In magic, timing is everything. Hand and eye coordination need to be flawless. A hidden move here, a directed glance there, and what could otherwise look like a series of questionable gestures becomes performance art and earns a standing ovation.
In life as well, so much comes down to timing, especially when it's time to make a change. At least when learning to be a magician, you can consult books, videos and performance coaches to learn the secrets of timing, to know when to do what. You can rehearse. With life, it's not that easy or clear-cut.
I recently worked on a writing project that ended abruptly. I had been consulting for a wonderful company that provides real help for people in real need. The work was fulfilling and allowed me the running room to finally figure out how to meld magic and ministry together, to flesh out this thing called Magistry, before bringing it to the world.Â
Several months into the project, there was a changing of the guard. And just like that -- poof! -- the running room was gone. Or so I thought.
How do we know when it's time to make a change? Sometimes, as in this instance, the time chooses us. Ah, but here's the thing: We still have power over our timing.Â
I don't mean I can use my magic skills to make money flow endlessly from my hands and build back that financial running room. (Real Magic Spoiler Alert! I can't!) Nor can I turn back the clock to when things were better and days were sunnier. Time travel just doesn't exist. If it did, there would be headlines every day about folks from the future suddenly appearing to fix things, like the quest for world peace. (Clearly that is not happening.) Generation XXX, coming to pay a visit.
No, I did a little verbal sleight of hand just a moment ago and said "our" timing, not "the" timing. There's a difference. The timing is when fate intervenes. Our timing is when we do.
Fate doesn't always have to have the upper hand. In my case, the internal intervening conversation sounded something like this:
What? No work suddenly? I'm going to freak out. But I choose not to.
How will I make a living? I choose to think that since I've always been able to pay the bills, odds are I will find a way.
This will interrupt and delay my work developing the Magistry concept. It's internal conflict like this that Magistry is meant to address. So I can choose to believe I'll be developing (and road-testing) Magistry the entire time I'm going through this passage.
I think you get the picture. The operative word in all three of my talkbacks is "choose." I'll admit, though, that that first one is a toughie. I've been working on it every day since "time to make a change" reared its existential head. If total freakout mode was my usual destination in such a crisis, now I am circling it from the borderlands. Strange territory indeed. But I'm trying not to jump the fence.
There's an age-old wisdom that says we can't change what has already happened but we can choose what to make of it. As an article in Psychology Today put it, we can't change the past, but we can rewrite our history. And that kind of reframing can be very helpful. But what about right now? What do we do when -- to quote how Beethoven described the first four notes of his famous Fifth Symphony -- fate comes knocking at the door?
This is where using language such as, "I choose" has magical, almost mystical power. That's because you don't even have to believe your own positive self-talk at first. Just say the words -- or write them -- and watch what happens. We spend years training our brains to jump to the negative, perhaps because of our innate need for safety and a tendency toward disaster preparedness. Alarm bells go off. Everyone head for the exits! What if you went over to the glass case on the wall and instead of pulling the alarm lever down, you pulled it up?
We can train our brains to trigger the choice response, too. Psychology studies have shown that even faking a smile can improve your mood and bring on the real thing. Use "choose," and after a while you will begin to see that most events in your life don't have to be three-alarm fires. You have a power. It's the power of mind over what matters. If you can think at all, you have what it takes to pull this off.
When fate says, "Knock, knock" and then, "It's time," stop for a moment. Hold. Breathe. Think of the choices before you. They include how you choose to react and what of your many gifts you would like to bring forward in your choice response. Lo and behold, you will find that, thanks to the restless and infinite nature of the human imagination, your choices are endless. You'd swear it was magic. It's not. It is simply you in touch with your own human powers. Fire away.