Relentless optimism has been around for ages (and with good intentions). It can be a tool to transform your life and take your dreams from the vision board to IRL. More recently, you’ve probably seen it exemplified through the hashtag #LuckyGirlSyndrome on TikTok. But what is it about feeling lucky that pushes us to think differently about our goals?
Just in the tick towards the end of New Year resolutions, Lucky Girls find themselves speaking about how they transform their lives through mindfulness and relentless optimism.
Neuroscientists coined the term “negativity bias” as an adaptive trait of human psychology. It helps us perceive consequences and have a healthy dose of pessimism to evaluate threats in our environment. With fewer physical threats to our stimuli, we feel the same flush of stress hormones from alternatives like a difficult conversation or a harsh email.
If in influx, this cascade of stress can stop us from seeing the bigger picture, and in turn, stop us from reaching our goals. The paralyzation by fear often leads to this obsession with negatives.
The Lucky Girl Syndrome is an adaptation to this: it’s meant to help rewrite your brain and pave a healthy mindset for accomplishing your goals towards happiness. The term recently came to light from Laura Galbebe as she posted her own experience with positive manifestations.
She wakes up in the middle of the night and instead of doom scrolling on social media as we often do – she sits and tells herself how lucky she is for 10 minutes every day.
So, how can you feel lucky on your own without falling into the trap of toxic positivity?
Lucky Shouldn’t Be Your Pillar
It’s important to understand that pure luck doesn’t accomplish your goals. You cannot force positivity towards every situation and there should be an understanding that being a Lucky Girl isn’t the pillar. It’s a starting point to understand that you want to change how you feel about yourself and work towards self-improvement.
In Rick Handson’s book, Buddha’s Brain, he says, “The remedy is not to suppress negative experiences; when they happen, they happen. Rather, it is to foster positive experiences – and in particular, to take them in so they become a permanent part of you.”
It’s still good to understand that acknowledging your positive experiences as lucky doesn’t diminish every negative stressor in your life. They will still happen, but you will find yourself less in the pit bulls of obsessive negativity.
Know What You Want
You should set clear goals, but how do you know what you want?
Angelina Lombardo discusses this with Oprah Daily. Your manifestation goals shouldn’t be broad like, “I want to meet my soulmate.” You need to be intentional and concise with how these goals are outlined. What does this person look like to you? How do they make you feel? What traits do they have?
So, when you’re thinking about what you want to improve in your life, consider realistic change. Are you happy with where you live? Does your current work environment tend to veer towards excessive negativity?
Then, you should write these intentions down on paper.
At the start of each day, you should outline what your goals are, what steps you need to take towards achieving them, and work on readjusting how you speak to yourself.
Journaling every morning with intention is a great way to improve your mental health and help you reduce stress, but you should hold yourself accountable to your goals.
Treat Your Growth with Patience and Gratitude
Understand that feeling lucky and working towards your goals doesn’t happen overnight.
New connections and neural pathways are fragile. Only through repetition, practice, and exhibiting gratitude can you actually begin to veer away from this negative obsession.
Neuroscientist Dr. Tara Swart says it can take up to four and a half months to fully feel the effects of rewiring your brain. Building new pathways takes time. So, you must treat yourself with patience and be grateful for the hard work you’re doing.
If you are struggling to maintain a positive outlook while you work through it, write it down. Express those emotions on paper and try to outline why you’re grateful, and reaffirm why you’re strong enough to reach these goals.
Negative thoughts happen, but through intentional work, you can reach a place where it doesn’t cloud your judgment.