NOTE: By success, I am referring only to the conventional metrics like power/wealth/status, etc. There are certain unconventional elements of a successful life (like a meaningful relationship, self-actualization, peace of mind, etc.) that I am not going to touch upon in this article.

Successful People have worked hard enough to reach their most ambitious goals. I genuinely respect their efforts and admire their talents. However, lately, I realized that most of them seem to underestimate one critical factor that might have played a considerable role in their journey: "Luck".

In the past decade, several studies — including those by Michael Mauboussin Nassim Taleb — have suggested that luck may play a far more significant role than we ever realized, across many fields, including politics, sport, business, science, art etc.,

They have concluded that talent definitely matters, but we can't overlook the role luck plays in our life.

Let's analyze a well known real-life example. Our country of residence plays a significant role in our success by acting as good luck.

There are 196 countries in the world — Out of which the top 20 wealthiest countries have an average wealth of 100,000 USD per person. Not everyone is lucky enough to be born in these developed nations.

• The Top 10 Poor countries have a per capita GDP of around 800 USD per year (or) 2–3 USD per day.

• Life, in many ways, is harder for those born in middle latitudes because people born there are bound to suffer from a vast array of awful diseases, including Ebola, Marburg, Leprosy, Cholera, Leishmaniasis, Elephantiasis, Trypanosomiasis, Tuberculosis, Yellow Fever, Trachoma, Lassa Fever, Parasitic Diseases etc.,

• In general, poor countries are majorly located in Tropical Regions. There are a few key reasons — Tropical plants contain fewer carbohydrates. Moreover, Tsetse fly is overwhelmingly present in Tropical Africa (because of its heat and humidity), which makes the domesticated animals inactive. This has a profound negative impact on developing technology and increasing agricultural productivity.

It seems like no talent/hard work would matter as the chance of achieving success reduces drastically for those living in third-world countries.

Let's look into the sports field.

Do you know? For many years, around 40% of the Professional Hockey Players selected into top tier leagues were born in the First Quarter of the year compared to just 10% born in the last quarter.

So does this mean an early birthday can make you up to four times more likely to become a pro hockey player? Probably, yes.

Think about it: January 1st is the cut-off date for the kid's hockey league. Those born in the first quarter of the year are a little bigger and faster than those in their league born late. We might think that this difference should have eventually shrunk to nothing, but it doesn't. The older kids are given more time to practice and enter more tournaments. This advantage increases exponentially over the years and gives an edge to the players born in the first quarter.

However, it seems none of these players considers their birthdate as one of the factors for their success.

To quantify the critical role played by luck, a couple of Physicists — Andrea Raspisarda and Alessandro Pluchino, teamed up with economist Alessio Biondo. They proposed a "Toy Mathematical Model", the first-ever attempt to formally explain this phenomenon.

They simulated the evolution of careers of a collective population (1000 Individuals) over a work-life of 40 years (from age 20–60). During the start of the simulation, they allocated different degrees of talent and the same level of success (10 units) to these hypothetical individuals ("agents"). Ideally speaking, the more talented agent should be more likely to be achieving the highest level of success out of a given opportunity. Every 6 months, these agents were exposed to a certain number of lucky and unlucky events. The success rate was reduced in half whenever an agent encountered an unfortunate event. Their success doubled proportionately to their talents during a fortunate circumstance.

Below are the outcomes of the 40-years simulation,

• The talent was evenly distributed while success was not — 44% of the total success was held by the 20 most successful individuals. At the same time, almost half of the population remained under 10 units of success (which was the starting condition for everyone). This is consistent with the real-life data because the world's top 1% own 50% of the world's wealth.

• But the results don't deny that those with talent had a higher probability of increasing their success by exploiting the possibilities offered by good luck.

• However, talent was insufficient, as the most talented were rarely the most successful. The most successful agents were those with above-average talent and a lot of luck.

Lucky individuals with above-average talent are far better off than more talented but unlucky individuals.

Overall, most of us are unaware of our good luck as it is not something we did but instead just come to us.

What are the implications of this type of ignorance? Without any doubt, those with a lot of power and wealth are talented and hard-working. But they have also been luckier in some way (or) the other. As I said earlier, as most of us, they are also unaware of their good luck. Hence, they become delusional by not having a clear view of reality. This would trick them into believing that only meritocracy prevails in our society.

This type of thinking is harmful to our society in two ways,

• It fuels "Survivorship Bias" (A cognitive bias of mistakenly viewing a small successful group as the entire group and avoiding the experiences of the unsuccessful group). A famous example is Gary Vaynerchuk. He is definitely the epitome of entrepreneurship and living the American dream. He has the most loyal and dedicated fan bases (primarily young people) who love him. The problem lies in his Success Mantra, which he preaches to everyone — To work 20 hours/day and grind harder than anybody else until you achieve your goals. It might have worked for him, but I am confident this is a sure-shot way to get burnt out and kill ourselves. Sadly, his followers will realize over time that hard work and talent alone won't be sufficient in their lives.

• Successful people officially (like politicians) or unofficially (business leaders/celebrities) set rules for our society. But unfortunately, they don't have the life experiences of those who have worked hard their entire life but eventually failed. They conclude that the losers are just less hard-working/less talented. This, in turn, would make them accept inequality and view the world as a fairground for everyone. This partial view of reality makes them create an environment that allocates resources to those who are already highly rewarded (or) experienced past success rather than those who are most talented. This proves the "Matthew effect" — The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.

If we analyze objectively, there is actually one good thing about being delusional about our success.

Once we underestimate our luck factor, we tend not to get discouraged by reality. We try harder and harder until we reach our spot. This is a good thing as our efforts and optimism define us as a person. Otherwise, what's the point of living a boring life without trying anything outside of your comfort zone? Moreover, the comfortable life we live today results from our previous generation's distorted view of reality.

Hence, the best thing to do is to acknowledge the presence of luck and not to mind it. It's as paradoxical as living in the present moment along with having a clear view of our future.

Accepting the luck factor makes us more grateful and humble. On the other hand, not taking the luck factor seriously helps us put in the effort and live up to our full potential.