This video is from the book launch of Synchronicity: Empower your life with the gift of coincidence, with edited speeches by Sarah Leach and Chris Mackey, on October 20th, 2015 at Deakin University, Geelong.
I have decided to write about synchronicity after working as a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist for 35 years because of the emphasis many of my clients have placed on it, despite the phenomenon virtually never being mentioned in the training I have undertaken. I believe that it is an important, but under-recognised and under-utilised, phenomenon in the mental health field.
Synchronicity is an uncanny and meaningful timing of events that compelling seems to go beyond chance. In my book, Synchronicity: Empower your life with the gift of coincidence, I explain why I believe that appreciating synchronistic experiences can help us find life purpose and meaning, guiding us toward our destiny.
Examples of synchronicity include improbably running into someone when we had just been thinking about them, uncannily meeting someone who has exactly the right kind of skills or knowledge to help us address a problem, or acting on a whim that spookily seems to have anticipated future events. We might otherwise have experienced such an amazing series of related coincidences that it made us think that there must be some kind of hidden order to the universe. Such experiences might lead us to consider that some things that happen are simply “meant to be”. This experience seems more frequent when we are in a state of flow, when we are well attuned to our inner selves and our external world at one and the same time.
What might these experiences mean? Sometimes they seem to point to an extra sense of connection we have with others. When synchronistic experiences are especially fortuitous, they may lead us to feel that we are on the right track in whatever path we are pursuing. They prompt us to be more open to listening to our intuition.
Beyond that, they encourage us to wonder about influences on our lives that go beyond mere rational explanation. Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist, started wondering about synchronicity about 100 years ago, prompted in part by conversations with Einstein. It took him decades to write about it, and only when actively encouraged to do so by another quantum physicist, Wolfgang Pauli.
Synchronicity now seems to be a concept that is both timeless and timely. It is timeless not only in the lasting interest people have shown in it, but also because it goes to some of the deeper questions about the nature of our existence. It is timely not only in the amount of current interest it attracts (Amazon lists over 20 books, including my own, that have been published on synchronicity since 2010), but in the extent of current interest in seeking life purpose or deeper personal meaning in an increasingly secular society.
As described in my book, synchronicity offers us a window into the way our inner and outer worlds combine to help point us to our destiny.
Wishing you the best of synchronicity!
Regards, Chris
For Chris’s Psych Spiels podcast episodes on synchronicity, click here (ep. 24) and here (ep. 25). His short videos on synchronicity are available here.
Synchronicity: Empower your life with the gift of coincidence, was released in 2015. The 2nd edition, The Positive Psychology of Synchronicity Enhance your mental health with the power of coincidence, was released in August 2019 (See book launch for 2nd edition). It’s about harnessing the power of striking coincidences to enhance your life meaning and purpose. It’s available at Amazon, numerous bookshops and by pre-order. Further blogs and information about the book are available at www.www.synchronicityunwrapped.com.au.