A while back, a woman came up to me after a speech and told me that each night she writes down one miracle that happened that day. She’d been doing this for the last three years and had an amazing collection of miracles.
While I’ve often recommended that people keep a daily gratitude journal, I love this variation because it puts you in the mindset of looking for miracles.
This practice engages the reticular activating system, the part of the brain designed to bring things to your attention. Once you start consciously looking for miracles, they become easier and easier to find.
So I decided to experiment with this practice myself.
Day one happened to be the final day of a speaking trip to Panama. Early in the morning, the same wonderful man who’d driven me to my speech venue each day was taking me to the airport. Since my Spanish is limited, our conversations had also been limited. However, that morning my sister, who speaks fluent Spanish, was in the car, and she translated for us.
I discovered that Guillermo was not only a driver but had been the bodyguard for two Panamanian presidents. (It was reassuring to know that I’d been escorted by an experienced bodyguard.)
Hours later, I arrived in San Francisco, exhausted after a very long flight. I got in the taxi home from the airport and met another delightful driver. He had just moved a year ago to the U.S. from Russia, where, he revealed, he’d been the bodyguard for several Russian presidents.
Two airport rides in the same day—both with presidential bodyguards. Now what’s the likelihood of that happening?
My “looking for miracles” practice had begun with a bang.
Try it out for yourself. Be on the lookout for miracles each day and when one occurs, write it down.
You might want to look for these three different types of miracles:
1st there is the Twilight Zone Event – This is the kind of unlikely occurrence that makes you spontaneously break out into a round of “DOO-doo-DOO-doo, DOO-doo-DOO-doo
2nd there is the Serendipitous Support – This happens when you’re searching for something like a specific piece of information, for instance, and an unrelated email shows up in your inbox with exactly the answer you were looking for.
3rd is the Cool Coincidence – Finding two presidential bodyguard/drivers the same day is certainly one. Another cool coincidence occurred when I saw one of my happiness articles in an issue of Ladies Home Journal with a picture of Sally Field on the cover. I laughed in delight because she had been my favorite TV star when I was a child (I loved Gidget).
Experiencing these daily miracles will create a sense of wonder and optimism in your life. If you want to hear more about this and other life-changing ideas to make 2022 your most miraculous year ever, I invite you to read my ebook where I share The 4 Biggest Mistakes That Keep You From Living A Miraculous Life. Just CLICK HERE to access your copy for free.
Marci Shimoff is a #1 NY Times bestselling author, a world-renowned transformational teacher, and an expert on happiness, success and unconditional love. Her NY Times bestselling books Happy for No Reason, Love for No Reason and six titles in the Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul series have sold more than 16 million copies and are translated in 33 languages. She’s also a featured teacher in The Secret and narrator of the award-winning movie, Happy. She currently co-leads a global online program called Your Year of Miracles to help people live more miraculous lives. www.HappyforNoReason.com & www.youryearofmiracles.com