Who is lady luck smiling at?

A solo flight across the Atlantic in a single- engine plane was hailed as a feat of incredible daring, a practically impossible one at that. A thoroughly experienced pilot and mechanic, Lindberg started with a hunch that airplanes had advanced to a point where such a flightwas practicable. And he proved it right. He landed in Paris ahead of schedule and with enough fuel to fly another 1,600 kilometers. Peopled called him lucky.

Bob Peterson, a former petrol pump assistant, acted on the hunch that there were lots of American men like him who loved to soup up their cars and talk about it. He and a partner risked $400- everything they had- to convert that enthusiasm into a slim magazine called Hot Road. Peterson lugged copies of the magazine to California car races and sold them for quarter of a dollar. The Peterson Publishing empire now produces 23 automobile hobby magazines, and Peterson’s personal fortune is estimated at over $350 million. All the same he was lucky!

President Ronald Reagan firmly believed in the hunch that a defense against nuclear missiles possible, he initiated the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).Many influential people sought to discredit the programme. But Reagan went over the heads of these “opinion leaders” to build public support for SDI. The Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to make Reagan abandon the programme. He continued to fence with the Soviets, banking on their growing economic problems to force concessions. In the end Gorbachev gave in, with history’s first treaty bringing about actual reductions in nuclear arsenals. Nonetheless lucky was all that he was.

And so was Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro, when he started manufacturing PCs when IBM was thrown out of India. Ambani, the business giant of Reliance Industries, joined the list when he invested in polyester. Equally lucky was M.S.Oberoi ,the man behind Oberoi chain of hotels , when his crazy idea of buying a Hotel Cecil when it was running on an all time low went on to fetch glory.

Why do some people seem to ‘get all the breaks’? Is it just dumb luck?

The answer could be the fact that they slogged hard to meet up with their dreams but so did hundreds of other wanna-be business magnets or pioneers who lost out on a risk. Not that these people din’t venture into risks. They do, but they have a knack of emerging out of it mighty victorious. Perseverance could be an other option, but just a baseless repetition does not do the trick. In my opinion what sets him apart or rather on top is a mysterious word called “hunch”.

A hunch is a conclusion based on facts stored on some unconscious level. Successful individuals are constantly tucking away such information to enhance their intuition. May be that’s what American poet Robert Frost meant when he noted’ “All the best things a poet ever uses are things he didn’t he was getting when he was getting them”.


Lucky people perform acts that seem daring, but in fact they are playing out informed hunches with a clear sense of probability of success. Lindbergh’s flight itself was a culmination of months of concentrated effort, during which he oversaw every detail of his plane’s construction and calculated every aspect of the trip.

Lucky people move through life with a different attitude than most. They prepare for their “strokes of good luck,” and they develop habits that capitalize on good fortune. They know the difference between risky and rash, between an informed hunch and a vain hope. They take second looks at things others barely see the first time.

Opportunity never has to knock a second time at their doors, for they are already there leaning against the door listening intently with that hunch driven antennas of theirs. And when the door is opened, there beside opportunity stands lady luck,smiling.