TikTok’s Latest Self-Help Trend, Explained: What Is Lucky Girl Syndrome?

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If you feel down on your luck as of late or, possibly, your whole life, fret not. TikTok’s self-help gurus are here to help. There’s a new practice going around the platform claiming to transform your misfortunes into good ones and create lasting changes in your life. Does this sound like something you want? Great! With the magic of positive affirmation, you too can reap the endless rewards of the lucky girl syndrome. 

What Is Lucky Girl Syndrome and How Does It Work?

That’s how most personal growth coaches, transformational influencers, and life strategists sound on TikTok anyways. The latest self-help bandwagon everyone seems to be on is the so-called lucky girl syndrome. 

If that sounds like a made-up medical condition to you, you’re not alone—and it is made-up. It’s not a medical or mental disorder of any kind but a mindset. Lucky girl syndrome is a visualization tool for attracting good fortune into your life. Believe that you are the luckiest person in the world—although the TikTok content is mostly pushed by female influencers—and lucky things will happen to you. Simple, right?

No one knows who exactly coined the term lucky girl syndrome, but I first came across the hashtag on TikTok in December. In a get ready with me (GRWM) video, another viral social media trend, user @lauragalebe talks about a shift in mindset that changed her life. “I just always expect great things to happen to me, and so they do,” she tells her followers. The closest she gives to an explanation behind the lucky girl syndrome is that she wholeheartedly believes opportunities will come flying. And because of this positive affirmation, everything just always magically works out for her. “Be delusional,” she advises her followers.

The hashtag has 416.9 million views as of writing and thousands of entries from people, mostly women, sharing how lucky girl syndrome has worked for them. A user got a check in the mail after the bank refused to give her a refund. Two women used the life-affirming quote, “Good things always happen to us,” and won at a casino slot machine minutes later. And two college students who experimented with lucky girl syndrome got the apartment bedrooms they wanted after firmly believing that everything always works out for them. And several others shared stories of luck flowing their way—getting good deals in thrift stores, free tickets and meals, or even interviews for their dream jobs. 

Lucky Girl Syndrome, Law of Attraction, Manifestation—or Toxic Positivity?

Many believe that these “lucky” events only happened once they’ve started reciting positive affirmations. Who wouldn’t want free meals or their dream job? Maybe it’s just confirmation bias, or maybe it is lucky girl syndrome. 

However, those who are old enough to remember the popularity of The Secret by Rhonda Byrne know that this is hardly a new self-help concept. The 2006 best-selling book promoted the law of attraction. It’s a spiritual belief from the New Thought movement that says if you want something enough, you will receive it so long as you believe you can. 

These ideas—law of attraction, lucky girl syndrome, magical thinking, and other mind-over-matter exercises—encourage followers toward very similar paths of visualization, self-belief, and willpower. If you want it enough, you will attract good things into your life and everything will work itself out. They are simple enough in concept, which is why they attract so many to followers. Plus, you won’t lose anything by chanting a few mantras every now and then.

The problem with lucky girl syndrome is that it veers dangerously close to toxic positivity, as did the law of attraction. There are law of attraction advocates that say you can will away chronic illness if you can believe it. And, conversely, advocates who say you attract negative things because of the way you think, implying that people attracted their illness with their negative thoughts and energies. 

These spiritual notions want practitioners to focus on the positives in life and leave very little space for the negatives. Lucky girl syndrome doesn’t say anything about bad things that happen—whether that’s a breakup, getting fired from a job, or, something like having coffee spill on your new shirt. It only wants you to focus on the good things because your luck simply doesn’t roll the other way. And if bad things do happen, everything always works out. 

But what if they stop working out? Lucky girl syndrome doesn’t teach people how to feel about or process the inconveniences, setbacks, and tragedies of life. In fact, it wants people to believe that they can will away negative things from occurring altogether. But no one is that lucky. And if you think you are, then you may be emotionally and mentally ill-prepared to face daily life. 

I don’t believe in luck and I definitely don’t believe in TikTok’s lucky girl syndrome. The trend only promotes the idea that you can “mind over matter” the challenges of life, and it’s just another way to perpetuate toxic positivity. Try telling someone with a terminal illness that everything always has a way of working itself out. Or a person whose house burned down that they can turn their life around through the lucky girl syndrome. See what kind of responses you get. 

What people who are extremely positive to the point of being toxic don’t realize is that they are minimizing negative experiences, be it their own or others. Even if their intention is to help, advising a person to look for the bright side of things or to adopt the lucky girl syndrome invalidates their thoughts and emotions. They may feel rejected and end up bottling up negative feelings to avoid spreading negativity. It may even induce guilt in a person and make them question that if bad things continue happening to them, maybe it’s them that’s the problem.

If you’re into positive affirmation and believing good things will come to you, there is nothing wrong with that. But it’s important to realize that lucky girl syndrome toes a dangerous line between being positive to being toxically positive. Bad things just happen sometimes and we have to accept that so we can learn from them. If not, lucky girl syndrome might become another way to avoid experiencing the full roster of human emotions. Not everything will work in our favor, and we have to be accountable for the changes we want to happen.