Анна ШиманDraft translation. This text was translated automatically and has not been proofread yet — if something reads oddly, it does.
Success in life and personal growth.
For many people, luck and good fortune are inexplicable phenomena. Yet there is no one who doesn’t dream of them becoming frequent guests in their life. Even the most hardened sceptics and those who have lost faith in success, the tired and the distrustful, carry somewhere deep in their hearts a hope for a happy ending.
So what is “luck”, and does it depend on the person?
Let’s work it out.
Many people know stories of lucky coincidences which, at first glance, seem almost impossible to influence. But here, admit to yourself that you actually want this very much. If not, don’t read this article: it will stir nothing in you but irritation.
The first mistake of a person who wants to become a favourite of fortune is to see the world as if all good things lie outside, with other people. So the intention arises to get in touch with the owners of those good things and take them for oneself. Why “take” exactly — read on.
This outlook on the world comes from several factors:
- egocentrism and infantilism, which lead to a person being merged with the world, and therefore to an inability to understand themselves as separate and a difficulty in finding their place in the world around them. This state of affairs forces a person to imagine that they are the centre of the world, and therefore that everything must happen the way they want it to. But the world is arranged so that a person grows, becomes stronger and steadier, and learns to rely on themselves. An infantile person has no “self”: their self-awareness is undeveloped, they have no stable structure of worldview, they are focused on themselves and cannot see themselves as separate, with their own territory, their own possibilities and their own place in a world of people just like them. So when such a person runs into “bad luck”, into the impossibility of satisfying their desires, they cannot accept their powerlessness and begin to demand (this is exactly the wish to take for yourself what does not yet belong to you). At the same time they begin to realise that there are certain forces that won’t give them this (but do give it to others — since others already have it!). They perceive these forces as something external and begin to idealise them. Here a person has two options. The first is to admit that they cannot control everything and to meet their own ordinariness, their real limits and possibilities. But this hurts and stirs strong feelings. So almost always a person protects their consciousness with the second option — building psychological defences. Over time they lose touch with reality and go on imagining themselves almighty and all-powerful, spending a huge amount of energy on it.
- And yet, meeting limitations, a person comes to understand that there are certain forces they didn’t know about which influence what happens. Here the next factor comes in — belief in something bigger than me, something I depend on. Belief plus egocentrism makes a person hostile towards these forces, because dependence on anything is in itself a loss of self and of control; it is unsafe and provokes an instinctive aggression that stays in the subconscious, shut away by the psyche’s defences. At this point a person is still very far from understanding that the control they should exercise is over their own territory, that is, the territory of their personality. Their “I” is not yet separate; they still feel themselves to be the centre of the world. So the person begins to fear the external forces they depend on, and again faces a choice of strategies. They may decide they are able to take these forces for themselves, and such people often turn to esotericism and magic in search of a “magic wand” that will fulfil all their wishes. Or the person becomes superstitious and fills life with rituals whose meaning they don’t fully understand. Performing the rituals, they secretly hope that “if they are good”, all their wishes will come true. Have you noticed that deep down the person still doesn’t want to give up the intention of getting something, and getting it exactly the way they see it?
- So as not to give up the feeling of omnipotence, a person builds illusions in which they “could, but it simply isn’t worth their attention”, in which they hide their desires from themselves because they cannot come to terms with the fact that they cannot influence how fast, or whether, these desires come true. They build an illusion of their own worth when they meet, for example, a rejection in a relationship or at work — with reasoning such as “all women want is money” or “working for someone else is humiliating”. Yet at the same time such a man needs money, lives on credit, or very much wants a family or a relationship. These illusions help him avoid meeting a reality in which, in a woman’s eyes, he looks poor, lazy, irresponsible and unattractive, and arouses neither desire nor interest. A reality in which, in his boss’s eyes, he looks like someone with no real skills but with big ambitions and big demands for guarantees. Whenever you want guarantees from anyone other than yourself, it means that luck and fortune are not on your side — you don’t believe in it.
So what is to be done?
Let’s see what the available sources tell us:
Luck has another name: Fortuna. That is the name of a goddess we know from the myths.
Fortuna (Lat. Fortuna) is the ancient Roman goddess of luck and of the unpredictability of fate. Translated from Latin, Fortuna (Lat. Fortuna) means “fate”.
A normal person doesn’t believe in Fate, of course! So they hurry off to a fortune-teller or try to solve their problem in some other, non-traditional way. That’s understandable: the traditional ways are too hard to grasp, let alone to put into practice. So the person spends even more energy and drifts even further from reality. The reckoning comes “later”, and today, right now, one can go on believing in a “miracle” (while not believing in fate).
So which ways are the traditional ones?
Let’s try to list them:
- give up the idea that you are the centre of the world and that everything in the world exists for you and because of you;
- develop self-awareness and build healthy personal boundaries, relying on your real skills, possibilities and strengths;
- learn to see your possibilities at every moment, to see your desires and turn them into goals within your reach;
- live “here and now”, not “there and then”: don’t regret the past (it can’t be changed) and don’t worry about the future (it hasn’t come yet and depends greatly on what you do in the present);
- start acting, even though this is the hardest part. Almost everyone loves to dwell in their ideas, fantasies and illusions, where they feel full power over the world and over people (although it doesn’t extend beyond your own head);
- if you need money, learn to earn it; if you want a family, learn to build relationships; if you want to be liked, work on your appearance, making the best of what is possible (instead of suffering over your build, your genes, the “wrong” nose, the shape of your lips, being “big-boned” and so on);
- learn to see the difference between “who I am” and “what I do” — this is called finding yourself.
Fortune, that is, Fate, exists as a given and holds every possibility for life. Only not for the life you paint in your fantasies of a “quiet paradise where you never have to strain”, but for the life that nature has laid down in you as potentials — the very potentials called “a person’s calling”.
Fortune’s favourites are not those who chase after her, having given up developing their personality, their home, their work, their family. Nor those who look for “Fortune dealers” in the endless mass of information online or by comparing the radiance that comes from teachers and other gurus.
Fortune loves hard-working, cheerful people who don’t wait for guarantees, don’t count what they invest before the result comes, and work on their weaknesses and skills. And most importantly, they act. Action brings real results that the people around you can see. In this way you make yourself known. It is risky: people may not like it, it may hurt someone, it may cross into someone else’s territory, with all kinds of consequences. But it is precisely risk, which is nothing other than giving up your own ideas and control, that Fortune loves so much, and she generously rewards such lucky people with wonderful coincidences and the ability to be in the right place at the right time.
Don’t look for Fortune; take care of yourself. She will appear on her own when you are ready.
