So, did it work?

Ok, I know this final post was supposed to be written at the end of last year, but I needed to wait a few weeks because there’s something I wanted to show you.

Her name is Jemima, and I picked her up from the SPCA yesterday.  She’s curled up asleep on my lap right now, which is making it rather difficult to use my laptop, but I really don’t mind.

If you remember, getting little Jemima was the third and final of my goals I set near the end of January last year.  To recap, these goals were:

1.      Find a new job – preferably one which I enjoy, pays well, and lets me use my brain.

2.      Move out of home – find a house in a nice neighbourhood, with affordable rent, and which allows pets.

3.      Get a kitten – I really, really want a cat. I’m not allowed one while I live at home.

I achieved the first goal at the end of March when I accepted a two-month long temp job doing administration work.  It’s been over ten months since then and I’m still there.  The longer I’ve been there the more responsibilities I’ve been given, and while it still isn’t my ideal job, it is helping me to gain some really valuable experience that is benefitting me in other job applications.  I still have faith that my ideal job will come along, but until then I’m happy where I am.

My second goal was achieved in December when I moved out of home and into a lovely little two-bedroom place with Duncan.  It’s in a neighbourhood where your neighbours stop to talk to you about the weather, rather than hurling abusive language at you for having the nerve to walk down your own driveway.  I really like it here.

The third and final piece of the puzzle, as I have already mentioned, arrived yesterday.  I wanted to wait until I could take a few days off work before I got her because it seemed cruel to leave her home by herself all day as soon as she came to live here. 

So what does all this mean in relation to my Secret project?  Without The Secret, I know there is no way I could have achieved my goals within a year of setting them.  But do I believe you can control the Universe and your surroundings by thinking positively and practising The Secret?  No.

I believe that The Secret helps to put you in a better state of mind, and to find the positives in every situation.  For me it helped to clarify what it is I really want, and taught me to be happy with what I have.  I think that when you’re in that positive state of mind, and focussing on the things you want, you’re in a better position to recognise opportunities and ways to get those things.  When you’re feeling really down, and stuck in that horrible dark swirly place, you’re never going to recognise an opportunity when it arises, because you can only see the hopelessness in everything.

I still recommend to people that they read (or watch) The Secret.  I found it really inspiring, and I still practise some of the techniques mentioned in my blog – my particular favourite being the ‘I am’ technique – whenever I need to get myself into a better mindset.  I believe that The Secret does work, in the sense that it helps you to get the things that you want.  Whether it really does allow you to get what you want out of the Universe or not is up for debate.

Thoughts and conclusions

So does The Secret work?  I’ve spent two weeks looking back over the past six months and trying to decide definitively whether the law of attraction is, as they say, as real as the law of gravity, or if it is a load of baloney.  Here is what I have concluded:

When I started this project, I was in a bad place.  I was jobless, had just had to move back home, was down to my last few dollars, and stuck feeling like everything was falling apart.  It felt dark, and confusing, and I really couldn’t see a way to make everything right again.

When I decided to start this Secret project, I had three very clear goals which I wanted to work towards.  Whether I achieved these goals or not would give me some kind of indication about whether The Secret was working for me.

The first of these goals was to get myself a job.  Not just any job, but one that I found interesting, which challenged me, and which, most of all, I enjoyed.  Having spent the past year and a half sending out CVs, writing cover letters, and attending interviews to no avail, I knew that this wouldn’t be an easy task.

My second goal was to move out of home, and into a nice house, in a nice neighbourhood.  Obviously, given that my bank account held the smallest sum of numbers I have ever seen, moving out had to come after I had found a job.

My final goal was to get a kitten.  It seems a strange thing to have as a goal, compared to the other two, but when I started this project these were the three things that I most wanted.

My first goal was achieved in March, when I was offered a temporary job with a large organisation.  This job wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but it held so many opportunities; this organisation is known for placing their temp staff in permanent positions, plus they have a massive communications department – which is where I want to be.  Two months later, when I was due to finish, the position was extended for another few months, and just recently I was offered guaranteed work for the next year. 

While I may not love my job as much as this guy loves his, I’m happy where I am, and I know that something else will come along that will be exactly what I’m looking for.

As winter began and the weather dropped to -4 degrees, I realised that for the first time since I first moved out of home four years ago, I was living in a warm house.  I’d become accustomed to living in houses so cold and draughty that your breath turned to fog while you were inside watching TV.  I realised that I’m happy at home, and while I am still looking at places to live, I’m not in any hurry.  In fact, I’m saving a lot of money by living at home, and in a few more months I might almost be able to afford to buy my own house.  So many possibilities.

My goal of getting a kitten is still on hold until I move out of home.  Despite my continuing hints (and outright saying) that I want a kitten, my Dad is still adamant that he is “sick of living in a cat’s toilet”.

So does The Secret work?  The Secret tells us to get clear about what we want, to focus on the positive and push away the negative.  It tells us to be thankful for what we have, and for what we receive.  It tells us to give, to help, and to bless others.  I have done all this.  Has it brought me what I want?  To some extent, yes it has.  But mostly it has made me realise that I am happy with what I have.  It has helped me to figure out what I want and to know where I want to go.  It has helped me to escape the dark place where I was before, and brought me back to a place where I am happy again. 

So in the end, does it really matter if it works or not?  If you’re happy, healthy, and have a positive outlook on life, then everything in your life is going to seem that little bit better.  The Secret is a way to ensure that you remain happy, healthy and positive, and I am definitely going to continue using it in my life.

Ask for a cat and the Universe will burn down a house

One of my goals for this year has been to acquire myself a kitten, and it seems that the Universe has been listening.  

The other night my Mum received an email from her friend, saying that she was moving out of her house for three months to rent it out to a family who need a place to live while they rebuild their fire-damaged home.  To accommodate this family, my Mum’s friend was trying to find homes for her animals, and wanted to know if we could house her new kitten.

The Secret does say that if you ask for something, and believe it is yours, the Universe will move people and events to bring it to you.  But really Universe, did you have to burn down someone’s house?! Couldn’t there just have been a Free Kitten Day at a pet store or something? 

As it turns out, the people moving into the house are going to look after the kitten, but I think this was simply the Universe’s way of reminding me that it is working on my side.  I just have to believe that the things I want are on their way, and the Universe will find a way of getting them to me.

But please Universe, don’t burn down any more houses.

It's a fun Secret

Life has been pretty good for me lately.  I think that comes down to me doing exactly what The Secret has been telling me to do, and that is to have fun.  A few weeks ago I realised how incredibly bored I was; I had become some sort of machine that gets up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, goes to sleep, wakes up the next morning and starts the cycle all over again.

From my experiences last year, I know that boredom causes me to be dissatisfied with life, and as I know how the law of attraction works, I know that thinking dissatisfying thoughts will attract more of that into my life.  And I have worked far too hard over the last few months to plummet right back to where I was when this all began.

The Secret tells us the importance of having fun and doing what we love.  It specifically says “if it ain’t fun, don’t do it”, and “do the things you love that bring you joy”.  So for the past week I have made a real effort to break my routine and find the time to do things that I enjoy.

I know it probably seems really obvious, but this really has made a huge difference to my life this past week.  I’m in a better mood, it’s easier to get out of bed in the morning (marginally easier, but I still reckon there’s a difference), people are nicer to me, time moves faster while I’m at work.

There are people out there who will tell you The Secret is a load of baloney, a bunch of new-age rubbish.  I know this is not true, but even if that was the case, what harm could possibly come from having a positive attitude?

Secret clues

I have some exciting updates relating to my goals for this project.  My number one goal - to get a good job - was partly achieved earlier this year when I was recruited by a temping agency and placed in a two month long position within a fairly well known organisation.  I've been in that same position now for three months, and they've just offered me further work for the next year.

To begin with, I wasn't sure that I was going to accept this further year of work.  The type of work that I'm doing isn't really what I want to do, and to stay there for another year would put me another year further away from the job that I really want.

When you're clued up on The Secret and know a little bit about the way the Universe operates, you start to notice signs where before you might not have.  While I was thinking the offer over, my boss took me aside and said that he's been thinking about my qualifications and the area that I really want to be working in, and that if I do stay on he would talk to the manager of the Communications department to see if he could arrange for me to get some work experience.  Sign number one.

The same day I was offered this extra work, I received a call from a woman working for an organisation that I had applied for a job at.  The message quite bluntly stated that I wasn't right for the position, and my application had been "denied".  Sign number two.

I started thinking about these things, and realised that the Universe is trying to point something out to me.  All the pieces are being lined up for me to accept this job, and eventually this will lead me to where I really want to be.

So I think I can officially say that goal number one has been achieved.  Goal number two - to find myself a house - is already beginning to take shape.  Although after four years of living in houses so cold you can see your breath while sitting in your lounge, I'm thinking that living at home where it's warm and dry might be a great idea over winter.

It's July now, which means this is the last month of my Secret project.  In honour of this I watched The Secret on DVD yesterday.  Soon, I'll be updating my Things to Achieve with the very last set of tasks, and it'll be a busy month as I attempt to achieve the final things on my list. 

'I am' Megan, hear me roar!

I’ve been working on some of this month’s Things to Achieve for about a week, and I’m finding them quite interesting.  My particular favourite so far is “...begin to use the two most powerful words, I AM, to your advantage.”

The reason I’ve been finding this so interesting is that it’s only now that I’m aware of these words that I realise how often during a day I’ll say ‘I am’ in relation to how I’m feeling.  If I’m at work, I’ve discovered I’m often saying ‘I am tired’ or ‘I am bored’.  So really, it’s no wonder I find my day’s slow and dull when I’m constantly telling myself to feel that way.

The other day I was almost falling asleep at my desk.  I was taking some very long blinks and thinking about how I felt so very, very tired, when I remembered something that I’d read in The Secret that says “all power is from within and therefore under our control”.  It occurred to me that I am in control of me, and that if I didn’t want to be tired then I didn’t have to be tired.

All I said to myself was “I am awake” (in my head of course; my boss already suspects I’m nuts, I don’t need to add evidence to his theories).  And just like that I really did feel awake.  I wasn’t expecting the effects to be so instantaneous, and it took me by surprise.

So this technique is one that I’ve been using a lot lately.  Every now and then I’ll stop and ask myself (once again, in my head) how am I feeling?  And regardless of how I might really be feeling, my response will always be a positive one.  It’s definitely one of the most effective methods I’ve discovered so far for switching my mood around.

No Moan Zone

Seriously, it’s June already?  Where is the time going?! Well, as it is now June, that means it’s time for me to begin the next chapter of The Secret: The Secret to You.  In a few days I’ll post my new things to achieve, but first I want to reflect on how last month went with The Secret to the World.

At work last week, we had a talk by Dr Tom – a doctor who specialises in the benefits of healthy thinking.  As a practising medical doctor, Dr Tom’s talk was more about the scientific, physical benefits of thinking healthy thoughts, rather than the ability to manifest items by focusing your thoughts in a certain way.  What struck me throughout this talk was that there is a very physical connection between brain health and physical wellbeing, and thinking positively.

The Secret states that thinking positively will allow us to create the life that we want, and while Dr Tom takes a medical point of view, he is effectively stating the same message.  Dr Tom has a method for turning a negative situation into a positive one, which I particularly like.  The Secret tells us that we must not dwell on the negative, or we will attract negative things back to us, but I have always had difficulty switching from negative to positive. 

Dr Tom says we should look at negative situations as opportunities.  For example, if I dropped my toast on the floor one morning, instead of seeing it as a negative situation where I have lost my breakfast, I could see it as an opportunity to try something new for breakfast.  Or as an opportunity to go out for breakfast.  Or as an opportunity to eat the toast and see how clean my floor is.

I felt like this talk was particularly relevant to my Secret project this month, particularly in relation to one of my things to achieve: “Learn to become still, and to take your attention away from what you don’t want, and all the emotional charge around it, and place that attention on what you wish to experience.”  Looking at all the opportunities takes the attention away from the negative situation, and places it on all the positive opportunities the situation has given me.

There was one final aspect of Dr Tom’s talk which I particularly liked, and that was his concept of a ‘No Moan Zone’.  He makes up posters to put up around the workplace to discourage people from complaining about things, because complaining has a bad impact on people’s health.  The Secret tells us that we shouldn’t listen to people complain as it will bring us down with them, and we will attract depressing and negative things.

So from now on I live in a permanent No Moan Zone.  If you’ve got any complaints, please send them elsewhere.