[balabaster]

Realistically though, is it luck? If you identify that you are exactly where you are today by happenstance, then sure. You are exactly where you are today because of 1,000 decisions you made, or not made; opportunities you've exploited, people you've met.

But just because one turn of "fate" if you want to call it that meant that one of those pieces may not have lined up and you'd been somewhere else doesn't make you a different person entirely... you could've exploited some other opportunity and ended up somewhere else, that doesn't mean you wouldn't have been equally or even more successful at it. Where one door closes, another opens... if the first door had opened, you probably wouldn't have opened the second door, but you might have. Who knows?

I think your success is a matter of hard work, discipline, paying attention, being what you need to be in the moment to exploit the opportunities in front of you and having the tenacity to turn them into something useful.

Would you call any of that luck? The specifics may be, sure, but the overall pattern of success is not.