I was thinking about luck and wealth, and their connection, tonight, which reminded me of my favourite Antiques Roadshow clip (sadly I don't have a link).
Basically a woman brought along this flower pot for appraisal, it had been bought a couple of years before at a car boot sale for 20p because she liked the plant. But as the pot was "horrible" the plant had been put elsewhere and the offending item consigned to the loft.
You can see where this is going.
Of course, it turned out to be a very old, very rare pot in mint condition. Auction value of £20,000.
If you have the urge to say "lucky <expletive>" right now I don't blame you :)
The point is (apart from being a suitably heart warming story for a rainy Sunday evening) that wealth can happen at the oddest moments, borne out of sheer luck. According to "The key to succeeding at business", a very very boring book that I do not recommend ever, career success is much like this - you flail around somewhat randomly until it works, or until you hit on a good thing you can milk.
I have a feeling much of life is like this :)
I guess the skill, in any aspect, is recognizing the lucky moments and capitalizing on them - taking a small piece of luck and turning into a big opportunity. Looking back at my own life I can see this in action - like my awesome job that happened pretty much by fluke. Or the list of really bad missed opportunities.
There are really two possible responses to such thinking; either you can carry on regardless and take these as they come. Or you can review the past and self-optimize, try to improve your chances for good things to happen. I suspect that most people do the former.