Why we hate hearing “But you are so lucky!”

Probably the most annoying sentence that one has to hear is “But you are so lucky!”

My daughter spent the last summer working in Portugal and then flew on to Shanghai to work. One son is training to be a joiner and loves it. The other son is working his way across Australia and has now been doing so for nearly a year. I have a job I love and enjoy at least one adventure every year. And all because we “are so lucky”. It is not luck and the record needs to be set straight.

Success From Hard Work Is Not ‘Luck’
Richard Branson

Portugal and Shanghai at the age of eighteen is a dream but it is definitely not the result of luck. Both jobs were the result of making a commitment and following it up with job applications. Particularly the job offer in Shanghai followed two months with over a hundred applications sent across the globe before some one “luckily” offered a position. Within a month of getting to China she was offered jobs in Australia and on a cruise ship.

The carpenter could still be attending school learning latin, integration and who knows what in order to pass a test before forgetting it all again. But he knew tht he wanted to be a joiner so, against all advice from academic obsessives, he left school and applied for apprenticeships. “Luckily” he was immediately offered exactly what he was looking for and is now happy and successful.

And the traveller across Australia? He decided on his aim and then he spent a year researching, saving and organising.  While others paid an agency to organise their trips, he dealt with all the details himself so that now he is “luckily” able to apply for a second year without  having to sacrifice a flight home.

While in Germany with the British Army I decided I wanted to stay for a bit so I actively asked around and was offered two jobs. In Germany I did an apprenticeship and then a distance learning honours degree. I left a safe but boring job to manage a struggling startup working stupid hours to begin with. And because of all that I am now “lucky” enough to have my dream job in a ski resort in the Alps.

All of us put in the hard work that Richard Branson wrote of. We planned and worked to achieve our goals and now we are reaping the benefits of succeeding. It is understandably annoying that this work is then so lightly dismissed by those unwilling to try with “But you are so lucky!”