the birthday present from Rhonda Byrne

it was a typical monday.

i am not yet in the habit of gratitude journalling on the weekends because the w/ends just tend to get away from me. i blame the children. oh i'm kidding - i full well realize that i am still attracting the 'time is running out!!!!' experience into my weekends. and i will stop doing that.
i will
i will
i will
next weekend, as the universe is my witness i will make it last an eternity! or at least not make it slip away. a nice lovely long weekend is on my horizons. you read it here first. i'll let you know how that works out.

anyway, driving on towards my point. although i didn't do any gratitude or pray-rain journal at the weekend, i did do one today. at a reasonable breaking point at work, i whipped out my notepad and just wrote away. it only took a couple minutes to fill out the two sides of the paper, and it makes *such* a difference. once you go into that mindset, you get a bit chirpier, a bit of a bounce creeps into your walk, and the smile that had eluded your morning finally surfaces. oh i was smiling before that, but it was the smile that everyone knows is fake. the 'really! i'm serious, i'm really really pretty almost good!'

but having taken a couple minutes to really feel the feelings of where i wanted my vibration to be really changed the rest of the day.

i also thought of how i am already wealthy. that goes a long way to feeling your own abundance. what have i got that i used to really want? i now have the house i wanted for three years, the car i wanted for two years, a job i enjoy, the books i wanted, the computer i wanted.

and something smacked me in the face today that i had hoped for years ago. there is a 'techie' journal that i read occasionally, but the articles used to be way over my head. long ago, i had the intention that in five years, i would be able to pick this journal up and understand every bit of it. that day was today. i couldn't believe it. i read every article in that mag, and it was clear as a bell. a m a z i n g. it was so amazing it made me giddy to think what's ahead of me, now that i'm consciously applying LOA.

to be clear : i am not a geek. just wanted to point that out before continuing. i just understand that magazine.

but THE most amazing thing to happen today was weigh-in. oh yes, monday is weigh-in day, and holly was just attracting maintenance all day long. actually, in my really good-feeling-moments, i was thinking it would be great to have lost a pound, and felt what that was like, but i was really just letting go of the need to have lost any weight this week.

WHY? well, let's see
a birthday concert.
a birthday four-glasses-of-amaretto
a birthday cup of ice cream
and those were the day BEFORE the birthday!
on the day, i had my favorite almond-marzipan chocolate bar and a terry's mint chocolate orange.

then, on saturday, we had a movie with obligatory sweets, dinner at a place where the menu serves half- and quarter- chickens. (i mean c'mon! work with me here! i need to make it home in one pair of jeans!) then i had my favorite thing i have every year on my birthday. ice cream mushed into a cake slice. yuuuuuuuuuuuum.

did i mention i'd had starbucks on friday?

i also went running on wednesday.

but clearly, it was not a dieting-type week. but my mantra all week was what Rhonda said on The Secret cds. "i eat whatever i want and maintain my perfect weight." that was the best gift she has given me on that series. it's all gold, but this has been fantastic - virtually instant manifestation of what i want!

so that was my mantra all week and it bloody worked!!!! i lost a pound and a half this week! woo hoo!!!!!!

now before i get told by some readers that i can't really just go eat anything i want and yet magically lose weight, i have two things to say:

a) when you can eat anything you want to eat, you want to eat the right things more often than not. and when you're happy most of the time like LOA encourages, you don't need 'comfort food' like maybe you used to. but more importantly,

b) i think i just proved i can, actually :)

all the same, i got a whole pile of veggies in today. d'em's good eatin'!

initial trials

that first week after listening to all four cds in the car was just amazing. by friday my feet weren't really touching the ground, i was so high. and lovely things were happening. the sun was a little sunnier, the grass was a little greener. i had never felt so good in my entire life. and i'd been to a barry manilow concert! (street cred alert: i also listen to a myriad of other artists, but i do love barry!) let me rephrase : i had never felt so good in my entire life, and i'd been given morphine! (my daughter was 10 weeks early, there were issues.)

i'd been experiencing the loveliness before The Secret. i had been wanting company x to need a software engineer for quite some time, and in the month before receiving the secret cds, i had gotten a call about such a position. i had the right level of experience, and only my nationality kept me out of the running. then my friend, a former coworker told me that i dodged a bullet, as i wouldn't want to work there because it was a lot more geared to consultancy than what i was looking for. i decided not to feel bad about it, as i was getting what i wanted (a call about company x), but because the opportunity wasn't what i wanted, it didn't go further. niiiice.

i was really ready for something a little more concrete to start happening regularly. on monday evening, my daughter had a golf class. while she was in her lesson, i went to weigh-in at weight watchers. i had been hoping all day for a pound off. on the drive to her lesson, she listened to one of the cds with me. i asked her 'what do you want?' she replied 'i want to pass my golf test.' 'okay then, what would it feel like to do that,' i asked her. she got a great big smile on her face. i said 'pretend it has happened, and thank the universe.' she did that. then i said 'i'm hoping i've lost a pound.' my lovely daughter said 'why not go for 3?' thanks sweetheart. leave it to the children. i didn't know about that. but in that moment i thought, let's put it to the test. 'okay,' i said, 'i want to lose 3 pounds!' i took a big breath, felt what it would feel like to lose 3 pounds, and thanked the universe as if it had already happened. i then told my daughter that the rest of the drive, we really have to focus on feeling good. 'do you feel good?' i asked her. she said she felt okay. i asked her what thoughts make her feel good, and explained that when i have trouble feeling good, i think about her and her brother. so she decided to think about her little brother, too.
i dropped her off at her lesson, and headed off for the weigh-in. i concentrated on feeling good the whole way there. 20 minutes after re-launching the intention, i stood on the scales and was amazed at the 2.5 pounds i'd lost.
'oh
my
god,'
i thought. i know the leader said some congratulatory things to me, but my head was swirling, as all day i'd really hoped like heck for the pound, and then at the last minute i'd clocked up 2.5! all of my rational-minded friends would say 'oh holly! coincidence, dummy!' but how many coincidences do you have to experience before you say 'hmmm.... perhaps not so much?'
AND, my daughter passed her golf test so well that if she'd got another point she'd have gotten a distinction!

the next day, i decided to kick it up a notch with the parking space thing. i visualized the parking space i wanted at work, next to my friend's car. then i just sat there and felt good the rest of the way to work, which was tricky because there were a lot of zombie drivers out that morning. i thought about attracting the right to revoke some people's license, but that didn't sound very LOA. i didn't look at the parking availability until i was right at the turning spot in the spot i wanted. it was there, right next to my friend's car! and it was the only spot left!

well, then i set to getting my old hard drive working. my daughter and i had started writing a story a couple years ago, and after five chapters, the hard drive failed. yes, thank you, i should have backed it up. i had tried different things to get the drive back, but none of them worked. i even took it to my sys admin friends. no joy. well, this week was shaping up to be the week of it. i plugged the drive in. i wrote the error message down again, and tried the first suggestion that google could offer. bingo! i had a hard drive! and there was our story WHICH i quickly backed up to another drive!

this was motivating! if nothing else, i sure as heck felt really good. it felt better than just sitting there letting stuff happen without intending anything.

tomorrow: i get yet another parking spot and a whole pile of playdoh. stay tuned!