Good Luck, Coincidence... or meant to be?

Twice in my life I’ve found a four-leaf clover and when I tell people about it, you can guess the typical response, ‘how lucky!’ Interestingly it wasn’t by coincidence, or at least I don’t think so.

The first time was about five years ago when my sister was going through an horrific IVF journey that was to last 5 years, trying to get pregnant and it just wasn’t happening. With all of the will in the world, this one time, I sat down on a patch of grass in Arrowtown looking for a four-leaf clover to send to her and found one. (Do you remember the card I sent you Alli with the clover cellotaped into it?) On her very last attempt, my sister got pregnant and now we have Riley (named after the saying ‘The life of Riley’ and both he and we are fortunate to have him in our lives)

The second time was about three years ago, when I was at a crossroads in my life, asking ‘shall I go this way, or shall I go that way?’ You might laugh, but I put out to the universe, ‘show me a four-leaf clover if I’m meant to step up and create a wellness retreat business based in Queenstown (the idea had not only been brewing for a while but had hit a stumbling block in that my then potential business partner had found her ideal job, which was awesome but I was left wondering, ‘am I meant to be doing this?’ I started looking for a four-leaf clover and within minutes I found the one in the photograph above.

Good luck? Coincidence? Perhaps… but prior to finding the four-leaf clovers, I had the intention of finding them. The recently departed Wayne Dyer wrote a book about intention. According to Dyer, each of us is powerfully creative, that we create our realities and it begins with having an intention. For me intention has a different energy from a wish or a pipe dream; there’s more activation in the word as in, ‘I really mean to make this happen’. I sense that intention is fueled with energy, like passion or motivation and this idea of measuring our energy for something is a useful guage through which to filter our wants or goals to determine our intention. For example:

If you say to yourself, ‘I want to make a million dollars,’ how fired up or lethargic do you physically feel about making this happen? Is it a fantasy or is it an intention?
If you say to yourself, ‘I want to lose some weight,’ how excited or indifferent do you emotionally feel to doing whatever it takes to achieve that? Is it a dream or an intention?
If you say to yourself, ‘I want to build a veggie garden this summer’, what do you sense about your level of commitment and intention to doing it? Dream or intention?

Try it out for yourself right now. Think about something that you would like to have/do/be or create and ask yourself the questions underlined above and notice your responses. Is it a dream or an intention? When coaching people who are procrastinating about getting things done, the first thing I check in with is their desire or intention. Do they really want the goal they’ve set for themselves? If not, we reassess or reframe the goal.

Once you connect into intention, the universe seems to conspire and communicate with you to support you. Isn’t it amazing to think that we have this link to creativity (which some call divine energy, or God)? That we can ask and receive and that it’s possible to will something into being? Isn’t it awesome that when we feel uncertain about which path to take that we can ask and receive guidance from our own physical and emotional body, or that nature can guide us so long as we are open to noticing, seeing and sensing. I can say with excitement that since my four-leaved clover, I’m in the lucky position (tongue in cheek) of opportunities and connections flowing through my path. I’m guessing this means I’m on the right one.

Posted by Amanda Woolridge.