Don’t worry; this isn’t a post where I’m about to head down the road of self-victimisation. It’s actually the total opposite!

I’m sure we’ve all been around that person, the kind of person that says…

“Why is it always me?”
“Knowing my luck…”
“Why do bad things keep happening to me?”
“It’s about time that I had some good luck.”
“Why can’t something good happen to me for once in my life?”

This kind of attitude never fails to grate on me and I have to bite my tongue whenever I’m around somebody who comes out with one of the above comments. To me, it’s just an incredibly self-centred, ignorant and blinkered perspective. I’m not saying that I’m always a super-duper positive soul that doesn’t get brought down by life. I have bad days on a frequent basis and I’ll get angry, morose and bitter about a great many things. I’m only a human being after all.

The thing is though, I’ll never shout up at the sky in frustration and ask, “why does this shit always happen to me?” I’ll never question why life keeps selecting me as the target for a slew of bad fortune. I’ll never demand to know why nothing good ever happens to me.

The thing is, there is no such thing as bad luck. Bad things are happening to us all the time, just as good things are always occuring in our lives. It’s a matter of perception. Some events are undoubtedly bad news – contracting a serious illness or experiencing the loss of a loved one, for example – but there are so many other, more minor things that can be perceived either way.

And there are many people who simply can’t help perceiving every little thing as ‘bad’. When somebody is constantly doing this, all of these ‘bad’ events stack up in their mind and can really affect their outlook on the day, their week or even their life. The irony is that so many things don’t even need to be interpreted as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. They simply are. Why interpret rainy weather and getting wet as bad luck? It is just what it is. Sometimes it seems that people are actively seeking out ‘bad’ things to complain about.

It’s called self-victimisation and it makes people feel good. It makes them feel important and special because THEY are being singled out by life…apparently. And it’s easier to blame your “luck” rather that doing something about your problems, isn’t it? It’s so much easier to wallow in the comfort of your own self-cultivated misery, secure in the fact that you’re being kept down by everybody and everything else, and that there’s nothing you can do to turn things around in the face of such oppression.

Further up this post, I described this attitude as ignorant and blinkered because that’s exactly what it is. The entire “why is it always me?” outlook on life is massively flawed because, while something bad is happening to you, bad shit is also happening to millions of other people around the world at that exact same moment. Having a bad day at work? So are millions of others across the globe. Feeling under the weather for what seems like the umpteenth day in a row? Well, perhaps you should remember that thousands are being diagnosed with life-changing disabilities or terminal illnesses.

And here in the developed, western world, our problems and the things that we determine to be ‘bad’ are so trivial in the grand scheme of things. They are usually things that won’t bother us when we wake up the next day – things that can and will be forgotten. Certainly things that don’t deserve to be moaned about when our lives are paradise in contrast to the lives of others who are much less fortunate and live in extreme poverty or in dangerous, war-torn regions of the world. How do you think those people would view your complaint about it being “so unfair” that you missed out on that Black Friday deal?

You’ve probably heard the phrase “you make your own luck” and it really is true. If you’re blind to the good things in your life, because you’re so busy focusing on what’s wrong, then all you are doing is reinforcing – in your head – the notion that your life is rubbish…for no valid reason at all. You are perceiving your life as negative because you are only interested in seeing the bad things in order to maintain the victim narrative that you’ve created for yourself.

You forget that you actually woke up this morning and get to live another day.
You forget that you have your health.
You forget that you have family and friends (when so many people have nobody).
You forget that you have a job to go to (when others don’t and are struggling to pay their bills).
You forget that you don’t have to worry about having your house obliterated by an airstrike.
You forget that you have the luxury of being able to buy all of these material goods.

I don’t mean to come across as preachy but I think a vast majority of us are guilty of forgetting how great our lives really are. But maybe you still don’t think so and are STILL wondering when you are due some of that much-deserved good luck.

Well, let’s return to that phrase, shall we? “You make your own luck”. Many successful businesspeople will tell you that there is no such thing as luck. “Good” luck is simply the act of recognising opportunities and being bold enough to take them. And you don’t need to be all about business and financial gain to benefit from this insight. For example, you might look at that guy with the incredibly beautiful girlfriend/wife and think, “man, that is one lucky sonofabitch.” But was he really “lucky” or did he just recognise that there was an opportunity – sometime in the past – to get to know her better or ask her out on a date – an opportunity he was bold enough to take.

What I’m saying is that there is no mystical universal force flipping coins or rolling dice above our heads and determining what happens next in our lives. It is only us, choosing to perceive our situations in one way or another. It is only us recognising opportunities and taking them…or not. You are not being specifically targeted by life to receive misfortune.

More to the point, we need to be better at recognising what’s RIGHT in our lives and what we HAVE. That doesn’t mean that we should ignore the bad parts or pretend that the negativity doesn’t exist, but it does mean that we shouldn’t allow all of our attention to zero in on the shitty elements of life. We shouldn’t allow insignificant unpleasantries to be needlessly exaggerated in our mind’s eye.

And we certainly shouldn’t inflate our own sense of importance and believe that we alone – out of billions of people – are so special as to be on the receiving end of life’s attentions.