Do you ever wonder “why is this happening to me?” Understanding an experience can lessen the anxiety we feel about it and lead to acceptance regardless of the outcome. This can be difficult when we get stuck in the objective facts of the situation, wrangling with thoughts like “what have I done to cause this?” and “what can I do to fix it?” When we can look at a situation subjectively in terms of what we can learn from it, it can be possible to gain understanding of the synchronicities of life.
The Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung defined synchronicities as meaningful coincidences. Sometimes, no causal relationship can be seen between two events but a meaningful relationship appears to exist anyway. Jung espoused that synchronicities are events we attract into our lives for various reasons. They help us define what is important to us as individuals. We attract them into our lives when we are looking for confirmation or seeking guidance, whether we are consciously aware of this or not. While synchronicities can often point to “learning lessons”, they can also be there just to make a subtle point, a gentle reminder of things we already know.
So, what does a synchronicity look like?
You meet someone who interests you and with whom you feel a connection. This person seems to come into your life over and over again. You begin to feel a destiny with this person. You begin to think with your heart instead of your head. The relationship may be positive but it may end before you are ready, become a negative experience or turn out in ways you had not anticipated.
You find yourself thinking about someone that you are not in regular contact with. Out of the blue, you see or hear from them or hear something about them from someone else.
Through synchronicity, you have attracted these events into your life, or they have attracted you, to increase your insight and understanding of yourself and others.
It can be helpful when a specific situation is not going the way you want to ask yourself what you need to learn. Is it patience, tolerance, empathy, the ability to live with ambiguity, appreciation that different is not necessarily bad, or something else? Realizing that we can learn from heartbreak and other negative experiences can help us tolerate and even in some ways appreciate when things go awry. Understanding synchronicity can help us reframe events, understand that there are things to be gained in negative circumstances, reduce anxiety and go with the ebb and flow of life.
When you live your life with an appreciation of coincidences and their meanings, you connect with the underlying field of infinite possibilities
-Deepak Chopra
