In a world where we could have just about everything we want at a moment’s notice, we have to pick and choose where we allocate our energy and always remember that while good things are fleeting,

Hi! Yes! The pessimist in the title is me! This might seem funny or surprising to you because I often hear that I have such positive energy, but it doesn’t always come naturally to me. The positivity I project isn’t fake; it is absolutely real, but it doesn’t always come naturally, especially when I’m thinking about my Great Things.

So what happens when you get someone who considers themself more of a pessimist trying to manifest… well, this newsletter and some details from my past…

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Manifestation! Everyone’s doing it. Okay, maybe not everyone, but I’m sure you had an immediate reaction to manifestation. Either “yes! I love it, works for me” or “that’s more BS than Adrian saying he likes to wear sleeves.”

Usually, there is no in-between, and to be completely honest, I’ve actually found it to work for me. But in my case, it’s not like toxic positivity where I’m just throwing hope and joy at a problem and hoping it will magically resolve it. I also need to include some elbow grease with it (Nana would be proud of said elbow grease, especially if it did double duty and kept me from looking ashy).

I start with an idea or a desire, something I want to achieve, and I picture it in my mind and try to write it down somewhere. Then I fight with the little voice in my head that says,

“Who, you?! You think you’re good enough to get this? Ha! Dream big, buddy!”

(That inner voice can be quite the jerk sometimes and just downright MEAN)

But the seed has been planted, and the magic starts to happen. In reality, this desire has reprogrammed my brain to make decisions that get me closer to my goals. Sometimes, it’s that nagging voice in the back of my head telling me to go to a place or talk to a person (this one is much nicer to me). Other times, it’s treating every opportunity as a “this could be it” moment. Not necessarily a huge step forward, but one where my life is slowly changed.

This concept works for me because I truly consider myself a closeted pessimist. I love to find the beauty and good in everything, but behind that is a man yelling. “Everything is going to crash and burn! Nothing is going to work out! Prepare yourself for the worst.” It’s like Titanic-level doom in this brain of mine.

Wow, there sure are a lot of voices in my head talking to me… y’all paying rent up there?

But whether I realize it or not, my path is getting slightly altered in the direction I want to go because my actions start aligning with the path that will get me there.

It’s not always obvious. Take Google Maps, you plug in an address, and you get several clear routes to your destination. Usually, we all choose the fastest, but sometimes we want to skip a toll, or a road we know gets full of traffic. Maybe we want the scenic route. We also have a few additional turns in the back of our mind, where we think we can cheat the system and take a completely different route, and outsmart the navigation system

C’mon, I know it’s not just me, admit it!

There are always multiple routes to a given destination that will take you past very different things that could leave something in your path you might not have otherwise seen that will change your life.

A new coffee shop! An available apartment! A new sight! A random stranger on the street!

Ahh, strangers, how much I love to both take and disregard your advice, like the one who came up to me in California many years ago.

I was getting coffee with a friend when someone she knew swung by to drop something off for her. Despite never having met him before, he asked to pull me aside because he had something to tell me. He then proceeded to drop a load of information on what I should do to live the life I dreamed of.

You may have heard this story before, but the man in LA found me during a transitional time in my life, where I was wondering what my next step was. Not a lot he shared was new info; he brought to light things that I already knew on some level. He told me that I couldn’t live small and that I was missing out on things because I thought that accepting recognition or putting myself in forward-facing roles was a negative. I had tried to make myself small and avoid attention because I was worried that receiving attention would come off as needing it, and I never wanted to be the person who felt they needed attention to exist. 

So, I guess the lesson here is to listen to every stranger’s opinion, especially ones on the internet?

My brain took what he had shared with me and used it to highlight what was applicable, almost like SparkNotes for my goals. I could see some of those new routes and new things I could try. The seed that had been planted all that time ago was starting to grow into a tree that was coming into my path and redirecting me.

Like with the man in LA, my life has been punctuated by both little and big moments that I might not have realized the gravity of at the time. The trajectory was altered from each one; it just might not have seemed like it in that moment: 

There were little ones, like all the times I dropped into a workout class and got to know an acquaintance on a new level. These people eventually became life-changing friends I might never have connected with on the same level. 

I clicked on my current apartment, thinking it was in the same neighborhood I lived in. It ended up being in a completely different neighborhood, but living there changed my life in so many little ways that ended up amounting to big things.

There’s obviously the big moment where I was testing out a demo treadmill at the PelotonHQ for a personal training client when Rebecca Kennedy saw something in me. At the time, I didn’t realize it was a big moment; it was just another aspect of my daily life. The same could be said for when I showed up at a car meet in search of furthering my passion, only to reconnect with my brother’s childhood friend, which led to my partnership with BMW.

It’s moments like these that make me ask what would happen if I woke up at the start of every day with the energy that I could encounter something life-changing. Because that has been the case many times over. When I hold my Great Things so clear in my mind, I can trust that any “nos” I encounter are just re-directs. It’s Google Maps sending me on a new route. If you want to get real capitalistic, it’s the grocery store switching up how the aisles are set up, so when you go down the same aisle, you’re seeing cookies that catch your eye instead of your normal pasta.

To me, a lot of manifestation is about knowing exactly what you want and keeping yourself open while you continue with hard work. I don’t see it as a hands-off process; you have to be actively working towards something. But whether it’s the law of attraction, or maybe it’s just your brain being redirected in every decision you make, when you keep yourself open to all the moments you experience, and all the people as the ones that influence your life, you start seeing the beauty of all those nos you had in the past.

When it comes to your Great Things, no is just a redirect down a different path; it is not the final decision.

If you only pause to reflect on your life for one moment today, do it now.

Have a change of opinion on manifestation after today? Maybe it’s worked for you, maybe it hasn’t…or maybe you just haven’t realized it yet. In my opinion, the first step is knowing what you want and that the possibility of getting it could be coming at you TODAY!

Your turn! Journal your answer, or if you find yourself sharing the progress of your Great Things on social, tag me at @greatthingswith_adrian so I can join in on cheering you along!

Here’s to the people out there achieving their Great Things!

There’s a new episode of Great Things coming out soon, so make sure you catch up on the latest with Max and read some of the takeaways I got from how he achieved his Great Thing.

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