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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

Chance favours only the prepared mind.

Every life is shaped to some extent by circumstances: a lucky break or a fortunate decision...Things happen to us that drive our destinies in unforeseen ways. More fundamentally, we are all dealt a hand of cards-- ranging from our genes to the family and neighborhood we grew up in-which shapes how we adapt to these circumstances.

Personal alignment is how well we play that hand so that our decisions match our capabilities and aspirations. The game is complex and gradual. As children, our parents guide us, then ease away until we are virtually independent. We select a college and then a first job, often making choices without even beginning to know what we really don't know.We move on, reacting to opportunities, coping with disappointments.As we succeed, and especially as we fail, we mature and learn more and more about the consequences of our choices. The nature of the game and its choices change dramatically from age 30 to age 45 to age 60, yet the fundamentals remain largely constant.We must build on the hand of cards we're dealt and adapt to changing circumstances.

I've found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.

Luck only favors those minds ready for it.

There's a door through which good luck enters, but you have the key.

I strongly believe in luck and find out that the more I work, the luckier I am.

Luck waits to come to that man who accepts opportunity.

What is it that makes luck so dominant in the determination of outcomes? Almost every system of even moderate complexity is subject to random variation. Because of this, in any system with a large number of players engaged in repeated attempts to win, some will pile up seemingly remarkable streaks simply as a consequence of that randomness. And the greater the randomness, the longer and hence more seemingly astonishing a given player’s winning streak might seem.

The prominence of luck, and our singular ability to ignore it, is downright dangerous. Much of what passes for advice on how to succeed—in business, in investing, in romance—appears to be based on an examination of randomness. That advice, if followed, amounts to tinkering with complex systems we only partially understand, and that almost always increases the unpredictability of the system itself.

Although we need not “correct” for luck when allocating economic reward it is worth considering the role of luck when allocating other valuable commodities, such as our moral approbation and our efforts to learn from the experiences of others. Those who win lotteries justifiably get to keep the money, but few of us admire lottery winners just because they won the lottery. (Don’t confuse envy with admiration!) Neither would any of us seek to learn anything about lottery winning from them. They are individuals operating within a system, and that system generates “winners” entirely independently of the individuals within it. Winning the lottery is its own reward.

In the corporate world, the rewards of great performance are similarly self-contained: Superior profitability or stock price appreciation is valuable. But companies with great performance do not merit our admiration or study merely by virtue of their great performance. For although competition among companies is not nearly so dominated by luck as lotteries, neither is it a perfect meritocracy.