TikTok’s ‘Lucky-girl syndrome’- revolutionary or problematic?
Since leaving uni, like many of us, I've been confronted by a lot of questions: What do I want to do with my life? What impact do I want to have? Who even am I?
I think they are the questions we ask at many crossroads in our lives, in our twenties, after a break up, in a quarter-life crisis, when our jobs don’t feel satisfying, when we see others doing what we wish we had the courage to do.
Part of me feels nostalgic to that time before we could do anything we wanted for a career. I remember taking online careers quizzes in secondary school and being given print-outs of our ‘options’. I am nostalgic to a time when the most outlandish career handed to me would be a graphic designer. In my head, throughout secondary school, I would one day become a graphic designer. Little did I know that in the next few years, technology and the media world would develop so dramatically creating hundreds of new jobs and an exponential amount of possibilities for monetising creativity that graphic design was now one of many possibilities for a creative person. We forget how much the working world has changed since we were in school. The world we’ve inherited isn’t the one we were taught about.
The comforting thing about the old system was that we could look ‘out there’ to find what jobs might suit us; we didn’t have to go too far inwards to find it. We didn’t have to ask the questions. But with the questions comes the tangible potential to really live the lives that our parents’ generation could only dream about. When there is an option to off-road (metaphorically), to work from abroad, to step into the niche thing that you care deeply about - how can we say no, or actually, for how long can we keep saying no?
I don’t think i’m the only one who, from the depths of their quarter life crisis, found the concept of ‘manifesting’. Manifesting, meaning to ask for something and the ‘universe’ or ‘God’ or whoever you’re asking, answers. In fact, TikTokers have taken this one step further by sharing their version of manifesting, known as ‘Lucky-Girl syndrome’.
Lucky-Girl syndrome is where you repeat to yourself “I’m so lucky, everything always works out for me”, before, during and after doing just about anything.
It’s the kind of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s, Veruca Salt’s my-daddy-buys-me-anything kind of mentality - but for us all to use, no matter what kind of background you come from.
So people are saying this works, but how… and could it be this simple?! Here are some reasons why TikTokers could be onto a winner:
Positive thinking - we’ve heard it before but perhaps we shouldn’t underestimate the power of positive thinking and trying on hopefulness for our futures. By reaffirming to ourselves positive statements about our future, maybe just maybe, this might shift our mindsets and get us one step closer to achieving our dream lives.
Privilege-mentality - maybe Veruca Salt has something to teach us. Regardless of our background and set of privileges and anti-privileges growing up, we can tell ourselves the story of privilege. Think of it like self-affirmations. Brains are good at re-wiring themselves.
Clarity - One of the biggest thing in our twenties is not being clear. One friend is travelling, the other is on their third promotion, the other is having stop-gap jobs whilst they go back to uni for a panic masters… you can literally be doing anything. One expert thing about manifesting is it forces us to get clear on what we’re asking for because, you can’t manifest or lucky-girl-syndrome anything if you don’t know what you want, right?
I’m still not 100% sure on the whole thing, trying on privilege like all it takes is a mindset shift to overcome it feels icky, as does sounding like Veruca Salt…but i’d like to poke my head out from the quarter life crisis and try it.
