The word “synchronicity” was coined by Carl Jung, famous Swiss Psychiatrist, to mean “meaningful coincidence.” For example, you need a service and two people mention the same provider, unsolicited, in one day. You’ve been thinking about calling a person and you suddenly see him or her while running errands.

Our lives have a narrative structure, and synchronistic events often reflect turning points and directional arrows in our narrative. They can also indicate that we are in a state of “flow,” and synchronicities have been referred to as the “angel’s way” of speaking with us.

When we are in a challenging place in our lives and without actively seeking support, we may find that help arrives in the form of an accidental sequence of events which occurs exactly as we need in order to assist us in moving through a circumstance or event.

People often report the following synchronicities:

•  It is common for telephones, addresses, and wrong numbers to crop up in many stories so that individuals may connect.
• Synchronistic events are almost always present for two people to meet the first time or an important subsequent time.
• It is considered synchronistic when seeming bad luck turns out to have a positive significance.
• Sometimes something will delay you, and the delay leads to a more fortunate outcome.
• The more obstinate we become about the way we think something “should” be, the more likely synchronicities will come to speak to us.
• The kind of child we have is always synchronistic–sometimes making parents confront their own shadows, develop their own strengths, and so on.

Most important, if we pay attention to the meaningful coincidences in our lives, we can question their significance. Are they directional messages, are they action-oriented, are they symbolic?

When an extraordinary, meaningful occurrence has significance for us, we should question how we might let it guide or change our story.