On the hottest day of the year and possibly even the decade with late 30’s showing on the temperature scale, we spent 9 hours in the car.

Fortunate that it is a modern car, air conditioned, with radio and auxiliary cable to play multiple Famous Five audiobooks.

Fortunate for my other body parts, as a long with my swollen, blistered lips of yesterday, this morning I woke up with a bright red peeling nose.

Fortunate that we didn’t really meet anyone, other than the very nice man who showed us all the gluten free options in the new Gloucester services and the kind man who pointed out I was parked in a coach bay and about to be charged £100.

Note to self – good work on the positive attitude.  Probably from the line I read in my book this morning that said that a ridiculously high proportion of people who attend seminars, read books, go to classes to improve themselves do very little with the information they learn.  In fact only about 5% do.

I really wanted to class myself in the 5% that do… so I immediately flipped back a few pages and did some of the exercises I had book marked for later and did them.

Having been down in the dumps rather a lot lately, one of my new daily declarations to myself is ‘I am fun and I laugh a lot daily’ (something I have felt that I haven’t been or done in the last few months) and then follow it up with ‘I live with a positive and optimistic attitude’… (again something, that I have felt that has spiralled down into negativity and cynicism lately).

So rather than viewing the 9 hour journey in stinking heat as my worst nightmare, I saw it for what it was and started to play with the parallels of life’s journey.

I set my sat nav to direct me ‘home’.  Just as my book has been advising that I declare my intentions and dreams to the ‘universe’.

I set off with purpose anticipating a nice clear run on the motorway, arriving home in the early afternoon.  Like the book says – expect the best!  Visualise it, believe it to be true.

As with any good journey, there are always hiccups and obstacles and this is where you just have to see them as that and turn them in to positives or learn from the lesson the universe is teaching you:

The sat nav got confused with new road layouts, so I went round in circles a few times around Exeter airport (dropping the Big Man off to fly to a meeting in Scotland).  Just as I had read, sometimes you have to rely on intuition, not just follow the instructions….

The sat nav took me a different route to the one I was expecting, or had even plugged in.  Rather than going  across the Midlands on the M42 to reach the M1 to Leeds as I thought I had instructed, we ended up going M6 to Manchester, and then the M60/62 across to Leeds.   The destination was the same, the end result the same, but the route slightly different… Did I mind?  No… I saw it that the Sat Nav knew better based on traffic or road conditions… I was open to being guided and had faith in the Universe navigating me on the right path, a better path..

The journey took almost twice as long as I was expecting, but the result was the same.  We are all safely at home, everyone happy, tucked up in our beds, the washing machine going 10 to the dozen…Again do I mind?  No!  I actually enjoyed the journey – the boys were really good.  We enjoyed the Famous Five, we enjoyed our picnic lunch… And the added bonus was that I had no time to go to the shop for food, so Granny invited us for a BBQ tea… so I didn’t have to shop or cook!  Bonus!

Does all this positivity, gratitude, trusting in the Universe make me in that top 5%?  only if I apply it daily, consistently, diligently…  and keep on reading, learning… and most importantly, applying.