“Some of my favorite people are the ones who don’t let society rush them.”
♥️ A Note from Me
Hi, I’m Jessica.
I write NP Fellow Become the CEO Your Health, a weekly mental health and functional medicine newsletter for people who want real, honest, and science-backed support.
I’m a nurse practitioner, professional writer, and stock trader who writes like the friend you’d call at 2am—someone who actually gets it.
I started NP Fellow to create the kind of trustworthy space I wish existed when I was struggling: no fluff, no WebMD fear, no Sunday scaries, just practical tools, and real talk backed by science-based insights.
If you’re here to learn, grow, heal, and help others feel less alone—welcome!
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The Truth About Getting Lucky
Someone takes an unusual idea seriously, spends years figuring out how to make it work, and finally gets noticed.
And we say, “They got lucky.”
Maybe they did, but we rarely see everything that happened before that moment.
The years spent learning.
The failed attempts.
The conversations nobody noticed.
The ideas that seemed strange until they worked.
We see the result and call it luck because we weren’t there for the work.
What if some of the choices that change your life look completely ordinary while you’re making them?
Thinking Differently Has A Social Cost
Most of us like the idea of doing something extraordinary.
We just don’t always like what it requires.
We want to create something original, but we also want people to understand it. We want to question the usual way of doing things without making anyone uncomfortable.
We want to stand out without risking rejection, but creativity often begins where certainty ends.
Why does everyone do it this way?
What if there’s another approach?
What am I overlooking because I’ve accepted that this is simply how things work?
Those questions can lead somewhere interesting and they can also make you look foolish.
Maybe you want to change careers, but everyone around you thinks you’re making a mistake.
Maybe you have an idea for a business, but you keep adjusting it until it looks like everything already available.
Or maybe you’ve convinced yourself that something you care about isn’t worth pursuing because nobody else seems interested.
Sometimes we’re more committed to being understood than to finding out whether our ideas could work.
Of course, being unconventional doesn’t automatically make an idea good. Some criticism is worth listening to.
However, there’s a difference between considering feedback and abandoning your judgment because someone disagrees.
You don’t need to be strange for the sake of being strange.
You need to be willing to think for yourself.
Hard Work Isn’t The Same As Getting Better
We often assume successful people simply worked harder than everyone else.
Sometimes they did, but effort alone doesn’t explain expertise.
You can spend years repeating the same habits without making much progress.
Getting better requires something more deliberate.
Studying what you don’t understand.
Finding mentors who challenge how you think.
Practicing the skills you’re weakest at.
Asking for feedback, especially when you suspect you won’t like the answer.
Changing your approach when the evidence tells you something isn’t working.
Effort matters, but effort without curiosity can become years of doing the same thing.
People who develop exceptional abilities aren’t necessarily the ones who know the most from the beginning.
They’re often the ones willing to keep learning after they’ve become good and they don’t assume an opportunity is owed to them.
They prepare for the opportunities they hope to earn, seek out, or create and when something unexpected comes along, that preparation may help them recognize it and respond.
From the outside, it might look like luck.
From their perspective, it may feel like years of work finally meeting an opportunity.
You Can Influence Your Chances Without Controlling The Outcome
Luck is real.
Timing, circumstances, access, and chance all influence what happens to us. People don’t begin with equal opportunities, and hard work doesn’t guarantee success.
However, acknowledging what you can’t control doesn’t mean surrendering what you can.
You can choose what to learn.
You can question an assumption.
You can seek guidance, test an idea, and improve your skills.
You can take a chance on something meaningful, even when nobody can promise it will work.
You can take responsibility for your choices without taking responsibility for every outcome.
That’s the distinction.
Creating your own luck isn’t about controlling the outcome.
It’s about increasing the chances that you’ll be ready when opportunity appears and sometimes, the most important opportunity is one you create by doing something differently.
Final Thoughts
Maybe the question isn’t whether some people get lucky.
Of course they do.
The more interesting question is what they’re doing before anyone calls them lucky.
What are they learning?
What are they willing to try?
What are they prepared to look foolish doing?
And what about you?
What would you be working on right now if you weren’t waiting for someone else to understand why it matters?
Thank you for reading this article.
Until next Sunday,
—Jessica
Your 2am friend who actually gets it
“The default is to live from a place of ego, focused on surviving. The goal is to live from a place of compassion for yourself and others, which supports thriving.” —Yung Pueblo
🪩 A Gentle Invitation
If this article resonated with you, you may appreciate my new product called Weekly Skill, a paid NP Fellow series focused on one real, grounded internal skill each week regarding attention, impulse control, emotional regulation, presence, and learning how to work with your nervous system instead of against it.
No pressure. Just an invitation.🤝
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MEDICAL DISCLAIMER
This content is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of such advice or treatment from a personal physician. All readers/viewers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health questions. All viewers of this content, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition, supplement or lifestyle program.
Jess!!!! Yes 🙌 So much good stuff here. The idea that people are simply lucky is the easiest way for outsiders looking in to negate the time, energy and effort it takes to expand the surface area for luck. Do some people catch big, crazy breaks like winning the lottery? Of course. But if you build anything of substance, a family or career or connection with self, that’s not luck. It’s persistence over a long time horizon. It’s a willingness to walk courageously through uncertainty. Again and again.
thanks for sharing it.