And then came the crash...my brand new fabulous computer crashed. Within the course of a few minutes all of the hard work - the book, the website, the personal projects I had been working on were seemingly gone. I had spent about 6 hours earlier that day working on rewrites to my book...I was having a hard time finding the right words and the day's progress was slow, and finally I thought I had worked through all of the kinks...and suddenly it was very possible that it was all gone.

It took several days, but I eventually discovered that a repair was possible and that not all of the data would be lost...what a relief!! Then the next day we were presented with a new challenge - our air conditioner decided that it had outlived it's life expectancy, and was ready to head to air conditioner heaven.

Now most of you don't know me - don't know that I am not what one might consider to be "good in an emergency." I freely admit that I have been prone to panic and am a bit excitable and overly empathethic...

Well that was then, and this is now. I'm not saying I didn't have a moment or two, but 99.9% of the time I discovered that not only do I preach to others about living in the moment and anticipating positive end results in every situation, but I now find that I actually live in that place myself. When the computer crashed I was concerned, but was also able to stay present in the moment and realize that there wasn't much I could do other than to focus on and hold on to the knowing that it would all work out and that whatever needed to happen would, and that it would all end exactly the way it was intended to. Same with the air conditioner...I consciously made the choice to think of all of the people who had it worse than me - those who were without power from Tropical Storm Fay - so not only were they also hot, but they had no refrigerator, no lights, and some had to evacuate their homes because of flooding. I also choose to know that everything would fall into place and be ok...and that is exactly what happened.

I find more and more how easy it is to fall into that place of peace in the moment...to connect with my inner guide that tells me that everything is going to be ok, all is happening in the exact way it was intended. It took a long time to get to this place - it is easy to be "positive" when things are going well...the true test comes when things take a bad turn. I know the "bad turn" could have been much worse...but I also know that whatever comes my way I will not project and look for the worst...I will work at aligning myself with positive expectation...and I have no doubt that everything will be ok. As I said to a friend the other day, I no longer expect there will never be storms in my life...I just now know that it is possible to find peace within every storm. ~ Andrea :-)