This beautiful image from utne.com

Don’t let your current reality dictate your future possibility.  Hold true to your dreams. Miracles are entirely possible if you dispense with miserable thinking!~ Nicole Cody

The reason for today’s post comes from something seemingly ordinary. But what’s ordinary for some can be positively miraculous for others.

Bert - patiently waiting for me on the stair mountain

Yesterday I walked up the stairs carrying two laptops and a ridiculously heavy bag of books. Ordinary enough, hey? But not for someone with cardiomyopathy. For over two years I have struggled with stairs, let alone carrying a load at the same time. Stairs usually leave me breathless as my enlarged heart battles to get blood and oxygen around to all the right places with the sudden burst of physical activity.

Yesterday I got to the top of the steps, walked into my office and then thought, “Oh. My. God.”

No chest pain, no panting or racing heart – just normal old got to the top of the stairs and kept walking.

Why is this such a big deal? Well, to me it proves a very important point:

Changing your thinking can change your life.

There is no point in fighting the reality of your current situation. If you’re fat, you’re fat.  If your finances are a mess, they’re a mess. If you procrastinate, well that’s just what you’ve been doing.  Stop fighting it, making excuses for it, or pretending it isn’t happening. Accept what is.

Accepting what is, without judgement, is the first step in making positive change in your life.

The second step is letting go of your attachment to what is.

Where you are today is the result of yesterday’s thinking, yesterday’s actions, yesterday’s focus or lack of focus.

The third step is to hold a clear picture in your mind of what you DO want in your life, and find a way to summon positive emotion around that.

According to the Law of Attraction, (there’s a good definition of the Law of Attraction here) whatever you focus your attention on, is what you draw to you in your life. Resisting or fighting anything, dwelling on it, obsessing on it, worrying on it, speaking of it – all those actions keep that thing you don’t want fixed firmly on your horizon.

This quote from Abraham really sums it up:

You will notice that those who speak most of prosperity, have it. Those who speak most of health, have it. Those who speak most of sickness, have it. Those who speak most of poverty, have it. It is Law. It can be no other way… The way you feel is your point of attraction, and so, the Law of Attraction is most understood when you see yourself as a magnet getting more and more of the way you feel. When you feel lonely, you attract more loneliness. When you feel poor, you attract more poverty. When you feel sick, you attract more sickness. When you feel unhappy, you attract more unhappiness. When you feel healthy and vital and alive and prosperous—you attract more of all of those things.

— Abraham

When my doctors first gave me a diagnosis of cardiomyopathy caused by a virus which had induced a heart attack, after everything else I’ve been through, I took a day or two to come back to a place of calm after the shock of their news. I accepted what they’d told me, and I set about making peace with that.  I decided to make every day count, and that has been a lasting Blessing in my life.

My doctors also told me that after two years, there was no chance of improvement, and to expect a decline, which might be steady or fast, and that would lead to needing a transplant, or possibly, death.

If I have cardiomyopathy, then that is my current reality. After the news I mourned, grieved, got over myself and moved on. I have made choices to focus on health and on life.  I have embraced natural therapies, food as medicine, and visualisation. I live with it, and I embrace the current reality of it.  It is what it is.  Sure I have had many reminders of my health situation, such as chest pain and lack of breath, but I have not let it define me, and I have often forgotten it is even there!

Each morning in my meditation, and each night before I go to bed, I see myself as healthy, vibrant and living a full life where I can share my joy and gifts with others. Why bother with this, when my life doesn’t look like that now?  Because reality has a funny way of changing itself over time…

And yesterday my reality shifted. Today I am in a different space!

I have always believed in holding a picture of a brighter tomorrow, of embracing optimism, doing what I can, and turning the rest over to the Universe.  I expect miracles. And in expecting them, they show up in my life.

So what about you? Stop looking at your life as it is and being unhappy with that.  Accept what is.  Forgive yourself and others if that is what’s needed. And then find a place in your life where you can summon the smallest amount of gratitude, appreciation or happiness. (Don’t know how to do that? Here’s some info that will help!)

Hold a picture in your heart of a brighter tomorrow. Trust. Cherish and nurture your dreams.  Miracles happen daily. They can happen for you too! ♥ xx