People's belief in destiny seems to come in 3 main flavors, based on my experience. The first way is exactly as you stated it--the, honestly rather vague, statement or belief that events that happen in one's life always happen for a reason... whether that be because a plan set out from creation by a creator deity or a more mystic/spiritual kind of sense where disparate occurrences in your life are somehow mysteriously connected by a more transcendental, meta-physical bond and that that connection exists for a some goal or reason of its own.
The second, although somewhat related to the first, is that they believe the universe is deterministic, either through an inability to reconcile a lot of our current understanding of physics and causality with the idea, or they believe the universe is deterministic in nature because a creator being had some plan set out from the beginning (which is how its related to the first, although belief in a divine plan, strangely enough in my opinion, doesn't seem to cause any cognitive dissonance in some people even though our having free will doesn't really jive with a the universe being created with the entirety of its future existence planned from the beginning).
Lastly is something akin to what I believe it was the ancient Greeks believed in. A person had a destiny, and one they really couldn't avoid, but its cause was attributed to the fundamental nature of one's personality. These were seen as a set of characteristics that one was born predisposed to having which would directly inform how that person makes decisions and reacts to all the encounters and events experienced during the course of one's life.
When it comes to the first type, so long as you don't believe the reason is a plan that was determined from the beginning by a deity, then this version seems the most likely to allow for legitimate changes to be made in one's destiny. That said, I believe the reason for that is precisely the result of how vague the parameters for who/what decides the reasons behind what happens to someone throughout their life. I fully expect that the more detailed, consistent, and concrete one's beliefs regarding what determines the reason certain things happen during life are is inversely proportional to how plausible the argument that one's destiny can actually change would be. Case in point, believing the reasons are determined by God because He has a divine plan in place.
The other two types really don't seem to allow any chance for one's destiny to change. As far as my own beliefs go, I'm open to the idea that the universe may in fact be deterministic by the nature of its being, but it isn't exactly something you can really prove so I don't see in any point in making a decision one way or another about whether the choices I make are my own, a result of my individual free will, or if it's even accurate to be describing the choices and decisions I make as choices or decisions because it is all just a result of a chain reaction because the as of yet fully understood nature of causality. It's interesting to speculate at times, but a determination, on top of being premature, just seems silly when it winds up having no real functional impact on my life experiences either way. Committing to one belief or the other instead of just staying considerate and open minded to both seems like it'll just wind up leading to a pointless headache later on down the road, because the belief in destiny greatly concerns and influences your perspective and world outlook.
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