I was diagnosed with Sjogren’s Syndrome in 2012. I decided not to talk about it very publicly until I knew what that diagnosis meant to me. I feared that people would treat me as someone who was sick or have sympathy. I didn’t want others to influence how I saw myself now. I needed to decide what this diagnosis meant to me and who I was living with it first. I only recently opened up about it. It took me seven years. SEVEN! I wanted people around me to find out after they knew I had been living just fine with it for a long time. Not just surviving….LIVING life.
I was a focused, driven business owner. I was multi-tasking and working insane hours even with my condition. I decided to press on and not let it bother me as often as I could.
Then I learned about something that changed my life and my outlook entirely. It is a topic so big that I can’t just cover it in one post. I have spent so much time researching and understanding this philosophy: The Law of Attraction.
If you aren’t familiar with it, the Law of Attraction is based upon the philosophy that like attracts like in all situations; even our life experiences. Bad thoughts, bad feelings yield bad experiences. Good thoughts, good feelings yield good experiences. It’s not magic. You can’t just think about wanting something and then have it happen. It took a long time for me to genuinely understand and implement it. I will go more into that, but for the sake of simplicity, I will tell you where I began.
I was 7 months pregnant with Shep. It was the night before I was about to leave for a vacation with my husband and his side of our family. My doctor had just put me on modified bedrest, I was trying to get about 60 orders out, answer customers who were sending awful emails, paint monograms that needed to be done quickly with my sister (she was working for me at the time and kept me together mentally) and I just broke down. I was so exhausted, so pregnant, so tired, and was sobbing. I felt so overwhelmed. My sister helped me get the orders out and we left for vacation. My father-in-law looked at me and said ‘let this week be a week you do nothing.’ It wound up being the first time I actually relaxed in a long time.
I sat on the beach and opened the book that started my journey: The Secret. The Secret explains the Law of Attraction. It explains that we have control over our experiences. I read it thinking, wouldn’t that be nice? If we could just take control of what’s happening in our life? I was interested but I didn’t really believe it. I came to a part in the book that suggested testing the theory by visualizing an object. Jack Canfield (remember him? The man that created Chicken Soup for the Soul?) said to picture the object, every single detail and then focus on finding that object. He said to make it something believable. I figured, why not? We were at the beach and Briggs and I love to hunt for shark teeth. So I decided to try it on a shark tooth-we’d be hunting for them anyway. I pictured a large white one, because I have never found one before.
I searched and searched. I tried to genuinely believe I would find the shark tooth. I didn’t. I looked every day of that trip.
We went home and life continued as normal. I began to research more about the Law of Attraction and implement it into my life. I will describe that in further detail, but I want to fast forward to the point where it finally “clicked” for me.
June of 2017, almost exactly a year later, I sat at my desk in my office. I just successfully ran my machine (CNC router) for the first time ever. I was staring at my computer and feeling over the moon that I did something that seemed impossible to me. I thought, “How in the heck did this even happen? I can’t believe it’s real.” It was a huge step for me, my family, and my business. My next thought was “Man, there really is something to this Law of Attraction stuff.” I heard David calling the kids for a bath and started wrapping up to go help. What happened next still sends chills down my spine.
Briggs came walking into my office. He said “Here, Mom.” He put a white shark tooth into my hand. I stared at him in shock as he started leaving to go up for his bath. “Briggs…why did you give this to me?” I asked.
I just couldn’t believe it. He literally shrugged and said “I don’t know, I was just looking at my collection box and had a thought to give it to you.” I kept staring at him. “Where did it come from?” I asked. He shrugged again and said he didn’t know and went up for his bath. I quickly snapped a picture and ran upstairs to do the bedtime routine.
I hadn’t thought about trying to find that white shark tooth on the beach since the week we were there. But the second I felt that I understood I could truly get anything I wanted out of life, this unusual moment happened. I felt so confident I was moving in the right direction.
*edited to add that The Secret is currently on Netflix-definitely worth watching.
