The World is Conspiring in My Favor

I was home from the office last Friday and was able to watch Oprah for the first time in ages.  It was as if I was meant to see this particular episode: Living the Law of Attraction.  No, this isn’t “attraction” in the sense that likely comes to top of mind.  Acclaimed author Louise Hay is considered the mother of positive thinking. She was on Oprah to have the conversation about the L of A. “The law of attraction is that our thinking creates and brings to us whatever we think about,” she says. “It’s as though every time we think a thought, every time we speak a word, the universe is listening and responding to us.” (Hmmm…so if we think about negative things and live in negative environments, the universe will create and bring negativity into our lives.  So conversely it’s only natural to believe that if we think about positive things, if we live positive lives, the universe will create and bring lots of happiness and good fortune to us).

It’s all about positive thinking.  It’s easy to be positive when things are going well in life.  It’s much more difficult when things aren’t going in our favor.  Ironically, it’s during these tough times that we need positivity the most.

Cheryl Richardson, an acclaimed author and life coach talked about how she gets through the dark times in her life.  She said that she refers to a specific devotion when things get out of hand: The World in Conspiring in My Favor.  That devotion reached out and grabbed my heart and my soul.

I often wonder why I find it easy to be positive.  It’s not as if I truly try to be positive, to smile 24/7, it just comes naturally, and it always has – even as a child.  It came naturally even when a teenage friend committed suicide, when faced with cancer, when faced with financial crises, when faced with a life of M.S.  I know that some people still believe my ability to find the positive in having M.S. is unnatural, or even fake.  A co-worker recently told me I was masking the news and impact of finding out I have three additional lesions on my brain well.  I replied in the affirmative, but later in retrospect, I recognized I really wasn’t masking anything at all.  Masking something means hiding something.  Hiding means denial.  I was “OK” with the news of the progression of my disease. Sure, I didn’t want more lesions to grow on my brain, but I also didn’t fold up into a ball when the news hit.  In fact, the news made me more positive.  It made me realize I had to fight harder, to work harder at changing my life and my destiny. 

As I think about the Law of Attraction, it reinforces so much about what I believe about life.  It’s about dreaming big.  It’s about seeing what you want to achieve and being able to get there because you have a path and a goal. It’s going with your gut.  Embracing change.  Choosing happiness.  Closing the door on negativity.  I’m not always good at these things; in fact lately I’ve had to work darn hard at closing that door.  I’ve also decided that when it gets too hard to close the door on negativity on a daily basis, it’s time to move away from whatever is causing the negativity.  It’s why I believe negative things come to negative people and why I wholeheartedly believe that amazing things come to positive people; big things come to people who give back; it’s the self-fulfilling prophecy at its finest.  Lately some of the things I’ve been working towards have fallen through my fingers.  I truly believe it’s because I’ve let myself succumb to the negativity surrounding me just begging to be let in.  Some great things are teetering right on the edge for me.  I’ve re- committed to surrounding myself with positive energy so things teeter in the right direction.  I believe I needed to hear the messages on Oprah to push me – a little more forcefully – back in the right direction.

I’m a huge goal-setter, but I’ve never truly written down all of my aspirations or put pictures to them.  Sure, I have a bucket list and I know some of the things I want to achieve in my life, but I’ve never captured all those dreams visually, concretely.  This episode of Oprah has inspired me to create a Vision Board, a great way to visualize the positive things you want to bring into your life.  Additionally, an individual (Psychologist Gay Hendricks) talked about a client who was extremely depressed, clinically depressed.  Hendricks spoke to his patient and asked him if there was anything that happened during the day where he could have stepped in to make a change, to make a difference.  The patient had walked outside the door of a neighbor who was unable to get out and about.  Mail and garbage had piled up into a mess outside the door.  Hendricks suggested his patient do something about the mess.  Minutes later the patient was glowing inwardly after helping his neighbor without being asked and he made it through his stage of depression that day.  Doing something helpful for another reaped a positive reward for the depressed individual.  In my mind I related to my day as Skee Ball Queen, where I guess I was living the Law of Attraction without knowing what it was called.

Now that I know what the Law is, and have some tips on how to remain positive even in the darkest of times, I feel as if I have one more tool in my “how to get through life with M.S.” toolbox.