Day 27: Earthquakes

With one day to go, I'm a lot less wiggy than I thought I'd be. When I initially set out to do this thing, I never thought far enough ahead to see what the completion of this project would look like. To tell you the truth, I'm surprised at myself at having made it through so many exercises back to back with my wits in tact. More or less.

I think I was secretly hoping for an earth-shattering breakthrough when I started this book, a parting of the clouds of my ambivalence or clap of thunderous insights at the end of it all. You know, at least a mini-miracle for my troubles would have been nice, right? Well, I'd be remiss in saying nothing of the sort happened. Because it has, and if you've been reading along at all in the past few weeks, you know as well as I that the experience has been well worth it.

Interestingly enough, today's work focuses on looking ahead to the kind of future we desire. Denise asks us to create it through visualization and intention. Even though I'm still a little bit on the fence here, I'm way more inclined to embrace the validity of creating with my own thoughts if for no other reason than it's always through my creative . She says thoughts from the past are what create our present and that we are currently living the future we once thought about in the past. Which makes perfect sense to me now.*

'Believing is seeing' seems an appropriate turn of phrase here because it wraps up Denise's sentiments and shows just how contradictory this concept is to the conventional 'seeing is believing' strategy. Of course fancy Self-Helpers have been saying much the same thing since well before I came along—I'm talking Bible days here—but today's the day I happened to arrive at a new understanding of it. And if we reference the Good Book for a minute, turn to any passage about faith, and you'll likely arrive at this idea, too.**

Given that I happen to be an expert on the subject of ME, I know what past thoughts*** have led me to this point. Lots of good ones involving creative vision, fun and happiness, which I'm quite proud of. Lots of not-so-good ones, too, that played to fears of 'making it' and being 'enough' in a world of freakishly productive overachievers. Not so proud of there. But! Now that I'm embarking on a self-propelled journey into the future—on my terms—I'm going to create a scene replete with everything I've already got lots of (love, happiness, joy, radiant health and strength, dreams, creativity, friendship, talent, spunk, companionship and fun) and I'll add to that those qualities I feel I'm lacking in the present.**** I won't bother mentioning what it is I think I'm lacking because—if you didn't already get the message—being negative now may very well impact my future, and we don't want that.

And, just like our body language exercise a few days ago, I'm supposed to embody the positive effects of my futurific dreaming by experiencing the associated emotions as I imagine them. So when you see an animated lady singing out loud, twirling uncontrollably and kicking up her heels in the grocery store, you'll know I've just imagined myself winning Mega Millions. So don't worry, I'm not ill, just ecstatic.

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*Considering how clueless and fearful I have been in the past when it came to thinking about my future in terms of overall satisfaction and financial solvency, is it any wonder I'm clueless—and broke—now? Maybe I'd better seee myself with more certainty, conviction of purpose and loot in the future.

**I personally can't tell you exactly where to look for faith passages because I don't know the text like that. However, I can tell you visualizations and all this other talk about positive thinking has shown up as a brand new thing, but it smacks of Sunday schoo

***The waking thoughts, at least. Who knows what else lurks beneath the surface of my conscious self talk?

****Whatever I'm lacking in the present is due to my thoughts of lack in the past, which, if entertained and encouraged, will persist down the line and thereby create a less-than-desired reality if I don't do something proactive and positive right this minute. And I mean now.