Sometimes you see just the right thing at just the right time. A book drops off the shelf. Or in my case, you turn the TV on at the right time and come across a program you weren’t planning to watch.
One you were meant to watch.
That happened to me last Friday. I was watching a DVD, and I hit the wrong button and went back to cable. The channel that came on wasn’t one I had been watching. Can you hear the eerie music creeping in? Something magical was happening. The show was on Oprah’s network, OWN, and she was interviewing Pharrell about his song, “Happy.”
Well, I could sense something significant was happening, so I started watching, and boy, am I glad I did.
Pharrell shared that when “Happy” came out in the movie Despicable Me 2 in July, NO ONE would play the song on the radio. It sounded nothing like the other hot music that was playing at the time. Can you imagine that?
He doubted.
Then he trusted the vision.
He made the video to “Happy” in November because he believed in it, and five months later it went viral. Now it’s one of the most played songs out there, and it has catapulted this artist to his own success, one that he’d given up on achieving.
Happiness is trusting the vision.
Why did this resonate so much? I’m still a new author, out less than a year. I published Nora Roberts Land in July, the same time as “Happy.” The book has been finding readers and the other way around, but there have been some bumps here and there. I still know where I want to be, and I’m not there yet. I’m grateful for all I have received, but I have had my moments of doubt since quitting my very lucrative career to pursue my passion.
Happiness is trusting the vision.
If Pharrell can experience that big of a shift in just five months, so can I. My sister, Michelle, the one whose ex blamed their divorce on Nora Roberts, an experience that inspired part of my character Meredith’s journey in Nora Roberts Land, also had a huge breakthrough. She’s still working “the day job,” but she’s pursuing her dream on the side like I used to do. She was just voted Best Wedding Planner of the Year in the city where she lives.
Again, happiness is trusting the vision.
Deep down inside us, there is a blueprint of this vision. Once we are brave enough to look, we see what we’re called to do. But that’s not enough. We have to take guided action, and that requires courage and trust and lots of grace.
When the storms come and shake the foundations, when things don’t turn out as we expect, it’s easy to stop trusting in that blueprint, that soul vision, and to think it was wrong or simply fading like old ink on parchment.
In those moments, we have to reach deep inside ourselves and trust what we find there.
Where are you with your vision? Do you have one? Have you looked? If so, are you moving forward?
A dear friend just wrote me to tell me she is taking the steps to her divine blueprint, this new blissful vision. She said it’s exciting and scary and oh so new.
That’s how the path is lined, it seems.
But we are not alone as we walk it, and our feet are sure and true as we continue to pursue it—even when the sky grows dark. When it does, there is shelter and support.
We wait for the sun to come out.
Happiness is trusting the vision.