Do you see yourself as someone who’s lucky, or unlucky?
And do you believe you can change your luck?
I first came into contact with the word ‘serendipity’ when I was about ten. My mum wanted to open a business and call it ‘Serendipity’, and explained what it meant to me then.
I thought it was a beautiful word, and it’s hidden in the back of my mind ever since.
Fast forward through the years: she never opened the business, but I’m still in love with the word.
For a while, I’d have considered myself someone with neutral luck, or perhaps someone that good luck didn’t come to. I’d never won a competition, not even a lucky door prize or the like, and have only ever seen people around me get the good fortune.
But recently, I’ve been looking into serendipity and luck a bit more, and analysing what I think of it.
Truly, I have been lucky.
When you sit and really think about it, put life into perspective.
I was born at this time. If I was born even a few years earlier, my opportunities as a woman would be much different, or in health, or in work opportunities and life opportunities to live in a world of technology, where perspectives on creators and those who thrive out of the ‘norm’ have changed so rapidly.
I can read, write, I went to school until I was eighteen and then went to university.
I got to choose where I lived. Have lived in a few different countries and chosen my life path.
Got the work I wanted, and been able to adapt and start my own business.
Met a man of my own choice, and had a child of my own choice.
I get to eat good healthy food, drink clean water, and access information and education from so many sources, many free from places like YouTube and free library books.
Could I have done that if I was born someone else? Somewhere else? Sometime else?
I often joke I could never have lived in the past. And it’s true.
I am an awkward woman. They would have hated me.
This time suits me well.
I have been so lucky.
And if you think about it this way, with all these nudges on how you think about your luck, how about you?
If you have space to do so, before you continue reading, I’d like you to sit and think about your own luck in this way. It might make how you take the rest of this post different to had you not.
Has it changed how you thought about luck?
That your life, a series of serendipitous events, has led to you being here, like this, as you are.
Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had so much bad thrown at me, and I’m sure you have too.
In those moments, it’s easy to think we have bad luck. Easy to get stuck in that zone, that world of grey and darkness.
I saw people close to me succumb to that darkness, to only see the bad, and it scared me. Watching them rot and their worlds crumble around them.
Never. Never would I let my world be like that.
And it’s so hard—to actively choose the opposite. To constantly remind yourself to pick yourself up to avoid that fate you’ve seen others fall into.
When times get bad, especially when really bad things happen to you, it can be so hard to keep stepping towards the future, towards the light.
Choosing light as often as you can.
I call it chasing serendipity.
To look for the good things.
And it started with a choice to actively look for the good. After a dark period, I told myself I would look around me and find what was lovely. And I would tell myself about it.
In my head, of course.
Oh, look at that flower over there. I like the orange.
That cat is so cute.
Looking at the blue sky and embracing the warmth of the sun for a moment.
Choosing to tell someone at a shopping counter that I liked their tattoo if it caught my eye.
Actively choosing the good.
The world got brighter, and I got better at seeing the nice things.
And I think around then good things started to come my way more.
Or, at least, looking back, it’s not that they weren’t there, but that I was starting to notice them. To choose them.
When I was given a choice, I became aware of choosing the good one. The one that sometimes seemed harder at the time but gave a better result over all.
Taking risks.
Risks that paid off.
Like moving overseas to move in with my partner. I had never planned or even thought to live in Australia. But here I am. And it’s going well.
I came across in Daniel Priestley’s Entrepreneur Revolution book that he thought you could choose luck. Make your life luckier.
And it’s just about being open to those choices.
An example of his was: watch Netflix, or read a book?
Likely you’ll get more mileage out of the book.
Go out and meet people, or stay home?
Likely you’ll get more out of going out and meeting people. Having conversations in real life. Laughing together. Maybe you’ll share good memories and in the future they’ll have a good opportunity for you.
And a video I watched a while back (sorry, I can’t remember the name, but I’m sure it was a TED talk on serendipity), discussed a study on people paying attention to things around them. Do you notice the money on the floor, or are you trapped in your own world and don’t notice it?
If you think you’re an unlucky person, or you’re not paying attention, you’ll miss opportunities right in front of you.
But if you were to change your mindset—that luck is something that can be changed, can be chosen—you’ll start to see serendipitous encounters more often.
How lucky that you came to town this day. The protein powder you wanted to buy is half price.
Maybe a friend texted you when you’d been thinking about organising a meet up with them. What good timing.
And something that happened to me yesterday on the way home, in a place I never would have expected I bumped into an author and now-friend I love, who I see rarely. We’ve been for coffee together and laughed together, and she did me the honour of coming to my first book launch. There was no reason we hadn’t kept in touch. Such is life, but I am so grateful I bumped into her, and my late train turned into a wonderful conversation and the organisation of another coffee catch up at her recommended French cafe.
Would I have had that lovely experience had I not looked up. Stared into a face I thought I recognised and talked to her again. I could have been frustrated about the late train and buried my face in my phone.
Looking back, I can see that, since I was a child, I’ve been trying to chase the life I wanted. I saw my mother not rise to meet hers, not make any moves even towards it, though she said often what she wanted to do. It was odd to me that she never seemed to take any steps towards it.
I know now there were mental health things there, and while I fight with my own demons like many of us, many of you reading this too, at least taking some small steps towards the life I want helps to control those demons.
Helps me know, no matter how slow, I’m making progress towards the life I want.
I refuse to let it slip through my fingers like that business that would have been called ‘Serendipity’.
Irony, isn’t it.
So here I am, chasing serendipity as much as I can.
Of course there are still days it’s tough, but that’s the day we call out the big guns—looking for even one tiny thing I can look at and call good or beautiful. Keeping me at least walking in the light.
Because it’s looking for the good, the light, that we see those choices that lead us to changing our luck. Having those serendipitous encounters.
It’s all just a series of small decisions and steps. Not some grand event like we think it is.
And now you’ve realised how lucky you are to be here, now, able to read this, I hope you can keep taking steps towards chasing your own serendipity too.
So for today, take a moment to notice one small, beautiful thing around you—a colour, a sound, or an act of kindness. Let it be your reminder that serendipity is always there, waiting for you to see it. Start with this one step, and keep chasing your own serendipity each day.
It’s a habit—a skill—I know you can grow.