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everything connects to everything else.
leonardo da vinci
Spotting Synchronicity
Synchronicity is happening all around you and has been your entire life. Every event in your life, person you met, or heartache you’ve experienced has led you to where you are right now—and they all have meaning and purpose. When you start to unearth these golden nuggets and link them together, you will realize your past is a true pot of gold. It will also help dramatically shift your outlook on the present and future circumstances to one that is more positive and hopeful. I’ve uncovered three distinct ways synchronicity shows up in our lives, and this chapter will help you get familiar with them so you can begin spotting them in your own past, present, and future. This is the next step in expanding your awareness and opening you up to these miracles, and I’ll also share an exercise to get you started on discovering the ones that have already taken place in your life.
How to Spot Synchronicity
The universe will often use synchronicity to communicate with us in our daily lives, and I’ve uncovered three scenarios, or themes, as the most common ways they show up. These include providing reassurance, which is a way to let us know we are on the right path; wake up and notice, offering gentle nudges to alert us about something that will be helpful either now or in the near future; and guidance and direction, which point us down the path toward our highest good, setting us up for the future.
The first two use the same method to get our attention: repetition. When you see something repeating in your life, whether it’s a certain topic, brand name, type of doctor, name of a doctor, type of diet, book title, author, or the same number sequence, this is always something to pay attention to and take some type of action on. I’ve found many people worry if they are making the right decision or choosing the right road, so they don’t take any action for fear it’s the wrong one. But I assure you, the universe is working for you 24/7 and if you head down the wrong path, it will simply redirect you. It’s always better to take action than to not take any action because when you do, you allow the universe to continue directing you forward.
If you get the name of a doctor two times in one week from two different sources, then take the action to look them up online and make the appointment. Maybe that doctor isn’t right for you, but you end up meeting someone in the waiting room who recommends you to something else that can help. If you waited on acting, that meeting might not have taken place, and then the universe has to go about arranging something else for you, praying you will act on that! The universe will never give up on you. It will continue to send you the same message until you get it. And when you don’t, it will try a different avenue. Let’s take a detailed look at each of the three ways synchronicity shows up.
1: Providing Reassurance
Have you ever wondered if you were making the right decision about something important in your life? Maybe you are looking to move to a new home, accept a new job offer, take a trip to Hawaii, or start a new diet, and you wonder if you should be doing it. Is that new neighborhood right for you? Will you be happy at the new company? Should you spend the money and take the time off to visit Hawaii now? Is paleo really the right diet for you?
It’s human nature to question our choices and worry we might be headed in the wrong direction. But when we can open ourselves up to the guidance available to each and every one of us—guidance I believe we knew was there when we made the decision to incarnate into a human body and take this miraculous journey on earth—this worry dissipates, and we can feel more secure in the decisions we make. In fact, even when we remain unsure, we can move forward with faith that, no matter what, all will be well. The universe is always operating for our highest good and will reroute us if we make a wrong turn. This faith becomes easier and easier as you wake up to these miracles.
The first way synchronicity shows up for us is to help in these scenarios and provide reassurance we are on the right path. I think of it as the universe or our angels and guides saying, “Hello, I’m here and helping/encouraging you. Move forward with faith in the direction you are headed.” Here is an example of how something like this would play out in your daily life:
Lately you have been hearing a lot about the health benefits of drinking green juice in the morning. People are posting about it on social media, including people you admire and follow, and so you think to yourself, “I should get a juicer and start adding this into my morning routine.” But you don’t buy the juicer yet. That week you wander into a bookstore and over to the bargain table, featuring books on a variety of topics. As you are browsing through, you see a book titled 101 Green Juice Recipes to Transform Your Health. You think, “That’s weird. I was just thinking about green juice.” You buy the book, and it sits on your kitchen table for the next week.
Then you sit down to watch some television, and as you are flipping through the channels, you come across the documentary “Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead,” which chronicles the journey of Joe Cross, who used juicing to regain his health—going from being 100 pounds overweight, relying on steroids, and suffering from a debilitating autoimmune disease to being happy and healthy. Again, you think, “Wow, I really should start drinking that green juice.” A few days later, a friend calls and tells you she bought a brand-new juicer and has been drinking green juice each morning for the past week with amazing results. You tell her all the things that have been happening and vow to finally get online and order that juicer. And you do.
Can you see how the universe continued to give you signs pointing you in the direction of green juice in that example? When we have an idea that will be beneficial to us and move us toward more health, joy, abundance, and love, the universe will work overtime to make sure we act on it. It will continue to put signs in front of us to remind and reassure us of something worth pursuing. Sometimes two or more signs show up over a matter of weeks or even months, and other times they can happen within the same day. In fact, I’ve had them happen within the same hour and sometimes even less.
For example, I had been working on a number of projects for my business, and as I was out running errands one day, I found myself worrying if I was on the right path and putting my focus on developing the right things at the time. I got back into my car to head home and looked at the clock. The time was 4:44. I know the universe and our angels communicate with us through numbers, especially when we see one number repeated, such as 11:11 or 2:22. I quickly grabbed my phone and looked up the meaning of 4:44. On Joanne Sacred Scribes’s website, this is what I found:
The number 4 resonates with the vibrations of the Archangels…inner wisdom, determination, endurance, hard work and progress. It also represents our passion and drive and encourages us to achieve our goals and aspirations…Angel number 444 asks that you pay attention to your intuition and inner wisdom as your connection to the angels and the angelic realm is very strong at 45this time. You are encouraged to continue on your current path as your drive and determination will lead to success and fulfillment.
It also said:
You have nothing to fear in regards to your life, work and divine life purpose and soul mission…Angel number 444 brings a message that ‘all is well.’ Trust that you are on the correct life path and doing a great job.6
This message resonated deeply with me. I realized the angels knew what I was thinking and had directed me to the message so I could stop worrying and doubting my choices as I had been doing that day. I started the car and drove home, and just as I was pulling into my driveway, the Sarah McLachlan song “Angel” came on the radio, which talks about an angel and finding peace. Now, not only did this song reinforce that angels were around me, but it also happens to be a song that my mother often uses to let me know she is around me. It was two messages in one!
2: Wake Up and Notice
For so many of us, life has become so fast-paced. We run through our days, get caught up in routines, and don’t even look up when we are walking somewhere because we are busy looking down at our cell phones. Because of this, it’s very easy to miss the answers and insights around us that could be helpful or even life-changing. That is why the universe will use signs and synchronicity to help us wake up and notice the important things we are too busy to pay attention to in our daily life. I view these as gentle nudges telling us where to go or what to do next for our highest good and happiness.
Just as in the last example, where the universe used repetition to clue us in to a message, the same thing applies here. Sometimes it’s a clue that crosses our path once and we never think about it again, and other times it’s something entirely new to us that we have never thought about or seen before.
A great example of this from my own life happened in the summer of 2016. I was reviewing books and was reading one that mentioned the Kirtan Kriya meditation. I had heard about this meditation many times in the past and even read scientific research published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease,7 revealing it improved brain functioning, memory, and mood. I made a mental note to look into it soon.
The next day I was in my office going through another stack of books sent for review when I picked one up randomly and started looking through the chapters. Suddenly, I found myself face-to-face with the Kirtan Kriya meditation—again. “Wow,” I thought. “I seriously need to look into this meditation.” I put it down and picked up the next book, which had to do with spirituality in business. It did not appear to have anything to do with yoga or meditation. I opened to a random page, and guess what was staring back at me? An illustration for the Kirtan Kriya meditation. My mouth dropped open in disbelief and my eyes nearly popped out of my head as chills went down my spine.
“Okay, I get it.” I said out loud to the universe and whoever else was trying to get my attention. “I’ll try practicing the Kirtan Kriya. In fact, I’ll look up more about it right now.”
Here are just a few of the benefits I discovered:
After three mentions of the Kirtan Kriya in twenty-four hours—with two happening only minutes apart—I knew this was something important for me to pursue. I researched the meditation technique, watched a few videos online, and then downloaded a free Kirtan Kriya Timer app to my cell phone. I fell in love with it. Now I teach it to others based on what I’ve learned. In fact, I’ll be sharing exactly how to do the meditation in Chapter 9, and you can watch a video I made to guide you at the link in the resources section on page 6.
In addition to waking us up to something new, sometimes the universe will use synchronicity in this way to wake up and redirect us when we’re headed in the wrong direction. Think of the universe as a GPS that will reroute you if you make a wrong turn. This is why taking some type of action forward is always better than standing still because even if the action you take isn’t the perfect one, it will lead you to the right place. Taking action will always get us where we want to go faster than not taking any action at all.
For example, have you ever had a relationship, either romantic or friendly, that you knew in your heart was not healthy for you? The person might be an energy vampire, where after spending time with them or talking on the phone you feel depleted and exhausted. They might be jealous of you and make you feel bad when good things happen to you, or stop you from moving forward on things that would be beneficial for you because it wouldn’t be beneficial for them. Maybe you have even walked away a couple of times but keep finding yourself going back. This happens in both romantic relationships and friendships, especially to those of us who are empathic and tend to take on the energy of other people or the environments we visit. If you are in a situation that is not healthy for you, the universe will do all it can to help you move out of that scenario once and for all, and it will continue to try until you do.
I’ve had relationships like this, and I can think of one friendship in particular that very much served a purpose in my life and was beneficial at one time but that had become unhealthy for me. It was draining and exhausting, yet each time there was a chance to exit, I would reopen the door and let this person back into my life. After the second or third time of reopening the door, I was forced to shut it, and I now know the universe had a big hand in that happening. This is how it played out.
While texting a friend of mine and complaining about the person I was in an unhealthy friendship with, I “accidentally” sent it to the person I was talking about instead of my friend. I put that word accidentally in quotes here because I know there are no accidents. Thank goodness I didn’t say anything terrible in the text, but it was obvious I was texting someone else about her, and she was furious. She told me the friendship was over and that she would be blocking my texts and calls from now on.
I was very upset at the time and couldn’t believe I had made such a mistake. However, knowing that everything happens for a reason, I let it go and surrendered the situation to the universe. Ten months later, I was in the kitchen washing dishes, and a mug I had bought for both my friend and myself slipped off the counter and broke into pieces. I didn’t think anything about it until the next day when I got a letter in the mail from her reaching out in an effort to start the friendship again. I knew right away that the mug breaking was the universe’s way of telling me the friendship was truly over and opening the door again would be a mistake for both of us. In fact, as the cliché goes, when God closes a door, he opens a window. Once this friendship ended, I had more time to devote to other friends and started spending more time with my best friend from high school, Sandi. A couple weeks after the mug-breaking incident, Sandi introduced me to the man who would become my husband.
3: Guidance and Direction
The universe is always setting us up for the future. We don’t know what is coming next, but the universe and our angels, guides, and loved ones on the other side—where there is no time and space—know it all. As events in our life play out, we don’t often notice how one event or circumstance connects with another. Most of the time, these connections can only be seen by looking backward. As you begin to open your awareness and see these connections in your past, you will begin to have more faith and peace in your future, no matter what happens to you, and you will also uncover the connections as they unfold in the future much easier, too.
Apple founder Steve Jobs said it best during his June 2005 Stanford University commencement speech where he alluded to synchronicity and how the universe always has a plan for us:
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So, you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.8
Once you begin to connect the dots in your own life, and I will show you how to start with an exercise at the end of this chapter and another one in Chapter 8, you won’t be able to look at life and the events in it the same way.
For instance, leading up to my mother’s death, there were so many circumstances that occurred to prepare myself and my family for her passing and our ability to cope with it. The month before she died, my therapist suggested I bring my father into a session because we were never very close when I was younger. I used to joke that we didn’t speak until I was in the third grade, but he honestly wasn’t much of a talker when I was growing up. My mother was the buffer between us and she called the shots in our house. She was always the one my sister and I went to for anything. My dad worked all day, came home around 6:30 p.m., ate dinner, watched television, and went to bed.
I remember how uncomfortable I was when I asked him to come with me to see my therapist, and then taking the half-hour ride to the appointment together. He was my dad and I loved him, but in a sense, he felt like a stranger to me. There was an energetic distance between us. However, after that session, the energy actually shifted. I felt more connected with him and there was more of an ease between us. Of course, I had no idea it would be just him and I living in the house together only one month later after my mother died—but the universe did. Looking back, it was no accident that session happened at the exact time it did. It made the transition to life without my mother—who my father leaned on just as much as my sister and I did—a bit easier. Today, our relationship is so much more connected than it ever was before, and it all started with that one session.
Even the timing of my eating disorder played into the preparation for my mother’s death. My struggle was at its worst in the year before her death, and because of my fear of food, gaining weight, and feeling out of control, I isolated myself a lot that year. I didn’t want to be in social situations where I would have to face food or worry what people were thinking of me. Instead of going out with friends and socializing, as most twenty-
one-year-old girls would do, I hung out with my mother. In fact, we spent more time together that year than ever before. We watched movies, went shopping, talked, and grew even closer. I’m actually grateful to my eating disorder for granting me that time with her before she was gone and leading me to a therapist who not only ignited a new connection with my father, but who also would help me tremendously in dealing with my mother’s sudden death. You see how it all fits together in perfect timing?
Guided to Love
I’ll give you one more example before I share an exercise to get you started on uncovering these connections in your own life. Three years ago, after not dating anyone for a couple of years, I decided at thirty-seven years old it was time I opened my heart to new love. I opened an email from a friend sharing that the new moon was coming up and for my astrological sign of Virgo it was perfect for manifesting love. New moons are said to be the ideal times for setting intentions to manifest what you desire, so I decided to perform a ritual that would set my intention and bring new love into my life.
On a snowy night in February, I made a list of all the attributes I wanted my perfect guy to have, including a love of cats, an open mind to my spiritual views, a family that loved me and that I loved in return, and someone who would adore me as much as I adored him. I made a copy of the list and tucked it away so I would have it to look back on in the future—something I had learned from interviewing Arielle Ford for her book The Soulmate Secret—and I headed outside to the back porch so I could burn my list in an old slow cooker to release the intention out to the universe. Yes, you read that correctly. I burned it in a slow cooker on my back porch! I let it go and didn’t give much thought to it after that.
Seven months later, after persuasion from my sister, I hired an online dating coach. Part of the package was a professional photo shoot, help creating an online profile on various dating websites, and weekly phone calls to go over the results. I had just started the process and had not even put up my profiles yet when out of the blue my friend Sandi texted me a picture of this guy in a red shirt, asking if I thought he was cute. It turns out a coworker of hers had been talking about this guy named Ryan on and off for months because Ryan was good friends with his wife. When Sandi asked to see his picture, she thought of me and asked if he was single.
I thought he seemed cute from the picture and agreed she could send him my picture and phone number. I figured since I was starting on this dating journey, I might as well give it a shot. And guess what? He is now my husband, and he fulfilled almost every item on that list. I went on a couple dates through the dating websites since I had paid for the coach and she encouraged me to keep my options open, but the more I saw and talked to Ryan, the less desire I had to date anyone else. I just wish the universe could have arranged this so I hadn’t blown money on the dating coach, but it was a small price to pay for true love!
Why am I telling you this story? Let’s analyze the moving parts of this to connect the dots:
Now, if that is not proof enough that there is a secret order to our life and that the universe knows exactly what it’s doing, then buckle up because you won’t believe what I’m about to tell you next. This entire scenario of me finding love actually started more than ten years before I ever met Ryan—and my mother had a hand in it from the other side.
Four years after visiting George Anderson, my sister heard about a medium named Concetta Bertoldi who gave readings out of her home in New Jersey. She came highly recommended, so we decided to make an appointment for the two of us to get another reading together. I was twenty-six years old at the time and had just ended a tumultuous romantic relationship, so at the end of the reading Concetta asked if we had any questions for my mother. I wanted to know what she thought about the relationship I had been in. After sharing how glad she was that I was no longer with that guy, she shared very specific details about the man I would marry someday.
“She said you will know the man you are going to marry someday because he will wear some type of uniform,” Concetta shared, relaying the message from my mother. “It doesn’t have to be a military or police uniform. He might just work for the town or something, but he wears a uniform for work. He also works with his hands. He is very good with his hands and can fix things around the house.”
Shortly after I met Ryan, I discovered he worked as a chemical engineer for a refinery that required him to wear a head-to-toe uniform when working in certain conditions. And he not only worked with his hands, but he also had a home improvement business, remodeling kitchens, bathrooms, basements, and more. He can fix or build just about anything and is amazing at it. Prior to meeting him, nobody I dated fit the description she gave me that day.
Now it’s time to take the first step on your journey to uncovering these miracles in your own life. This exercise will be a useful tool for you moving forward, and it has helped me and my students uncover so many connections from the past. When I started looking back on my own life and trying to connect the dots, a friend suggested I do a timeline of my life. I started this exercise and could not believe the things I discovered!
For example, I knew my mother was aware of the medium George Anderson and his book Lessons from the Light before she died because my sister’s friend brought it to my parents’ house one night, where we all discussed it. However, it wasn’t until I started working on the timeline that I realized his book had been published only six months before she died. I had no idea at the time that my sister and I would be driving to Long Island for a reading with him to talk to my mother after she passed—but the universe did.
6. Joanne Sacred Scribes, “Joanne Sacred Scribes ANGEL NUMBER 444.” 10 September 2011, sacredscribesangelnumbers.blogspot.com/2011/09/angel-number-444.html.
7. “Meditation and Music May Help Reverse Early Memory Loss in Adults at Risk for Alzheimer’s Disease,” Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, www.j-alz.com/content/meditation-and-music-may-help-reverse-early-memory-loss-adults-risk-alzheimer%E2%80%99s-disease.
8. Stanford University, “Text of Steve Jobs’ Commencement Address (2005).” Stanford News, 12 June 2017, news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/.