Seeing what you are looking for

I play a game with the Universe. Every time I see a copper colored car or truck,  I know that my wishes are closer to coming true.  Two years ago, I had just started grad school, and I was very concerned about how much money I was going to be spending on tuition and residencies-more that I make in a year. So I asked the Universe to show me copper cars, an uncommon color, to let me know that I could relax and get on with the work, that the money would come.

You've had the experience, I'm sure, of learning a new word, and then seeing it everywhere. A friend of mine, an angry young man uses the word 'egregious' (means something so wrong it takes excel and powerpoint to understand the depth of the wrongness). I'd never heard this word before, but not I hear it every week. It's the same thing with the copper cars--once I started looking for them, I saw them, everywhere, two on the way to work (a 7 minute drive) this morning.  People have gone out and bought copper-colored cars so I could see them. My friends say that they never see copper cars unless I am riding with them!

So, what does this have to do with being your own fairy godmother? You see what you are looking for.  Your threshold of perception is affected by what you think about, so it is a good idea to think about the things that you do want, and not to focus on how things are now.  Your wish is to have something different than what you have now, so you want to look for that thing, see how it has happened for other people, and find the joy in knowing that it's coming to you.

Being realistic is good when you are writing the business plan for the bank, but it does not help when you are doing the dreaming. I live in an economically depressed part of South Carolina, but I read about Carmen Geschke, who moved here from Michigan four years ago with her husband and and a dream. Her business has grossed over a million dollars each year for the last three years. Lots of folks will tell you how impossible it is in today's market to make it, but she just dreamed and worked her dream into reality.

The copper car game is working. I will finish my master's degree in Humanities (another story for another time)  in three weeks, and I am already seeing money come in from unexpected places--$400 this week alone.  Instead of worrying, I am opening my mind to new possibilties and new roles for me to play.

My agent asked me to write to an editor who saw my novel at a wrting conference (Southeastern Writers Association) to see if he had any suggestions for revising it. He wrote back this morning that he never got the manuscript, but if I would email it again, he'd take a look. This is a real New York editor, not a self-publish print-on-demand editor.  Things are coming together.

That's what we want to do, to dream our wish into reality. What are you looking at today? What part of your dream is right in front of your face, waiting for you to recognize it?