My name is Autum and I am addicted to a positive mindset. 

Before you are all, “Gross.  Life is hard, Autum, I’m out.”  Give me a second. Because life IS hard.  Although I consider myself incredibly blessed and so fortunate I’ve also been dealt some bad stuff.  And worked through more stuff that the average human. And when I could take the easy and safe path, I have been really good at choosing not to. And I’m still alive and here to talk about it. I’m creating an outside-the-box career that fuels my soul and I am thankful I am raising my kids to work hard and think outside the box.

This all started for me with my miscarriage.  I miscarried baby #3 for our family. I was home and my heart was breaking with mourning of our lost child. I wondered how people even move on from this.  I thought, “HOW do so many women make it through this and keep going?” I know miscarriage is common. But if you have been there you know the pain is real and it doesn’t matter how common it is. It hurts.

At this point I had two healthy kids.  I was blessed with a daughter at 27 and a son at 31.  I became pregnant fairly easily with both and was pretty sure getting pregnant with the third would be a breeze.  Then it wasn’t. We tried for over a year and when I *finally* became pregnant, I was over the moon. I felt like I needed this to make me happy.  I’ve learned a lot since then, but that’s where I was.

Life was going rough in a lot of ways for me at that time.  My husband and I were under a lot of stress. I was transferred to a new position in my job that was also incredibly stressful.  We were fighting a lot and it was hard for our marriage. As soon as I was pregnant, I thought, “This is too good to be true!” Within about a week of finding out I was pregnant, I also found out I was able to transfer back to my former & less stressful position at work and again thought, “No way so many good things can happen at once.  I don’t deserve this. Something bad is going to happen.”

I was given gifts that I didn’t feel like belonged to me.  How many of you live like this? You feel like you don’t deserve the good things life throws at you?  But you know you are incredible and do so much for others. Why aren’t you deserving???! My guess would be if this is your way of thinking that you also struggle with accepting gifts in general, too.  You probably have no problem giving them, but accepting them feels weird and maybe awkward. Well, I am here to tell you to stop.

God is trying to give you gifts.  Think about how much you want to give your kids the world.  But maybe you don’t have the means. If you could, you would. Well, God can folks.  He has the means. Be accepting. So many people walk right past the gifts God is giving them because they are not at the level to receive. Maybe it’s not wrapped in a big pink bow and plopped on your lap.  Maybe it looks like work. Maybe it’s on the middle-costs-a-little-more shelf and you are only shopping the discount section bottom shelf. Whatever the reason; changing it can help you grow and increase your energy.  Increase your energy and mindset and you will start seeing things waiting for you to accept everywhere.

Anyway, you’ll get a lot more of that on this blog in the future, but let’s go back to that day I am thinking of.  The day I was mourning my miscarriage on my couch. I had heard of the movie The Secret and I had thought about watching it plenty of times.  I didn’t really know what it was about, but I knew it seemed like something I should watch. 

Actually, let’s go back to right before The Secret. Two days previous to sitting on the couch, actually.  After a couple weeks of light bleeding and check ups, at 12 weeks into my third pregnancy, I miscarried.  I’ll share the whole story another time, but after all that time it took us to get pregnant I was devastated that I wouldn’t be having a baby after all.  I delivered that baby in my home after I knew it passed away inside of me. It was very traumatic and also nothing I’ve shared before. So maybe one day it will end up here.  But I was going though a lot.

Two days after my miscarriage, a day after delivering, I was sitting on my couch after just calling in sick, & I was mourning. It was a hurt I couldn’t describe. The only thing I knew similar was the loss of my father. That happened just a few years prior to this day and I was sitting there DEEP in the, “Why Mes.” Why was life so hard for me?  Why was I transferred and having such a hard time at my job? Why was I having a difficult year coming back the the former job I loved? Why did I have to lose my dad when so many people get theirs longer? Why were my husband and I fighting so much?  Why did I have to lose my baby when so many people don’t have to go through this. Why, why, why, why,why, whyyyy is life happening to me this way????

The movie starts and the narrator, who I believe is the author of the book, begins talking about losing her job and her father.  I was instantly frozen in that moment. After a few more lines I paused the movie. I hobbled up and grabbed a notepad.  That movie that runs for 90 minutes took me hours to watch. I kept pausing, replaying, and taking notes. And at the end, “Thoughts become things” replayed in my mind over and over.

I thought of my childhood.  Growing up with little money when I was young and feeling like I had all my heart’s desires.  Dating just about every guy I wanted. One summer I even told a friend I was going to date a guy I barely knew.  She looked at me like I was crazy. That fall he was my boyfriend. At one point I mentioned college and my mom said, “I don’t know how you think you’re going to college.”  I said, “I will.” I knew nothing about the amount it would cost or how I would get there, but there was no doubt in my mind and I went. I thought about the first car I knew I would own.  And my parents driving it to me one day as they did.

Then I thought about college.  About the doubt that began to fill my mind when I got there that I wasn’t good enough.  About the guy I began dating there, how I decided he was too good for me & I would lose him— and that’s exactly what happened.  How I was constantly creating my reality my entire life but didn’t realize I was. And how when I was confident life was going to be mine as I wanted it; it was. Then when I let doubt take over and I started telling myself I wasn’t worthy… it also became my reality.

Then I thought back to the day I found out I was pregnant and thought, “This is too good to be true.”  How when I got my old job back I thought there was no way I deserved two good things. But…. You know what else?  That year while I was at that job and trying to get pregnant, I had first heard of the Law of Attraction. I started to practice it without knowing what I was really doing.  And I bet that’s where I first heard of The Secret and stuck that title into my subconscious.  

I decided to attract a handful of things that were career related with that Law of Attraction. But I actually knew almost nothing about it at that time.  I didn’t know that you are not supposed to focus on the how. The what is where you should focus and the how will fall into place. 

So while I was stuck on the hows I was missing the whats. At that stressful job I was transferred to I was offered an add-on position that was paying me a lot more and advancing my skills.  I was attracting what I set out to and I hadn’t even opened my eyes to it. I got my old job back. I became pregnant. I was attracting the things I wanted that year.  I just wasn’t yet in the practice of looking for signs that I’m in the right energy and the “how” may not be what I had hoped, but the “what” is happening.  

Since then I have created a completely different life than I had at that moment on that couch.  I have checked off so many things on my list of desires and almost none of them are in the way it would have happened if I had controlled the “how.”  But we are not meant to control the how. We are meant to focus on the destination, live in the gratitude of right now, and let the rest reveal itself.  

I will spend a great deal of time in this blog sharing more about my practices on mindfulness and how creating a positive mindset can bring things into your life that you have been dreaming of.  And if you aren’t receiving those gifts you are wishing for; could it be you aren’t in the mindset to accept those gifts yet?

xoxo-Autum