Copyright © Donovan Baldwin www.DonovanBaldwin.com I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. -- Thomas Jefferson Me too! I don't know about you, but I have never won a lottery. I wasn't born rich and I have no rich relatives, at least, none that I know of. I DO, however, make a pretty good living from an internet business, I have a great wife, my health is excellent, and I guess that makes me pretty lucky. If I lost everything today, I could somehow make a comeback. You wouldn't find me in a homeless shelter or begging at an intersection. Again, some of that is pure blind luck. I was born to parents who passed on some really great genes to me. I have an extensive array of relatives who would be happy to assist me whatever happens to me. My parents were also able to provide me with a good education, I had some extraordinary teachers, and was gifted with a high intelligence. Yep, a lucky individual from a lot of different angles. But, if you look at luck, and Luck, as many people think, I've never been "Lucky" at all. I couldn't win at cards or board games even if I cheated! Nothing out of the ordinary has ever happened to me. Year after year I hear about people winning lotteries or discovering treasures in their attics, or inheriting large sums of money, and I think to myself, "Man! Nothing like that ever happens to me. I must really have bad luck." Then, I watch a news show or read a newspaper and realize what has happened to thousands of people around the world while I slept. A tsunami struck and thousands were killed, maimed or left homeless or without their families...or a hurricane, or a tornado, or a war, and I wasn't there! How lucky can you get? As far as the other kind of luck is concerned, I have to agree with Mr. Jefferson. A lot of what has been "good luck" for me and for others I have known has been directly or indirectly related to hard work and effort. So often I have heard someone bemoaning their "luck" when I personally knew that a large part of what they were griping about was directly attributable to their own actions and attitudes. So many times I have known people who rose above the "bad luck" of their birth or station in life. Oh yes, we can't all solve all the problems that face us, and sometimes the skill and tools needed to solve the problem are the very bits that fate forgot to hand us. Even so, each of us has within ourselves the potential strength of character and will to surmount at least some of the obstacles that we sometimes define as "just bad luck".