The other day I said to my sister “What would happen if I parked in a Handicap parking spot and then got a ticket?”  She said “Oh that would never happen…forget it about it” and I went on about my business. Literally the next day I pulled into Best Buy and for some completely moronic reason that escapes me now, I parked in a handicapped spot (I had just dropped my sister off a physical therapy….as she had just had knee surgery…so I had her handicapped placard hanging in the car….but regardless of that it was admittedly, a totally moronic thing to do).  When I exited the store, sure enough, there was a cop standing there.  A really pissed off cop…by the way.  I cannot tell you how stupid I acted or the totally banal things I said to this guy….its any wonder that the guy didn’t arrest me on the spot.  I just got flustered I guess and got myself deeper and deeper with each word.  After the whole ordeal was over…..I felt worse than I had the only time I was ever fired from a job.  So I sat in the car for a while and wondered “is it possible that I just made that happen by thinking about it?  Or was this was just a coincidence?  I wonder what a statistician would say the likelihood of THAT event occurring by chance?  I had JUST said that the day before….had my thoughts or words about this very thing made it happen? Despite feeling pretty blue on the outside, I was actually secretly happy to see that I had influenced SOMETHING…..no matter what it was.  At least I had seen the cause and effect of my thoughts.  And now, I thought to myself, I just have to figure out exactly what I did and do the opposite of that.  Instead of making something bad happen could I figure out how to make good things happen?  Is that even possible?

This is a point worth discussing……and quite frankly I’d love to discuss it with YOU.  I’ve been reading a bunch of books lately about this subject starting with the worst one “The Secret”.  It’s not that I didn’t LIKE that book. I DID.  But I went through the same process as everyone else feeling like a total idiot when a new Mercedes  Benz didn’t show up in my driveway after I time contemplating it.  But it kind of left me wondering “so what the heck do I do next?”.  First of all, if I’m going to read a book like that, I’d appreciate it the author would tell me HOW they made their million dollars and HOW they got their new car, or the Man (or Woman) of their dreams, etc.  Quite frankly if I had to guess I’d say that we’ve all been pretty discouraged by the results (or lack there of) of practicing the tenants of “The Secret”.

But rather than just forget the whole idea because of one mediocre book, I decided that it seems like there’s something to this. AND by the way, it appears that other people are talking about this very thing now (have you ever noticed how that happens?  You discover something new and think it’s totally novel, only to discover that half the planet is already buzzing about it!  But I digress!).  Perhaps it’s time for our species to take a step up to the next level of our development and look beyond the Newtonian Physics that we’ve all been taught as young adults….and at least think about the possibility that there may be some way to manipulate or direct our lives to our benefit.  All I can say is that even if there’s one chance in hell that this can be done I think it’s worth trying to figure it out.  (and by the way I am a Christian and I do not think this conflicts with the tenants of Christianity…..Jesus often taught that the words we speak have the power to influence our lives).

OK so to conclude for today, I’ll leave you with a little excerpt from a book I’ve been reading by “The best known life coach in America” (as per USA Today)….Martha Beck (of Oprah fame).  She opens the book (Steering by Starlight: The science and magic of finding your destiny) with this:

“The first guy to go in always carries a shotgun” says Kirk Fowler.  He’s not a big man, for a law enforcer; in fact he’s not much taller than I am.  This is a quality I appreciate in a martial arts instructor.  Kirk is my sensei, and in the middle of a lesson, he’s telling me how he used to serve warrants on suspected drug runners and coyotes  con-artists who take would-be immigrants’ money, then load them into trucks and abandon them in the desert to die.  “These are really violet people,” Kirk says, “and they have an intense fight-or-flight reaction at the first sight of the officers.  They’re usually doing drugs as well as selling them, and that makes them about as violet and unpredictable as humans get.  You’re never in more danger than when you’re walking into a room to serve a warrant.  It’s scary as hell.”

It’s hard to imagine Kirk terrified.  He’s a master of aikido, a martial art that focuses more on inner peace than on physical power.  I’m learning aikido because it works like magic.  Literally.  An aikido master gently touches your head and suddenly you’re on the floor.  You try to slug him and you can barely lift your arm.  These effects feel almost supernatural, but given a few minutes anyone can use them well enough to see that they’re real.  So it isn’t surprising that Kirk’s aikido training was very helpful when he worked for the border patrol.  What is surprising is the way it helped.

“One day when I was serving a warrant,m I decided to try going in with my energy totally calm and relaxed, instead of high adrenaline.  The suspects were in a motel room, wired, scared and well armed.  To reach a place where my energy was calm, I had to imagine that all of them were already dead.  So I went into that room feeling really quiet and respectful, the way you’d feel going to a funeral.  And when i opened the door, no one did anything.  The suspects just looked at me as though they’d invited me to a summer picnic.  they cooperated with the officers through the whole arrest.  Even to me that was weird.  From then on I kept my energy tuned that way whenever we served a warrant.  I still had the shotgun. But I never needed it.  Over and over, people who should have fought or run simply started cooperating.”

OK just FYI as I discover more about this I will share more with you….if you’re interested.  PLEASE if you see my blog, say hello.

Have you ever woken up after a long period of time only to realize that you’ve been in a rut?  You’re in a  hideous feedback loop of doing the same thing over and over and over again?  If you haven’t….you might want to reexamine your self and your life, because this is something that most of us do.  As most of my intellectual readers know…..Einstein said that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.  If you say to yourself, “every time I ask the kids to do the chores they don’t do them” or “Every time I say something my wife (or husband) she/he gets mad at me”  or “Every time I order at a restaurant they get the order wrong.”  For now I am not going to talk about the REASONS these things keep happening in your life as much as I am going to talk about the fact that they do happen.

My current favorite author (Martha Beck) says that sometimes in order to change we have to go through “The ring of fire”.  The ring of fire is any trial or tribulation that we’d rather live without…..but sometimes (or most of the time) when we experience something dramatic we come out on the other side of the trauma (or the other side of the “new experience”) with a new perspective or a new plan for our life.  If you find yourself stuck in a feedback loop in life, try doing something totally different…something you’ve never done before or haven’t done for a very long time.  If you are a mild-mannered house wife, take a trip by yourself to Paris.  If you’re a scientist or doctor….learn to paint.  If you’re a “dare-devil”, learn to meditate.  If you’re a graphic designer, read a book about quantum physics (I’d highly recommend “The Dancing Wu Li Masters” by Gary Zukav).

It doesn’t matter WHAT you do, but just DO SOMETHING that’s the opposite of what you normally do….something that’s not necessarily comfortable for you to do.  Do something to break yourself out of your shell of security and procrastination.  By the way….I’m not saying I’ve got it all figured out, I’m just telling you about things that I’ve discovered along the way that I think have value to us as human beings.  You CAN change your life.  You CAN fulfill your dreams; and by the way, to do that you have to HAVE some dreams to begin with….if you’ve tossed your long forgotten dreams off to the side of an old dirt road, pull the car over and make up some new ones.  Start by thinking back on the things that fascinated you most when you were little.  Did you spend long hours outside staring at leaves & trees?  Did you get excited just thinking about your next tennis lesson?  Did you suck at all your classes EXCEPT creative writing?  Each of us has something (at least one thing but maybe more) that we’re good at…and those things are your first clue to the question “what SHOULD I be doing?”  If you’re stuck in a rut the likeliness is it’s not a rut where you’re doing the thing you love most in the world….rather it’s a rut made up of life’s responsibilities and other pressures that you have had to do at the expense of the things you were BORN to do.  To get out of the rut….dream up some new dreams, make sure they’re in line with what you love most (aka your “Gifts” or your “Destiny) and then start doing that thing….even if you can only do that thing one time a month.  Break out of the life you’re currently stuck in by taking just one little step in the direction of your destiny (aka God’s plan for you) and don’t get overwhelmed by the fact that 99.9% of the people, that you know and love think you’re crazy for even THINKING of doing those things.  That doesn’t matter (as long as you’re not hurting other people by seeking your destiny).  Just do SOMETHING….anything that helps you to break out of the rut you’re in and changes abruptly (and sometimes painfully) the direction you’re going.  You’ll come out of that depression you’re in or shake off that gloomy feeling you’ve been living with too long and at the same time all those chronic diseases that you’ve got that your doctors can’t even properly diagnose will start to disappear one by one.  Living your life free of the shackles of being in a rut and moving in the direction that jives with your destiny is the best way to start on the path to happiness.