Psychology Today: 7 Facts That Will Change the Way You Think About Your Life

"Everyone can tell at least one story in which something either really great or really terrible happened without warning. As you think about such an experience from your past, how did you eventually come to interpret that event? Did you regard it as fate? Did you feel that it fit into some higher purpose?

The Two Factors That Influence Perception of Chance

The random occurrences in life can happen at any place and in any way. Their very unpredictability, University of Oslo’s Karl Teigen and Alf Børre Kanten (2022) proposed, gave them a highly aversive quality. People prefer to know what’s in store for them, as “non-random events bring stability and order into our lives.”

Seven Facts to Consider as You Rethink Your Life's Trajectory

These two factors of suddenness and timing were at the essence of the U. Oslo study, but along the way, the authors also provided other intriguing facts that can help you view your own life experiences from a new perspective:

Fact 1: Endings don’t seem to happen by chance, but beginnings do.

Beginnings seem to be responsible for the events that follow, but when something ends, you think you know what preceded it, leading you to miss the influence of possible randomness.

Fact 2: Beginnings seem due to chance because they are more noteworthy than endings.

Beginnings tend to draw your attention more than endings, which could also contribute to your perception that they occur by chance.

Fact 3: There’s a difference between luck and coincidence.

When an event occurs for no reason, you’ll be more likely to regard it as being a coincidence if it isn’t very important.

Fact 4: You can gain important knowledge without even trying.

This is a great observation. Think about how many of your skills you've picked up by accident. Chance can work in your favor in unexpected ways.

Fact 5: Sometimes chance is just plain fun.

Not only is chance occasionally educational, but it can also be fun. Although people generally dislike randomness, the authors also point out that “chance can also be hedonically attractive.”

Fact 6: Maybe it's not chance or even luck after all.

Thinking back on your injured ankle, it may have seemed like bad luck to you, but it's possible that it was “probable” given your level of distraction by all the things you were carrying. Maybe chance beginnings are just the continuation of ongoing patterns that already exist.

Fact 7: People prefer thinking about life transitions in terms of beginnings.

Reinforcing this last point, the U. Oslo researchers discovered in one of their experiments that, when given a choice, people prefer to think about life as a series of new chapters rather than as continuous patterns.

Are You Ready to Rethink Chance in Your Life?

As Teigen and Kanten point out, “all events have causes and are situated meaningfully in their own web of relations," some random and some not. However, because it’s so easy to think in terms of chunks than transitions, it’s worthwhile to take a step back and look for the broader themes that drive your own life’s patterns.

For this thought experiment, begin with events that seem to arise by chance but instead reflect some other underlying process, the “unplanned social interactions in the history of an individual” that can “determine their life trajectories”

To sum up, before you let coincidence or luck sway you into thinking that all of life is a series of chance occurrences, seeing the underlying logic to your life’s direction can help give it both greater meaning and fulfillment."

Read the full article here!

Reflection:

What are your thoughts on these facts?

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