When I was a boy living on a farm in the hills of Oregon I learned to visualize. And I didn't even realize what I was doing. I just thought my mind was drifting if I thought about it at all.
While my family wasn't poor, neither were we well-off. We grew most of our own food. My brother and I took care of the garden, growing fruit and vegetables. We also fed the chickens, pigs, and milk cows. Our lives from ages 5 to 12 were mostly work. If not on the farm, then at school.
But working all the time wasn't great fun. It was a healthy life, but kids want fun and excitement and to enjoy the nice things the neighbor kids had. And so I would often find my mind drifting back to Newport Beach, California where I lived with my mother and stepfather until I was five years old. Until the weekend my father took me and my brother to his house for a visit and never returned us to our mother who had legal custody.
Instead, he took us to a farm he'd purchased in Fall Creek, Oregon, where we lived for the next seven years. And during those years is when I learned about visualization. When I wasn't doing chores or school work I'd often find myself sitting on the bank of the river that bordered the rear of our property and day dreaming.
I'd picture myself living back in Southern California with my mother and grandparents. I'd remember the nice clothes she'd buy for me and my brother, the meals she prepared, the Catholic church she took us to and the encouragement she gave me to do well in school.
These visions I had of my former life were one way that I escaped the alcoholic anger of my father. When I'd dream of the future, he was nowhere in the picture. There wasn't a lot of alcohol around when I lived with my mother and stepfather. There was no rage and fighting. I didn't get my butt kicked when I did something wrong, though I did get periodic punishment if I deserved it.
So my dreams while I was on the riverbank were about having a peaceful life. One without alcohol or violence. I pictured living in a nice home. Of having a business and an automobile and eventual prosperity.
And those things came to pass. All of my visions have come true beyond my dreams. I have the life I dreamed of and much more.
I got here on a twisted path, though. In my younger life I acheived many of my dreams, but my father taught me about alcohol. And I became just like him for years, drunk and angry and destroying everything and everyone around me.
Then, in midlife I had an epiphany, a realization of what would happen if I didn't quit drinking and shooting heroin. If I didn't change it would be back to prison for me, or the hospital, or even an early death. I took inventory of myself and pictured myself being clean and sober.
I began to visualize that one thing: a sober life. And it happened for me. On January 13, 1991 I checked into a detox and never looked back. Once I got sober the things I visualized came into my life much sooner than I expected.
I pictured the sobriety and all the good things that come with it and it manifested in my life.
Start dreaming each day about the changes you want in your life and see what happens.
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