"Lucky Girl Syndrome" Is Going Viral—Here's How You Can Catch It
It's the perfect time to "try being delusional for a month."
Can simply tweaking your mindset change your life? Can the things you say to yourself truly affect what happens to you? Many people think so. Including those who believe in "Lucky Girl Syndrome," a phenomenon that has been taking over the internet as of late. We all hope to be lucky in life, but is it as easy as these people are saying? Read on to learn all about the syndrome millions of people are hoping to catch—could it can change your life for the better?
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What exactly is Lucky Girl Syndrome?
"Lucky girls" constantly tell themselves that everything always works out for them, and in turn, they say, it does.
This trend started to gain momentum around the new year and isn't showing signs of stopping. TikToker Laura Galebe, who gives all kinds of advice while she does her makeup on camera, coined the term in a viral video that now has over 3.1 million views.
"There is literally no better way to explain it … it feels like the odds are completely in my favor," she says in the video. "Ever since I could remember I have always made it a point to tell people, 'I'm so lucky.' I just always expect great things to happen to me and so they do."
According to Galebe, it's all about saying this to yourself on a regular basis, and of course, truly believing it when you do. "The thing is, it wasn't until I genuinely believed that great things just happened to me out of nowhere that things literally started flying at my face."
Her final advice: "Try being delusional for a month, and tell me if your life doesn't change."
People are listening.
The comment section on Galebe's video is full of people calling themselves lucky girls, repeating Galebe's mantras, and telling stories about how this practice has worked for them. Another video that has gone even more viral than the original (it has 5.3 million views and counting), is from a pair of friends who say that catching the syndrome has changed their life.
After watching Galebe's video, TikTok user @skzzolno and her friend started saying "everything works out for us" at every chance they could. And suddenly, according to them, things just started falling into place from getting the college housing set-up that they had hoped for, acing their exams, and even scoring noodles from a restaurant that they thought might be closed right before they shot their video (they then enjoy these noodles for the duration of filming).
"It was just an experiment, and we were like, let's see if it works, and it literally works. Everything works out for us now! Just try it and see," @skzzolno suggests.
And it seems people are following her lead: The hashtag #luckygirlsyndrome currently has more than 351 million views.
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This idea has been around for a long time.
This idea of putting positive energy out in the world or visualizing what you would like to happen until it does, is nothing new. Neville Goddard, a well-known philosopher and author popularized the idea in the 1960s, calling it the law of assumption. He believed shifting your consciousness is all that you need to shift your life. This idea has also been called the law of attraction, manifesting, and you may remember, The Secret, a book that swept the world by storm in 2006, inspiring millions of people to make vision boards to manifest their hopes and dreams. It even had its own resurgence on TikTok a few years back.
As long as this idea has existed, there have also been plenty of skeptics. This latest lucky girl iteration has been viewed by many, commenters and social critics alike, as a form of toxic positivity. While of course, there is something to be said about trying to be positive, it's important to take into consideration that privilege is a huge factor with this particular brand of lucky.
"This flavor of positive thinking serves as a comfort to those who already have power, while trapping the oppressed in a cycle of recrimination that obscures the real cause of their problems," said writer Alyx Gorman in an OpEd for The Guardian. "It is the opposite of solidarity, community-building and empathy. It's also just plain inaccurate."
Many users agree: @alliestartsacult fired back on Galebe's post. This is new age spirituality. This is not how the universe works. This is not how physics works. We've been able to disproof this stuff for a very very long time. This is not how the brain works."
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Studies have shown that positivity can be good for your well-being.
Though many people have issues with Lucky Girl Syndrome and the like, there has been studies that back up the power of positive thinking in specific situations. A 2013 study by PLOS ONE showed that using positive affirmations to help with stress helped improve academic performance.
For the study, 80 undergraduates with chronic stress had to complete 30 difficult problem-solving items in a certain amount of time in front of an evaluator. Half or them also did a form of self-affirmation before the task, while the other half did not. The study concluded that the students who repeated self-affirmations were more successful than the students who didn't.
"Results showed that self-affirmation improved problem-solving performance in underperforming chronically stressed individuals," the study authors said. "This research suggests a novel means for boosting problem-solving under stress and may have important implications for understanding how self-affirmation boosts academic achievement in school settings."
In another study done by the American Journal of Epidemiology, the researchers found that more optimistic thinking is linked to better health and decreased likelihood of dying young.
Researchers followed 70,000 women for eight years in total (from 2004 to 2012) and found that those who were more optimistic had a significantly lower risk of dying from several major causes of death, including heart disease and stroke.
"Growing evidence has linked positive psychological attributes like optimism to a lower risk of poor health outcomes, especially cardiovascular disease," the study author reported.
However, it's important to note that there were other factors that came into play for the participants. For example, "more optimistic women tended to have more education and to report more physical activity. These women also reported "a lower prevalence of hypertension, high cholesterol, and type two diabetes mellitus, and a substantially lower prevalence of depression."
