There are a propensity of books and other products out there that claim to tell you how to manifest things into your life.
The first one I ever picked up was The Celestine Prophecy, back in the 90s. I’ve looked into more than a few since then. They all come down to the same basic core principle, but dress it up in different ways–adding some extra rules or flourishes here and there, giving it a spin toward one belief system or another, and generally just riffing on everything that comes from a very basic idea.
That idea? When we’re primed and looking to find something, we will.
Or, as Aeschylus is often quoted: “When man’s willing and eager, the gods join in.”
It’s really not a new idea.
We Create Our Own Luck
It’s no secret I’m a big fan of serendipity (or synchronicity, if you want to be extra fancy about the same thing, like James Redfield was in The Celestine Prophecy). I regularly tell people that things happen for a reason… but note that it’s kind of up to us to determine that reason.
If we’re being positive, we’ll see signs leading us toward success at every step. If we’re skewing negative, all the portents will be declaring our ultimate doom and failure.
Call it luck, if you will, but the fact is that (at least most of the time) we create it ourselves.
That’s the gist of this recent article by Christian Busch, “How to be Lucky”. In it, Busch says:
You might think of serendipity as passive luck that just happens to you, when actually it’s an active process of spotting and connecting the dots. It is about seeing bridges where others see gaps, and then taking initiative and action(s) to create smart luck. Serendipity is a guiding force in great scientific discoveries but it’s also present in our everyday lives, in the smallest of moments as well as the greatest life-changing events. It’s how we often ‘unexpectedly’ find love, a co-founder, a new job, or a business partner – and it’s how inventions such as Post-it Notes, X-rays, penicillin, microwaves and many other innovations came about.
He goes on to lay out his theory’s structure, which isn’t that much different from a number of more metaphysically leaning writings on the idea.
Luck is an Active Pursuit
Whether you’re living by Bush’s, Redfield’s, or Aeschylus’ ideas, the key component–and one that’s glossed over or removed entirely from a number of other iterations of the idea–is that you have to actually be doing something for this to all work.
You can’t just sit back in your chair, visualize your desired things, and have it suddenly appear in front you. There’s still work to be put in. You have to leave the house (physically or at least virtually) and interact with the world at large.
You have to be in a position to stumble across things–chance meetings, new ideas, really any kind of actual experience or observation–that will provide some sort of nudge toward what you’re looking to achieve. And if you run into that thing with an open mind, willing and eager to follow where you think it leads, you’re more likely to make some progress.
If you don’t actually ask for what you want, you probably won’t get it. And if you just expect things to come to you, without lifting a finger, well… you’re definitely going to be in for a “bad luck” experience because very rarely will anything good show up like that.
Dream Big, Fail Well
There is no world where you’re going to get what you’re looking for 100% of the time. That’s for the best. Because a good hunk of the time you don’t get what you want, you’ll get something better: you’ll get what you actually need to get something you want more (even if you don’t know it at the time).
A lot of that, of course, is retroactive narrative building. “If this bad thing hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have been in this place, at this time, to have this awesome thing happen!” That’s how we’re built, though. We’re pattern finding machines that happily and regularly string together unrelated correlations and built a causative narrative.
There’s nothing wrong with that in our personal lives. (Just, y’know, don’t go foisting your personal narrative on others. They have their own Truth, and consensus reality has a bit of say on things, too.)
“Everything happens the way it should” is a narrative choice you have to make all the time. You can be crushed by a failure, or you can learn from it and use that knowledge to do better next time. Or you can take it as a sign that maybe what you think you want isn’t really worth it… that’s okay, too! You’re always free to want something new or different.
Dream big. There’s no other way to increase your chances of doing or experiencing amazing things if you don’t.
At the absolute least, you have to be open to big dreams–yours or those of others. If everyone around you is primed for synchronistic experiences, always looking for the next bit of good luck, you’re all going to benefit from it.
So, have you chosen to feel lucky today? Are you eager and willing and ready for the gods to join in? Keep your eyes open and your mind ready to make leap. Adventure awaits.
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