during the interview. This is one of the many approaches I can take to make circumstances turn to my side. Diligence and hard work in making sure you know what you are doing and where you are going to cab make a huge difference.
I once tried a certain approach that ended up being fruitful. I wouldn't like to boast about a past success, but I think sharing this experience with you could help me clarify my point. When I once lived in Tanzania, I used to visit the US Embassy Education Advising sessions quite regularly, and considering how talkative I am, I used to ask many questions to the advisors and have long interesting conversations with them. When the Embassy needed someone to recite a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for an event, the advisors thought of my activeness during discussions and asked me to fill that gap. I happily volunteered, rehearsed the "I have a dream" speech dozens of times and did a decent job reciting it. The event was attended by many dignitaries and at the end of the event, an owner of a media company offered me a job to start a talk show for his TV station. In this incident, my hard work was being active during the discussions at the Embassy, and I marketed my public speaking skills that when they needed someone they called me up. I used those conversations as a means to stand out from the crowd, and when they wanted someone, I made it easier for them to choose me. When I volunteered at the event, I wasn't paid, and that job I did for the Embassy was sort of an investment, a means for me to sell my product, to do a decent job and at the same that event opened a lot of doors.
Sometimes, doors just won't open automatically. In situations when I wish to stand out from a competitive crowd, I often consider myself as a product and I use the atmosphere to market my product, and when I sometimes succeed at selling that product, I can confidently say, "that was not just luck."

Yoseph can be reached at askyoseph@gmail.com