Towards the end of 2022, Samantha Palazzolo, 18, stumbled across an intriguing TikTok video. In it, influencer Laura Galebe swore her secret to success was as simple as assuming everything would just work out for her, a philosophy she dubbed “Lucky Girl Syndrome.”
Skeptical but curious, Palazzolo, a University of Illinois advertising student, decided to see if Galebe’s philosophy would work for her. So every morning she told herself she would have a lucky day.
One particularly thorny issue Palazzolo had been dealing with was who would take what bedroom in a new apartment she and her friends were leasing. She and one roommate were desperate to get the bottom bedroom, so they started telling themselves that it would all work out in their favor.
Lo and behold, it worked.
It was “life-changing,” Palazzolo told The Post. “A couple of days later, our roommate came to us and [said], ‘I want the top bedroom, you guys can have the bottom ones yourself.'”
Forget “The Secret” or vision-boarding. Gen Zers have put their own, uniquely entitled spin on manifesting their dreams by believing that if they simply assume they’ll land a great job or amazing apartment, they will. Galebe’s original Lucky Girl Syndrome post — in which she intones, “I just always expect great things to happen to me, and so they do” — has been viewed 2.7 million times, while #LuckyGirlSyndrome has 61.9 million views on TikTok.
Lucky Girl Syndrome hadn’t yet been coined by Galebe in early 2022 when Kirshten Garcia, 24, decided she was going to have a “lucky” year and get invited to New York Fashion Week. But Garcia believes the method worked for her. Inspired by videos of various girls on social media, she began using daily mantras such as “Everything always works out for me.”
“I just would always like affirm every day, ‘I’m so happy that I’m going to New York Fashion Week this year and I’m so happy designers are reaching out to me,'” the Orlando nursing student and fashion influencer told The Post.
Sure enough, designers did invite her to fashion week, and Garcia’s “luck” continued once she landed in New York last fall.
“I attended a designer’s show as a general admission with no seating, and I was just standing in the way back waiting for the show to start. But then a staff member personally came up to me and offered me a front-row seat just because she liked my outfit,” she recalled. “Good things always happen.”
But not everyone in the New Age space is on board with Gen Z’s version of positive thinking.
Lucy Baker, a 46-year-old life coach based in the United Kingdom, cautioned that when manifesting doesn’t work, it can be a huge problem for those who’ve come to believe that happy thoughts are all you need.
“[It] triggers disappointment for some whilst others completely lose their confidence,” she told The Post. “I use positivity techniques with my clients — but believing you are the luckiest person on planet Earth and luckier than any other living being can be dangerous.”
