by Phyllis Meiring, in the Patch designs, Troy, Ohio

Sometimes I am so inundated with the busyness of my life that there’s no time to share, while time brings still more busyness. Yeah, I’m sure you are familiar with that. Turns out that despite all of this, you can still make things happen if you first intend to make it so, without worrying about the specifics.

Something magical happens when you see things happen that you only first imagined. By magic, I mean something happens that I cannot explain but it is replicable.

I should clarify that it feels magical when it’s something positive. Not so much when it’s something unpleasant, unjust or downright terrible. I did not think it so magical when a bag company in Colorado cashed my two checks totally over $2,400 without ever sending me the bags I paid for. I did not think it was so magical when I paid $5K to a local company to build a custom website for my business, but failed to. I did not think it was magical when the attorney I hired to pursue this did some phone-dating with the website-building man, then charged me $2,100 for her service. And despite her discount of $800, I still did not think it was magical. I did not think it was so magical when my colleagues (in a former career) banded together to torment me.

Nope, not one of those or any other negative instances that have happened in my life ever felt magical. But they all had one thing in common: me. I was the common denominator. Not my mother, my family, any former spouse or teacher. There was no one but me. I was it. Slowly I began to see a pattern. (Sometimes it takes me a wee bit to get the message.) The pattern? It was in my mind.
We Create Our Own Paradigm

The pattern, the trend I was seeing, was this: I created it all. I created the paradigm. It was a world in which I was unworthy, unloved and unaccepted. In that world I needed actors in roles cast to perpetuate that whole scenario. If I was unworthy, then I would need people who would come and steal from me since I did not think I had anything of any worth anyway. I would need people to take advantage of me and help me continue to build that self-loathing by repeating aloud what I would say to myself all the time. They only played the part I cast. I did not choose the players. Yet with every self-destructive thought I had, I was sending out a casting call: “Needed immediately; come one, come all.”

Still, throughout all of this was a whisper of something that made me unsatisfied with the woeful world I had created. We are truly powerful creators!

Does this sound like self-help psychobabble? Does this even need to be in a professional publication? Yes and yes! Why? If this isn’t already ringing every bell in your mind, tooting every whistle in your soul, then consider this: You are a human being operating a business, not a machine operating in a factory. You have emotions and thoughts that are subconsciously driving all you do, which is why you have the kind of business you have today, why you are surrounded by the people and current circumstances that surround you.

Before I began to accept that I alone had the power to make my world, I had a shop that could barely make ends meet. I was late on payments, had borrowed from our family income to pay the bills, would give product away with discounts and underpriced services because I did not think I was worth it and that no one would pay that or buy this.
You Have the Power to Change

You can change your practices or policies, move furniture around, add social media to your communications, buy from a different vendor . but until you open up to the real source, things will not change. You have the power to change it all when you first accept that you have the power to change it all. Quit blaming others. It is all you.

Do you think I might be wrong? Consider this: Can you write down 10 reasons that someone should be your next best customer? If you can do that, why not share those? Embarrassed? Maybe it’s that you don’t really believe it. Honestly, why should anyone else if you don’t first believe it yourself. It really will not matter where you are until you first accept responsibility for the creating of your paradigm. Nothing will change. You will keep getting what you have been getting.

You owe it to yourself to discover the best you that you can be-to discover all of the wonderfully positive life-creating magic within you. When you wrap your mind around this, you will find that there is nothing you can do to fail. And what may seem like a failure is simply offering you choices for determining what you do and do not want.

So get down with your wonderful self! You don’t have to know why you are wonderful-just know that you are. Write it in a journal, on your grocery list, on the bathroom wall, in the memo on your checks, as the signature on your emails: “I am wonderful, I am worthy, I am loved, I am creative, I am all that and a super-sized box of chocolates!”

Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet: “To thine own self be true.” Be true to you, and everything will fall into place.