You Make Your Own Luck
Pardon me for not coming up with something new and ground breaking, but good things take time. So here is something that has been tossing around in my head for a while:
"You make your own luck."
I dunno who first said this, but it's fricking awesome. How many times has a team or an athlete said that they didn't get the right breaks or were unlucky. Well thats just a crock. Losing a close game isn't unlucky, it's the sign of an underprepared team. The breakdowns can be in a lot of places: conditioning, mental preparedness, actual skill. The only outcome that matters is L in the Loss column. These same reasons for losing also hold true with the individual athlete. So what does this have to do with making your own luck? Training! The more you train (and I mean proper, intelligent training here, not slam-yourself-into-the-wall-overtraining), the more you practice competition-like settings, the more you compete, the more likely you will be the one who gets all the breaks.
Too many grown athletes hide behind the facade of luck. For most of us it's been at least a decade since we've stopped believing in the tooth fairy, santa, or the easter bunny, so why do some still insist on believing in luck? It's time to grow up and make your own luck.