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A life rigged in my favour

By Sinem Bilen-Onabanjo
07 December 2019   |   4:01 am
Recently, there was quite a major change in my life – the sort of change I had hoped for but not foreseen or predicted even weeks before it happened.

Recently, there was quite a major change in my life – the sort of change I had hoped for but not foreseen or predicted even weeks before it happened. It all happened so fast that by the end of what seemed like an ordinary week I realised my life would change in ways I couldn’t have even imagined at the start of the week.

Then as I discussed these changes in my life with friends I realised I had spoken it into existence exactly two years and a week to the date.

Talking to a friend over dinner about the course of events in that momentous week a few weeks ago, it suddenly hit me, on yet another dinner with the same friend, I had already given myself a timeline of change. I recalled vividly how I had told her, “I will move on to something that’s more suited for me in two years’ time; I don’t see myself where I am beyond two years.”

Over the course of those two years however, as it often happens to most of us, I had got accustomed to the status quo, grown into a routine like people grow into an old tattered coat that they know they should get rid of but can’t quite bring themselves to shake off. I believe it is that cosy little place called the comfort zone.

Even when I would joke Mr O, “If you ever see me settle down for anything because it is convenient, please take a gun and shoot me”, I was slowly sinking into that inhospitable place where not much really ever grows, least of all self-confidence.

Thankfully, the feisty me before the ‘comfortable’ me had spoken things into existence and the universe was working daily to bring me closer to what I’d asked for. I’m often the ‘glass half-empty’ pessimist who would very much like to believe in ‘The Secret’ that “when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it” (Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist).

A couple of months ago, following a bike ride, I hung about waiting for the raffle draw; having picked a strip of tickets I was hopeful I’d at least win a consolation prize. Sadly, it was not meant to be – well, at least not on the day. However, a few weeks later, the ride organiser contacted me to say one of the prize winners had re-donated the gift as she didn’t live locally so wouldn’t be able to take up the offer and they’d drawn another ticket. Lo and behold, I was the winner of a free manicure which I have made sure to claim just In time for the festive season.

Hence, tonight, at another function with my mother-in-law, as she sighed “I never win anyway” at the end of the raffle draw, I felt like hushing her. In my mind, until proven otherwise we are all winners. Or at least that’s what we can keep telling the universe.

I put out something into the universe two years ago, and even at times I was sinking deeper into my comfort zone, only a week after my self-allocated deadline, the universe delivered. Hence, I am getting ready to ring in the new year sharing with it all my heart’s desires while quietly working towards them and living life like everything’s rigged in my favour, in 13th-century mystic poet and scholar Rumi’s words.

What about you? What will you be putting out to the universe as you ring in a new year?

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