Guest Blog—Yellow Bicycles

Dear Redefining Able Readers:

Today I post my first guest blog. I first read this on Amy’s site and thought it was definitely something I had to share! I truly believe in this message, that what we look for, we find. So I hope as you read this you will begin to think about what you are looking for and then go on your own quest to find it!

Happy searching and cheers to all who take charge to Win Your Human Race!

Sincerely,

Trish

Yellow Bicycles, Amy Birks – originally published Jul 14, 2013 at http://amybirks.com/blog/2013/7/13/yellow-bicycles

I’m reading this (AWESOME) book right now called e2 (as in “E Squared”, which stands for Energy Experiments).  The author, Pam Grout, in a very pragmatic and realistic way, highlights the idea that we have the power to manifest what we want in our lives.  She uses a series of nine easy experiments to help her readers understand exactly how the universe conspires on our behalf to bring us all our hearts’ desires.

The best part is that she does so in a way that even a “realist” like my Love, or a tried-and-true skeptic can’t argue with. Using scientific logs, which include hypotheses and means to track concrete results, she provides a practical platform to prove her ideas.  So even if you’re someone who thinks the whole “Thoughts Become Things” idea and things like The Secret are just nonsense, these experiments should still resonate for you.

Today I’m working through experiment number two, which is called “the Volkswagon Jetta Principle”.  This experiment intends to prove that what shows up in our lives is a direct reflection of our thoughts and beliefs.

The experiment suggests, “if I decide to look for (insert something pretty specific here, like a VW Jetta, for example) for a 24 hour period, I will find it, no matter what it is“.

Have you ever observed in your own life how once you take notice of something, like a VW Jetta, for instance, and think to yourself, “Huh, there’s a Jetta over there”, all of a sudden all you can see are Jettas everywhere?  At the grocery store, parked in front of your house, those quirky VW commercials pop up on TV; they’re everywhere. This is the idea behind experiment number two.

So the item I decided I was looking for was “yellow bicycles”. Being a cyclist myself I figured I’d have to run into at least one yellow bike at some point in the next 24-hours. I sent that thought out to the universe last night as I went to bed and promptly forgot about it, until this afternoon.

Around 12:30 today, I was walking back to my house from where I parked the neighborhood car-share car (about a block away from home) and noticed a yellow butterfly flying about. Which got me thinking…

I remembered that, in the book, Pam suggests looking for yellow butterflies as an example of something to seek out. Now, I know it wasn’t a yellow bike, but it got me thinking about the experiment in the moment and got my eyes open to more possibilities.  I walked on down the block.

And I saw a yellow hatchback.

And a yellow fire hydrant.

Then a yellow sign on a post, under which was some yellow graffiti.

THEN a yellow truck up the street.

And a yellow hose in the yard of a house I was passing.

AND two yellow flower pots in front of another house!

This all transpired within LITERALLY 60 seconds as I was walking back to my house. I was laughing out loud all the way home; my neighbors probably think I’m a total lunatic.

But here’s the kicker.

As I rounded the corner, almost home, I noticed a guy on a bike coming towards me. I lost sight of him behind a parked car and was waiting with baited breath to see what the bike he was riding would look like, smiling the whole time like some sort of maniacal evil genius. When he finally cleared the parked car I caught sight of the bike and lo and behold…!

It was silver and black. (insert collective “booooooo” right here…)

But, it also had a BRIGHT YELLOW bottle of sports drink in the water bottle cage!!  EUREKA!  

Now all of this may seem like a bit of a stretch.  Right now, you might be saying, “OK, Amy.  I get that you saw all this yellow stuff, but you didn’t see one yellow bicycle, which was exactly what you asked the universe to provide. Plus, you’d EXPECT to see fire hydrants, cars and flower pots in a residential neighborhood, right? Game over, thanks for playing, I still don’t buy it.”

The point here is that even though I haven’t yet seen a yellow bicycle in the flesh (in the aluminum?), this experiment DID help me bring awareness to all the other instances of yellow in my life.  Not even in my life, which is long and prosperous, but just in a teeny-tiny span of one minute within that long prosperous life.

The “yellow” I’m seeing today (which keeps reappearing, by the way, in all sorts of manifestations) is a metaphor for all the other things I may be looking for in life.  It’s a reminder to me that even though I may be looking for more abundance, love, friends, job satisfaction, whatever; I may be missing what’s right in front of me.   

Sure, you’re likely to find two yellow cars on the same block, a yellow hose in a neighbor’s yard, a yellow butterfly in the middle of summer.  But if your eyes aren’t open to the possibility of seeing them, if your mind isn’t focused on appreciating what already exists in your life, you’ll pass right by them as if they were invisible.

I’ll leave you with this thought: If what you seek in life is more of anything (happiness, money, respect, etc…) first try looking for it in your life around you.  Before you go searching for it elsewhere, plotting your course to find it, devising your plan to discover it hiding under some rock in the Himalayas, put your mind towards noticing what already exists within your world as you know it.

Then, once you start seeing the different manifestations of it (like the positive balance in your checking account, the three calls a day you get from your annoying mother because she loves you so much, the smile you receive from a stranger on the street), express gratitude for the abundance of “yellow” you already have in your life as a powerful gesture of welcoming even more of it to come right on in.

Comment below and tell us about your instances of running into “yellow” in your own life.  And if you like what you read here, please share it using the “share” button on the page!  (BTW, as I write this, Pam’s book, e2, is available on Amazon in Kindle version for less than $3.  I recommend downloading it NOW while the price is so ridiculously low and trying out some of her experiments yourself.  Find your yellow!)

Did this story resonate with you? Would you like to do a little one-on-one work to help you find your own “yellow” in life?

Click here now to book a free A to B Strategy Session with me.

With love and inspiration (and yellow, literally everywhere)

-Amy

PS… The day after I wrote this story, I was walking through my neighborhood again, recounting this exact experience to my soul-sister cousin over the phone,  and guess what I came across???  Yep. I see them in multiples just about every single day now.