When people think about success, they think about money, status, and (most importantly) luck.

I was recently talking to one of my friends, and he was talking about how Bill Gates, J.K. Rowling, and Floyd Mayweather Jr. were the luckiest people in the world.

"Man, Bill Gates was so lucky! He's a billionare even though he failed out of Harvard! And take a look at J.K. Rowling! She was poor and wrote that book on a whim! And look at that boxer man! I wish I had fast reflexes!"

For some reason, he believes that all these people became the people they are today through simple luck. He calls them lucky! I didn't have the heart to tell him that Bill Gates made a large sum of money in high school fixing computers and getting into Harvard was a feat in itself. I didn't want to tell him that J.K. Rowling had to have worked constantly to find a publisher that would make her book the number 1 best seller in the world. I didn't care to mention that F.M. Jr. had to work his heart out to get those fast reflexes.

These people were lucky. Maybe the computer would have never caught on. Maybe the publishers were having a bad day and threw Harry Potter out the window. Maybe a father would have never made his son start boxing. However, these people did have to work hard to become successful.

They worked so hard that they became so specialized in their own individual professions and overtook the competition by storm. They took risks, and reaped endless rewards instead of facing harsh consequences.

You know, we can learn something from these people, but it takes a successful person to use what they learn.

-SK's thoughts on August 10th, 2007