The Lie We Tell About Success

Hurts by Joy Crookes

Long time no see.

I’ve been busy lately.
The kind of busy where days blur into each other and ideas sit quietly in the background waiting for you to return to them.

But one thought kept lingering in my mind.

We don’t talk about luck honestly enough.

Not because it isn’t real.
But because admitting it makes people uncomfortable.

We prefer stories where everything makes sense.
Where outcomes are the clean result of discipline, intelligence, and hard work.

Work hard.
Follow the steps.
Repeat the formula.

And success will come.

It’s a comforting story.

But life doesn’t behave like a recipe.

Two people can do almost the exact same things — follow the same advice, build the same skills, copy the same strategy step for step — and still end up in very different places.

One opportunity appears for one person and not the other.
One person meets the right collaborator at the right time.
One project catches attention exactly when the world starts caring about that problem.

The other person may have done everything right.

But the moment never arrived.

We often explain this difference away with other words.

“Connections.”
“Positioning.”
“Timing.”

Sometimes we call it nepotism when access clearly tilted the field from the beginning.

But even beyond that, something else exists.

Something quieter.

Something we rarely like to admit.

Luck.

Or what the Greeks called kairos — the right moment.

A moment when something opens.

An unexpected opportunity.
A conversation that changes direction.
A door you didn’t even know existed suddenly becoming visible.

Most of us aren’t fully prepared when these moments arrive.

They appear suddenly.

And when they do, we step into them with whatever readiness we have at the time.

Later we build stories about how intentional everything was.

We say we always planned it.

We say we manifested it.

But if we’re honest, many of the turning points in our lives were simply unprepared kairos moments.

Moments where timing and circumstance intersected with our lives in ways we couldn’t have designed.

This doesn’t mean effort is meaningless.

Effort is what allows you to stand close enough to the door when it opens.

It’s what gives you the ability to recognize the moment and step through it when it appears.

But pretending that effort alone determines everything is one of the most persistent myths we tell ourselves about success.

Some people were lucky.

Some people met the right person.

Some people arrived at the right moment.

And many people who deserved the same opportunity simply didn’t encounter that moment.

Maybe we should be a little more honest about that.

Not to diminish hard work.

But to recognize that life is shaped by forces larger than our plans.

Because once we admit that luck exists, something interesting happens.

Success becomes less about pretending we control everything…

…and more about preparing ourselves well enough to recognize the moment when it arrives.

After all, some doors open because we knocked.

But many others open because we happened to be standing there when they did.