On Luck and Impostor Syndrome
"You just got lucky…" - sound familiar?
Behind the facade of good fortune, there's almost always systematic work: hours of training, money invested, mistakes made and corrected. Yet we keep hearing this phrase, and worse - we start believing it about ourselves.
I remember I watched an interview with Doronichev and couldn't fall asleep for a long time. Much of what was said about entrepreneurship and the challenges of taking on new subjects - admitting you don't understand them yet but still achieving success - resonated deeply with my experience. It got me thinking about the strange relationship between what we call "luck" and that nagging voice that whispers "you don't deserve this."
The story of golfer Bernhard Langer from Bodo Schäfer's book “The Road to Financial Freedom” perfectly illustrates what luck really is.
Scorching tournament. Decisive shot. The ball soars… and gets stuck in a tree crown. The crowd holds its breath - is the game lost?
Langer doesn't take the penalty. He bites down on his club, climbs up the branch, carefully knocks the ball onto the lawn, and with the next stroke sends it straight into the hole. Victory!
"Did you just get lucky?" the reporter smiles.
"Yes, I'm often lucky. And you know what? The more I practice, the more often it happens."
But here's the thing - even when we know this intellectually, we still struggle to apply it to ourselves.
The Cultural Programming of Self-Doubt
I have grown up in the Soviet Union and witnessed its collapse, I saw how deeply entrepreneurship was not just discouraged but morally condemned. I remember the envious, dismissive comments about my neighbor, a single mother who took enormous risks traveling to Turkey to bring back goods she could sell at local markets. It was backbreaking work and huge financial risk. I'm glad her efforts were rewarded and despite all the difficulties, she achieved tremendous success. But society called it "luck" or worse - suggested she was somehow cheating the system.
If you open comments on any social platform and read what people write to entrepreneurs, you stop being surprised by your own impostor syndrome. "You just got lucky," "happened to be in the right place at the right time," "your business lacks scientific novelty," "it's just labor market arbitrage," "you never deeply understood this," "you weren't even a star in college," and so on.
This kind of cultural conditioning runs deep. Even after moving to the United States, I was surprised to encounter similar attitudes from colleagues and partners who would ignore obvious facts - that every dollar was earned through work and capability - and attribute success to external factors instead. To this day, I catch myself thinking there's a feeling that next time I won't be so lucky.
The external voices become internal ones. We internalize the dismissal.
When Success Feels Borrowed
My friend and partner completed one of the most complex projects in terms of applying our IT knowledge for pharmaceutical researchers. In record time, we created a working prototype solution for capturing researchers' thought processes during clinical trials for subsequent data presentation to FDA regulators. We did everything on a modest budget - tens of times smaller than Oracle's solution, which was formally implemented but never used. Researchers, including Nobel laureates, highly praised our solution.
Every time we mention this success, we exchange apologetic glances because we did the project as subcontractors, not directly with the client, because we don't know how it's being used further, and many other "whys."
Sound familiar? We diminish our achievements before anyone else gets the chance.
Devaluing your successes because "it wasn't that difficult" and "doesn't deserve much attention" creates a stream of negative self-talk. But here's what I've learned: that voice isn't wisdom - it's programming.
What's Really Behind "Luck"
Luck = a side effect of discipline. Years of training turned Langer's extreme situation into just another work episode. Under stress, we operate on reflexes. The better our basic movements are honed, the more stable the result when everything goes off-plan.
Doronichev asked: "When can you call yourself an entrepreneur?" I believe it's when you've undertaken something, started doing it, took on the challenge and made that first small step.
Not when you've "proven yourself." Not when others validate you. The moment you take action.
Your Challenge
Remember your own ball in the tree - that project, deal, interview. Really just luck?
Ask yourself: how many shots (meetings, calls, rehearsals) did you take yesterday, last week, last year, five years ago?
If there were enough - this isn't luck and it's not impostor syndrome - these are the dividends of your discipline.
The more you work on yourself, the more random victories seem to come. And the more you'll need to remind yourself that they weren't random at all.