12 times fortune cookies literally changed people’s lives

“Don’t pursue happiness, create it.”

When author Wendy Turner got this fortune, she saved it because it inspired several more life-changing mantras that together comprise a “happiness contract” with herself. For example, “I will slow down and be grateful” and “My actions will speak louder than my words.”

“God can heal a broken heart, but He has to have all the pieces.”

That’s the fortune spiritual blogger Kali got from a cookie while she was trying to decide what to do with her life. After struggling for years trying to piece her own heart together, she read this fortune and made the decision to find the missing pieces of herself by devoting herself to volunteerism.

On December 9, 2017, college student Jordan Richards opened a fortune cookie at a local Chinese restaurant that read, “3 months from today, something good will happen.” Well, Richards took it seriously, marking it down in his calendar as “Fortune Cookie Day.” Three months later, to the day, he got an offer for a job that he could start post-graduation.

Don’t believe in fortune-cookie luck? Steal these secrets from people who seem naturally prone to good luck.

“If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.”

When blogger Jillian Beaubourg read that, she was still battling post-traumatic stress disorder from her bad relationship with her father – at the age of 50. She realised that she had to let the past go to move forward.

Jim Markley and his wife, Debbie, had been trying to start a family for five years with no luck, according to a story in Spokesman-Review. Finally, they found out that Debbie was pregnant, but before they could tell anyone they went out to dinner with friends for Chinese. When they got their fortune cookies, they both got the same fortune: “You will live to a ripe old age, happy in the love and respect of many children.”

They ended up with two children – which Jim says qualifies as “many.”

Jessica Darling told her fortune cookie story on a travel blog: “Shortly before my 33rd birthday, I read the fortune, ‘You will never know your full potential until you try’.” So she decided to try. “I gave myself an open-ended sabbatical to really get in touch with what deeper meaning my life had and what work I was meant to do in the world,” she explains. “Within six months I had resigned from my job, found myself single after years of being with a partner, and was entirely on my own.” She travelled for three years and ended up becoming an ordained minister.

“Is your fortune as corny as mine?” That was the line blogger Nikki D got from the man who would become her husband. She was eating Chinese food in an airport when she noticed a cute guy in line. “As fate would have it, the two of us ended up sitting about 30 metres apart facing each other. I ate about half of my fried rice and pulled out my laptop to do some work. That’s when the handsome man came up to me… I gave him my business card (not my smoothest move ever), and he started texting me before we even left the airport.”

Fountains, statues, temples… these luckiest places in the world could just be the golden ticket to having your biggest wishes granted.

Author Wendy DeGroat once got a fortune that said, “A goal is a dream with a deadline.” They were all the words she needed to finish the history book she’d been writing. That fortune is still hanging on DeGroat’s wall, serving as an inspiration for the book and 63 poems she’s published in the nine years since opening that cookie.

Married couple Barbara and Scott Turnbull became very wealthy thanks to a fortune cookie. In March 1995, they each played a set of numbers they got from a fortune cookie. They ended up being two of the three winners of a $4 million Lotto jackpot.

Someone else who played lucky numbers and won big is 66-year-old Richard Davis . He had been playing numbers he got in fortune cookies for some time when, in 2015, he became the sole winner of a $7 million jackpot.