A pigeon pooped in my eye and now I’ll never see * LUCK * the same way again.

A pigeon pooped in my eye.

And somehow my first thought was “Wow. I’m so lucky!”

In this video, I’m sharing two moments that completely changed how I see luck. From getting pooped on (LITERALLY) to almost getting hit by a car (SCARY!) and why the meaning you assign to things matters more than what actually happens.

In todays episode we talk about:

• Why luck isn’t as random as you think

• How your perception shapes your reality

• The difference between “good” and “bad” events

• How to reframe situations in real time

• Why you create your own luck through how you show up

Because the same situation can feel like a disaster… or a strange kind of gift.

If you’ve ever felt like life is just happening to you, this conversation might shift how you see everything.

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🩰 HI, I'M VERONICA VACANZA

Hi there! I'm Veronica, welcome to my beginner dance journey. When I was 17, I was told by a teacher that I would never be a ballerina. I let that thought control me for YEARS but now, in my late 20s, I moved to New York City and I'm finally starting ballet late. This is a space for me to document the ups and downs of learning how to do ballet in my now 30s and show the world that it's never too late to live your dreams.

#growthmindset#lifeadvice#selfimprovement#storytime

Transcript

– Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:00

They say that getting pooped on by a bird is good luck. So today, I'm gonna tell you the story of how a New York City pigeon shitting in my eye made me the luckiest girl in the world. Hello, hello. Welcome back to What's the F Point? It's great to have you here. And if you're ever someone who struggles with wondering what is the point, what is all of this for? Why am I trying to dance? Who do I think I am? All of those thoughts that can kind of swirl around in your head that we are constantly talking about here on this podcast. You might feel like you're just not a lucky person. And feeling that way can kind of become a little bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like you start to believe that other people are lucky, other people are worthy and in the place and in the headspace and all the things to be lucky. Whereas you are just an unlucky person. Now we've talked about this before, where making your identity something negative can really hamstring you. Like to identify with being an unlucky person can be the source of so much of your frustration. So we're gonna talk through all of this today. We're gonna unpack some myths about luck. I'm gonna tell you some stories that I never thought I'd be sharing on the internet, but here we go. And we're gonna get into the nitty-gritty of what is luck? How can you become more lucky if you feel like you're an unlucky person? We're gonna do it all. But before we get to that, if you're totally new here, welcome. My name is Veronica, and I document my journey of starting ballet as an adult for the very first time. So if any of that jibes with you, if any of that sounds like something you want to be a part of, subscribe. If you're here on YouTube, subscribe on YouTube, or if you're listening to me in your ears, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you are listening to this show. Awesome. Thank you so much. So now let's get into the heart of luck. Ooh, this is a good topic. I have lots of thoughts on this. But let me first begin by sharing a couple of personal stories that can illustrate the power of luck and what luck actually is, in my humble opinion. Don't forget, okay, I'm just a gal. I'm just a girl who figured out how to operate a camera and a microphone and upload things to YouTube. So just take this with a grain of salt. These are my opinions and it's your life. At the end of the day, you know you. You know you, baby. You know what works for you. But if you're struggling and any of this is helpful for you, great. If not, take what works, leave the rest, and search your heart for the answers that you know to be true. Okay, now without further ado, allow me to tell you about the time that a pigeon pooped in my eye. So several years ago, when I very first moved to Manhattan, we were having this beautiful snow day. I really have not seen a snow day like this since. So the ground is covered in snow. It's a winter wonderland. I'm so excited because I have dreamt of living in Manhattan my entire life. Like I watched all the early 2000s movies. I was in that headspace. And like, I am not going to rest until I get a cozy, comfy little apartment in New York City. So I did it and I was so happy. It was honestly like being on drugs all the time. Now I'm not a drug user, so I'm using that metaphor loosely, but I can imagine that it's just like, oh my gosh, the everything is so magical. I just felt like high on life all the time because I did it. I was here. So I walk outside, I'm about to go to work, I'm in my cute, comfy little, you know, my little jacket, my little mittens, everything. And all of a sudden, I feel splat right on my eye. Now, thank God I am visually impaired. So I was wearing my glasses, and I used to have this pair of glasses, which I love so dearly, I miss them. And they were like huge big 70s style glasses. So even though this pigeon pooped in my eye, it hit the glasses and it didn't go in my eye. And my reaction to that was oh my gosh, I have to be the luckiest girl in the world. I am so lucky that that did not go in my eye because that could have been so much worse. I don't know what I would have done. I was just seeing my vision flashing before my eyes of how bad that could have been. But thankfully, I was wearing my glasses, so it didn't get in my eye, and it hardly even made me late for work. I just had to run inside, clean them off, and go on with my merry day. I laughed about the situation. But it's interesting because just a few years prior to this, right before I was moving to New York, I was wildly stressed out. And I hadn't really decided whether or not I was actually gonna move here or not. And I was interviewing with a bunch of different jobs. I've always been someone who had like five million jobs, and one of the jobs that I was doing was I had just gotten an interview to go meet this family that maybe I was gonna babysit for. And I go there and it was kind of this thing of like, well, if I take this job, then I guess I'm not gonna move to New York. And you know, maybe if I don't get this job, then that will be a sign for me to move to New York and whatever. So anyway, I go to the interview and I'm not really jiving with it. Um I'm kind of thinking, like, I don't really, there's something it's just it doesn't feel in alignment with me. I don't feel like I'm supposed to be doing this, even though the family was really nice and they were happy to hire me and everything. It just didn't seem like it would be a good fit for me. And on my way home, I'm so stressed out because I'm confused now. I'm like, well, I don't know, it feels irresponsible to turn down a perfectly good job, but I also feel like I'm not supposed to, and I just I didn't know what to do with my life. This was at a point in my life where I was a lot younger and I was so confused. I had just really lost my way. I'm driving on the highway, and this woman comes flying, flying off of an exit and almost slams into me and almost causes a 10-car pileup. And in that moment, I really saw my light flash before my eyes. I was just like, whoa, that really could have been so bad. But I was taking the approach that I was annoyed that another thing had to happen in my day, that I was so stressed out, that I was so overwhelmed. And now here's this crazy person flying out of nowhere, they're almost gonna cause an accident, everything is so crazy. Why is life so hard? This, that, and the third. Like, I was really not seeing that for what that was, which was a gift that I almost lost my life. Like, if she had made it to the highway a little bit earlier, or if if so many circumstances that easily could have been different were different, I wouldn't be here right now sitting here telling you this story because something really bad would have happened. So I was thinking about both of these instances, and I realized that luck is such a matter of perception. Whereas in one instance, when I nearly lost my life, I didn't have the ability to see that situation as the gift that it was that wow, I'm so lucky that that didn't happen to me. I'm so lucky that she narrowly avoided me. I was not really approaching that situation with gratitude. And then just a few years later, when my life is so much different and I'm in such a better mood because I'm so excited to be alive, like I'm just happy to be alive and be living in the city. That even when a pigeon poops on me, and the only reason that it stops me from getting in my eye is because I have shitty eyesight. I'm looking at all of that as a good thing. I'm approaching all of that with gratitude, and I'm saying, oh wow, I'm so lucky that it could have been so much worse. So I think that that's a great example of how we really create our own reality a lot of the time. And that's not to say that bad things don't ever happen to you when you're positive and you're happy. It's not about that, but it's the meaning that we ascribe to things that is really what shapes our reality. This is an example of how an event can happen in your life, and you are in the position of power to decide what you're gonna take away from that story, what you're gonna take away from that event. What is the story that you're now going to tell yourself about what happened to you and how is that going to shape your future? Because really, you know, the situations that happened to me were pretty neutral. You know, in one situation, okay, someone was crazy on the highway, that happens all the time. In another situation, I got pooped on by a bird. These things happen all the time. Now, I could have, in each situation, applied a very different meaning and a very different story. In that same situation that happened with the car, I could have said, Oh, I'm so lucky that I didn't get killed that day, essentially. But I didn't. I was annoyed. I was completely bypassing that. And then in the other situation, I could have just as easily been like, What the hell? You know, I'm running late for work, I'm trying to get out of the door. Now a pigeon poops on me. I gotta go clean off my glasses. This is ridiculous. And why do I even wear these glasses in the first place? Why can't I just have normal eyesight like everybody else? This, that, and the third. Like, there is a completely different meaning and a completely different story that I could have applied to all of that. But that's the thing. Luck is a matter of our perception and the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, the stories that we tell ourselves about the world. So it's really easy to get caught in a bad thought cycle of I'm so unlucky. Why me? Why me? Now, I've had some really truly horrible things happen to me. I've had betrayals happen in my life that really affected me. I've had horrible living circumstances, I've had, you know, just so many situations that I think any person would say, that's really pretty bad. But I have contracted this fierce, persistent obsession with being very careful about the meaning that I ascribe to things. And now that's not the same as not actually letting yourself feel the feelings, okay? Bad things happen to you. I'm not advocating for sitting here saying, like, oh, I'm so glad that I was assaulted, or I'm so glad that this, that, and the third. Like, you know, it's not it's not like that, okay? You are allowed to be angry. In fact, you need to process the things that happen to you, but you don't have to let that define your life, you don't have to let that convince you that you are an unlucky person or that you are not deserving of good things. And, you know, I'm sitting here dishing out this advice, but I'm talking about this because this is something that I struggle with. You know, there's one side of me that is deeply, fiercely optimistic and an overcomer, and you know, I'm not gonna let anything get me down. But then there is a side of me, there are times where I feel so overwhelmed and I feel frustrated, and I feel like, why me? Why am I so unlucky? Why do why do these crazy things just not stop happening to me? Like, can I catch a break? But at the end of the day, I recognize and I realize that to me, there's a point to all of this happening in my life. Like, there is such a big point because I now have learned some hard lessons but valuable lessons nonetheless. I have awoken to so many issues in my life that all of the bad things that have happened to me in my life, my living situation, my my betrayals, you know, all of the things that have made a big impact on me. But all of those things have given me, I believe, a gift. They've given me the gift of awareness, they've given me the ability to really like sweep up my life and clean up my life and get rid of these old negative patterns, the old people that I used to let control me and dictate my life and bring me down, not support me. You know, like I've gotten rid of so much of that, and I've awoken to so many of my unconscious patterning of why do I even let people like that in my life in the first place? Why do I show up in the ways that I show up? Why do I think the things that I think? I never would have been given these incredible gifts of deeper self-awareness, deeper understanding of humanity and life, and just all of it if I hadn't been through what I had been through. So I choose to give these trials and tribulations in my life a different meaning and a different story. And I choose to acknowledge that I'm a different person. I'm a very lucky person. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have been through what I've been through, to have made it out of what I've been through, because not everybody gets out of the situations that I've been in. So I feel lucky to still be here, to still be alive, and to be able to film a podcast, to be able to use my voice to speak to the world on matters that maybe I needed to hear a long time ago. I feel so incredibly lucky to have that opportunity, but I could just as easily sit here and tell myself that I am the unluckiest girl in the world because of the things that I've been through. So I guess all of this is to say that I believe luck is a matter of perception. It's a matter of choice. You have the choice every single day to decide whether you are a lucky person or whether you're an unlucky person. And I choose to consider myself one of the luckiest girls in the world. So that's just about everything that I have for you today. If any of this resonated with you, please let me know. Share a comment, share a time where you maybe felt really unlucky. Share a time where maybe you felt like actually you were really lucky in a weird, distorted, twisted kind of way. Um if you haven't heard my story, my you know, the very first episode of What's the point? Then I highly recommend giving that a listen. I'll leave that linked right here if you're on YouTube and if you're just listening to this, then it will be in the show notes. But I highly strongly encourage you to listen to that because it will give you a much better context of some of the things I'm talking about and uh some of the things that I've been through, and how even through all of that, you can still come to the conclusion that you are a lucky, blessed person. Um, I'm just pretty happy to be here. I'm just pretty happy to be alive. So, um, but that has taken a lot of work and a lot of effort, and I hope that in some way, shape, or form this helped you. So I look forward to hearing from you, and I will see you very soon with another episode. But until then, don't forget that even if it feels like there isn't one, there is always a point. Okay, see you soon. Bye!