Using "Coincidences" for Personal Success

Is there a unique formula out there that can be used to find success, romance, love, and fulfilment? Or are these things found through sheer effort, goal-setting, or perhaps a certain flavour of luck? There is another alternative – Making Your Own Meaning out of the string of "coincidences" that occur in life.

The Culture of Making Meaning

Throughout the ages it has been the nature of humankind to look for patterns and to make meaning out of events and experiences even when there is no meaning there to begin with. It is always on Our Terms that meaning gets to be known — or gets assigned, rather.

For example, if you are in a relationship and assign the title of "boyfriend" or "girlfriend" to your significant other, this carries with it a certain meaning and understanding of who that person is. Often people interchange these meanings when it comes to future experiences. Like we sometimes attempt to place the same boundaries over their significant other in future relationships, so we incline to place the same presumptions on future success or happiness.

This begs the question, is it a coincidence that leads to meeting our closest friends and finding the most beneficial opportunities, or do we create our own sense of coincidence to some extent? An inner intuition of sorts?

Happiness and Success Can Be "Learned"

You could ask questions like "what does happiness look like? how will I recognize success when I have it?" because no coincidence can exist without meaning, and meaning is often created or 'learned'.

This concept is best illustrated when considering the restrictions and perceived limitations to achieving a certain level of happiness or success. For example, a businessperson who keeps bumping in to his competitors after releasing a new product might consider it a coincidence that just as he put out a new product he begins noticing competing products of the same kind on each street corner.

Coincidence is to some extent just the specific feeling we experience when meaning seems to click into place for us. I was thinking about a friend a few hours ago who I haven't spoken to in months who happened to call me just a moment ago. This is a coincidence, but if something else happened that related to another thought I had earlier on I could also label that a coincidence.

Coincidences occur when meaning clicks into place, but we also make our own meaning to some extent. If we experience a coincidence and have an "ah, that makes sense" moment then we re-enforce that this has meaning to us – but the true power of this process becomes evident when we take control of it.

Take Control

Coincidences have a strong relationship to the flow of life, however this flow is established in how each of us chooses to make meaning. You are able to find meaning in certain aspects of life and then to relate this meaning to happiness or success, for example. You are also able to increase how often coincidences occur using this same process.

One of the factors that I take into account when establishing a sense of 'success' with is whether events occur in a natural flow. So if I am having trouble getting through to call a cab for example, and I keep getting put on hold or the call keeps dropping, I might just step outside to find that a cab is driving past.

You can take control and create positive coincidences with a simple decision of "I want X job" or "I want to achieve X" and each time something close to one of those goals happens it will act as a confirmation for that sense of meaning.

You'll often hear people discussing how a string of bad events keeps occurring in their life, or perhaps how positive business opportunities keep coming up for them. This is an unavoidable aspect of coincidences that occur through intention-based meaning. If a person thinks "that makes sense", it doesn't matter whether he just lost his wallet or won a prize, he is still confirming that there are forces at work to help him achieve that result – whether negative or positive.

I know someone who keeps losing his house keys, and the fact that each time he does others are not surprised and confirm this as a 'regular' event seems to make it occur even more often. It is inevitable that we all attract certain events in life, coincidences that confirm the meaning we make. Yet it is still up to us to bring attention to creating more positive coincidences rather than letting life decide them based on past experiences.

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