Believe
This column ran in a local publication a few years ago. I thought I’d resurrect it for this holiday season, with wishes for a Merry Christmas and Very Happy New Year.
When I was in third grade, I was invited to a sleepover, and all I wanted was one thing: A pair of Jolly Green Giant elf slippers to arrive in time for the party. Please don’t ask me why. They were green felt slippers, turned up at the toes, ordered through the mail with a canned corn proof-of-purchase label and a few cents for shipping.
In my eight-year-old mind, it was VERY important to have those slippers for the party. They were new and unique, trendy (I thought) in a third-grader sort of way. I’d be the only one at the sleepover with such cool elf wear.
I trusted that they would come. I just knew they would. I trusted so much, in fact, that even ten minutes before leaving for my friend’s house, I still knew they’d be here. Five minutes before throwing my pink duffle bag in the car, I was still expectantly praying. Two minutes and counting...still waiting. And one minute before we left...the mail came. A small box. A Jolly Green Giant logo. The slippers had arrived.
I don’t remember a thing about wearing those slippers at the party, or how the other girls must have rolled their eyes, but I do remember the lesson of trust. It was evidence that the universe will provide if you ask and believe.
Around the holidays, it’s easy to believe—in Santa, magic, generosity and kindness. “Believe it and you’ll see it,” Wayne Dyer says. And so it is, an intersection between prayer and the Law of Attraction.
A friend just forwarded to me a video by Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., author of The Biology of Belief. The power of positive thoughts and negative thoughts are equally powerful, he says. One can heal and the other can make us ill. “We’re uniquely able to heal ourselves...unless we believe we can’t.”
The power of belief makes anything possible. A friend demonstrated it a few months ago when she got a job she’d been focused on for two years. It offered her the hours and lifestyle she wanted. So even though she didn’t have seniority and wasn’t sure the job would ever come open, she didn’t waver in her belief that she wanted and deserved it. Sure enough, in a chain of events she could never have choreographed, the job opened up at the perfect moment, and it was hers.
Sometimes, of course, we don’t get what we ask for. Loved ones die, companies lay off workers, children go down arduous paths. But belief holds out the promise that the world will right itself again, and that no event, no matter how devastating, can permanently silence joy.
Believe that what you want is what you can have. Believe that this is an abundant world. Believe that as you state your intentions, focus on them, ask for help from Spirit, and take right action, you are reeling in your desires like you’ve cast your invisible fishing line in abundant waters.
This is my wish for the holidays: That your thoughts dwell on the beauty of this miraculous world, and that, like the elf slippers, your desires arrive by the power of your belief. Merry Christmas, everyone!
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May we all get our elf shoes! And angel wings.