Why Luck Has Almost Nothing to Do with Career Success

If you believe that the most successful people are lucky because they were at the right place at the right time, then you are one of those that do not understand being at the right place at the right time means countless hours of hard work and preparation. The bottom line: the highly successful people prepare themselves and act when opportunity knocks on the door - they don't wait for the perfect time, they work for the perfect time. And there is no luck involved.

The most successful people believe that their luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

Luck is fortune - a situation or condition in life where your fortune lays. If this is the belief, then success just happens to you and you do not have to work for it. But if you wait for luck nothing will happen and success is impossible. Once you start working for success and prepare for it, you make your own luck. You have worked for success and luck really didn't have any part of it.

Here are 5 incredible tips on how to prepare yourself for success and putting yourself at the right place at the right time. These tips will help determine your luck - if that's what you want to call it.

5 ways to prepare yourself for opportunity and success.

1. Read
2. Listen
3. Participate
4. Improve
5. Motivate

In order to succeed in anything you have to prepare for it. People want to succeed in '_________' (something - you can fill in your own blank), but when opportunity shows up, they have no idea how to continue the path to success because they did not prepare for it. Preparing for opportunity and success is preparing yourself with everything you need to do so that failure is not an option - only success. These tips will help a person, you, prepare and be ready for anything.

1. Read

People go to college for 4 years for a degree. They prepare themselves daily for a career outside of college. What did they do in college that encompassed most of their time? They read. Textbooks, research, lecture notes - they read in order to prepare for success. Why would this be any different with any other venture?

Luck would mean a person would hope for a better future and someone would hand him or her a passing grade despite his or her inability to prepare. Do you know anybody who was lucky enough to graduate college without doing anything?

Most millionaires would tell you, they read a lot and that reading was an integral part of their success. So if millionaires read, anybody who wants to succeed in anything should read.

2. Listen

A USC study suggests that listening to CDs on your daily commute where you drive 12,000 miles a year, you can get the equivalent of a two-year college education in three years. Listen to self-improvement CDs, listen to CDs on success and personal growth, listen to books on tape and utilize this time to educate yourself instead of entertaining yourself.

3. Participate

Do not miss out on family gatherings, social affairs, networking, and functions of opportunity. Opportunity is what successful people act on. Opportunity does not pop up while sitting at home at night watching TV. Opportunity is out there, everywhere, you just have to be aware of it and put yourself out there. By not participating, you do not give yourself a chance. People who believe their success will be founded on their chance of luck, do not participate. They do not take action. They wait and achieve nothing.

4. Improve

By reading, listening and participating, you are on a preparedness and opportunity readiness track. Improve every aspect of your life, whether it's your professional life at work, or your personal life at home. Improve relationships, improve how you read by reading more efficiently, improve how you listen by listening intently, and improve how you participate by participating fully.

Just by looking at the first four tips many people can see that success means work. And luck has nothing to do with it. Most people who have yet to take these steps in order to succeed know they have a lot of work ahead. Again, is 'some' luck involved? The only luck is the luck you make and how you define luck after reading, listening, and participating, and then opportunity knocks because you did all three.

Finally, the one thing you need to do is...

5. Motivate

Motivate yourself, motivate the people around you, and motivate the actions needed to prepare for success. You can't motivate luck, but you can motivate yourself and others around you to achieve success. Success is not achieved alone. Nobody, from an Olympic athlete to a Corporate 500 executive, achieves success alone. They are motivated by success, but do it with people by motivating and influencing people.

Self-improvement and motivation go hand in hand. Without one, you cannot have the other. It is the key ingredients to maintain a good handle on a success and opportunity readiness track that most people ignore. They just expect once they 'succeed', everything will fall in place. This is completely wrong. If luck got them to where they are, without preparing for it, they will end up where they started. And that will lead to failure.

Luck has nothing to do with success unless you believe you make your own luck. And they only way to make your own luck is to prepare for success. You do this by reading, listening, participating, and improving yourself - and through motivation. These are incredibly simple tips. They are simple - but they aren't always easy. But with hard work, you will be prepared for opportunity when opportunity comes knocking.

Good luck.