To Be Lucky, Be Prepared

I remember the exact moment I learned the principle of preparing for luck.

I was on the wrestling team. Now, if there’s one thing I can tell you about any sport, it is that wrestling is probably the sport that has the least luck. There are only two people out on the mat, so you cannot blame it on your teammates, your mother, your father, or your coach. And guess what? There is no weather because we do the whole thing indoors, so you can’t say, “It was raining” or “It was snowing.” It makes sense to say wrestling is the sport with the least luck.

On our team were two world champions; one of them had been a world champion five times. We also had five people who were national champions, and most of them had been national champions five years in a row. It was an amazing team. One of these wrestlers was a guy by the name of John.

John had never been defeated in any high school wrestling competition that I could remember, because he was a national champion. There was nobody locally who could touch him.

He would go out, pin them, and go home. The next match he would do it all over again: pin them and go home.

One day, we went for a match with our biggest perennial rival. John went out on the mat, and about a minute and 30 seconds into the match he tried to execute a particular move. He rolled over, and his opponent caught him halfway through his roll. He was pinned instantly!

The match was over.

I remember on the bus on the way home, one of our teammates tried to comfort John by saying, “Oh, he just got lucky.” And John said, “That’s so stupid. The opportunity presented itself, and he exploited it.”

We used to have this big sign in our wrestling room that the coach had put there: “Luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparation.”

John’s opponent was prepared to exploit this opportunity. The odds of beating John were not strong, and he knew it.

But he paid attention for the right opportunity to present itself, and he defeated and pinned a five-time national champion.

In other words, the real message is “Be prepared!” It’s not just finding the opportunity; you have to be prepared to seize it.