In the early nineties, when my mother was going through a
particularly difficult time in her life, she became somewhat spiritual and
turned to a lot of the self-help gurus of the day to get her through her days.
Books about empowerment and motivation and blah blah blah were all over the
house… stacks of self-help books sat in corners and in bathrooms. I couldn't
get away from them. Then she started putting motivational quotes in my lunches.
To a kid in his teens, my mother's new-found spirituality was a little
unsettling. And super embarrassing.
One evening before going to bed she handed me a book titled
THE LAW OF ATTRACTION. "Read this," she said. "It'll change your
life." I looked at it and in typical fashion asked her to summarize it for
me. "Basically," she said, "if you know what you want… what you
really want, and if you continue to tell yourself it is going to come to you,
then it will." I coughed "BULLSHIT" and went to bed.
Despite my response, it was the first time I had
heard of the law and I think that night it was absorbed somewhere deep in my
subconscious. THE LAW OF ATTRACTION… "like attracts like." In the
book IN TUNE WITH THE INFINITE, Ralph Trine wrote "The law of attraction
works universally on every plane of action, and we attract whatever we desire
or expect. If we desire one thing and expect another, we become like houses
divided against themselves, which are quickly brought to desolation. Determine
resolutely to expect only what you desire, then you will attract what you wish
for."
My intention with this is not to get new age-y with you… To
give you THE SECRET or pull a Tony
Robbins on you and tell you this thing is rock solid, but there are FOUR
instances in my life where the universe truly delivered exactly what I wanted,
despite the insurmountable odds of these things happening. It was partly
because I worked extremely hard for these things, but mostly it was because I
said they were going to happen… over and over and over again.
In grade eleven a friend's parents purchased a little
coffeeshop in Abbotsford called ROASTMASTIRS, with an "I" in
"STIRS". Punny, right? Roastmastirs became our hangout for the next
two years. I'd sit on the patio hour after hour drinking cold coffee, inhaling
second-hand smoke, and ignoring school. I liked the concept of owning a little
coffeeshop. I was working at Starbucks at the time and I hated it with a
passion. I knew if I owned a little coffeeshop I would make it sooooo not Starbucks.
"Yeah, one day I'm going to have my own coffeeshop," I told my
friends.
I didn't say, "I think I'd like to have a
coffeeshop," or "maybe one day…" I said, "I am going
to…" and so my intention was put out there into the universe. Over the
years, no matter what direction I was heading, no matter what career I was
trying out, I always told people my end game was owning a little coffeeshop.
And the years would pass… and that desire would continue to smolder in my
subconscious as I moved into the next phase of my life. Early adulthood.
I had always been good at telling stories, or
"lying" as my mother put it. In grade twelve I had a creative writing
teacher who saw potential in my daunting prose. She inspired me to work on
simplifying my text and to explore, in more detail, the craft of writing. That
year I began a novel that was a semi-fictional take on my life growing up in
the bible belt in the Fraser Valley. As I wrote it, I began telling people that
I was going to get my book published. Not that I was "hoping to get my
book published…" But that "I was GOING to get my book
published." These were the days when millions of writers were fighting for
double-digit openings in the publishing world. These were the days before self publishing and
lackluster literature was so widely accepted. My friends told me to stop
dreaming. My extended family told me it was next to impossible. When I finished
my book, I sent it off to two-dozen publishers. After every publisher rejected
my novel, I contemplated giving up writing, but then something funny happened.
At a family Christmas party, I noticed one of my young cousins reading a
children's book by Lemony Snicket. She said it was her third time reading it.
If I wanted, I could borrow it. I read the book in three hours and knew then
and there I had been writing for the wrong audience. That night I dreamed I was
at the barrier wall of this castle-like home. The wall stood as high as the
clouds. There were police officers all around me with their batons drawn. But
something wasn't right about these cops. They were all hobbling. Then one of
the officers caught his pant leg on the bumper of his squad car. When the pant
leg rose up, I could see his leg was made of wood. I woke up with a story in my
head. Six months later I had the manuscript for my first middle-grade
children's novel, THE KING OF ARUGULA. I didn't have the same expectations with
this one. I visited several classrooms of children aged 9 to 12, workshopping
it with the very people I had written it for. When they
were happy with it, I sent it out into the world. The sixth publisher I had
sent it to accepted it. I knew I was going to get my book published… and I did.
It may not have been the book I had been writing at the time I had made the
decree, but because the universe was working for me, it directed me to where I
needed to be. I spent two years with that book traveling the province reading
it to kids and promoting it.
And it just so happened to come while I was on a new career
path. My book came out just before I went back to school to learn about the
world of publishing. I was given an assignment in class to build a magazine
from the ground up. I focused on a magazine of playfully dark children's
literature, like what I was writing. Though it was just an assignment, I
quickly saw that there were thousands of amazing writers out there who had no
outlet to share their work. As the assignment grew into an animal of its own, I
began to tell my fellow students and my teachers that I was going to jump in
and do it for real once school was over. They told me how hard it was going to
be. They told me I would never last more than an issue or two. They told me to
get real. It just so happened that when I left school, my parents were making
more money than they had ever made in their lives. They helped me get the first
issue off the ground. The universe was on my side again. I published fifteen
more issues of CROW TOES QUARTERLY. The magazine was on magazine racks across
Canada and had subscribers in more than twenty countries. I said I was going to
do it… and I did. And despite the struggle to keep it going I loved every
minute of it.
When the magazine folded in late 2010, I had to return to
the real world and rebuild a social life that had collapsed alongside the
magazine. Starbucks coaxed me back into their management program. All I had to
do was sell them my soul. For four years I put my morals aside and I pushed the
poison of the green siren. And I was making more money in management at
Starbucks than my friends who were teachers. It was making me sad. And Angry.
At that point I think the universe had had enough of my inner struggle. In the
spring of 2014 I was at a family reunion in Oliver when my aunt mentioned a
little café in Penticton I might like. She had heard me say for twenty years I
was going to open up a little café of my own one day. I couldn't visit the café
then, but when I got back to Vancouver I looked it up on the Internet and found
out it was for sale. I had never been to Penticton and I had no chance in hell
of securing a loan to purchase the café. But I knew the minute I saw it for
sale, I was going own it. I was so sure of it, I went to my boss at Starbucks
the very next day and gave her my notice. As luck would have it, my mother had
just started working for one of the wealthiest men in Abbotsford. He was a good
Christian man who had built a fortune in construction. At 80 years old, he now
gave out personal loans and used the interest on the loans to fund initiatives
in Africa. My mother got my foot in his door. For me, the catch was, I had to
sit down with him for two hours and prove to him that I was worthy of his help.
And what he said during our meeting still gives me chills. "The way you
talk about this," he said, "It's like it has been inside of you
forever. It's like every path you've taken, every decision you've made has lead
you to that chair across from me. It's like as much as you want this, the
universe wants it for you just as much."
Six weeks later I was living in Penticton, about to take
over SAINT-GERMAIN CAFÉ GALLERY. There was always a pure energy behind the
belief I would one day own a café. There was never any wavering on this belief.
And I never put a time frame on it. I just knew it was going to happen. And
that is the key to the LAW OF ATTRACTION that I want to leave with you. As soon
as we put time limitations on our dreams, we put a sense of foreboding on what
happens if we don't get there in that time. This negativity scares the universe
off. I know the LAW OF ATTRACTION is real, because it brought me three
exceptionally wonderful things that might not have come had I wavered on them
in any way. I just lived my life and when the universe knew I was ready, it
delivered. And it keeps delivering little things, like new loves and new
passions.
Now I know, if you've been paying attention, you're probably saying
to yourself, "he said the law of attraction brought him four things. He
missed one." I'll let you know, the fourth is actually a work in progress.
We'll talk again when I'm mayor of Penticton…
