Luck & Hard Work

Luck and hard work can be very easy to confuse.  I work hard, but I do not always feel lucky with the results.  Teaching, in particular, often leaves me questioning the correlation between the two.  Maybe it is true of anything that is a craft-- that the hard work takes longer to pay off.  

It is just so easy to think that successful people are lucky and forget the role that hard work plays in their success.  I know that I often catch myself thinking that published writers are lucky.  However, I also know that they put in a ton of work and refuse to give up, which ultimately matters more than luck.  After all, you will never publish anything if you do not write it or pitch it in the first place.  Maybe, then, the secret is not luck, but that successful people are the ones that do not give up.

I'm trying to remind myself of this, to keep myself motivated.  The ironic part is that I remind my students of this all of the time.  "This is hard!" they'll say.  "Yes, life is hard, and you have a choice.  Either you can work hard at it and be successful, or you can give up and never succeed."  I'm pretty sure that I said this at least five times this week.  Funny how sometimes we do not hear our own words.

I thought that you might also like the reminder to make your own luck.  If, like me, you're pursuing a creative endeavor that would benefit from online networking, check out this great post about making your own luck.

I will create my own happines by ~notmi on deviantART