One of my biggest pet peeves is the phrase, “You’re so lucky!”
Here’s what nobody calls ‘lucky’ in real time: the nights we were up until 11 pm or midnight after performing at a high level at our full-time jobs, raising teenagers, and then doing the second shift, which was building a business when there was an hour or two of free time.
Back in those days, post-2008, the urgency was real, and the tools were nowhere near what they are today. Nobody said, “Wow, you’re so lucky you’re exhausted.” They just saw the results later, much, much later, and tried to explain them away with one convenient word.
“Lucky” is what people say when they don’t see the price tag.
I’ll never forget someone asking me, years ago, with genuine confusion, “Don’t you just want one job where you work your hours, go home, and don’t think about work anymore?” And listen – I get why that sounds appealing. For a lot of people, that’s the goal: stability, boundaries, peace.
We learned the hard way that was an illusion. We earned the hard way a position to weather anything that comes our way. We’re willing to carry two things at once: responsibility and ambition.
The truth is, when you’re in the messy middle – working late, learning fast, failing forward, turning down invitations to the fun stuff, you don’t look lucky. You look crazy. You look tired. You look like you’re doing “too much.” And if you’re a woman? Add “Who do you think you are?” to the mix.
So if you ever catch yourself calling someone “lucky,” pause. Consider what you didn’t see:
• the skills they built painfully
• the risks they took without a guarantee
• the discipline they practiced when they didn’t feel like it
Luck is preparation, meeting opportunity, and saying yes before you think you’re ready.
If you’re in your late-night season right now, let me say it plainly: you’re not behind. At a certain point, all the groundwork you are laying will be a solid foundation, you are going to be the person who gets a call when someone asks, “Do you know anyone that…”, and the opportunities will show up from the most unexpected places. Critical mass will happen, seemingly overnight.
And someone will call you “lucky.”