It’s estimated that 2.5 crores babies were born in India in the year 1981.

I was one of them.

Of those 2.5 crore infants, about half (45%) were born to parents living under the poverty line.

Fortunately, I wasn’t one of them.

And that’s...

…perhaps the greatest fortune I’ve had in my entire life.

That one event — being born to financially sound, kind, educated, & loving parents — contributed about 99% to this outcome today — that I’m not among those who don’t know where their next meal will come from.

Warren Buffett calls it the ovarian lottery. He wrote —

"The odds were 50-to-1 against me for being born in the US in 1930.

I won the lottery the day I emerged from the womb by being in America instead of in some other country where my chances would have been way different."

For me, the streak of luck didn’t end with my ovarian lottery.

I spent 4 years studying in one of the best engineering colleges in India ( @iitbombay).

Did I earn that?

I used to think that I did but now I have changed my mind.

Yes, I studied hard but so did other lakhs of aspiring students.

A friend who was smarter & better prepared than me didn't make it to the IIT because he was down with a severe headache on the day of the exam.

It was luck that I didn’t catch flu on the day of the entrance exam.

A few years back, my wife and I became parents to a set of healthy identical twin girls.

Our doctor told us that the odds of that (especially given our family history and demographic) were less than 1 percent.

Lady Fortuna had smiled again.

Am I telling you all this to impress you with my badges of lucky breaks?

Maybe some part of me does want to boast.

However, my argument is centered around the fact that it would be plain foolish to take the entire credit for the good things that have come my way so far.

Talking about one of his investments, Warren Buffett once wrote this in his letter to shareholders —

"..this holding has proved extraordinarily profitable thanks to a move by your Chairman that combined luck and skill—110% luck, the balance skill."

I can relate to Buffett.

Most of my good outcomes haven’t necessarily transpired because of the hard work.

They have come in spite of the hard work.

In other words, I don’t deny the possibility that luck has probably compensated even for those acts which would have sent me in the wrong direction.

By enumerating a few instances from my own life, I want to remind you (and pound it back into my own subconscious) that we have luck & fortuitous timing to thank for almost all our successes.

And if you’re reading this, you’re pretty successful from most standards.