A day in the Life Of…

© By Nicholas Grimshawe


Let me tell you a story by way of illustration.

I tell stories about myself, not to brag, but because I am my own biggest experiment in self-development.  I am late to the whole personal-development field, finding my own personal mission statement at the ripe age of fifty-six.  Since then, I have been on an amazing voyage of discovery and adventure taking me from one personal high to another.
I believe my experiences are instructive to others and I offer them with a sense of humility and a sincere wish to share with you my journey.

This story begins last July 2006. I enrolled in a self development course delivered online.

Each chapter combined instruction and a workshop. When I stared on the section about goals I wanted to learn everything I could. One of the exercises asked me to write down, from the moment I woke up to the time I went to bed, a blow by blow account of my day as if I were all ready living my dream. This happened before the whole storm about "The Secret" broke on the Internet.

I madly started scribbling away. I closed my eyes. I visualize myself waking up. As I opened my eyes, I could smell the sweet sea air and hear the tumble of the surf. As I looked around my bedroom, I saw white everywhere. I raised my head to see huge white curtains billowing in the morning breeze and beyond the curtains the ocean, danced in the morning sun. My bedroom appeared to be wide open to the outdoors.

I went on to detail every event of that day; my healthy breakfast on the patio over looking the garden and then the sea, my morning in my office in another wing of the house, also looking out at the sea, the evening dinner party to celebrate the release of my new book, to the moment I dropped off to sleep in my amazing bedroom.

I continued with the other parts of the lesson for another hour then returned to my office to complete a project I had underway.

I forgot about my exercise in visualization.

Over the next few months, I embarked on several personal development projects.
I continued to challenge and stretch myself. I suffered through doubts, wrestled with the frustrations of working online, but continued to persistently pursue my short-range goals.

Somewhere along the line of months, I began to come up with a series of ideas, one piling on another. This happened both in my home business and at work. I didn't notice this at first, until my Boss turned to me in a meeting and said   "just keep them coming, that's your third great idea in a week."
Her comment stopped me in my tracks. I hadn't notice till then just how many creative ideas I had generated.

The next thread in the story came when I bought the audiotape of  "The Secret". Again, the message about visualization took me back to my perfect bedroom close to an ocean somewhere in the world. I began to work again with visualization.

Now you think I am going to tell you I found my house and moved in. No. Instead, what I found   made me so excited I could hardly stand still.

I walked by a rack of paintings at work and there staring back at me, I honestly could not believe my eyes, was a painting, in exact detail, of my visualized bedroom.

Now the cynical among you will say that I had seen the painting before, which my unconscious mind had stored the image for me to regurgitate at the proper moment.
I don' t refute that at all. I don't think that probability diminishes the story.

In a couple of days, that large painting will grace a wall in my living room where I can view a visualization of my dream everyday. The painting represents only a portion for my total dream, yet the site of those billowing curtains and the shining sea, moves me deeply.

With my dream board and my painting, the elaboration of my visualization began.
Now in the morning when I wake up the first thing I listen for is the sound of the waves tumbling across the beach. Before I get out of bed, I take a walk along the beach, with the sea washing at my feet, and making them painfully numb with the cold. Even the sand is cool at this time of the morning. Ahead of me my dogs race, running in and out of the surf. Overhead seagulls call to each other. The whole scene is washed in early morning sunshine, and the air is so fresh I gulp it into my lungs.

I don't know, but it must be sleeping with all that fresh air, because my sleep patterns have changed. I sleep more deeply, more peacefully.

When I drive to work now, I am leaving   for a speaking engagement. I have transformed my Ford Focus, into a Silver Ford Hybrid Escape. Sitting up that much higher, sure gives you a different view of the traffic. Strangely, my whole posture changed when I began that visualization. I don't slouch; I sit up straight and proud.

Even if that is all I get from my visualization, I have been changed in a profound way.

My dreams are possible and so are yours.

First, create a vision of them.

Then live that vision in you mind.

Finally, trust absolutely that the vision will manifest itself to you.

Then one day, you will open your eyes to the blurring of vision with reality. You will wake up to find yourself living your dreams.

I wish you great dreaming.


Nick Grimshawe