How many people had to choose you?

No career, business, or important project depends only on the decisions of the person at the center of the story. At some point, other people had to respond to what you did. A customer bought, an employer hired, an investor trusted you, a partner stayed, someone recommended your name, or simply decided to pay attention. You made many decisions, but you also needed to be chosen.

It is easy to forget this because we know very well what we did to receive those responses. We prepared the proposal, studied for the interview, improved the product, kept trying after rejections. All of this can enormously increase our chances. Even so, there is a limit: we can give someone reasons to say “yes,” but we cannot say “yes” on their behalf.

And the person on the other side does not exist merely to take part in our story. They have their own interests, problems, experiences, and priorities. A company may be looking for exactly your profile, or may have changed its needs just days earlier. A customer may like your product and not have the money at that moment. A publisher may recognize quality in a book and simply be looking for a different kind of work. Being good does not mean always finding someone willing or able to choose you.

This does not turn success into chance. Competence still matters, as do preparation, reputation, and the ability to persuade. A person can do a great deal to increase the likelihood of favorable responses. What they cannot do is turn other people’s will into an extension of their own.

Other people’s involvement tends to disappear after everything works out. We say “I got the job,” “I closed the deal,” “I won the customer.” These statements are correct, but tell only half of the encounter. You got the job because someone also decided to hire you. You closed the deal because someone decided to sign it.

Many achievements we call individual are, in this sense, the results of encounters between different wills. You may have done almost everything within your power and been the main reason for a favorable response. Still, at some point, another person had to make a decision that was not yours.

Look at what you have achieved and make a different calculation: how many people had to choose you for that story to become possible?

You Were Just Lucky explores how far our authorship over our achievements really extends: what belongs to effort, choices, and competence, and what depends on conditions we did not choose, people we do not control, events we did not foresee, and even things that never happened.

It is not an attempt to deny merit or reduce our achievements to luck. It is an invitation to look more carefully at the story we tell about ourselves — and ask how much of it really began with us.

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