Tatiana Khodakova
“A pessimist is a person, who complains about the noise when fortune knocks at his/her door” (Oscar Wilde)
A lucky break can change your life. But why are some people always lucky, while others can only watch someone else’s luck?
A lucky break can take a person to a new level of life, like a high-speed elevator, freeing from many years of often futile efforts. But luck is not the lot of the chosen ones, but the ability to notice and recognize random opportunities that life throws you up. Often these opportunities, gifts of fate, turning points in life come through challenges that a person can read as troubles, difficulties, or as problems.
“A black stripe can sometimes becomes a takeoff streak” (Elchin Safarli)
A challenge, if accepted, will later turn out to be a gift of fate
For example, a person works as a librarian at a school. He has a fixed salary. There is nowhere to grow higher than a librarian, and he dreams of a significant increase in his income. After some time, the librarian begins to notice that there are more problems at work (the system is “tightening the screws”), and his salary is only being cut. In fact, the system is pushing him out in this way so that he can improve his financial well-being by doing something else or working in another field. But if the librarian does not read these signals, but perceives the situation as a blatant injustice, is indignant that “they don’t give the tiger meat in the cage”, then perhaps a gift from fate will be delivered through dismissal. And then there are several possible developments. Either the librarian becomes even more indignant: “How is this possible? I dreamed of a raise, and now I’ve lost my last penny!?”, or will accept this challenge and see in it a real opportunity to change his life.
THE FIRST thing a person does to push away his luck is disagreement with challenges: unwillingness to accept and follow these challenges. A challenge is a radical change in life: moving, changing activities, being fired, breaking up, etc.
A CHALLENGE IS A GIFT OF FATE
If you look back at your life, you will find that the most wonderful changes in your life happened because you accepted challenges and agreed to change. Everything that happens is for the better.
And if not? “Not for the better” only happens when a person resists change. When the wind of change blows, and it is usually strong and gusty, then there are options – either set the sail to the wind, or be “disheveled” by the wind into shreds. If a person agrees to follow this “gust” of change, then, most likely, he will be afraid, but over time he will be able to discover that these changes were for the better.
“Fate will pour to each person as many liters of luck as the gas tank of his courage can fit” (Marina and Sergey Dyachenko)
THE SECOND reason why a person pushes away his luck is a small internal psychological capacity. There is such an expression – “died of happiness.” This is not quite a metaphor. Pleasant events can also be stressful. When a person is in euphoria, then his nervous system enters a highly excited state. If the internal capacity, one can also say the internal norm, does not “accommodate” the emotional “volume” of happiness, then the “fuses” will work – those mechanisms that do not let this very happiness into life.
This manifests itself approximately like this – it turns out that half a step before receiving the result (the event that will make a person happy), suddenly something breaks down, suddenly something went wrong, suddenly all efforts went down the drain. If the internal norm is not “stretched” to the level of happiness, then the psyche thus “turns on” the fuse so that the person “does not die of happiness.” Therefore, psychologists recommend that when setting, for example, financial goals, you start increasing your income not in “X-s”, but gradually, by 2-3 times. There are many cases where a person with a low internal financial norm won a million, and then very quickly lost the money and returned to the starting position. This is a clear example of the work of mental fuses.
“Is this really all for me?” – in other words, the state of euphoria that a person experiences when thinking about what they want, says precisely that there is no readiness to have it. Therefore, it is necessary to psychologically “grow” yourself to the state of the norm of your goal. When the reaction to what you want feels like “it’s normal for me”, then the psyche will let the result into your reality.
So, in order not to scare away luck, the FIRST thing you need to do is to realize: luck comes in the form of a challenge.
SECOND: your internal norm must be capacious enough so that the psyche perceives what you want as safe.
“I think everyone is lucky, but not everyone knows how to use it” (R. Litvinova)
AND THIRD — actions. Here, as they say, “lucky is the one, who carries himself.”
- If, for example, you say that you want to be safe, but continue to be in a dangerous place, then you need to lift yourself up and lead yourself to a safe place.
- If you say that you want more money, but work where there is no opportunity to grow in income, then you need to quit or you will be fired. The system will “spit you out”, and this will be a gift of fate, this will be luck.
- If you do not fall into the role of a victim, but begin to actively look around, then you will see opening doors, see opportunities and begin to take actions to create income.
- If you want a happy relationship, but live with an abuser who does not value you, uses and humiliates you, then the situation in the family will worsen, so that you finally take the necessary action.
You can tame luck by accepting challenges, increasing your internal norm, and taking action with the knowledge that everything happens for the best, and that you are not a bystander but an active participant in creating that best.
“I am a firm believer in luck. And I have found that the harder I work, the more it smiles upon me” (Thomas Jefferson)
Photo by Fellipe Ditadi
Translated by Maria Zayats
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Татьяна Ходакова
Практический психолог
Интегративный подход
