Ina Garten's Be Ready When the Luck Happens

When I was growing up my dad was a big reader. We were all taught that all answers could be found in books. Time has changed some of that but I still love to read. I’ve read or listened to 84 books in 2024 as of this morning. Many are fiction. I especially love British mysteries/detective novels. I also have a real love of history—especially the Wars of the Roses.

I have been thinking a lot about success and what drives it. I’ve been a fan of Ina Garten for years. I’m sure I own most of her cookbooks and have seen her speak a couple of times so when I saw that she had a new book, I pre-ordered and impatiently waited for it to be delivered.

The name of the book, Be Ready When the Luck Happens was intriguing to me. It details how she met her husband Jeffrey and how everything changed for her when she met him and that was when her life really began. After they married, Ina was working in Washington DC and was unfulfilled in her government job. One day while looking through the Business Opportunites Section of the New York Times she saw an ad for a catering and gourmet cheese shop in the Hamptons. That was the beginning of her journey with the Barefoot Contessa.

Her point in the book and the thing that really resonated with me is that life and success are are mixture of doing all the right things to get you to a point, but that you need to keep your eyes open for that opportunity that will take you where you want to go. She says “everybody thinks that successful people are smarter, more talented or just plain lucky. I don’t think it always works that way. The people I have known who are successful have faced enormous challenges, they didn’t let the challenges stop them—they figured out some way over the wall or around the wall, or they smashed the wall down. In fact, it was exactly those challenges that shaped their success”.?

My takeaway is that do everything you can to make sure you are in the right place with the right skills so that when the right opportunity happens you can take advantage of it. I really enjoyed this book!