Come visit my new Cafe Press store, The Karmic Bulldog http://cafepress.com/karmicbulldog. See the banner in my sidebar.  I finally got my gratitude cards, sorry cards, everyday cards and more for sale at my store.  You can get baby gear, bags, clothes, mugs and more.  Send a smile to someone – why wait for a special occasion?  I even have some postcards that you can send to people every day.  Remember, the most important rule in The Law of Attraction is gratitude.  So send some gratitude cards and attract more things in your life to be grateful for!As always, be prepared for the best!

This blog has a new home at karmicbulldog.blogspot.com, and a new name, Acquiring Abundance–you can click the link on my blog roll.  I’ll be focusing more on getting The Secret/Law of Attraction to work for me–and you too.  So come on over and check out the new blog at Blogger.  Also, you can see the adorable bulldog.

Thanks.

We now have our new ceramic tile kitchen counters and they look great.  Especially now that we shined them up with some floor wax.  Now we’re waiting for the workers to put the sink back down so it rests on the counter.  But the Einsteins who came to fix the leak that they left us with when they popped the sink (same home repair company) said they couldn’t do it.  So we asked that the person who popped the sink come back and put it back in right.  But I’m not holding my breath.  We got the promise from the contractor that they’d be here on Friday so I waited all day and wasn’t so surprised when they didn’t show.  This is the biggest team of inept labororers I’ve ever seen in my life.  I’ve heard bad contractor stories before, but I don’t even know how some of these people got jobs in this business.  My husband has spent most of his nights fixing stuff that they did wrong.  And they even had to use my husband’s tools while they were here because they didn’t have their own.  Then one of them walked off with all our tools–even the ones in the garage–and also took the clips to our sink so my husband can’t fix it even though he knows how and they don’t.  We did get the tools back, but not the clips. 

They don’t even have their own tools!  What kind of home repair business doesn’t even have their own tools?

I know, where’s the gratitude for getting all this work done for free, you’re probably thinking.  And it is there.  We just didn’t realize what a huge amount of work would go into redoing our kitchen counters.  And we didn’t know we’d be taking on a do-it-yourself project. If they’d been done right in the first place, we wouldn’t be complaining.  We are grateful to have our kitchen back.  We’ve had to keep our counters clear for the past 2 weeks and now we finally can use the microwave and toaster in the kitchen. 

We are grateful for getting a grant to cover our new roof–which was done by professional roofers who know what they’re doing–and kitchen floor and counters.  But if I had it to do all over again, I don’t know if I would bother.  Maybe after the dust settles I’ll think differently, but this has been one of the most stressful times of my life.  And I think if we got to choose the contractor and were paying for it ourselves things would have turned out different. 

Originally I was totally picturing our new floors and countertops looking great.  I just didn’t know what a long and difficult process it would be.  That’s the thing with The Secret and the law of attraction, you don’t ask to know how or when, just the outcome.  So, I guess in that respect, I did get exactly what I wanted.  It’s all in how you perceive it.

Next time I hope to have my sink fixed.  And just maybe I’ll have more positive news to report.  But The Secret does work.  Just know that sometimes things get much worse before they get better.  In the end it should be exactly the way we want.

Till next time, prepare for the best.

We have our new counters–ceramic tile.  They look much better than that crappy paint job they left us with last week.  And we got them at no extra cost us! The contractor even came to our house yesterday while the guys were finishing up and apologized to me and my husband.  We were rather shocked.  Maybe he’s seen The Secret too?  Anyway, I’m finally free to use my kitchen–when the grout dries. 

There is one tiny problem, however.  Our sink isn’t laying against the countertop like it used to.  And our water pressure isn’t as strong.  I guess that’s two tiny problems.  No major deal, but I’m not sure if I should complain or just let it go.  Afterall, we got way more expensive counters than we expected, and they make our kitchen look newer and brighter.  But that kitchen sink just doesn’t look right.

In The Science of Getting Rich, as well as The Secret, we’re not supposed to focus on what we don’t want or the problems.  Only what we do want and what we’re grateful for.  Well, I’m grateful for the counters and for getting my house back to normal–almost.  I do want the sink to be fixed, and I am trying to picture it the way I want it.  It worked for the counters, why not the sink?

There’s a long story to why we didn’t have to pay for all this and it was also a stroke of good luck–or just attracting something good into my life by focusing on gratitude.  Next time I’ll tell the whole story.  Until then, I’m trying to stay grateful to the workers for all their efforts instead of wondering why these people can’t put the sink back to where it was before.

 This is a picture of my dog Steph who died two years ago with my brother-in-law, Bruce, who died two weeks ago today. And while I’m still in kind of disbelief about it, I feel a little guilty that I’d been feeling good about The Secret and Law of Attraction working for me.  It’s like being pulled in two different directions.  In one direction I’m soaring because I realize I don’t have to dwell on the negative anymore and when I think about where I want to be I feel much better.  But then I get sucked back into the reality that Bruce is gone and my sister has become a widow while starting treatment for cancer–alone.  

So I’m trying to focus on all things positive but reality always has a way of creeping back in.  I have not seen anyone in my family since the wake and while I want to tout the benefits of all the wonderful ways I’m finding to improve myself and my life, I just can’t bring myself to tell them because I think I should still be feeling sad.  Sometimes I’m overcome with sadness, but it’s usually momentary and I can find something to make me happy again–usually.   That’s why I’m still healing the hard way.  Even though I’ve made so many strides in the past few months, I just don’t know how to deal with all these conflicting emotions.

I could say he’s gone to a better place now and it’s just part of life–in other words: get over it.  If it wasn’t for my sister having cancer, I probably would.  I’m worried about her being strong enough to get through the chemo and radiation.  But I’m going to try and get her to watch The Secret and try EFT–both of which have been known to heal cancer in some people.  See my sidebar for more info about EFT–it is amazing! The key is to believe.  If you believe something will work for you, it will.  I guess I need to work on my power of persuasion because my sister is a bit of a skeptic.

 I will get more into the power of belief in an upcoming post because I don’t have enough time to go into here, but it does work.

Until then, be prepared for the best!

Okay, I’ve been a bit skeptical of all the much-hyped DVD and book, The Secret, but I tried it and it worked–I think.  If you read my previous post about my hellish home repair experience–painted kitchen counters–you know I’ve been going through a rough time.  Not to mention losing my brother-in-law and finding out my sister has breast cancer all in the same week.  I’m a firm believer in the principles in The Science of Getting Rich–see previous post and links for more information about that free e-book that changed my life.  But when life throws curves at you and you’re stuck thinking you attrracted it all (according to The Secret, we attract everything to us even the bad) it gets kind of hard to believe.  I mean I just wanted to have nice new kitchen counters, so why did mine turn out to be worse than before?  Maybe because I lost confidence in the workers who were in charge.  They left my counters a wreck and we didn’t know what to do since there was no more money in the budget to fix it.

So, last night, my husband and I watched The Secret again after viewing it once last fall.  Well, I decided to picture my counters the way I wanted them, no matter what they currently looked like.  Today, I had a call from the contractor saying he’s willing to install new countertops–which is what we wanted all along–on top of our newly destroyed ones–at no cost to us.  Wow! I was shocked because this guy had been anything but willing to help us before.  Now, without even a phone call from us, he says he’ll fix the problem.  And when I called my husband at work to tell him, he told me he got a call for a job interview next week–without having to submit a resume or anything!  That was fantastic news because my husband hates his current job.  He had been layed off from a great job three years ago and now three new jobs opened up in his fromer place of employment and my husband is first in line to get one.  I’m thrilled!

Was this some kind of magic because we watched The Secret last night and decided to put it to work?  I can’t say for sure, but it is a big coincidence otherwise.  I prefer to think that we’re changing our luck by changing our thinking.  Of course, The Secret is not the only self-improvement tool I’ve used in the recent months, and I will get into the others in upcoming posts.  But this news is too good not to share.  Perhaps I should have saved it for my upcoming Healing the Easy Way blog!

Until next time, be prepared for the best!

Here’s that article I told you about.  Enjoy!

  

How To Have An Out-of-Body Experience (Sort of)

		By Rebecca FineWhen the battered old Chevy ran the red light and pulled directly into our path, I didn’t notice it at first — the pounding rain was just too heavy and the moonless night very dark. By the time I could see it, bright white in our headlights, it was too late to stop: in a split second we would plow into it broadside at 60 miles an hour.That crash happened nearly 34 years ago when I was 16, and I can’t remember most of what happened before and after it. I don’t even recall the names of the three other people in the car. (Well, it was one of those awful “blind” double-dates, so perhaps THAT part is for the best!) ;-DBut I remember every bit of what happened during that split second, and what I saw and experienced then was something I didn’t tell anyone about for years. It was just too personal — and too weird. In fact, about 15 years later when I finally told my best friend, Joan, about it, she listened without comment until I was done and then said, “Well, I’ve always thought these kinds of stories were just interesting stories. But you are the LAST person on earth I’d ever expect to say something like this, so it must be true.” It is true. It’s amazing how long a “split second” can be and how much can happen during it. At the moment I realized we were about to crash, I felt instantly calm, unafraid, and detached — as though I were watching a slow-motion movie of an impending crash, but from my perspective in the front passenger seat. I remember thinking, “We’re going to hit them,” and then … I watched the passenger side of the Chevy cave in as the hood of our car sloooowly pleated itself into an accordion shape. And suddenly … I wasn’t sitting there anymore; I was somehow just above the car, looking down and watching someone — ME! — soundlessly come up out of the seat and fly into, and through, the windshield. No fear, no pain, no noise. Just a slow-motion movie. Then it was over, and I was outside the car, soggy and bloody and covered with bits of glass, yanking the back door open to see if anyone was hurt. Still no fear and no pain — but PLENTY of noise from ambulances, police cars, people yelling. (We had the good sense, at least, to crash right in front of a major hospital so help was there in less than a minute.) Now what on earth does all this have to do with the science of getting rich or thinking and acting in the certain way? Well, let’s see if I can tie it in! What I want to suggest to you is an experiment. This week, when you feel yourself edging onto the slippery slope of ANYTHING that leads us off the certain way path of creative mind — envy, grumpiness, guilt, anger, and so on — don’t DO anything, just WATCH. In other words, pay attention to what’s happening and sort of stand apart and watch yourself react to whatever has happened. Take a mental step back and become the compassionate witness to your own life. (Remember it’s not what happens that matters, it’s how you respond to what happens.) Watch yourself start to feel irritated when someone says something rude or cuts you off in traffic. Watch your anger flare up. Watch that nasty self-talk thing that happens when you make a mistake — you know, the one where you mentally beat yourself up. Watch it ALL. But don’t judge it or try to stop it. Just watch. Don’t think of what’s happening as something that’s bad. Just watch. Here’s what I think you’ll notice. If you don’t INVOLVE yourself in what’s going on, but just observe it, you’ll begin to see that this simple process takes all the wind out of that particular emotion’s sails. Just as I felt no pain or fear while watching my physical body smash through a windshield, you’ll notice a kind of calm come over you. By simply being aware of what’s happening TO you, you’ll find the once-raging emotion almost instantaneously loosens its grip. Yes, it’s a little tricky to stand back and watch, but it’s not really difficult. (You know what the hardest part is? NOT judging the emotion and then passing judgment on yourself for having it!) Just keep trying to catch yourself so you can watch. It gets easier with practice — and even more fascinating. Now obviously, you’re not going to try to project your soul out of your body or anything like that; that’s not what this is about. You’re just going to use the power of your mind to become AWARE of what another part of your mind and your body are up to. So … are you game? Are you willing? (I believe the most powerful statement a human being can make is “I am willing.”) See, you already have within you everything you need to be, do, and have whatever you want. All that resides within your great big, limitless True Self. But you also have within you your own “little me,” small self, or ego, that pops up again and again to thwart your best-laid plans. Its job is to keep you “safe” by keeping you from stepping out of your familiar zone. And for most of us, little me is operating covertly, below the surface of our awareness most of the time. But when we wake up and become AWARE of what’s going on — simply by observing — the tables can begin to turn. Because once you are aware, you have the power to CHOOSE your response. Until you know you have choices, however, you have no choices. So this week, just watch. Pay attention. Become aware. And then, of course, share what you notice with the rest of us on the “new and improved” (go see it!) http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?af=614038 I can’t WAIT to see what YOU learn from your “out-of-body” experiences! ***** Oh, one more thing: Whether you’re driving or “passenging,” please remember ALWAYS to fasten your seat belt. I want you with us a good, long time, and I promise you that a little while AFTER you go through a windshield — if you’re still with us — you WILL feel it! Rebecca Fine is the founder of The Science of Getting Rich Network where you can download your free copy of the amazing 1910 forgotten classic, The Science of Getting Rich. http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?af=614038   ©2001 Certain Way Productions.

Unfortunately for me that means I have to go back and deal with the headaches that were keeping me occupied before my sudden shocking family news and unexpected death of my brother-in-law.  That means getting the contractor hired to install kitchen counters and floors in my house to finish the job–correctly.  That last word is where we keep running into trouble.  We just wanted to update our 70’s kitchen floor and matching burnt orange kitchen counters.  Seems fairly self explanatory for a home repair business to do, right?  Wrong.  We got our floors–not installed perfectly, but who’s complaining?  Anway, the company seems not to know how to install countertops so my husband and I agreed, under duress, to let them paint them because it was the only feasible way to get the job done.  Or so they said.  Here’s a few words of wisdom from me to anyone thinking of remodeling their kitchen:  Don’t ever agree to let anyone paint your counters! 

The color of the paint looked fine at first.  Then they put the finish on.  Now there is a yellowish film that makes burnt orange look desirable.  I thought people in the home repair business were supposed to know how to install counters and paint.  I thought wrong.  Yet, I’m not complaining.  Just detailing my experience so I can get it out of my system and go back to having faith that everything will work out for the best–or at least trying desperately to convince myself of that.  In other words, making the most of a bad situation.

They left our new hideous counters to dry and vowed to be back in the morning to fix them by sanding–like that’s going to stop the paint by the sink from bubbling and cracking, which is another problem that comes with countertop painting.  I was freeing the hounds who must be locked up while workers are here–my bulldog bites.  To tell the truth, after seeing their work, I wanted to bite them too.  I opened the basement door to get one of the dogs to come upstairs and turned around for a moment to see what my other dog was doing.  I saw my 22 month old daughter heading for the basement door and I went to stop her.  On the way, I heard a thud like she’d slipped on the floor.  My heart almost burst from my chest as I thought of her tumbling down the basement stairs to the cement floor.  But she just tripped over the vacuum and landed in front of the stairs.  I picked her up with shaking hands and realized again that there is more to life than ugly counters.

Watch for my next post because I realized I needed some refreshing on how to cope when everything in life seems to be headed in the wrong direction.  So I went back to the Science of Getting Rich website and read an article that helped me put things into perspective–somewhat.  So, I’m sharing it with you here. I hope you gain as much from it as I did.

There was no change in Bruce’s condition the following day.  No decline but no improvement.  And I learned that my family and his had realized this situation could only get worse.   So they were hoping he would die peacefully instead of prolonging his suffering.  On the first day he was diagnosed with locked-in syndrome where he was alert but had no way to communicate except to roll his eyes.  Now he’d lapsed into a coma.  The night before I had been seriously praying for a miracle that would save him and bring him back to full capacity.  Now I was supposed to pray for him to die and get it over with?  How do you do that?

 Now, I’m not religious, but I am discovering my spiritual side and always pray for my family, especially those who are ill, and the earth–that needs all our prayers.  I’ve been praying for Bruce for the past year and a half because of his cancer.  I’ve also kept my cousin in my prayers because he too has cancer, and my brother who has cirrohsis and my sister, Eileen (the one who keeps me updated on Bruce’s condition) who has autoimmune hepatitis which we’re hoping won’t lead to cirrohsis.   And now I’ve added my other sister, Cathy, who has breast cancer to my nightly prayers.  Actually, I’ve been praying for her the most since the stress of watching her soul mate lying in the ICU knowing he can’t recover has caused her to postpone her cancer treatment because she needs to be strong for that.  How can anyone be strong under such circumstances? 

Later that night I got another call from Eileen informing me that tomorrow (Saturday) would probably Bruce’s last day here on earth.  He was still in a coma with no brain activity.  Cathy and his family had decided to pull the plug if there was no improvement detected in the MRI, and most likely there would not be.  I hadn’t gone to the hospital yet and Eileen said if I wanted to go say goodbye I should go in the morning.  But I had this picture of Bruce in my mind of the last time I saw him a couple of weeks before when he was so healthy and happy.  I wanted to remember him that way.  Besides, Eileen was always crying when she called from the hospital saying it was really difficult to see Bruce lying there so helpless and lifeless.  He would not want to be remembered that way. 

The next day came and went with no improvement but the doctors said they had to give it one more day before taking any action.  They needed to wait at least 72 hours to monitor brain activity.  Also, Cathy needed one more day to accept that Bruce was never again going to wake up.  So the call came in the next morning at 11:35 that he had passed away.  Bruce was now in a better place. 

But where did that leave the rest of us?