“Recently, I’ve been asking for a really big opportunity to come in to my life. ”

I said to my girlfriend.

She looked at my through squinted eyes.

“Asking who?”

“Well… the Universe.”

She chuckled, like she always does when I tell an admittedly lame joke.

“The UNIVERSE?” Rolling her eyes.

I gave her my serious face.

“Really?”

She had a point. We’re rational people. We take western medicine because we know homeopathy is bullshit and if we had kids, we’d get them vaccinated. We read books about science and watch documentaries about how one day maybe we might think about possibly becoming vegetarians, for a bit.

If there was a boy scout badge for being rational: stitch it on my arm and call me Arkela.

But here I am, speaking to the universe like it’s my pal.

It all started a couple of months back.

I’d read a book called The Miracle Morning. After giving it a scathing review on Goodreads I then started to follow through with my own modified version.

Every morning I wake up, I go to my condo’s roof and after a few minutes of exercise and meditation I do my affirmations. Out loud. While visualising what it would look like. Doing my best to fill myself with emotion every time I say it.

This tends to scare away the birds.

One of my affirmations works like this. I look up to the sky, spread my arms wide and say:

I’m ready for a big opportunity.

Not send me a big opportunity. Not give me an opportunity. It’s just acknowledging that I’m ready.

I’ve had big opportunities before — some I’ve squandered, some I’ve been lucky enough to do well with and others have no doubt floated past me while I stare at them with a scrunched up confused face.

Once I had the opportunity to meet Lionel Richie outside a palace in Delhi but I squandered that one because I didn’t like asking Taxi drivers to turn around.

One repeating pattern throughout my 20's was that squandering. From a lack of experience and character I would do well, only to later self-sabotage in some way.

As I enter my 30’s I’m starting to feel that my character is starting to catch up with my talent.

If you are not careful, your talent will take you places that your character can’t keep you. — Eric Thomas, The Hip Hop Preacher.

The next big opportunity won’t be wasted and I’ll use it to do good for those around me.

So, back to having a little chat with the Universe.

It reminds me of one of my favourite quips.

And herein lies my girlfriends mistake.

You are not in the universe. You are the universe. The atoms that make up your body and you consciousness are completely inseparable from the soup of all other atoms that collectively make up… the Universe.

Talking to it, is talking to you.

It’s the act of subtly programming your sub-conscious to be on full alert. At it’s most simple level, it is focusing your attention.

Where your focus goes, your energy flows.

The ripples that come from that affirmation, the influence it has on your behaviour, the interactions it leads to, the people it brings in to your life, the opportunities it bubbles to the surface — they are hard to credit to the actual affirmation.

But it seems to be working.

In the last 2 months I’ve started 3 new projects with 3 smart people. And the feeling of abundance that flows from having options is in full force. That abundance leads to more giving, which leads to more opportunity. A self-fulfilling prophecy that feeds on itself.

It may just all be confirmation bias. It probably is. But like the placebo effect — I’ll take it if it works. Because being rational is doing what seems to work consistently, even if it does look a little bit batshit crazy in the moment.