The Four-Leaf Clover I Could Never Find
Growing up, my mom and I had a running joke about four-leaf clovers: I always found them, and she never did. She called me "the lucky one." I'd spot them on sidewalks, hiking trails, even in fields of weeds. She'd search repeatedly but never see one.
As I grew older, this seemed to symbolize something deeper. My whole life felt charmed—I was cared for, built a successful business, and even scored a deal on the first-ever episode of Shark Tank. My mom's life, by contrast, carried the weight of harder odds. She was one of ten siblings, most placed for adoption. She fought a life-threatening autoimmune disease, was placed on the transplant list, and a donor match didn't come in time.
Just days before we lost her, I found another four-leaf clover. I handed it to her in the hospital, and she looked at me with a soft smile and said, almost in a whisper, "But of course." We were hoping, just this once, she could borrow a little of my luck.
The experience left me with a question that still echoes: Why are some people lucky and others not?
When Hard Work Feels Invisible
If you've ever poured everything into something—a business, a degree, a relationship, a dream—only to watch others succeed with what looks like half the effort, you know the ache of that question. It's the feeling that shows up at 2 a.m. when you're still working while others are sleeping. It whispers when you see someone's overnight success story, knowing they started with advantages you'll never have.
Now, as I'm building my second business and challenging myself in new ways, I'm starting to think about luck differently. Not because I've found easy answers, but because my mom's life taught me something that took years to fully understand.
What My Mother Built From Nothing
My mom came from nothing, yet she built a beautiful home and life. She supported our family and became a nurse to help others. She worked harder than anyone I knew. In fact, even while hospitalized and waiting for the transplant, she was studying for her fourth college degree. She was convinced she'd pull through, recover, and return to serving others. Her hope was unshakable.
None of this was about luck. It was about purpose and perseverance.
And it made me realize: Luck could cut the other way too. A person could grow up "lucky," with so much given to them, and never learn to work for or accomplish anything. They might have every advantage and still drift through life without building something meaningful.
Research on perceived control helps explain why this matters. Studies show that people who believe they have meaningful influence over their outcomes—even when circumstances are difficult—maintain higher motivation and greater life satisfaction. This isn't about denying that external factors matter. It's about recognizing that how we interpret our agency shapes what we do next.
The people who navigate adversity most successfully don't pretend circumstances are irrelevant. They focus relentlessly on the variables they can actually touch.
The Paradox of Showing Up
My mother never found a four-leaf clover in her entire life. But she showed up every single day with purpose—for her family, her patients, her own education and growth. She showed up even when the odds were stacked against her. She showed up in a hospital bed, studying, because she refused to let circumstances write the final chapter of her story.
That's when I understood: Success is not really about luck. It's about showing up.
This isn't bootstrap mythology that ignores systemic barriers or pretends everyone starts from the same place. Circumstances absolutely matter. Starting wealth, zip code, access to healthcare and education, timing, and a thousand other factors beyond individual control shape opportunities in profound ways.
But nested within that reality sits a different question: Given the hand you're holding right now, what moves remain available? The answer is always more than it feels like in moments of despair.
What Showing Up Actually Means
Showing up doesn't mean grinding mindlessly at the same approach forever. It means staying engaged with your purpose even when the path forward isn't clear. It means adapting, learning, building capabilities that will matter regardless of which door eventually opens.
On hard days in my business, this is now what I think about. When a deal falls through, when growth stalls, when I question whether the effort is worth it—I think about my mom studying in that hospital bed. Not because she was lucky. Because she understood that the act of moving forward with purpose creates its own meaning, independent of guaranteed outcomes.
Research on perseverance and achievement confirms something important: people who maintain effort through setbacks often do so because they've found value in the process itself, not just the destination. The studying mattered to my mother because it represented who she was and what she valued, not just what it might lead to.
When you show up consistently with purpose, you create compound effects that remain invisible until suddenly they're not.
The Variables Within Reach
You have less control than you fear in moments of despair, and more than you realize when you're willing to look closely at the variables within reach. The question isn't whether hard work feels like enough—some days it won't. The question is what you do in the gap between effort and outcome.
Do you keep refining your approach? Building capabilities? Expanding your understanding? Or do you stop moving because the original door didn't open?
My mom never got to borrow my luck. But I finally understood that she had always been mine—not because she found four-leaf clovers, but because she showed me what perseverance with purpose actually looks like. She showed me that showing up matters more than starting position.
I look at that four-leaf clover—the last one I handed her in the hospital, which I'll keep for the rest of my life—and I see something different now. Luck was never what really mattered.
What Can You Reach From Here?
If you're facing a moment when effort feels invisible, when others seem to glide past obstacles that stop you cold, when the gap between where you are and where you want to be feels impossibly wide—I understand. The question about luck and fairness is real, and anyone who dismisses it hasn't been paying attention.
But here's what I've learned: The most meaningful achievements rarely come from perfect circumstances. They come from people who showed up consistently, adapted when necessary, and refused to outsource their sense of agency entirely to forces beyond their control.
Purpose and perseverance create something that luck alone never can: a life built by your own hands, shaped by your values, meaningful because you chose to show up for it.
What variables can you reach from where you're standing right now? What can you learn, build, or contribute while you're waiting for the next door to open? Who can you help? What capabilities can you develop?
The answers to those questions matter more than any four-leaf clover ever could.
