When I read The Secret and watched the DVD, I knew immediately that it was true. I could look back at every major event in my life and see how my thoughts set those events in motion. It also fit in with my instinctive feelings about the nature of God, and explained many of the things that I believed to be true but had no structured reasoning behind those beliefs.

The first thing I did was do the exercise where you write the future as if it were the present. I did this at lunch and wrote about many aspects of my life, including how I was a successful consultant and how much money I would be making. The project I was on at the time was not in line with what I wanted to be doing, and the people involved were very negative and had a lot of problems. The money was good, but it was not going to allow me to make the kind of salary I had written about.

An hour after I got back from lunch, the client informed me that they had budget problems and the project would be ending in two weeks instead of two months. I almost laughed!

I have been able to take some time off and restructure my firm to do exactly what I want to do, and also to spend time with my daughter (which is what SHE wanted!). I got a call last week from a client I had wanted since last year. They have multiple projects and would like me to work on them!

Oh yes, and the 1968 quarter! I started out wanting a 1968 (the year I was born) penny to use instead of a gratitude rock. I wanted it to put on my keychain since I never go anywhere without my keys.

Weeks passed and I didn’t find the 1968 penny. I started thinking about Wallace Wattles book and how he said if you don’t get what you want that you didn’t ask for enough. So I started thinking about a 1968 quarter. I had a hard time not looking for it which made me notice I didn’t have it. So as I was walking yesterday I held my keys in my hand and pretended that the quarter was already on my keyring and feeling grateful.

This morning I was cleaning out my purse and I dumped my change. There was only one quarter and I happened to look at it just before dumping it into the laundry quarters. You guessed it: 1968! I now have my “gratitude coin!”

By the way, many years have over a billion quarters in circulation. 1968 was a relatively small circulation year.