Every year my in-laws ask my wife to ask me what I want for Christmas.

Last year I told them two specific albums on vinyl: Billy Joel’s The Stranger, and Van Halen’s 5150.

These albums are particularly hard to find. The Stranger is considered Billy Joel’s greatest achievement, so hardly anyone gives it up, and 5150 came out in 1986 when cassette tapes finally outsold vinyl, so there just aren’t that many copies. Plus, Eddie Van Halen died recently, which makes all Van Halen albums tough to find.

My brother, a vinyl aficionado, and I both believe that collecting vinyl is more fun when you do it in an actual store, and not when you simply order online. It’s a sport, a game, in that sense.

But neither of us had been able to find either album for years. So I put it on my Christmas list for my in-laws, figuring they’d just order some used copies from Amazon or Ebay.

When I gleefully opened both albums on Christmas, I asked my father-in-law who knows nothing about vinyl, record collecting, or my favorite bands, “Where did you find these?”

He looked confused. “We went to the record store.”

I nearly spit out my coffee. “You found these in a record store? How many did you have to go to?”

Again, confusion.

“We just went to the one in town. I told him the two albums I wanted. He pulled them out and we bought them.”

I practically fainted. “You’re telling me you found both of these albums in the first store you tried?”

“Yeah, why?”

I explained how rare they are, how my brother and I had searched for years, and how unlikely it was to come across one, let alone both, and in such great condition to top it off.

“Oh,” he said. “Well, great!”

What’s missing for you?

Dave got lucky. Everything in the universe conspired to be on his side that day, and because he didn’t know better, he couldn’t even recognize his own luck.

This is how success works, most of the time. Yes, you need to work hard, develop your talent, and persevere through failure. But every real success story involves luck.

When you see others succeeding, easily doing something you’ve struggled to do yourself, it could be that you’re not good enough. But far more likely, you haven’t been lucky enough.

As Billy Joel sang in the title song on The Stranger,

Don’t be afraid to try again / Everyone goes south every now and then.

You’ve done it / Why can’t someone else?

You should know by now / You’ve been there yourself.

Keep at it. Commit. Be kind and generous. Connect with people. Stack the odds of luck in your favor.