“I just have terrible luck with jobs.”
“I always end up with difficult teams.”
“Every relationship I’m in turns out the same way.”
“Opportunities never seem to work out for me.”
I hear variations of this constantly. Smart, accomplished people attributing patterns in their lives to luck, timing, other people, circumstances beyond their control.
And sometimes? They’re absolutely right. Sometimes life is genuinely unfair. Sometimes you do get dealt a difficult hand.
But often, there’s something else happening.
There’s a pattern you’re participating in without realising it. A role you keep accepting. A boundary you keep failing to set. A red flag you keep ignoring because this time, surely, it will be different.
The pattern you keep calling bad luck is actually information.
It’s trying to show you something about how you move through the world. About what you tolerate. About the unconscious agreements you make. About the story you believe about yourself and what you deserve.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: if the same situation keeps showing up in your life wearing different faces, you’re not unlucky. You’re repeating something.
Maybe you’re brilliant at starting things but vanish when they get difficult. Maybe you’re so focused on being useful that you attract people who need rescuing. Maybe you say yes when you mean no because conflict feels more dangerous than resentment. Maybe you wait for permission that’s never coming instead of just acting.
These aren’t character flaws. They’re coping mechanisms that worked once, probably when you were younger and had fewer options. But now? Now they’re just keeping you stuck in the same loop, wondering why nothing ever changes.
The pattern isn’t punishing you. It’s trying to teach you.
Every repeated situation is an invitation to notice. To ask different questions. To interrupt the automatic response and choose something else.
“What role am I playing here?”
“What am I avoiding by keeping this pattern alive?”
“What would I have to accept about myself if this isn’t about bad luck?”
Those questions are uncomfortable. They require you to stop being the victim of your circumstances and start being the author of them. That’s harder. It means you have agency, which means you have responsibility, which means you can’t just wait for things to get better on their own.
But it also means you have power.
If you’re participating in the pattern, you can interrupt it. You can choose differently. You can stop showing up the same way and expect different results.
I’ve watched leaders finally see their pattern and everything shift. The executive who kept getting “difficult” managers until she realised she was seeking validation from people incapable of giving it. The entrepreneur who kept attracting “flaky” business partners until he noticed he was choosing people he could feel superior to. The health professional who kept burning out in “toxic” workplaces until she understood she was performing burnout to prove her worth.
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
And yes, that’s uncomfortable. But it’s also the beginning of actual change.
So what’s your pattern? The one you keep calling bad luck? The situation that keeps showing up no matter how many times you change jobs, cities, relationships, strategies?
It’s not happening to you.
It’s happening for you.
Pay attention.
