Three Steps to Break Free of "Lucky Girl Syndrome" & Embrace Your Own Success!
SHOW NOTES
If you've been anywhere on the internet lately, you've probably seen lucky girl syndrome, the idea that things just fall into your lap when you embrace being the main character and believe hard enough. As a licensed therapist, I want to talk you off that ledge, because being purposely delusional is never the answer to your life's problems. In this episode I break down three healthier ways to actually embrace your own success.
First, the freedom of not having to be the only star on stage, because someone else winning doesn't take anything away from you.
Second, why things not going as planned is not a failure of your belief, illustrated by the time I quit a toxic job early and thought I'd let everyone down, only to watch that company get investigated and shut down within months. It was protection, not failure.
And third, the real reason good things land: preparation meeting opportunity. The work you do on yourself while you're waiting is exactly what lets you catch the thing when it finally arrives.
Warmly,
Linda
💖 For comprehensive support from a licensed therapist, reach out to me through:
Meet Your Host!
Linda Sanderville, LCSW, RYT-200 is the founder of Satya Counseling & Yoga LLC. She specializes in concierge therapy for female founders and public figures, helping high-profile women navigate public scandal, executive burnout, and the values that will define the second half of life. Based in Albuquerque and serving clients virtually in DC, Maryland, Virginia, and beyond, Linda combines clinical expertise with somatic wisdom to help leaders reclaim their truth.
Read below for full transcript.
[00:00] Intro & Letting Go of Lucky Girl Syndrome
Hi, I'm Linda, emotion coach and hypnotherapist, who also loves a good sunrise yoga class, listening to the belly laughs of my baby boys, and hunting down the best vegan donuts. This podcast is for ambitious and high-performing women who want to feel fulfilled in all areas of their life. I'm here to give you practical tips and mindset shifts that will help you put your self-love skills into action. Welcome.
If you're of the female persuasion and have been anywhere on the internet in the last several months, you probably came across this concept of lucky girl syndrome. It's something that's been on TikTok and on YouTube, and people have been talking about how they embrace being that lucky girl, and having things just sort of fall into their lap out of the sky, and how it's very magical, very much law of attraction kind of energy. I actually want to talk with you about three ways to let go of this idea of lucky girl syndrome, and many of the folks who are selling this concept to you, and actually embrace your own success.
[01:13] You Don't Have to Be the Only Star on Stage
Number one, lucky girl syndrome has a heavy emphasis on main character kind of focus, right? Like you are the star of the show and things are just sort of happening to you as people watch you walk across the stage. I want you to embrace the freedom that is available when you don't have to be the only star on stage.
I think a lot of us think this is what we want, but it's really just a trap. It's not necessary to experience good things by having other people sort of just stand back and be the background cast of your movie. That's really not necessary for you to enjoy your life completely and fully. There's freedom in realizing that you don't have to be threatened by somebody else winning. Them winning, or them coming onto the stage and shining just as brightly as you, maybe brighter at some moments, that's not a threat to you. It's not going to take anything away from you. And there's freedom in knowing that.
There's a certain kind of confidence that comes when that doesn't scare you. When you can watch somebody else shine and it just doesn't bother you. In fact, you find yourself celebrating with them. And you know that when you celebrate with others on their wins and their glow-up, that they are also very likely going to celebrate with you when it's your turn. And there's just a lightness that comes with that.
And frankly, it just releases you from the pressure of having to excel all of the time and have all of the answers in every situation. It's not realistic that you would just constantly shine, that your whole life would be a highlight reel. That's super unrealistic and actually pretty immature to be pursuing something that is just so unbalanced. That's not how life works. And that's okay. It doesn't mean that life sucks. It just means that there's a natural ebb and flow. And it doesn't have to be perfect all the time, and neither do you. So embrace that. Take that for what it is.
But you don't have to carry around that pressure. You don't have to have that burden to excel and shine and glow all of the time. It's not required. You can still have a perfectly good life, a great life, actually. And this way, you can actually embrace the fact that you need others, that you lean on others, that everybody gets help from someone. That's perfectly natural and normal, actually. So that's number one. You don't have to be the only star on stage. There's freedom in releasing yourself from the pressure to be the only star of the show.
[03:54] Things Not Going as Planned Isn't a Failure to Believe
Number two, things not going as planned is not a sign of your failure to believe. Okay, it's not a sign that you didn't believe enough, that your thoughts were not perfect, that you're not manifesting everything that you want, because your manifestation engine internally is broken or whatever, you know, someone's trying to get you to believe about that.
So there are so many ways to debunk this idea. Obviously, one of the first things that comes up is the idea that, you know, tragic events happen to everyone. I know in my community, there was something awful that happened just a couple weekends ago, and it affected someone that I know. And now there are several people who just aren't here anymore, right? And it's nonsense. It doesn't, it's illogical. It shouldn't happen. And tragic events don't only happen to people who deserve it, or who think negative thoughts, or don't believe hard enough, you don't have enough faith. That's not how life works, right?
Things not going as planned is not a failure, not a sign of your failure to believe. Things not going as planned is part of just the randomness of how things happen. You know, we're all human beings living here together on this planet. And we do good things to each other sometimes and terrible things to each other sometimes. And there's not always a rhyme or reason to it.
If I get a raise at my job, it's not proof that my thoughts were perfect and that I'm a great person. I could be a terrible person and get a raise at my job, right? Or you could be an amazing person, so heart-centered and loving, and not get the promotion. Then what's that about, right?
Sometimes things not going as planned is much more of a redirection than a rejection. Sometimes it's much more of a protection than a rejection. We don't always know what's on the other side of the thing that we thought we wanted. And sometimes when we don't get it, we never have the opportunity to know. And sometimes we do. Sometimes we get a little 20-20 hindsight kind of situation. And we find out later, oh, that wasn't what we thought it was. Actually, it was terrible. The person who ended up in that situation, really, they regretted taking on that opportunity that they were presented with. So sometimes that happens.
[06:21] When Leaving Felt Like Failure but Was Actually Protection
I know it's happened to me. A job, I should say, that I left very quickly after starting to work there. And that felt like a failure to me. I'm someone who's very loyal, grounded. I'm willing to do the hard work and stick things out, especially when it's serving people. And one time I had to make a decision early on in my career to be like, I can't take this anymore. This is super unhealthy. This whole environment is toxic. Day one, all my coworkers are leaving. It's down to me and one other person. This is not going to work. And I loved feeling like, man, should I have just pushed harder? Should I have just done more, right?
Come to find out within months, that company was actually investigated by the local government where I was working. And they were found to have so many issues. Things that we were saying as people who worked there, who were suffering as a result of how this company was run, but we weren't listened to. And then finally, they were later literally taken off of the playing board. They were no longer allowed to have a presence in that area. And I'm not going to go into more details than that. But I didn't know that, right? I just thought, oh man, maybe I could have worked harder or tried longer, for the sake of the other people who were affected, right? But I knew that my health was declining, everything was declining, I needed to get out.
So me leaving, even though it seemed like a failure, like maybe I should try harder, it was actually protection. I'm glad that I wasn't there when all that went down. I'm glad that I was redirected into finding more of my focus and more of my skill set, and actually focusing in on that and being much more authentic to what I wanted to do, which was to really focus on being a therapist. And that was the best decision. It was like a pivotal decision in my career. So it felt like a failure at the time. I felt like I was letting myself down, letting other people down. But really, it was bigger than me. The reason it was so toxic was bigger than anything that I could have ever fixed, as much as I tried. And where I was redirected to next was a huge part of where I am today.
So things not going as planned is not just a failure on your part to believe. It may be protection, redirection, opportunities that you can't even sense right now. And so it's not that you're failing to be, you know, lucky girl. You're actually perhaps coming into something that's a much better fit for you. And it's going to lend much more to your happiness and well-being, because you're willing to let go of what's not working right now. Okay, so it's not just about your negative thoughts. We all have them. You don't have to only think positive thoughts for good things to happen to you. And just because you think positive thoughts doesn't mean difficult things won't happen in your life. The good thing is that, for the most part, we can recover from that, right?
[09:17] Preparation Meeting Opportunity
Okay, so number three. Falling in love, getting a new job, having an exciting new experience, these are not the result of lucky girl syndrome, which is made up anyway, right? The people who talk about it actually say it's their way of being purposely delusional. Like, being delusional is never the answer to your life's problems. Let's just get that out there. Now, as someone who is a trained and licensed therapist, I can just tell you now that's never going to be the answer, okay?
But having all these great things that most of us desire happen to us, it's really largely as a result of preparation meeting opportunity. When these things happen, and they kind of just land at the right time in your life, and it's like, wow, it just feels like stars are aligning, this is amazing, it's preparation meeting opportunity. So the preparation that you've done on yourself, right, by having the hard conversations, looking at your problems with your eyes wide open, and dealing with them head-on, addressing them head-on, going to therapy, right, assessing your health and making changes to your health in the ways that you need to, or resolving those relationships or ending some of those relationships that you need to, speaking up for yourself, learning how to advocate for yourself, right, those are all types of preparation that would actually get you ready for the opportunities when they arrive.
When all we do is sit around kind of waiting for opportunities, or feeling sad about opportunities that we're not having, as opposed to actually getting ready for them when they do come, then even when they arrive, what are we going to do? What are we going to do?
If you're waiting to fall in love or find a partner, and then someone comes along, and you've got these unaddressed wounds that make it hard for you to even communicate effectively with them, or you keep reacting to things that they're doing out of love with a lot of suspicion and just negative assumptions about why they're doing what they're doing, that relationship is going to take some heavy hits, right? Because all the preparation that could have been going on in the time when you were waiting, your waiting period, didn't happen. And then the opportunity showed up, and you weren't ready, right?
So the way that we can embrace our own success, instead of relying on just lucky girl syndrome, things just falling out of the sky, is to actually prepare when we're in those moments of waiting for that next phase or that next goal or next dream to be realized. Okay, the positive thought there would be, okay, it's not here yet. Well, I have a little extra time to get myself prepared so that when it comes, I know exactly what I'm going to do with that. I've got it lined up, right? I'm more than ready to let it in and use it wisely, all that good stuff, right? So when the opportunity meets your preparation, it's just going to be like game on. Just walk into your happily ever after with that thing, right?
[12:25] Embracing Your Own Success
So these are ways to really escape the trap of the delusional idea of lucky girl syndrome, and to actually come into your own success with healthier, balanced thoughts and understanding and belief and knowledge. Knowledge really is power. I feel like we've all heard that. I don't know, maybe it's just being a child of the 80s and 90s. But we've all heard that saying, and it's true. Having that knowledge gives you the power to then experience many more good things and to see them arriving as they come.
Sometimes we can miss things, right? If we haven't prepared, or if we're caught up in wanting to be the only star on the stage, or we think our thoughts aren't perfect enough, right? We can miss good things that are coming down the pipe to us, even as they're arriving. We're just looking off, all distracted. We don't even see what's happening right in front of us.
So let's not do that. Let's not be that person. Let's be grounded and mindful and present and able to accept the good things that can happen on any given day, just because that's what life is too, right? The surprise of good things. That's pretty awesome.
If you're needing some help with knowing how to think more clearly in an abundant way that isn't delusional, feel free to check out my course, the Self-Love Skills course. There's a link in the description box. And you can look into some of the skills I go over in that course that have helped my clients to realize some of these positive relationships, jobs, transitions in their life, with less of a headache, because it just gives you those direct skills that actually get you to that next level more quickly, without you having to spin your wheels trying to figure it out or trying to figure out what's wrong or what to do differently. You don't have to worry about that. It's all outlined in the course.
It comes from years of experience working with many different people. And so I want to offer that to you as an option to embrace your own success without having to tie into these false ideas that really are based on nothing, okay? This is coming to you from an actual mental health expert. All right. So I hope that encourages you. I'll talk with you soon.
You hung with me to the end, my shero. If you benefited from this episode, please say thanks by leaving a wonderful review. It helps me know what's helping you the most and allows more like-minded women to find and learn from this podcast. We don't want to keep all the good stuff for ourselves. See you next time.
[Editing Note: The Self Love Skills and Relationship courses are not currently available. If you are interested in this content and guidance, all tools mentioned are now exclusively provided through my concierge psychotherapy practice, Satya Counseling & Yoga.]
Interested in Working with an Internal Family Systems Therapist who supports Public Figures in Norfolk, VA, Miami, FL or Santa Fe, NM?
Is the inability to rest or slow down leading to burnout in your professional and personal life? Reclaim your joy and vitality while managing your professional commitments through holistic and evidence based counseling. Our specialized support at Satya Counseling & Yoga is designed to fit seamlessly into your busy life, empowering you to conquer trauma-based responses and thrive. Prioritize your mental well-being – embark on a transformative journey towards a happier and more fulfilling life by following these three steps to get started:
Schedule a complimentary 15-minute call to see if we’ll be the right fit.
Begin meeting with me, therapist and trauma-informed yoga teacher, Linda Sanderville, to rediscover your healthy, authentic self.
Start moving forward in your personal and professional life in a positive and healthy way!