Great expectations

A co-worker at my "day" job got me thinking today. He was going into the conference room to get a cup of coffee and stopped to ask, "Would you like one?" I nodded eagerly, "Lots of milk, please."

When he returned with the coffee, I thanked him profusely and told him he was my favorite person in the world right at that moment. We both laughed. He left the room.

A moment later he came back and said, "You know, let me tell you something about men. Expect more. Don't let them think a cup of coffee is all it takes."

This set me back on my heels for a moment. Then it was like the brilliance of it washed over me in an instant. I replied, "You know, that's very true." It kept working its way into my brain and I realized this was a perfect Florence Scovel Shinn moment. Of course I should expect more!

"You are either heading for lack, or heading for abundance," Shinn, a metaphysician, wrote in The Secret Door To Success (1940). "The man with a rich consciousness and the man with a poor consciousness are not walking on the same mental street."

Shinn's idea is to prepare as if. For example, if you want a new home, she says you should buy furnishings for it as an act of faith.

She wrote: "Someone will say, 'Suppose you haven't money to buy ornaments or a chair?' Then look in shop windows and link with them in thought. Get in their vibration: I sometimes hear people say, 'I don't go into the shops because I can't afford to buy anything.' That is just the reason you should go into the shops. Begin to make friends with the things you desire or acquire."

Of course, this point was also driven home in The Secret. It's about the power of thoughts and words and how they interconnect. Shinn writes, " ... it is so necessary to make your demands aright on the Universal Supply, and ask for what is yours by divine right and under grace in a perfect way."

Never thought a cup of coffee would serve as such a stark reminder.