When Luck Rises, Be Ready to Dig

My wife Suzie and I took the grandkids into Belfast on the train recently to watch the St Patrick’s Day parade and join in the craic; we all had a great time. I even had a pint of Guinness 0.0 to comply with my abstinence for Lent. When the barkeep handed my pint over, he uttered the phrase “Go n-éirí an t-ádh leat,” and I responded in kind.

That old Irish phrase roughly translates into English as “may luck rise with you.” It’s a poetic way of wishing someone well — a nice verbal visualisation of luck reaching out to you. But I feel that in life, that’s only half the equation. In the real world, luck usually needs two to tango. You need to be prepared when it shows its face.

I’m sure all of us have known someone who’s had a “lucky break.” Take the friend who bought into the market at exactly the right moment. From the outside it looks random, almost unfair. But look a little closer and you’ll usually find they’d been sitting on a pot of savings for months, maybe years, resisting the urge to spend it, waiting — not for anything specific, just waiting. When the dip came and everyone else was panicking, they were simply ready. That’s not luck in the passive sense. That’s preparedness wearing luck’s coat

The same goes for careers. The person who lands that lucrative new role didn’t just happen to interview well on the day. More often than not they’d been doing the quiet, unglamorous work for years — networking after work rather than heading straight home, putting extra hours in at the office, perhaps those evenings at night school years earlier that suddenly make all the difference when a better position comes up.

Luck might “rise” with you, but if your pockets are empty or you’re weighed down by debt, you can’t exactly reach out and grab it. I’ve seen friends watch a “pot of gold” opportunity float right past them because they weren’t in a position to move. They had the luck, but they didn’t have the bucket to catch it in.

There’s an old idea, Seneca normally gets the credit, that luck is simply what happens when preparation meets opportunity. I think there’s a lot of truth in that. It’s having that bit of money tucked away so you can buy when the market dips, or having the sense to recognise a good deal when the rest of the world is in a panic.

As the festivities in Belfast wind down and the shamrocks are swept away, it’s worth remembering that the best kind of luck isn’t about stumbling upon the end of an Irish rainbow. It’s about making sure you’re the one standing there with a spade in your hand, ready to do the digging.

As the old Irish greeting goes: “may luck rise with you.”  But, at the very least, make sure you’re standing ready to meet it halfway.