What is Lucky Girl Syndrome? Everything you need to know about the Gen Z obsession

“I just always expect great things to happen to me, and so, they do.” With those words (and more) describing her impossibly charmed life, a 22-year-old TikTok influencer ushered in the “Lucky Girl Syndrome,” a viral trend wherein people (mainly girls and women it would seem) are encouraged to accept that just believing all good things will come to them can make it so. It’s as much positive psychology as it is toxic positivity, depending on who is being asked. Here’s everything you need to know about Gen Z’s obsession with Lucky Girl Syndrome.

Okay, so what, exactly, is Lucky Girl Syndrome?

It’s basically the belief that “affirmative mantras and a positive mindset in life will bend everyday events in your favour,” according to the Washington Post. Its “founder,” New York-based Laura Galebe, gets the “most insane opportunities” thrown at her from, like, everywhere, she explains in her viral clip. “Nothing doesn’t ever go my way.” Thoughts like, “nothing ever works for me,” never enter her mind-set. Lucky Girl Syndrome started trending soon after New Year’s Day. On TikTok, people are crediting the LGS mantra for helping them score raises, amazing apartments, cheap flights. Videos with the #LuckyGirlSyndrome hashtag, the Washington Post reported, “have been watched a collective 149.6 million times.”

Is it new?

Not really. It’s more a Gen Z spin on old concepts like positive manifestations, Vox reports, meaning “the practice of repeatedly writing or saying declarative statements in the hopes that they will soon become true.” TikTok has an uncanny knack of making “even the most stale, ancient ideas seem suddenly urgent using one simple trick: give it a new name,” Vox’s Rebecca Jennings wrote.

Essentially, manifesting hinges on the belief “that we can change and shape our lives just by the way we think,” according to the Newport Institute, a mental health treatment centre for young adults that has produced an FAQ on Lucky Girl Syndrome. Also known as the law of attraction, manifesting “gives us the sense that we can create order in a world that feels chaotic and unpredictable.”

That sounds peachy. Couldn’t we all use more positivity?

Well, yes, studies have found that positive thinking can be a salve for anxiety. It may help bolster the immune system and lower blood pressure. It can make people feel more confident and more resilient.

“There’s nothing against wishing,” said Gabriele Oettingen, a professor of psychology at New York University and author of, Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. “Our wishes are an expression of our needs, of what we don’t have,” she said. Her own research has shown that “optimistic expectations” help motivate people to work toward achieving goals, and not just click their heels three times.

Positive manifestation, Alyx Gorman wrote in The Guardian, shares some features of positive cognitive behavioral therapy, which focuses on enhancing that which helps people flourish. The difference is, cognitive behavioral therapy is anchored in science.

Still, the notion that if you just wish for something hard enough it will “manifest” itself is a seductive one. It alleviates people of actually having to work at achieving goals.

“As much as we might like to tell ourselves otherwise, we can’t transform our lives, luck and circumstances simply by telling ourselves so really, really hard that we can,” writes Roisin Lanigan in Vice.

“There are going to be, unfortunately, some situations in life that we are not able to manifest and think our way out of,” psychologist Carolyne Keenan told the BBC. “I would be concerned about people being in a situation where maybe that’s not going to be an effective strategy.”

What is it that people don’t like about this?

Lucky Girl Syndrome conveniently glosses over barriers like poverty, and systemic racism and inequalities. An argument could also be made that believing in luck “is an entitled luxury for the privileged,” according to Newport’s national advisor of healthy device management, Don Grant.

Indeed, Lucky Girl has been called “icky,” the “smuggest” TikTok trend yet and “the peak of the internet’s delusional era.” A defiant Galebe challenges her followers to, go ahead, “Try being delusional for a month and tell me if your life doesn’t change.”

Thinking positive thoughts and pushing away self-limiting ones is generally a good thing. Humans have an inherent negativity bias. “Thousands of years ago, our brains were constantly scanning the horizon for threats,” Louisa Jewell, author of Wire Your Brain for Confidence, told Forbes.

“Whether conscious or subconscious, (people’s thoughts and beliefs) strongly affect what we want and whether we succeed in getting it,” Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck told the magazine.

But ignoring reality isn’t helpful for mental well-being. “Trying to manifest change — and failing — can make people feel worse,” according to the Newport Institute.

“(It) triggers disappointment for some whilst others completely lose their confidence,” Lucy Baker, a U.K.-based confidence coach, told the New York Post. Believing one is the “luckiest person on planet Earth and luckier than any other living being can be dangerous.”

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