Luck is obviously an important consideration if you're aiming to be successful at anything. But what does it mean for someone successful to be lucky? I can think of three main ways.↵
The first is when the element of chance occurs before that person comes into the world. This kind of luck is pervasive and common. The child of rich parents becomes rich herself. The person born with extreme intelligence becomes a professor. You're beautiful, and thus become a famous actor. This kind of luck speaks to an unfairness that exists in this world. Where we are born. Who are our parents. What abilities, talents, fortunes, genes, beauty and other privileges were given in greater or lesser amounts than others.↵
The second kind of luck occurs after, but it is still impossible to predict or control. Getting a lucky audition that propels you to stardom. Happening to invest in a company before they hit bit. Winning the lottery.↵
The third kind of luck also occurs after you've come into the world. However, the outcomes you experience are entirely deterministic. The reason some people succeed and others fail, however, is success is confusing and difficult, so what you may lack is skill and knowledge. Serial entrepreneurs, who successfully start multiple successful businesses, in my mind, fit this third idea of luck. They know something others do not which allows them to succeed even though success appears to be based heavily on luck to outsiders.↵
My feeling is that these different types of luck should suggest a few things to you:↵
1. Humility and compassion↵
Because much of luck in the world is of the first type-being endowed advantages (or disadvantages) that are baked into who you are as a person there will be considerable unfairness in society. As such, we should always strive to be humble in our successes and compassionate to those who struggle (including ourselves).↵
2. Adversity our ambitions to our endowments↵
This happens automatically. I don't think that I need people who feel like they struggle to dream less, because millions of years of evolution have hardwired exactly that. When we see we are good at things, we increase our ambitions. When we struggle, we decrease them. If anything, our sense of possibility is likely too narrow It is overly informed by our past experiences and doesn't leave enough room for change.↵
However, given that this process occurs naturally, it also suggests that, within the range given to us by our experiences, luck matters a lot less. While I'm never going to be an NBA player because I'm neither athletic or tall enough, that was never a dream of mine. But starting a business was something I thought I might be able to do, and given that this lay with the range of possibilities given my starting point in life, whether I actually did it or not was based a lot less on random chance than on doing the work.↵
3. Smooth future-oriented luck out by replacing it with learning↵
Whatever luck remains in your future, as opposed to already having been given to you when you came into the world, this is something you can try to minimize by learning more about how the world works (so you can take control over the deterministic portion of this luck) and taking enough chances (so you can reduce the variance on the stuff that really is random.)↵
The combination of these two things to me suggests a picture where we admit the broader role of luck in society, and don't implausibly suggest that we ourselves came to everything we are from identical starting points, yet at the same time don't see our future goals and ambitions as being primarily occurring because of random chance, instead of hard work and mastering.