Success Doesn’t Depend on Us Alone
There’s an entire industry promising to change our lives by changing the way we think. All we have to do is stay positive, visualize our goals, believe deeply in our dreams, and sooner or later the universe will reward us. If success never comes, the problem must be us: we didn’t believe hard enough, we didn’t develop the right mindset, we attracted negative energy. It’s a convenient explanation, especially for people selling happiness courses and self-help books about getting rich.
Too bad reality is far less accommodating. We can be optimistic, determined, well-prepared, and even talented without getting what we want. We can do everything reasonably well and still end up on the wrong side of luck. Because beyond our abilities and decisions, there are other people, circumstances, and chance. And they don’t always work in our favor.
Success isn’t simply a matter of individual merit, just as failure isn’t necessarily the result of some personal shortcoming. Sometimes, behind the story of someone who made it, there’s also a healthy dose of dumb luck. Acknowledging that doesn’t diminish the value of hard work. It simply means we should stop telling ourselves fairy tales.
The Elevator, the Publishing Executive, and the Luck That Changes Everything
Imagine a writer who, through sheer coincidence, gets trapped in an elevator with a powerful executive from a major publishing house. An ordinary, even absurd situation that could turn into the opportunity of a lifetime: a few words exchanged to pass the time, an unexpected conversation, a connection that would have been almost impossible to make under normal circumstances.
It’s an image that calls to mind a famous scene from the Italian film Thus Spoke Bellavista (Così parlò Bellavista), in which a broken elevator forces Professor Bellavista and an executive named Cazzaniga to confront each other, setting off an unexpected chain of events. The cinematic scene shouldn’t be confused with the story of an actual encounter involving a publishing executive, but it captures perfectly how a chance situation can transform relationships between people.
How many people have needed to meet the right person to change the course of their lives, yet never had the opportunity?
Luck rarely arrives in the form of a winning lottery ticket. More often, it shows up as information received at just the right moment, an unexpected phone call, a chance acquaintance, or a door that opens almost by accident.
It happened to me, too. One morning, I went out for coffee with a friend and learned during our conversation that a job selection process was underway. An entirely ordinary circumstance that might never have occurred. If I had stayed home, if I hadn’t met that friend that day, or if we had talked about something else, I might never have received that information.
Of course, learning about a job opening isn’t the same as getting the job. You still have to recognize the opportunity, pursue it, and hopefully make the most of it. But without that information, I might never even have taken the first step.
That’s the point: merit can help us seize an opportunity, but it can’t always make the opportunity appear in the first place. We can prepare for years without meeting the right person, while someone else might simply find themselves in the right elevator.
Recognizing this should make us less arrogant when we succeed and less judgmental when others don’t.
Bad Luck Isn’t a Life Lesson
A business opens just before a lockdown and is devastated by a crisis that no business plan could have fully anticipated. A candidate misses out on a competitive exam by a fraction of a point after years of studying. Someone is involved in an accident because a truck blows a tire. A man or woman longs for a lasting relationship, tries to meet someone to share life with, and ends up single.
What should they have done? Thought more positively? Visualized their future more clearly? Believed more intensely in their dreams?
Sometimes bad luck carries no hidden lesson. It’s simply bad luck. Insisting that every misfortune must have a deeper meaning can become a cruel way of blaming victims for circumstances they never caused.
Not every failure can be avoided. Not every dream comes true. Not everyone finds the love, job, or opportunity they want. And not every closed door proves we took the wrong path.
Some people work hard without getting results. Others receive decisive help. Still others face obstacles far greater than those encountered by their peers. Reducing these differences to individual willpower means ignoring an essential part of reality.
Success requires ability, effort, and perseverance, but it can also depend on favorable circumstances, relationships, family background, historical timing, and chance encounters. Sometimes these factors combine. Other times, a single one can radically change the outcome.
The problem isn’t admitting that luck exists. The problem is turning our own good fortune into proof of our moral superiority.
Murphy’s Law Is Always Lurking
If the Law of Attraction encourages us to imagine that the world can respond to our wishes, Murphy’s Law reminds us, with a dose of irony, that things can go wrong precisely when we least expect them to.
It isn’t a scientific law claiming that everything must inevitably end badly. It’s a useful reminder of how fragile our plans can be. Unexpected events happen, there are countless variables we can’t control, and even the best strategies can fail.
That’s why I believe taking precautions is essential. We can’t prevent every disaster, but we can often reduce the likelihood of one occurring or limit the damage it causes.
Someone starting a business can build financial reserves and avoid relying on a single customer. Someone looking for work can prepare for a job interview or competitive selection process while continuing to explore other options. Someone seeking a relationship can create opportunities to meet people without putting their entire life on hold while waiting for a soulmate. Anyone facing an important decision can consider the worst-case scenarios instead of imagining only the best possible outcome.
There are no absolute guarantees. A carefully managed business can still fail, a well-prepared candidate can still be rejected, and an unexpected event can devastate even someone who has done everything reasonably possible to prevent it. Prevention isn’t omnipotence. It’s common sense.
Preparing for the possibility that something might go wrong doesn’t make us pessimists. It means we take our lives seriously.
You Can Improve Your Odds, but You Can’t Command Luck
There’s an opposite danger, however: moving from faith in positive thinking to the belief that everything is random and therefore making an effort is pointless.
That would be another mistake.
We can’t schedule good luck, but we can create conditions that make it more likely to find us. If we never leave the house, we reduce our chances of meeting people. If we don’t cultivate relationships, we’re less likely to hear about an opportunity through someone we know. If we stop learning, we may not be ready when an opportunity presents itself. If we never try, we also deprive ourselves of the chances that might have worked out.
The universe doesn’t reward us simply because we think the right way. Our actions change the range of possibilities available to us, at least to some extent.
That distinction matters. We can’t control the outcome, but we can influence the odds. We can take action without pretending to be omnipotent, prepare without expecting to eliminate every risk, and persevere without turning persistence into an obsession.
We can also recognize when it’s time to change strategies. Perseverance doesn’t mean repeating the same action forever. It means continuing to look for workable paths, learning from mistakes, and adapting to circumstances.
Marcus Aurelius’s Darts and the Right to Keep Trying
I like to imagine our attempts as darts thrown toward targets we can’t always see. We don’t know where they’ll land, whether they’ll hit the bull’s-eye or miss completely. But if we stop throwing them because we’re afraid of failure, we also eliminate the possibilities that might have surprised us.
This image fits with the Stoic distinction between what depends on us and what doesn’t. I wouldn’t present it as a literal quotation from Marcus Aurelius, but as a metaphor for the relationship between action and uncertainty.
We can exercise some control over our decisions, preparation, discipline, and responses. We can’t control other people’s decisions, historical circumstances, or every random event that interferes with our plans.
Self-doubt becomes dangerous when it leads us to stop acting. If we’re convinced that nothing we do matters, we may give up looking for work, meeting people, proposing ideas, writing, or building something of our own. Our opportunities shrink, and we end up interpreting that scarcity as proof that we were right not to try.
In doing so, we risk sabotaging the very luck we hoped to encounter.
This doesn’t mean every dart will eventually hit a target. Life owes us no reward for perseverance. Some people try for years without achieving the results they want. But continuing to try keeps possibilities open that giving up would close permanently.
And there’s another reason to keep going: the satisfaction of knowing we made an effort, even when the outcome wasn’t what we hoped for.
My Blog and the Satisfaction of Showing Up
I publish regularly on my blog. I can’t know how many people will read an article, which idea will attract attention, which piece will be shared, or whether a post might eventually connect me with someone who opens up a new path.
Every article is a dart thrown into the world. It might go unnoticed, or it might reach someone I never imagined would read it. I can’t plan that outcome, but I can make the possibility of it happening real.
Yet the value of this activity goes beyond the results. Writing allows me to develop ideas, explore issues, test my convictions, and give shape to my thoughts. It gives me a reason to keep learning and to avoid becoming a mere spectator of the world around me.
There’s a kind of satisfaction that doesn’t depend on the number of readers or the success of any individual article. It comes from doing something I believe in, day after day.
I don’t need to be certain that every post will bring me good luck. It’s enough to know that publishing keeps a possibility alive while giving value to the present.
We don’t have to convince ourselves that we’ll win in order to find a reason to participate. We can find a reason to participate even when we have no guarantee of winning.
Success Also Depends on How We Respond
The way we deal with bad luck can make a difference, but here, too, we should avoid turning a reasonable observation into another form of moral judgment.
People don’t all respond in the same way. Personal resources, support from others, and the severity of what happened can dramatically affect what someone is able to do. Some people bounce back quickly; others need time. Some find a new path, while others can’t recover what they’ve lost.
We shouldn’t expect every tragedy to make us stronger, nor should we blame people who are suffering for not being resilient enough. Sometimes the most important achievement is simply getting through a difficult period.
But when we have the opportunity, we can try not to let a setback determine the rest of our lives. We can ask for help, change direction, protect what remains, and try again.
The difference isn’t that some people are immune to bad luck. It’s that they try to preserve some room to maneuver within circumstances they never chose.
We Don’t Control Our Destiny, but We Can Do Our Part
Perhaps wisdom lies in holding three truths together.
First, not everything depends on us, and merit alone cannot explain every success or every failure.
Second, we can’t eliminate uncertainty, but we can take precautions, build alternatives, and reduce certain risks.
Third, we don’t need to believe the world will reward our efforts in order to keep doing what we consider meaningful.
The Law of Attraction promises a degree of control we simply don’t possess. Fatalism, by contrast, encourages us to give up the control we actually do have. Between these two illusions lies a more realistic approach: act, prepare, try, adjust, and accept that part of the outcome will remain beyond our control.
We don’t own our destiny, but neither are we obliged to surrender all our possibilities to it in advance.
Let’s keep throwing our darts. Not because the universe owes us a reward, but because trying has value even when we don’t win. And let’s take every reasonable precaution, because we can improve our odds of getting lucky and sometimes limit the damage caused by bad luck.
The real question isn’t whether positive thinking can guarantee us a happy life. It’s whether we’re willing to do our part without demanding guarantees, recognize good fortune when it smiles on us, and refuse to feel ashamed when, despite everything, it turns its back on us.
