My partner and I had driven to Bangor, to finally have the eye tests we had been talking about for months, a journey we don’t make very often at all – in fact, he hadn’t been there for around 4 years!

We decided to have a quick mooch around, and, discovering that a huge number of charity (thrift) shops had opened up, we thought we’d check a few of them out. There wasn’t really anything that caught our attention, apart from a jumper he quite liked, in one particular shop. We headed to the till, and was just about to pay the £3.99, when he spotted a box on the shelf, almost hidden from view… containing a brand new, unused pair of men’s walking boot/trainers. This was something he had been in need of for months, having been on the look-out, but without success. Having sustained a serious injury to the heel and ankle of one foot, almost 3 years ago, he really struggles to find appropriate, comfortable and supportive footwear. Asking the guy what size they were, it was clear from his surprised response that he hadn’t even been aware that they were there, needing to ‘check in the back’, for the price. As it happens, they were size 9 (spot on!), and £5 (wow, what a bargain!). They fit perfectly, offering the comfortable support that makes walking any distance a little easier for him. There is something so sweet about finding something we really want or need, out of the blue, and at a give-away price! (I do contribute to charity, via monthly direct debit, and always put money in collection tins, so I am not just being miserly here!).

As we left the shop, I was feeling a little in awe, and actually, still do. I couldn’t just write it off as ‘coincidence’… it seemed too convenient, too easy! Maybe it was just a case of being in the right place at the right time, but isn’t that what ‘luck’ is about, anyway? This kind of situation has occurred in my life many, many times, and I never fail to be, not only impressed, but grateful. Others may scoff, and say, “ah, it’s nothing more than coincidence”, but I prefer to call it synchronicity:

Synchronicity (German: Synchronizität) is a concept, first introduced by analytical psychologist Carl Jung, which holds that events are “meaningful coincidences” if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related (Wikipedia).

Now, he hadn’t been actively meditating on the subject of reasonably priced, appropriate foot-wear, or consciously putting it ‘out there’ to the universe; he had just talked about it, several times, over the weeks. And let’s face it, he might not have even noticed that box on the shelf (I certainly didn’t), and then I wouldn’t be writing this blog. Or, the two of us could consider it not to be noteworthy in any way, shape or form… just a bit of unimportant, random good luck, something to be taken for granted – and what ripple effect would that create, further down the line, and in the bigger picture?

What I recognise in my partner is that he has become more open to the idea of energetic attraction, and is much more likely to consciously acknowledge it than he used to (he even worked it out for himself that, prior to slipping down those steps, fracturing his heel in several places and displacing his ankle joint, he had been repeating the statement, “I need a break“, over and over again). In the past, he had tended to see himself as a bit of a victim, and often failed to recognise and appreciate the value of opportunities/gifts that came his way. Before I met him, he actually won a large number of airmiles – but the stories he told were not of wonder and good times; no, he talked of the lack of gratitude his family showed, when he paid for them to go on a couple of holidays, and how he didn’t get to see the sights he wanted to see – only those that they did. And he talked about the tickets he purchased for a trip to a theme park, for a bunch of friends who were supposed to pay him back in cash – none of whom did. And then he lost the remaining, unused airmiles, because the scheme was scrapped. And even the photo’s he took, in New York, were lost, because somehow the disposable camera he used got damaged.

Nowadays, he sees things very differently, I am really happy to report… but the charity shop/trainer boots situation got me thinking about the importance, and the joy, of recognising and acknowledging the sudden receipt of something we really need or want – and the way in which we ‘reply’. The more we genuinely see ourselves as lucky, the happier we feel, and the less impatient and demanding we become – and if nothing else, that alone has to be a good thing! I once knew an intelligent, witty guy who, sadly, had a rather bitter attitude towards life. He insultingly described his sister as looking like a ‘moose’, and expressed disgust towards her because she was consistently lucky, winning competitions and such like. I put forward the theory that, because she believed herself to be lucky, and because she now expected to win, she did (to paraphrase Denise Duffield Thomas: if you wonder why they have more money luck than you do, it is probably because they don’t have the money blocks that you do!). Of course, he sneeringly dismissed the idea as complete rubbish, which disappointed me, but didn’t surprise me. The last I heard of him, he had experienced a couple of examples of substantial ‘bad luck’, I am sorry to say… but who knows, he may have retrieved something of worth, from the ashes of the those events, and used them to build something better and happier for himself.

I have come to understand that it is my consistent, everyday approach, and my habitual way of looking at life, that holds the real, creative power. We cannot just switch it on when we want something, akin to being good in the run-up to Christmas! I definitely have to realign myself periodically, but the effort is absolutely worth it: I would rather be accused of being delusional, than become closed to the wonderful flow of positive attraction!