Discipline and Accountability – the first two factors which are essential for guaranteed success are very much dependent on you. It is something you can personally influence and develop. The third Essential Element is not something you can easily influence. Yet without it, most people fail. It is also the one element where some people can succeed without having to do all the hard work associated with Discipline and Accountability.

That element is LUCK.

Everyone pretty much knows someone who seem to have all the luck. They are successful without going through all the trials and tribulations of hard work. They somehow get all the breaks and the fates are always in their favor. We might even begrudge them of their success.

Discipline, Accountability, Luck – the triumvirate of Success. They are essential but they are not equal. They apply in different proportions to different people.

First thing you have to get over is – Life is not fair. Get over it. You may have all kinds of philosophical opinions about this. But if you want to succeed in life, get over the victim mindset. Remember, you want to have success. You won’t have it if you blame others, the environment, the government, the special action groups, whatever, for your present condition. So get over that, and be accountable for your own success.

For some, Discipline – manifested as hard work – is the essential element. For another person, Luck is the greater contributor. The proportion of these factors influencing one’s success depends very much on the individual. That’s out of our control. But if you are starting out on your path to success you want to be able to have as much of the factors in your favor as possible.

You can ‘control’ discipline and accountability – in the sense that you can work at it. But how do you control luck?

Well, first we have to see what luck is.

If you were to look up the definition of luck, you will see that it depends on one’s perspective of things – from random chance to acts of the supernatural. But one thing runs through all the definitions – it is beyond one’s control. And just so we do have a definition, Noah Webster defined luck as “a purposeless, unpredictable and uncontrollable force that shapes events favourably or unfavourably for an individual, group or cause”.

That seem to doom most of us who don’t have luck. For most of us, luck is something which just happens. It is something which happens by chance. It is what it is. But is it?

In the context of guaranteeing success, we do want to be able to control luck but how do you do it?

Well, the bad news is there really is no way to control luck. However, you can increase the chance of luck happening favorably to you.

Luck is after all, event-based. If you sit around and do nothing, then nothing happens. Okay, short of acts of God like lightning strikes, floods, earthquakes and such celestial happenings to get you off your butt to do something – which in itself is sending you a message.

But if you were to do something, or even try to do something, you have just rolled the dice for an event. Will it go your way? Or will it go the other way? You don’t know. But what you do know is that you have just taken a chance that it will go your way. And let’s say it doesn’t go your way. What do you do? Do you want success?

You roll again – you try again.

Each time you try, you are adding one more chance of success to your life. Luck, in the long run, is statistics. The more you try, the closer you are to getting a lucky break. Can you predict that the next try would be successful? No. But you can predict that you are getting closer to getting that break. Gamblers and statisticians know this well. But unlike gamblers who are gambling with their wealth (or lack thereof), you are gambling with your time and effort. Something you are already doing when you are disciplined and accountable.

Some people get all the breaks because they are statistically lucky.

But some people have more luck than others because they are rolling the dice more – they are working harder than the rest. If you are not one of the naturally lucky ones, then you just have to roll the dice more. The more you attempt with discipline and accountability, the more you are giving yourself the chance to succeed. You are increasing your chance to be lucky. You are building up your luck to succeed.