Thinking About Success

Luck, opportunity, skill, and hard work are all essential to economic success. If I were to rank them in order of importance, I would put them in the following order:

1. Hard Work
2. Skill
3. Opportunity
4. Luck

There is no form of success in the world that can be accomplished without hard work. No matter the level of skill one has or his or her circumstances, one cannot achieve his or her goals unless he or she is willing to put in the effort. Skilled individuals can become complacent; they will not advance if they are lazy. A genius like Thomas Edison would not have invented anything if he never tried.
Even if someone were to have the perfect opportunity to succeed, he or she needs both the proper work ethic and the skill to realize it is there and exploit it.
Finally, luck can be helpful, but one cannot rely on luck for success. It is necessary to work hard, rely on skill, and take advantage of all opportunities. One cannot expect any good fortune. It could be argued that luck is vital to areas like the stock market. Whoever takes that stance, though, cannot say that investors do not also need to work hard to investigate stocks, have talent and experience working with investments, and exploit the promising opportunities that they see. It is best to expect the worst and be prepared through other methods. In other words, one should make his own luck.