Five Ways to Stop Fighting Fate and Attract Success

I’m a firm believer that fate can steer you in different directions, but it doesn't do all the work for you, you still have to participate. When you work with fate, rather than against it, that's when the magic happens. Scrolling through Pinterest, it won’t take long before you might eventually stumble on some inspirational image with the phrase, “dream it, believe it, achieve it” plastered on top. I’ve always loved that idea, I definitely believe in the power of dreams and have always had a wild imagination. I believe in the impossible. I believe in following your dreams. And I believe in fate. But I also have learned through my combined 9.5 years of grad school (2 MAs and now a PhD) that it’s not enough to just believe in your dreams. You have to work for them too. I’ve had a sticky note on my desk for over a year now, from back during my comps prep time, that had the “dream it, believe it, achieve it” but then I also scrawled “work for it” in between the believe step and the achieve step.

To achieve something you have to work for it. But I hear a lot of people talking as if belief alone will carry them through. I’m not a huge fan of the law of attraction, I think we get what we work for, but I do believe that our mental energy plays a role. The more you dwell on the negative, the more likely you are to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. But that’s not fate screwing you over, that’s you not doing your bit to help fate out.

Now, I’m not a life coach (far from it) nor am I an expert on being successful (ha! If only!) but I do know a thing or two about determination, perseverance, and the weird and wonderful ways fate can work magic in our lives—if we let it. So I thought I’d share some of my tips/lessons learned about how to work with fate rather than against it and how to attract and make room in your life for success…yes, you need to make room for it, success won’t find you if you’re busy blocking the door fate’s trying to open for you. 

These tips aren’t simply “think happy thoughts,” because as someone who also struggles with anxiety and depression I know all to well it’s really not that easy. You can’t stop a negative thought from happening. But you can—slowly and with great practice—learn how to change the way you react to negative thoughts. And while I’m still not perfect at it 100% of the time, these are the things that have helped me a lot of the last several years.

1) Visualize the positive, don’t dwell on the negative

Previously I’ve talked about my tendency to worry, as well as my tendency to see things as “all or nothing.” I’ve also shared my tips on being more mindful and focused on the present, so this first tip kind of goes along with some of those tips. I’m very much a “plan for the worst, hope for the best” type of person. I can’t help it, I’ve been that way since I was a child. But it’s not always the best for my mental health, because more often than not, I get stuck thinking about all the ways something can go wrong. So lately, especially as I’ve been working on my dissertation and frantically trying to get everything completed in order to graduate this spring, I’ve tried to be extra conscious about visualizing the positives and not dwelling on the negatives.

I passed! Officially Dr. Severson now!

If I’m feeling stressed or anxious I try to stop myself and really visualize what life will be like if everything went right. Most recently, with my dissertation defense, I would close my eyes and think of giving a stellar presentation, handling all my committee’s questions, and getting my pass. If I’d spent the last two weeks imagining all the ways I could fail my defense, I probably would have failed it. But instead, I focused and visualized the positive possible outcomes and when the day came, I did better than I expected. Not only did I give a pretty great presentation (if I do say so myself), I calmly handled all the committee’s questions (and actually enjoyed them!), and instead of the “pass with major revisions” that I was expecting and prepared for, I got a “pass with minor revisions” that I’m actually looking forward to working on.

My Masters thesis defense was another similar case of focusing on the positive and getting my “best case scenario” outcome. Not only did I pass my defense in that case, but on the same day I found out I was being given funding for my PhD and would be able to stay on in that program (something I’d visualized the week before). And I have no clue where the 5 years from then to now have gone lol!

Point is, thinking takes up massive amounts of energy. Why waste that energy on negative thoughts? Why not enjoy spending that time and energy on positive thoughts? You can’t control the situations you have to deal with sometimes, but you can always control your reaction to them. I’m not saying this is easy. I. Am. Not. Saying. This. Is. Easy! It’s hard, it’s so hard. But it does get easier with practice and it is totally worth it. I’m not perfect at doing this all the time, I do slip into old habits and behaviors. But be kind and patient with yourself, and when you notice the negative thoughts creeping in and making you doubt a situation, or doubt yourself, try to think of the most positive way the situation could work out.

2) Don’t engage in negative self-talk

Put another way, talk about yourself the way you would want others to speak about you. Don’t criticize, judge, or put yourself down. People will follow your example and treat you the way you treat yourself. I used to be really bad at this. When I first started my YouTube channel, I would film my videos and then sit down to edit them and I noticed that in almost every video, if I made a mistake, flubbed my words, if my hair didn’t look right, or some other silly thing, I would say the meanest, cruelest things about myself. It was pretty shocking. I would sit there listening to the playback and think, “I would never say that to a friend of mine, why is it ok to say it to myself?” It’s not. It’s really not ok.

I also notice this behavior in a lot of the young women I follow online. Comments about having a giant face, or weird lips, or body parts they think are too big or too wobbly. Then there’s the whole ridiculous trend of labeling things as “basic” as if there’s something wrong with like a pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks or taking a picture of flowers just for Instagram. If it makes you happy, who cares if it’s “basic”? I mean really, can we just kill that whole mentality now please? I am 100% not ashamed of liking blush pink, rose gold, marble, cozy blankets, hygge, candles, or anything else that usually gets labeled as “basic”, and don’t even get my started on the trend of calling or labeling things as “extra.” I’m technically at the very early end of the Millennial generation, but “basic” and “extra” are two things that make me feel like an old granny who doesn’t understand “kids these days.” 

I don't care how "basic" this mug or this pic makes me.

Don’t let other people make you feel ashamed about what you love. Just don’t. And love yourself. Because if you don’t, how can you expect other people to see you for the amazing person you are? If you’re constantly criticizing yourself and putting yourself down, that’s what people are going to do as well. This applies to every person in your life, from your family to your friends and significant other to your coworkers and boss. The people in your life will never respect you if you won’t respect yourself, and opportunities won’t come your way if you’re constantly putting down your abilities. I haven’t completely mastered this, but I’m getting better. And while I still struggle with my own insecurities, I have gotten much better at being completely and unapologetically myself. As I’ve said before on this blog, just be you, it’s the one thing you will always do better than anybody else. Be who you are, love what you love, and when you find a blush pink, rose gold and marble coffee mug, buy it and put a picture of your morning coffee in it up on Instagram. And do it proudly.

3) Embrace and lean in to new opportunities and change

Ok, so this is obviously much easier said than done, and I am in no way perfect at this myself. Literally, I can hear both my mother and my therapist laughing right now. Laughing with me, not at me though, because I’m totally laughing too, I’m really bad with change. Change has always been terrifying for me. I think it’s from years of being in the military as a child and never knowing what the next move would bring. Will I make friends? Will I like the new house? Every couple years my life would get turned upside down and I’d have to start over. This made me very apprehensive to life changes as I got older. I would frequently turn away from new opportunities and anything that would cause a significant upheaval in my life. But that started to change over the last several years of doing my second MA and my PhD.

I will never get tired of this view!

It all kind of started the first time I visited London as an adult. I had just applied to the MA program and was waiting to hear if I got in. My friend had arranged a ticket for me to come stay with her in London over New Years. She had to work some of the time so I had several days to just wander London on my own and I fell completely and totally, head over heels in love with London. By that point I’d been living in Phoenix for more than 10 years and had always felt certain that I would always live in Arizona, that after years of moving around why would I want to leave a place that I was finally putting roots down in. But that trip to London completely opened my eyes. I felt more like myself there than I had ever felt in Phoenix. As crazy as it sounds, London felt alive to me. And London understood me. In a way that Phoenix never has. I decided on that trip that one day, and I had no clue when or how, but one day I would move there. Several years, and several visits to London later, that’s still a long term plan. I’m still working on the when and how, but when that opportunity arises, I’m jumping, head first. No looking back.

Just a few of my favorite parts of Oxford.

That trip led to many other trips, and reignited a love for travel, despite also developing signifiant flight anxiety at the same time. But when a chance to fly to London presents itself, I grit my teeth and get on that flight, because I know it’s worth it. I’m not always good at getting out of my comfort zone, but another standout moment in the last few years was the summer of 2014. The previous summer I had seen a flyer for a study abroad program at my uni that went to Oxford. 5 weeks living in student housing, in the middle of Oxford, 3 mornings a week of classes, 1 day a week of group travel to places like Stonehenge and Stratford-upon-Avon, and then three day weekends to do whatever we wanted. Did I mention the part about living in the middle of Oxford? It sounded amazing. But I couldn’t do it that summer because I was in between my MA and my PhD and not technically a student. But the following summer it was being offered again. And as scary as it seemed I signed up. I had never been the type to do study abroad as an undergrad. Traveling by myself with a bunch of strangers was terrifying. I never lived in student housing so sharing rooms was way out of my comfort zone. This whole trip just had too many things that were unknown and unpredictable. But it was Oxford! And as a PhD student I knew this would be my last chance to do something like this. Oh, and once they told me that I could get a summer reading card for the Bodleian library I was sold. So off I went. That summer was one of the best and craziest of my life. I made amazing friends, had incredible experiences, and fell in love with Oxford in a way that gave London a bit of a threat in the “favorite city” category.

Christ Church Meadow in Oxford

I could have looked at that flyer for the study abroad program and thought, “nope, too scary, not doing it.” But there are experiences I had and people I met that summer that would not have happened otherwise and my life would be very, very different. That summer led to the summer that followed, where I went back to live in Oxford for three months on my own as an independent scholar. And I can absolutely say that I would not be the same person I am today without those two summers. It’s now more terrifying to think of what my life would be like if I hadn’t signed up for that program. I have definitely learned that when something happens that takes you out of your comfort zone, whether from a change in your situation or a new opportunity, all the best things in my life have come out of those moments. So while change and the unknown still completely scares the living daylights out of me, I’m slowly getting better at finding ways to embrace the unknown and stop fighting it. Fate’s a tricky little devil, but it usually knows me better than I know myself so I try to give it the benefit of the doubt when it comes knocking.

4) Take chances.

Seeing my name in print, in a real book,
was such a crazy and surreal sight!

A dream opportunity presents itself, but you think you don’t have the qualifications. Take the chance anyway. When I finished my second MA, a professor who knew my thesis had been on Bond Girls and the James Bond franchise sent me a call for papers for an edited collection of essays for a book on Bond Girls. At the time I thought to myself, “I’m not a PhD student (yet) let alone a PhD, I’m not a professor anywhere, no one will include me in a book project.” But the CFP only wanted an abstract and a bio, and I had a whole thesis completed on the subject. I sent in the abstract and completely forgot about it, sure that I would be rejected. I got accepted. It was a lot of work, and more than a few tears of frustration throughout the editing process, and a huge learning experience at the start of my PhD, but that chance, sending in that abstract even though I was absolutely positive I would be turned down, led to my first academic publication.

Similarly, last year, another professor sent me the CFP for a conference of fashion scholars and suggested I try for it. Again, I thought, it’s an international conference in London, some of the best fashion and dress scholars are in the UK and Europe, there’s no way they’ll accept the paper from a PhD student in Arizona (I’m still working on fully implementing tip #2 above lol). Again, I got accepted.

Point is, there will be times in your life when opportunities seem to just drop out of the sky and would be perfect for you to try for, but self-doubt will creep in and try to prevent you from taking a chance. Do it anyway. Send in the paper, apply for the job, pitch the idea. The worst that can usually happen is you’ll be told no. But failure never killed anyone and isn’t something to be afraid of. Which leads me to the final tip…

5) Try, try, and try again.

I could write a whole blog post about failure (and I probably will soon), but it’s important to address in this post as well. Failure is a natural part of life. There will be times you fail and have to make a choice to try again. Try it differently. Try it better. Try it harder. Pretty much every great success or discovery was preceded by countless failures. If you want to truly attract success in your life, you have to learn to become comfortable with failure and see it as a learning experience on the road to success.

I’ve been rejected from conferences and publications. Heck, I’ve been rejected from graduate programs, which is completely demoralizing. I applied to 7 PhD programs, got rejected by 6, and waitlisted for funding for the uni I ended up attending. Those were three agonizing months between finding out I’d been accepted and waiting to find out if I’d also get funding. My first MA program I got rejected from as well, but I was determined, asked if I could appeal, agreed to extra classes to make up for my so-called “deficiencies” and eventually was admitted. I was so naive back then and had no clue about how academia really worked. I literally though since I was an Arizona resident and it was a state school, why would they reject me? I’m glad I fought it. I’m glad I didn’t know better. Because I would not be weeks away from receiving my PhD diploma if I hadn’t. My grad school journey would have been over before it started.

There are so many other examples of times I tried and failed. I failed as a costume designer. I failed to start a business as a jewelry designer. I’ve failed tests and papers. So far I’m failing to find a job after graduation lol. I’ve failed and fallen flat so many times. But each time I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and tried again. There have been countless times during my PhD journey that I was tempted to just give in and give up. To admit I was a failure and I didn’t belong. That I couldn’t do it. To give in to the voice of imposter syndrome and the ghosts of professors past who never believed in me and made me feel like crap. It would have been so easy. And it was definitely harder to keep going. These last few months have been especially hard, to be so close but still feel so far from my goal. But I stuck with it and kept going. If I got comments on my draft that made me feel like giving up I pushed ahead. Never say die, never surrender. (Can you tell I’m an Army daughter?) When you feel like a failure and like giving up because everything is falling apart, take a deep breath, wait for the dust and rubble to settle, and then start over. Try again. You really will succeed eventually.

As I said above, I’m not an expert. But I do have a fair bit of life experience (37 years and counting). I’ve learned most of these tips and lessons the hard way, and much later in life than I would have liked. So if sharing them can help someone learn from my mistakes and save themselves a few years of struggle then it’s worth it. Let me know in the comments what you’re currently needing fate to give you an extra boost on. And if you found this helpful, I’d love it if you would share it with others. A bonus tip..sharing is caring, and helping others usually comes back around and helps you. ;) 

Until next time,

Andrea