I decided the universe conspires in my favour

Note the word: decided.

It wasn't something that happened to me, or proof that anyone gave me. It was my decision, taken at a certain point and renewed every day since.

How this works in practice

Someone cuts in front of me in traffic. Maybe they spared me an accident. Maybe I was driving too fast and needed to slow down.

Someone is unpleasant with me. Maybe it was to make me stop. To redirect me. To open my eyes to something.

Someone is late. I gained time to do something else, or to rest.

Someone irritates me. Perhaps I was holding on too tightly to something else.

This isn't pretending everything is fine

This is the part I most want to say, because it's where this idea usually gets misused.

I feel everything just the same. I go through all of the emotions, with the same intensity and at the same pace as always.

The difference is what comes afterwards. I felt it, it passed, and then I look at it and ask: how was this good for me? What did I learn here? What might the good thing have been?

First I feel. Only then do I go looking.

Sometimes I find nothing

And sometimes I imagine something. Sometimes I invent it outright.

That's fine too.

Because the point isn't to discover the real reason something happened. I don't have access to that and probably never will. The point is to choose what I do with what happened.

Between carrying the weight and looking for what's usable in it, I choose the second. Not because it's truer. Because it's lighter and because it gets me somewhere.

Call it whatever you like

Universe, God, life, whatever.

The name doesn't interest me. What interests me is the stance: everything that happens to me is a gift, is a blessing, is welcome.

I only choose what I do with it.

What changes

What changes is how much time I spend fighting with what has already happened.

Before, one setback would take up my whole day. Now it takes up the time it needs to move through me, and then it turns into something else.

I still feel. I still have bad days. But I live far lighter.

And that lightness wasn't given to me. I decided it.