Earl nightingale once joked, “Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.” Its almost funny how many people who have neither the drive nor patience to make themselves successful blame their failures on “bad luck.”

It has been said many times that luck is what happens when preparedness meets opportunity. Consistently successful people haven’t one some giant cosmic dice roll, they have mearly been using the natural order of things to progress. They prepare themselves and then position themselves for the inevitable opportunity that will come. Others don’t see the hard work, the patience or the study, and so they call the success “luck.”

In his book Success, Max Aitken Beaverbrook writes:

Far different will be the mental standpoint of the man who really means to succeed. He will banish the idea of luck from his mind. He will accept every opportunity, however small it may appear, which seems to lead to the possibility of greater things. He will not wait on luck to open the portals to fortune. He will seize opportunity by the forelock and develop its chances by his industry. Here and there he may go wrong, where judgment or experience is lacking. But out of his very defeats he will learn to do better in the future, and in the maturity of his knowledge he will attain success. At least, he will not be found sitting down and whining that luck alone has been against him.

So there’s the secret: Luck is an illusion. No one is really “luckier” than anyone else. Through the application of correct principals, you prepare yourself for the opportunities that bring success. After you seize an opportunity or two, people who don’t understand just call you lucky.