Today I found a four-leaf clover. That makes three I've discovered this year. The first two I found within minutes of each other! Having seen a grand total of ONE in the previous 31 years of my life, I never really considered myself lucky. So why the sudden uptick in frequency?
I think it has to do with a shift in perspective. I am allowing myself to notice what's been there all along.
How often do we miss the joy that lives in plain sight because we’re too focused on what feels out of reach? Sometimes it can be as simple as pausing to see what’s right in front of us—the opportunities, the connections, the beauty that sits quietly backstage, waiting in the wings for our attention. In art, life, and love, there’s so much to be found when we decide to notice. Abundance doesn’t always look the way we expect.
There is a cute little TikTok term for this entire way of thinking. Lucky Girl Syndrome. An influencer got on a couple years ago and proclaimed she was luckiest girl she knew. And she concluded her video by telling her followers to "be delusional for a month" and see what happens. Manifestation techniques have flooded our air waves, as we look to escape the negativity around us. But do they really work? And how? Inside your brain, there is a supercomputer working from the moment you wake to the moment you fall asleep. It's called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). There's 11 million pieces of information flung at us every second, but our brains can only process about 40 of those. It's the Reticular Activating System's job to be the filter.
It uses our memories, our emotions, and our behaviors to get rid of what it deems as unnecessary stimuli. And it calls up to the forefront whatever it is that you might be looking for. So if you're a dancer or a musician, you may notice more nuance in a dance performance, because your brain deems it relevant. If you're an event planner walking into a venue for the first time, you're going to notice the atmosphere, the exits, the attention to detail, the temperature, the attentiveness of the staff, the traffic flow, etc. The RAS can be dangerous. It has to set priorities so we don't get overloaded, but it takes its cues from us. If we deem that days are generally good, people are generally good, and life is generally good, it will pull up the supporting information. If we deem that days are generally bad, people are bad, and life is bad, the RAS will pull up the supporting information.
Over the past year, I’ve been consciously focusing on the good. The small moments, the quiet victories, the little things that bring happiness. Interestingly enough, it feels like the Universe, or my RAS, keeps rewarding me for that choice. This kind of awareness can be a quiet act of resilience, a way to remind ourselves that joy still exists.
I know that something as simple as a four-leaf clover doesn’t erase the hard stuff. It doesn’t undo the difficult moments, or make challenges disappear. But it does help balance them. The good has always coexisted with the bad.
I choose to see the world as beautiful and abundant. My life is better that way.
xoxo
Alexandra Smith