So, now that summer’s dust has finally settled and we’re beginning the slide into our year-end reality again, let’s take a minute to kick back, stretch out, and let our imaginations roll.

Here’s a question to get yours in motion: What would have to happen to end up making this a glorious year for you?

Here’s another question: When I asked you that last question, what kind of feelings sprang up? Did the idea of ending with a glorious year excite you and get you thinking about the possibilities, and maybe even some delicious high improbabilities? Did it spark your sense of adventure?

Or did it feel heavy, as if the very idea of having a glorious year was an impossibility?

If it felt heavy, remember, all we’re doing here is playing. Imagine something magical happens, your own personal miracle. Imagine that everything that weighed you down simply evaporated for a while. Pretend that, just for now, whatever it is that’s keeping you from imagining a fabulous year is gone. Stuff it in a sack and let it sit over there on a shelf for a bit while you play.

So, the question is what would have to happen to make this a glorious year for you? Go ahead, name something. Anything. Whatever comes into your head.

Now take that something and imagine it actually happening. (We’re just playing a game.) Put yourself right inside it and let it drench your senses. When you think about it, what do you see? Where are you? What does it look like? What sounds do you hear? What are people saying to you or about you in this marvelous circumstance? What does the air feel like? Does it carry a fragrance? What’s the temperature? What are you wearing?

Pretend that we’re all sitting in a big circle and each of us is sharing our vision, and it’s your turn.

Imagine everybody clapping in delight at your dream.

Now sit back and relish it for a bit. Feel how good it feels.

Then, just for fun, ask yourself what’s stopping you from turning your vision into your reality? Maybe not completely, maybe just galloping toward it like some wild stallion. What’s the first thing that you’d have to do? What’s stopping you from doing it? What would you have to change? What would you have to give up?

If you answered a bunch of those questions, you have, right now, some great new insights about yourself—whether you ever act on them or not. You have a vision of something that captures the feel of things that turn you on. And you know for sure that you have a wonderful imagination – and that it can be quite an adventure just to let it roll from time to time.

It lets you see new possibilities for yourself. It opens you to new ideas.

You can grab that vision you created, you know. You can toss it around, look at it from new angles, see what else it has to say, what direction it’s asking you to go. It came, after all, from some place deep inside you. And it came to you for a reason.

What got me to thinking about this is a quote from Robert Moss, a man who teaches people how to capture and learn from their dreams. Here’s what he had to say about the kind of vision that describes your glorious life:

“Let’s be real about this: There will be days when the contrast between your vision and the clutter and letdowns and bruises of everyday life seems so jarringly huge that you give up hope. But this is not about hope. It’s about vision, which is more substantial than hope. Hold the vision in your mind, however rough the seas turn out to be. If you can dream it, you can do it.”

“If you can dream it, you can do it.” You’ve heard that, I know, before. But suppose that it’s true. Suppose that it can be true for you.

Wishing you a week of vivid imaginings!

Warmly, 
Susan

^{Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay}

“Remember,” motivational speaker and author, T. Harv Eker told his audience, “What you focus on expands. As I often say in our training, ‘Where attention goes, energy flows and results show.’”

That’s far more than a slick little slogan; it’s an explanation of how things work.

Know anybody who’s always telling you about the things that go wrong, for instance? I don’t mean the little things that go off-kilter in a given day, like when you can’t find anything you’re looking for and you always put things in the same place, or in order to do what you want to do, you have to do something else first and then something else before that, or when everything you touch seems to slide right out of your hands. Not that kind of thing. I mean someone whose life, to hear him tell it, is a magnet for troubles, one grand string of crises and setbacks and blind alleys after another. You know one of those?

I had a friend like that once. And there was no denying that bad luck seemed to cling to him like a cloud. The things that happened to him weren’t trivial or his recounting of them overblown. But over time I noticed that he never talked about anything else.

One day I asked him if he ever heard about gratitude rocks and I told him the story about a man, somewhere in Africa if I remember correctly, who brought a handful of pebbles from the creek to his village and told his neighbors that they were gratitude rocks and possessed of a great power. If you carried one in your pocket, he told them, and every time your fingers happened to touch the stone you thought of one thing for which you were grateful, unexpected blessings would befall you.

The people began to notice all kinds of good fortune coming their way. Soon, they began collecting and painting rocks and selling them to others as gratitude rocks, and in time the entire village prospered.

I took a polished pebble from my collection and gave it to him. “Feel it in your hand right now,” I told him. “Feel its size and shape, its texture and temperature. Now think of one thing you’re grateful for. It can be anything, big or small.”

My friend’s face fell. He literally could not think of a single thing. I asked him what he had for lunch, and asked him what he liked best about it. “There’s you first thing to be grateful for!” I smiled when he said that the bread was fresh.

Weeks went by before I heard from him again. Then one night he called to tell me that he’d been having a surprising stretch of nothing-going-wrong. He almost felt superstitious about telling me, he said, as if he might be tempting fate. “Maybe that gratitude thing works after all,” he said, chuckling kind of shyly.

I laughed and told him now he could be grateful for gratitude, and he laughed with me. I won’t say that things turned around for him overnight. But his conversations began to be sprinkled with little mentions of things he was noticing and enjoying that he would have discounted or overlooked a month or two ago.

The stories we tell ourselves about what’s going on in our lives—many of them “sticky stories” that we tell ourselves over and over—are energy patterns. Every time our attention gets hooked in them, we’re giving them our mental and emotional energy, and we tend to re-create the same kind of pattern over and over in our lives. What we focus on expands. That’s why it’s important to listen to your stories.

In your dominant stories, are you a victim or a victor? Do you always lose or do you always find a way to succeed? Are you irritated and angry with others, or do you strive to be patient and kind? See where you’re investing your energy, and notice the results. If you like them, keep on telling those kinds of stories. If not, well, here: take this smooth little pebble. (Better yet, go find a little pebble or safety pin or button of your own right now.) Feel it in your hand. Now think of something you’re grateful for and put it in your pocket. And put it in your pocket tomorrow, too, and the next day and the next. And every time your fingers touch it, think of something you’re grateful for. Even if it’s nothing more than not having lost your pebble yet.

You just might be surprised how powerful a little redirection of your energy can be. As Eker told folks, “results show.”

Wishing you a where gratitude rocks.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Julita from Pixabay}