The Serendipity Index

What if I told you that you have the power to manifest your dreams into existence.
Would you believe me? Have you tried?

Serendipity, I love this word.
Some people say it’s about the weird coincidences in life.

The dictionary says:
“the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for”. And the most interesting part of this sentence are these three words:

“Not sought for”

Because... sometimes we don’t know what we need…

When I was 16, my parents pulled us together
To tell us that for the last two years,
Mum had been fighting cancer
And things weren’t looking great.

Two years later,
It looked like things were getting better.

Then one Sunday evening,
She started mumbling strange words
and finding it hard to breathe,
So they rushed her to the hospital.

The next day dad took us to visit.
And there she was…

Connected to machines
Barely alive.
What do I say?
Can she even hear me?
Is this goodbye?

After Chemo, and losing her hair,
pain meds and surgeries
how much more could she bare?

On August 2nd 2004,
at 10.35am,
I looked out the window,
To the bluest of skies.
It didn’t make sense
Because my mum had just died.

She was finally at peace.
But me. I was destroyed.

Have you ever had
the very foundations of your life rocked?

What did you do?
I didn’t know what to do.
I just wanted to sleep.
I thought if I’m lucky,
I’ll meet her in dreams.

Loosing mum, was the most transformational experience of my life so far.
But it shaped me into the person I’m proud and happy to be.

The profound experience of death
Helped me discover a magic in life.

When we look at our story,
We can feel that things are happing to us, or against us.
That if things were better, then life would be better.

But what if those very things
Are precisely what we need to happen,
To shape us and help us become who we are meant to be.

There are three learnings
That when combined
Can help you experience the magic,
The serendipity in your life.

I call these, The Serendipity Index:

First, share your dreams.
Say them out loud.
Why?
Because if you feel them to be true.
You’ll train your brain to believe it too.

Next up, trust your gut.
It’s like a brain, free from the mind
Follow your instincts and you will find
That in ways “not sought for”
Things still turn out quite right

And last but not least
Let go of the illusion of control.
The more you believe
That it’s better your way.
The harder you make it
for life to unveil.

We live so worried about death
That we forget about living.

We have a choice, to be the victims
or the heroes of our story.

When mum died
I was given a gift.
A new appreciation for life.

Why wait, for something to happen,
Your life is golden. Now.
Realise life isn’t happening AT you, it’s happening FOR you

If you can learn to accept what is,
You can create what could be.
Your life is your perspective.
Change that, and you have the power to change the world.

Note: This post was born from a script for a live presentation, hence the not so common formatting. I tried to make it more "paragraphy" but felt something was lost in the process.