Opportunity Favors the Prepared Mind

Karen and Jay share thoughts on the importance of preparation and the vital role it plays in achieving success.

There will be those rare precious moments in your life when everything suddenly breaks your way. The new job, the new opportunity – whatever it is. Perhaps you’ve dreamed about it all your life. You need to seize the moment. But the question is ‘will you be prepared?’ Will you have done the hard work, day after day, year after year, to put yourself into a position to capitalize on the great fortune that appears on your doorstep?

During a lecture in France in the mid 19th century, Louis Pasteur, the renowned French chemist and microbiologist once famously stated, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” Pasteur was speaking of Danish physicist Oersted and the “accidental” way in which he discovered the basic principles of electro-magnetism. The idea being, that when we practice or prepare for something, what may feel like luck or simple chance when we encounter something unexpected, is actually the result of our preparation or consistent practicing. In the world of scientific experimentation, half-knowns are very much the norm. A scientist will conduct a physical experiment in an attempt to prove a genuine hypothesis. When none of the experiments are accurate, the chance of making an accidental discovery tends to grow. However, it’s only with a prepared mind, to Pasteur’s point, that a scientist can not only understand what their experimentation may have accidentally yielded, but also integrate the new accidental discovery within their existing work.

While life may often feel like a game of chance, it’s the ‘prepared mind’ that enables us to have a greater chance of success than we would otherwise. Preparation increases the likelihood of success in any endeavor. It allows you to anticipate and overcome obstacles, identify potential risks, and develop strategies to navigate challenges effectively. Whether it's studying for an exam, preparing for a presentation, or training for a sports event, thorough preparation enhances your aptitude and increases your chances of achieving your goals or in some cases going above and beyond them. There’s also something that should be said about how preparation improves our adaptability. Preparation gives us knowledge and awareness about a challenge we face or a task we aim to complete. It ultimately allows us to be pro-active about specific scenarios we may face and react accordingly. Rather than panic in the face of the unpredictable or unknown, it promotes composure.



Two years after Pasteur’s famous statement, saying that “chance favors the prepared mind,” he would happen across a discovery that would change his career. When approached by a colleague who was having difficulties with some fermentation experiments at his beetroot factory, Pasteur agreed to help him by visiting the factory and observe his samples with his microscope. At first, he thought he was only viewing a difference between filtered and un-filtered beetroot, but in fact what he was observing was the difference between healthy and failed fermentation. This discovery would not only lead to manufacturers being able to effectively observe the fermentation of their product, helping them avoid production failures and increase their production capacity, but introduce a whole new field of science: microbiology. And it all came through a little bit of chance and years and years and years - of preparation!

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