About sixteen years ago, I was frustrated, had left a suffering marriage (my second), was working part-time as a teacher and was mom to a beautiful 4 year old. Almost daily, I was in tears because the teaching was a part-time job, with full-time hours, and barely paid my expenses. My self-esteem was in the crapper following the four year demise of my relationship. I was, at the time, living in a bedroom in the high-end home of a friend, with my child. I slept on a narrow cot, she slept on an old car bed my friend’s son had grown out of. I lost 25 lbs and clothes hung off my body. I wasn’t dieting. I was just enormously stressed.

I thought – I need to fix this…I NEED to find my own home and a full-time job. I needed to manage the guilt of leaving my husband and keep my feelings under control at work (which I wasn’t able to do all the time). I was needy and scared and TRYING to be strong. I knew this had to change…I wanted to be SUCCESSFUL in all the areas – mom/daughter/professional/personal. I had turned away from the things that always helped me feel connected to the Universe, I wasn’t meditating or doing yoga, or reading the self-help books that had helped me through tough times before. BUT inwardly I believed I was striving…really striving mentally/physically/emotionally…to GET IT TOGETHER!

And it didn’t happen for many months. I was commuting my child and myself in a very old car an hour across the city because I had no place of our own. She was still seeing her dad, who had unstable emotions in the wake of our separation, two or three days a week. I was BROKE, living off my credit cards and just hoping the car would make it through the winter. It was utterly exhausting being overwhelmed with the burden of finding a new job and home. But here’s the thing…when we need it, a teacher or teaching shows up. So, it did.

This weird thing called “The Law of Attraction” was advertised- I don’t even remember where. I think it was actually a mail out. No one had really heard of it back then. I did two things; first, I paid attention. If I hadn’t paid ATTENTION, the teaching that I needed wouldn’t have come into my life. Second, I showed up – and that’s the other thing…we need to SHOW UP. Got the tickets to the presentation, convinced my mother to come with me, and off we went, notebooks in hand.

What I LOVED about how it was presented to us was that The Law of Attraction isn’t a belief system, it isn’t connected to any type of religious or spiritual teaching specifically, it just is HOW THE UNIVERSE WORKS. The idea that “what we pay attention to, we get more of”. The notion that “we are creators of our experiences” and we “manifest our realities”. The concept that we need to create the space and the things we attract will fill that space. You don’t have to believe in this, we were told again and again. It’s just the truth.

So…now that I had been presented with this concept I had two choices. I could PRACTICE it or I could DISMISS it. Dismissing it would have felt easy, familiar even. Why would this work when there are no full-time jobs posted for teachers in my specialty? How would this possibly work to get me a home if I was broke? How would it help me feel better when I had left my marriage and put us in this position?

I was sitting at the kitchen table after breakfast with my friend the next day. She and husband were discussing if they should stay at the same hotel they were in last time they took the kids to Disney World. It cost $500 a night, but in their eyes, it was worth doing because the giraffes were just outside their balcony for the week.

I didn’t look up. Tears welled. My face flushed. I had been looking for one bedroom places to rent for myself and my daughter that were $500 a month because that’s what I could afford, and even that was a stretch. I was ashamed of where I was at 36 and as a mom. We were homeless, and vacancies were hard to come by. I was feeling like there was no place to go except to move in with my parents, which I did. I felt that nothing would help, could help. And that was when I SURRENDERED to The Law of Attraction. That’s when I thought, if it can’t get any worse, then might as well try this. I decided to actually put The Law of Attraction into PRACTICE.

I wrote out my Law of Attraction statement for a new job using the template. I posted it at work and in the room I shared with my daughter in my parent’s home. I recited it out loud when I could (and silently when I couldn’t) at least three times a day. I was specific and avoided the word “want”. One day I realized suddenly that I had always wanted to teach at my former high school. I had even told my teacher that I would be back there one day to teach. It was a pipe dream, I thought, but I thought I may as well PAY ATTENTION to this goal I had forgotten. So, mustering all my courage, I reached out to the teacher there, who happened to be a friend (and who taught in my area), and discovered he was LEAVING! He was going to travel the world for just over a year and because it was for so long, he had to give up his position! He and I chatted, and he told me he would recommend me if I put in my resume. I submitted it the next day. There were lots of obstacles still. You see, no one moved from Jr. High to High School easily, especially in my area of expertise, especially coming from a part-time to a full-time position, and teachers with young children were often passed over. Also, I knew that there were going to be a LOT of teachers in my area who would want to have this job. I didn’t give up though… I just kept up the practice of the Law of Attraction Statement, three times a day, every day. Two weeks later, I was interviewed and hired. I would start teaching at my dream job, in my area of specialty, full-time, the next fall.

I quickly created a SECOND Law of Attraction statement for a new home for myself and my daughter. I was specific. I posted it at home and at work and I said it as many times a day as I could. Now…this is a really cool part of the story that I can’t leave out. One day, my daughter and I were in the car for our long commute and she said quite definitively, “Mom, when we move into our new place, I’m going to have a purple bedroom.” I gently explained that renters can’t always paint, but we can ask. Sternly she replied, “You don’t understand. I’m GOING to have a purple bedroom.” I placated her with, “Well, let’s hope we can paint, then, okay?” And I changed the subject.

The next week my soon to be ex-husband offered to renegotiate the mortgage, take my name off, and buy me out of the house. I couldn’t believe it! I had left him. He had been hurt and FURIOUS and not even willing to let me stay in our home. I was flummoxed. I could not believe he was being so generous and he would tell me months later that his lawyers would have told him NOT to do that for me. But he didn’t ask, and he made it happen. Suddenly, I had enough money for a down payment on a home!

I began the search for a condo. I would sometimes drive around the neighborhoods before heading home (while my daughter slept in her car seat) looking for a place that would allow us to be close to her dad, my parents and her school. I really wanted a park nearby and a small fenced-in yard. That’s how I came across the condos with the cute park in the centre courtyard and small fenced yards. Outside, I was already in LOVE. The price and location (5-10 min from everything) were perfect. Even if the inside wasn’t great, I was still prepared to consider it. We met the realtor with my parents and the place was actually quite nice. My daughter charged ahead of us and ran upstairs. A second later, I heard, “MOM, come see my room!” and so we all traipsed upstairs to find her standing in the middle of a purple bedroom, hands on her hips. “I told you, Mom.” We put in an offer that night and moved in two weeks later. She and I would live there for nine years.

How did this happen? What changed was my attention. My INTENTION and ATTENTION had to align and that only happened when I reminded myself each day, several times a day, what I really needed to come into my life. When I PAID ATTENTION, SHOWED UP and PRACTICED, that’s when the SHIFT took place; from feeling helpless to knowing these things were possible. And once they became POSSIBLE, success became PROBABLE.