You're so lucky!

I get told I’m lucky because dh does the clothes washing. I’m quite wtf at that. We both work full time, he does clothes and I do food. I’m not lucky, I married a like-minded man who loves me and we communicate well.

i am however lucky we are both fairly healthy with only minor blips. My job, I’ve worked hard for and I’ve had a mix of luck and been unlucky too. Life is about choices all the time so to a degree we make our own luck outside of what we can’t control. Totally see why it annoys you as it feels dismissive of your achievements.

Then you just say thanks I do feel lucky, but I do also work hard for it. Simple

I get this too. I have a thriving business, comfortable, healthy DCs etc. I work my arse off. I choose to work hard because I want stability, not chaos. Single mum so only have myself to fall back on. I get ‘it’s alright for you’ from my own siblings too. How so? Because I don’t sit around watching TV in the evenings?

@Missionimprobable
I am always amazed at the Mumsnetters who think that they shouldn't work like everyone else. I worked full time until I was sixty five. I still work part time in my seventies and do childcare on the other three days. The retirement age has gone up. There will be plenty of women 'knocking' seventy and still working full time in a few years.
Most people don't have the luxury of thinking that working full time in your late fifties is being hard done by. Most are grateful for their good continuing good health.

So have you told her this? 'Mum I'm not lucky. I work very hard and it's not easy. Just where does luck come into it'? Then see what her response is.

You can be hard working and lucky at the same time. Plenty of people work hard, make good life decisions but life just throws shit at them. It doesn't diminish your hard work and effort you put into maintaining your good life to acknowledge luck also plays a role in it.

I work very hard, but also had a lot of factors in my life to enable me to work hard (supportive parents, good health, good mental health) etc

To me, getting a promotion is due to hard work, recognition of your skill and effort, etc.

Some may comment that you were lucky to get promoted… sure, I guess in a way that is true. Lucky that you were in the right place at the right time, lucky that the panel selected you out of all the applicants… but luck would be worth 5-10%, the remaining 90-95% is all down to individual choices, agency, efforts.

Winning tattslotto is lucky - 99% luck, 1% individual choice/effort.

What I’m trying to say is that yes, all people are lucky (to some extent) with the lives they lead (even people in truly heartbreaking situations probably seem lucky to someone else). Saying how lucky someone is works if they win tattslotto, as it is majority luck and doesn’t disregard their efforts. Saying how lucky someone is when luck is only a small percentage of the achievement comes across like you don’t recognize, or are deliberately trying to downplay, the larger role of the effort, hard work, etc. of the individual.

OP, it sucks that your mum is choosing to focus on the small percentage luck instead of acknowledging the larger role percentage of effort.

This would drive me mad too. That said I don't agree its all down to hard work, there's always a luck element.

What i particularly hate is when people use this in time of bad luck, like it invalidates the person who needs support. For example someone who is permanently disabled after an accident is told they are lucky to be alive, someone getting a mastectomy is told they are lucky to catch it early etc

Every time she says/writes it just reply that it’s not luck, it’s hard work.

Yes that sounds even more annoying as you would assume your mum would know firstly how hard you have worked and secondly how much you have overcome along the way! That's irritating op. I would have to say something.

My brother has been helped all the way through his life and is basically now a man in his 50s who cannot fully adult as he knows my parents will pick up the pieces. My dad is constantly moaning about this to me so one day recently I said 'well you know dad, I never had the option of having the safety net so I just had to get on with supporting myself and figuring things out myself as I knew no one was coming to help me.' I could see he was digesting what I said.

Maybe you just need to say you would call it more hard work than luck and that you need to work to keep a roof over your head, then let your mum work it out herself. And then each time say 'it's more hard work than luck....' ad infinitum! Until it stops!!

Agree with all of this too

One of my two children died so you are lucky to have four living children but there are lots of what's I'm lucky too.

But you are lucky. I work hard, but my husband was dead at 40, and his long drawn out death impoverished and disabled me. But guess what, I'm also lucky: if we weren't born here he'd have died long before I got the chance to meet him. And I'm still here and alive and making my life, and I'm grateful for that.

I'm lucky. You're lucky. Take a minute to feel it. It's really something. Most people never get what we have.

I don't understand people getting chippy about being called lucky, I take it as a compliment, people recognise you have lovely things. I don't think it takes away from the hard work. I've worked hard to get to where I am, but I am lucky that my children are here, and healthy, and lovely. I am lucky that I have good health, good intelligence, and confidence to be able to have worked to get to where I've got to. It's not an insult.

Why do majority of people have to be self entitled now days.

I experience it in families, friends and the work place.

Grrrr.... Too many over opinionated people in the world today.

I have this too... I have people telling me how lucky I am and it can feel a bit irritating and frustrating. Yes there has been luck but there has been heartache and strife along the way. People say I'm lucky to have a good husband but I think well I deliberately didn't choose the charming, ultra fun, player sort of man, I haven't had the life of having lots of expensive holidays instead we put more money into our house. I don't drink so I have more energy and more money. So yes I have been lucky but I have also made decisions to help me with the luck.

Unlike other members of our family who have relied on their parents, my husband and I (not perfect at all by any means) have relied on ourselves and our own hard work to slowly build a business together. Long days and long hours of work. So yes lucky but also down to better choices (not luck) and hard work (some luck but mainly hard graft, making mistakes and trying things out and then constantly improving things).

Many people can’t access things that allow them to ‘choose’ careers that pay well. Society couldn’t function if everyone had those jobs. It would always be relative. It’s not all one or the other, it’s a combination of both. Luck allows you to make certain choices.

I am not well-off but am happy with my set up. I work 7 days a week to accommodate my simple lifestyle. And like you I have a friend that has chosen to have a child and work minimal hours who comments on the way I choose to spend my money. Yes, she could work more hours and have more choices too. So I understand where you’re coming from.

But I still also understand that for many people it isn’t as simple as ‘choose a better career’

I think there's a place for hard work and a place for luck and it's important to acknowledge both. I work extremely hard, I've also through absolutely no fault of my own landed on really hard times this past year and am now homeless and single with a toddler. I am working just as hard as I ever did (in fact harder than ever to take on a bigger salary and more responsibility) and I've no doubt hard work will pull me out of it. But even I'm able to step back and count myself lucky that I've had family and friends to lean on, I'm lucky that my health is good enough that I can work and show up for ds the way I need to, that i was able to get a good job so quickly, that I was born into enough privilege that I had opportunities via education that I could utilise, that I had parents who pushed me out to work and modelled hard work for me and instilled that in me in the first place.

I'm sorry op I think it's bound to be hard to hear that she isn't acknowledging the work you do, but she isn't wrong in that you're also very lucky.

OP I could have written this myself. I am with you 100%! Well done for getting the life you have through work and determination!

I get it to a degree, I think it's my mums weird way of saying well done. But I'd far rather her actually recognising that I am where I am because I bloody grafted my arse off. Something that I did without any influence from her. She wouldn't know a hard day's work if it tickled her in the armpit!

I think people see a person doing ok/well for themselves and think "oh they are so lucky". But it wasn't luck! It was work! Work! Work! To be lucky, would be to wind the lottery!

Obviously, health is another matter. I do believe some health matters are down to luck. But...I also believe the work I've done to stay fit and healthy plays a part in why I'm doing alright in that department too.

100% this.

'Well mum. The harder we work the luckier we seem to get'

See if the penny drops.

One day I'll say "yep, funny that. The harder I work, the luckier I get".