Are you feeling fenced in, or trapped in an unbearable situation?
You might not be as stuck as you think. Read the following, from a Mindset Mastery program student who asked to remain anonymous:
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For years, I felt stuck, financially and geographically. My situation was, at heart, good! And I was extremely grateful for it! But, at the same time, I also felt stuck in two significant ways.
First, my husband’s job as an elected official of twenty years requires him to live in a certain part of our county. It’s a great job and he’s very good at it, but as our children have grown, I’ve wished we had the freedom to move to a different part of the county—outside his job’s boundaries—for the kids’ academic, social, and spiritual growth. Particularly I wished for the chance to attend a church congregation with more youth, as our congregation has almost none, and hasn’t in the 22 years we’ve attended it.
Second, financially, we were stopped. Because of the nature of my husband’s job, it literally requires a bill in the state legislature for him to receive a raise of any kind—even a cost of living adjustment. There hasn’t been a COLA in my memory. Maybe never. In addition, the requirements of the job preclude his having a “side gig” other than teaching part-time, which he has always done, but it isn’t exactly a gold mine. Basically, our income was fixed, other than a little extra I brought in with some writing, but I felt it was vital to preserve my emotional reservoir for my family’s needs, so I limited my extra work. We had a serious financial ceiling.
Before anyone asks, “Why not quit?” I should interject that the insurance benefits and retirement were too good to walk away from, and it’s a very flexible schedule that has allowed him to be present in our children’s lives (and mine). Big win! But even more, it’s the fact that he loves his job, is valued, and is receiving psychic compensation for his work to a degree that has made me want to support him in this endeavor.
It’s a good life; it just has zero potential for financial growth.
Last fall, we encountered a particularly disconcerting situation with our children, and I, as Leslie puts it, “hit rock bottom.” My living situation had to change! I poured out my heart to my husband and to the Lord about these things that were heavy and tricky and seemingly immovable. Emotionally charged, I went into a frantic “I have to work to change this” mode, also talking to leaders, writing letters, making visits, basically being the raspberry seed in everyone’s wisdom tooth while chasing hard after the “how” to fix the problem.
Nada. Nothing I did moved the needle.
Frankly, I was up against impossible odds—the changes I craved could take a decade to implement. One, realigning congregational boundaries in the church to bring in neighborhoods with more families? Bureaucracy beyond imagination would have to all be on board. By the time it came through, my kids could not benefit. They might have kids of their own at that point.
Two, getting the county government to realign the boundaries for my husband’s work to loop in an additional area so we could move to a place with more youth but still stay within his boundaries for work? These election boundaries had, to my knowledge, never been adjusted—at least not for many decades.
In January, I joined the Guided Mindset Mastery course, and the information there created a seismic shift in my way of thinking. Instead of worrying all the time about the how I was going to get my family to where I think they need to be for their best growth and happiness, I learned the power of dreaming.
Briefly, I envisioned a perfect scenario: one where my husband was offered a perfect job. I pictured all the requirements that would make the new job ideal: something relatively nearby, something not requiring him to run for office, something where he could retire and draw that income while earning more on top of it, something that would also allow him to work on a side-project with potential for massive income that he’d been pining after for as long as I’ve known him, something where he could use his education and skills, where he’d work with people who love and respect him, where he’d still have insurance benefits—and that would allow us to move to the desired location.
Meanwhile, I still faced down frequent doubts that it could happen, but armed with my new Stickman skills—pew, pew!—I ricocheted them out of my mind as much as possible. Boy, it was illogical to believe, but I had to. My family needed this.
What I didn’t know was that Unseen Help was moving things in other ways on my behalf—as follows:
At the end of January, a series of events occurred. Miracles, I later realized, although at first, they looked like a disaster.
During meetings I did not attend, the county eliminated my husband’s counterpart’s job because the counterpart had announced a retirement. It shook us—because as soon as the county leadership announced the change, the counterpart announced he’d changed his mind—and now my husband would have to battle him for the job.
Awful! Heart-rending. (Campaigns can be so gutting, let me tell you. There’s nothing more grounded in the competitive plane than a winner-take-all situation like a political election.)
HOWEVER … focusing on the principles from the course, I paused. Instead of freaking out (because freaking out is not a divine quality, and the whole “Keep calm and watch what happens” principle was fresh in my mind), I asked my husband if we could watch to see what else could happen and to look for the seed of good in the bad situation. It had to be there, right?
Soon, it hit me—if my husband won, we could move. If he lost, we could move. The geographical confines had dissolved!
Then, the following day, something even more extraordinary happened, exploding my expectations of what’s possible.
My husband received a phone call from former associates from his work. They had started a new venture, and they asked him to not run for re-election but to join them instead in a great opportunity. “Do it,” they said, “since you can draw your retirement, and you can also earn an additional salary—one with a built-in cost-of-living adjustment annually, and which will be compensation above what you’re making now.” They described other perks of the job. They said he was not just their top choice, he was their only choice.
In essence, he could make more than double his current salary, keep exactly the same (very good) insurance benefits, and not have to run for re-election. As a political wife who’d helped manage five campaigns for him in the past, it was music to my ears. In addition, it met every single requirement for the ideal job that I had envisioned, and in a beautiful way, better than I would have hoped.
After careful deliberation and prayer, he accepted their offer.
The geographical and financial boundaries evaporated. Within days!
Days.
After decades of being bolted shut.
These former associates were like a “jackrabbit” that came hopping up to my family, who told my husband he would be the ideal person for their “dream team.” The truth of every problem containing the seed of an equal or greater blessing? In my view, the principle went wild here—far outweighing on the blessing side of the scale, in my family’s favor.
The Mindset Mastery course has helped me see that the world can change—literally—in order to help me help my children. Shackles can fall.
Anything is possible.
As I write this, I marvel in gratitude at the blessings that come with obedience to Divine Law. I’m in awe of the goodness and overwhelming generosity of Unseen Help. Pondering the magnitude of Grace in my behalf, and the simplicity of what’s required of me to access it, I’m profoundly grateful.
Change is possible when we change our minds.
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