There are any number of quotes out there, either real or apocryphal, that talk about the idea of luck. General Douglas MacArthur is purported to have said that “The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself.” Then if Pinterest is to be believed, President Thomas Jefferson said, “I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
These and other quotes have a common thread: the idea that luck is not some external capricious force working upon us, but rather an environmental condition we create for ourselves by way of hard work. It’s a very western, internal-locus-of-control approach to the whole idea of luck, one to which I subscribe, at least in part.