Like many of you, I’ve seen the rise of the Lucky Girl Syndrome manifestation tactic on social media. If you aren’t familiar with the term, it’s the latest Internet interpretation of the Law of Assumption: we act the way we want our reality to be. According to The Daily Dish “it proposes that our assumptions about life have immense power to positively or negatively impact the fulfillment of our wishes and desires.”
I was initially on board with the trend and the idea that good things come to you because you deserve it. Everyone easily flocked to the trend because it reinforces what we want to believe. Lucky Girl Syndrome offers a way to elevate our mundane, everyday life into the fairytale-main-character plot we deserve. Who doesn’t want to believe their existence is worth everything and more?
Over time, however, I began reassessing my allegiance to this new manifesto as I started looking deeper into the movement. I started to wonder where these ideas came from and where I fit among them.
One of the first things I noticed was that most of the Lucky Girl’s positive outcomes come from middle-class to upper-class people. Not saying it’s wrong to be comfortable or well-off, but this narrative of effortlessly receiving good things and the well-off pipeline being so close to each other raised a red flag. I then found a study conducted on successful women around the world, and the correlation between what they had to sacrifice versus what they had in material possessions was astronomical. For example, one of the women stated: “My trade-offs have been the extreme juggling required to balance having a family (two lovely children now grown up) and a career,” while another said: “The main trade-off to me is always about time management.”
People work hard for what they have, so where does Lucky Girl Syndrome fit in? There may be a misplaced optimism afoot. It can be harmful to those who are not in the same position to achieve the height others may be naturally blessed with. For instance, if you grew up with a celebrity parent and were able to land a big television gig, would that be considered Lucky Girl Syndrome, or could you only use the term if you’re someone who worked from scratch? Naturally, it would be easier for you to receive something good if you’ve been placed there either by birth, acquaintance, or other forms of being ahead than others. Not saying that nothing was worked for, but the balance of the universe ends up swinging in the privileged’s favor. So believing that just having a positive mindset is enough can be harmful to the reality of how life operates; not only for yourself, but for others as well.
It’s good to believe in yourself no matter the circumstances, but it’s another thing to believe things will come to you without any work. We all want to land the glamorous internship or job that we’ve been eyeing for a while. Imagine how it would go if you just wished your way into it without proper preparation—you’d likely find yourself in a sticky situation. There is a practical protocol that needs to be taken so the most aligned outcome can take its course. So please, study for that test, show up to work and send that email. It will all work out if you take the right steps.
Overall, using Lucky Girl Syndrome as a pick-me-up isn’t a crime, but believing in it more than the reality of the privileges you have and how you ultimately operate in the world can be. So next time you need a pick me up, give yourself a pep talk and remember you are that girl!