Lucky Girl Syndrome
March 15, 2023
Author: Caroline Tully
Editor: Lynn Sabieddine
I’m not a crystal girl.
I don’t look for angel numbers.
I have never manifested.
I don’t have Co-star.
I don’t even know what my big 3 are. All I know is I’m a Gemini so apparently I’m two-faced. (Ouch!)
It should be no surprise then that when the whole “lucky girl syndrome” trend went around, I didn’t pay it much attention. I’d skip past any of those videos in hopes that Tiktok’s algorithm would learn that I was not interested. Despite my efforts, video after video would pop up with those three words at the top. For those of you more fortunate than I that haven’t had the new theory shoved down your throat, I’ll explain. Similar to manifestation, you tell yourself that you’re lucky, and poof! You are lucky! Some videos go into further detail and share phrases you can recite such as “everything works out for me” or “only good things happen to me.” It’s as simple as that.
As a girl with self-diagnosed unlucky girl syndrome; I was pissed.
I was at a dinner party with friends when the topic finally came up. “Ugh, I can’t escape it. It’s all I see when I open my phone,” I complained. But my friend was quick to defend the trend: “I actually really like it. I just tell myself that good things will happen and then they do.”
Oh no, I thought to myself, they’ve gotten to him, too!
I went home that night and began writing my article titled Pennies From Heaven, where I shared why I collect lucky pennies and why they mean so much to me. While writing that article, I realized I didn’t really believe in luck… yet, somehow, I still believed in unluck, which seems counterintuitive. I started thinking more deeply about what my friend had said: he just told himself that he was lucky and then he was. It couldn’t be that simple! Yet it was that simple for me and my unluck, right? Last semester, I told myself that I was unlucky, and there I was, looking back at all of the misfortunes that I had. But, maybe it wasn’t truly as awful as I had made it out to be? Maybe I was getting in the way of myself. Maybe if I had switched my mindset, I would have been able to find more good things within that semester.
As humans, we love to be right, so we’ll do anything to verify that we’re correct. I think that’s what this idea of the lucky girl syndrome tackles. If we tell ourselves that we are lucky, we’ll start looking for all the bits of “luck” we can find to prove ourselves right. I still don’t believe in the power of luck, but I do believe in the power of our mindsets. Our head is one of our homes and it’s important to treat it with care and kindness. By practicing positive self-talk and continually seeking out and believing in positivity, we will slowly but surely begin focusing on the good things and looking for the good in the world. Lucky girl syndrome may be a trend now, but being optimistic never goes out of style.
Image: Sabrina Sugg
