Be Ready When the Luck Happens

by Ina Garten

I distinctly remember thinking, If I were asked to be the head of OMB, would I want it? And if not, what was I even working toward?

But Jeffrey always had the most positive attitude—If this is what you want to do, we’ll work it out.

and my first thought was, I need to be here! I didn’t want to write papers about enriched uranium; I wanted to bake cookies, not just because I liked them (and I do!), but because I saw a completely different life from the one I was living. The food business, this food business, would give me the freedom and creative outlet I craved.

I was only thirty

If I proudly said that I’d won a tennis tournament or made a fisherman knit sweater, as I liked to do, he’d say, “Those are things you wanted to do, but did you accomplish anything?” I was confused. Why couldn’t succeeding involve something you enjoyed doing?

So many years later, I think of writing recipes as little science projects, and I still feel good about each success. I have a hypothesis, I test it, and I find out whether it was a good idea—or not—and then test it again. But instead of ending up with smarter mice, I end up with the best mashed potatoes, which is so much more satisfying.

I wanted to have fun at a party school where I wouldn’t have to study hard to get good grades. And, after a childhood filled with anxiety, I was terrified of rejection. Looking back, I now realize that I was looking for a school that would never turn me down.

We went back to the jeweler and bought two lovely gold bands for the wedding. (Which, by the way, both of us wore for a couple of years, took off, and never wore again.) Life lesson—some things you think are important turn out to be not worth worrying about.

I’m so excited about this idea. You’re going to make my whole life so exciting—

How long could I keep up this race to nowhere? I was turning thirty and still trying to figure out who I wanted to be when I grew up.

Don’t worry, Passages assured me, your twenties are the time when you master what you think you’re supposed to do. But in your thirties, when you’ve figured out what you like and don’t like, and you’re more confident, you can move on to what you really want to do, which might be totally different.

More important, I realized that I hadn’t been wasting my time when I worked at jobs that were so unsatisfying. I was simply doing research, and now I just needed to decide my path forward.

She told me that “Type A” people (I guess she was talking about me!?) can’t begin to think about what to do next until they stop what they’re doing. They need space and time to allow “the universe” to reveal what is next.

you never know your good breaks from your bad ones.

the definition of a good marriage is that each person thinks they got the better deal.

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’ve known who are successful have faced enormous challenges, but they didn’t let the challenges stop them—they figured out some way over the wall or around the wall, or they just smashed the wall down. In fact, it was exactly those challenges that shaped their success.