Luck has far more influence than most like to acknowledge. Yes, hard work, discipline and the like matter, but luck is paramount. Nearly all of the people reading this are not only alive during the richest and best-fed era in human history, but they also have additional luck to be born in the more developed countries. Or just having good health. Luck matters, a lot.

If anyone compliments me I say it's due to good genes, good luck and good living. Well, like Meat Loaf sings "two out of three aint bad".

On a related note, I can remember being mostly terrified all through my teens and twenties about whether or not I could eventually establish a stable life for myself, and saw most adults around me above those ages as cautionary tales to avoid completely. Others my age seemed to just be going through the motions and resigned to a life similar to everyone else's. I often saw that as an opportunity, as there would be less competition to do what it takes to "make it", as they say.

They took this from a Buddhist fable, but it is apt.

I've always hated the saying, "Turning lemons into lemonade," but I've discovered turning every seemingly unlucky event into opportunity is generally not as hard as it seems at the time, and often the opportunity spawns many more positive dividends than the unlucky event took away.

There are, however, some unlucky things that happen in life that are ironically "the gifts that keep on giving". Illnesses, abuse (all flavors), alcoholism, drug addiction, poverty/ignorance/"lack of education", teen pregnancy, can all cause a ripple effect across generations that very often repeat themselves in children, grandchildren, great grandchildren.

Making the most advantageous decisions, general good health, fiscal responsibility, self preservation is not selfish. Deciding to leave a country due to MS 13 might be a decision. Voting for those that attempt to LEVEL the playing field might be a decision. Vaccinating your babies might be a good decision. Remaining childless by choice might be a good decision. Eating a healthful diet might be a good decision. Learning how to make far reaching decisions, calculate the risk /reward ratio & implementing those lessons is employing successful & proven regimens. Parents are our first teachers. Then school. Then educate yourself by reading, exposure, & being able to postpone reward are keys to success in countries that permit such. Wrong color, wrong gender, wrong belief, wrong class, wrong side of the border, wrong language, wrong marriage, wrong culture, will attempt to inhibit, so please evolve. Change the world for the better by not suppressing MY advancement.

Read Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Luck is the one variable in the equation that can make it or break it. People think they have more control over things, and that they have more options and choices than they do. There are people who think they did everything the right way, when in reality, they just lucked out.

It is totally true.

we're born into our situations good or bad and then we can do the best we can with the cards we were dealt -or not

Very much so i am snake bitten anytime things look like they will go my way it always comes crashing down in a brilliant blaze. So yes i definately believe that

true
easy to find examples between a starving kid on a dictatorial poor state that will never know about reading and a kid born in family so rich that it is impossible to fail.

Life sucks, then you die!

I think you can be born into more or less opportune circumstances. What you do with it from there is your choice, but the circumstances will continue to weigh in throughout your life via your family and friend connections.

A person born in a slum to abusive or negligent patents could be said to have been unlucky compared to someone born in a prosperous neighborhood to loving and competent parents. Yet the "lucky" one might become a dissipated drug addict while the other might pull him/herself up by his/her bootstraps and become a great success story. So which was the lucky one?

Yes some have more advantages then others but you still steer your own course.
Try to avoid landmines and chuckholes life throws at you.

True. But there will be some good days for the people who think they are unlucky, for sure

I don't think your life is predestined, but some people do have a way of falling into good or bad luck, call it destiny or just blind good luck or bad there are some people who seem to step into it all the time.

true some can fall into a pile of shit and get a commercial from it or an contract for a new perfume. Then others break their backs bend over backwards and get shit on!

Luck plays a role in a lot more things than we would like to admit.

Partly true. Sometimes a person is simply at the right place at the right time. But, it is what we did before that put us there at that time, and our will and ability to take advantage of the opportunity.

Yup, it's pure chance as to which life we are born into.

Of course no one can determine if one had a lucky life until one is dead.

However, some people appear to be very lucky, to live a charmed life.

You can flip a coin and the chances of it coming up heads or tails is 50/50, but there is nothing stopping a fair coin from coming up heads (or tails) 90/100 times. Nature has no preference, Aristotle thought (Eudemian Ethics) that some people live a life very much like the fair coin that comes up heads 90/100 times.

Very true.

Obviously true

I think it's a little of both. No matter how good we are...how hard we work Serious Shit happens that can devastate us. But when ( and it mostly likely will) you have to figure it out. If it never happens to you than you are lucky.