Thanks Andrew Mutavdzija for the detailed and enlighting follow-up. This is precisely what I love about Medium, people arguing and bringing the original idea further, or in a new and better direction.
Your answer was very well referenced, and that was quite interesting to read and dive in the topic. My story clearly lacks references, and it is making is much poorer than your answer to it.
Yet, it reflected and still reflects my way of thinking. That’s why the story should have maybe been better off with a headline like “The Reason Why I Don’t Believe in Luck”, making it much more subjective and left to the reader’s interpretation.
This is my life motto. I don’t want to believe in the concept of “luck” that you can hear on a daily basis. The one that enlightens the results without taking all the previous work into account. And this definition is much different than the one given by Jefferson in your two quotes.
To be clear, I still haven’t reached any kind of success in moutain biking. One thing really important to consider is that success is subjective, yet there is still a non-negligible gap between the best riders in my country and me, and I’m not even talking about a higher level. Nonetheless, I do get your point about narcissism, and I agree that making bold statements like this may lead to self-aggrandizement, which is really not something no one should be looking for. And this could be the reason why all these successful people we both mentioned attribute part of their achievements to “luck”: humbleness.
In the end, can’t “luck” be a matter of probabilities? Some people would say that for instance, as a writer on Medium or a YouTuber, you need to be lucky enough to have one piece of work going viral, and success and fame will flow, eventually. Still, isn’t it just a matter of producing a huge amount of content and letting the law of large numbers doing its job? Sooner or later, if the content is good, the audience will grow And it won’t be a matter of “luck”, but rather hard work and repetition, ultimately leading to getting attention.
