Whether it’s a sunny day when you expected rain or finding a twenty dollar bill that you had forgotten about, it’s always appreciated when life feels a little lucky.

But luck isn’t always easy to find. Like a spotlight randomly shining down from the heavens, it feels elusive and temporary. Gamblers get on a hot streak, tennis players find momentum, but then, as suddenly as it started, it ends. Maddeningly, when we can’t find it, it feels like everyone around us has it in spades. When we see someone doing well in life, we often grumble that ‘they just lucked into it.’

Scott Adams is a moderately rich and famous guy who attributes a lot of his success to luck. But rather than shrug his shoulders and leave his next move up to fate, he thinks it’s possible to make luck for yourself. He says one of the best career decisions he made was to move from Wyndham, New York (pop. 2000), to the San Francisco Bay Area. His exposure to luck got a bit bigger. His career advice follows the same formula: “The most useful thing you can do is stay in the game” or “every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.”

But try telling that advice to someone growing up in a war torn country. They might have Scott’s same intelligence and ambition, but no green card. They might be a world class programmer but were forced to work in a factory or never had the money to buy their first computer. Everything from paradigm-shifting scientific theories to the recipe for Coca-Cola can be attributed to chance, luck and being in the right place at the right time.

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Accepting the influential role of luck in our lives should not prevent you from building resilience like the Stoics or increasing your chance of landing a high paying job like Scott Adams. But it should force you to be more compassionate, more humble and grateful that you’re awake, alive and that’s about as lucky as it gets.