The old adage, or at least a take-off, is “you see what you want to see”. This can also apply to our life experience. So if we expect certain outcomes, we will attract those outcomes. For instance, if I want a better job, I might decide that it is impossible and look at all the reasons I cannot have that job. I won’t get a better job, because I see myself failing. One suggestion for overcoming that mindset is to look for unusual things in our daily lives. Pam Grout in her popular book, E², suggests that we look for yellow butterflies, even in the dead of winter. Somehow, somewhere those yellow butterflies will appear fluttering past the window or maybe stamped on the side of a paper cup. The trick is to count them. By counting the appearances of yellow butterflies in a certain time period, it proves that if you look for yellow butterflies, you will find them. And this principle can be applied to daily living. I was a little skeptical about how yellow butterflies can make a significant impact on one’s life. That is until I walked along Fleet Street after visiting St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Men’s summer business attire in London’s financial district appears to be a light blue, long-sleeved shirt worn with black pants. Tie and jacket are optional. Groups of blue-shirted men escaped their buildings at the lunch hour forming a river of blue along the pavement on Fleet Street. Some of the men jazzed it up a bit with a pin-stripe or even a checkered pattern, while adhering to the blue color scheme. In awe of the obvious conformity to what is deemed proper business attire, I decided to give the yellow butterfly experiment a try. I would count the men I saw in pink shirts on Fleet Street from St. Paul’s to where Fleet turns into Strand – just a few blocks. The rules were simple. Obvious tourists did not count. It had to be men that looked like they were part of the financial scene and they must be wearing suit trousers, not jeans. Up to this point, I had not seen anything close to a pink oxford shirt.

It was the strangest thing. I began to see pink shirts everywhere. I counted ten men that fit my criteria in a couple of blocks. As I continued onto Strand, pink shirts outnumbered the blue shirts. Maybe there’s something to this. It is hard for most modern women to walk down a busy street without making some comparisons, so I thought about looking at other women in a different way. Instead of noticing all the pulled-together, high-heeled, long-legged women, I looked for women in dresses who wore trainers. And it worked again. Women in lovely dresses or mini-skirted teens or well-dressed eighty-year-old women were wearing socks and athletic shoes. It seems we can alter our vision of the world in very simple ways. Maybe that applies to our relationships as well. If we expect certain behaviors from our children or spouses, we often are proved right. If we meet strangers and form an immediate opinion of them, do we reinforce our own stereotypical prejudices?

The woman sitting next to me on the train, who was on her cell phone for the first hour into the trip, was not a rude, don’t-care person. She turned out to be making an unexpected trip to see her sister who was going through a bad time, but she had to leave her ailing mother and new grandson to go cheer up her sister. The taxi driver that ignored me for the first five minutes? He had an intercom in his taxi that didn’t work very well. We ended up having a nice chat about Las Vegas and Scotland.

I must add a word of caution here. Sometimes people are exactly as they seem. I found myself in real trouble in Paris and in Norwich when I ignored my intuition. Luckily, I was able to extricate myself from both situations without more than a roughing up. These were isolated situations and far from the normal experiences I have had, but there are times it is better to keep those first impressions, even if you are wrong. Now, I will always put up defenses when I see groups of young men. It is unfortunate, but necessary.

What about yellow butterflies when you want to attract financial success or maybe just that guy down the street? The Law of Attraction will work for us when we focus on the outcome, right? Just thinking of our desire will manifest its appearance? Wrong. I want to believe that deep, constant, focused thinking can bring things or people into my life. This is where we misuse the Law of Attraction. I saw pink shirts on the street because men were wearing them. I did not pull pink shirts out of the air and dress those men. I paid attention to my surroundings. The key to success in our life, however we define success, is more than thinking about it. We must see the opportunities around us that will help us attain that success. It is important to think about what we want in life, but the key is to focus on that desire and to look for the yellow butterflies. The Law of Attraction is not a passive activity. We need to see the outcome, but we also have to participate in attracting our desires. It might be a good idea to introduce yourself to the guy down the street or to apply for that high-paying job. Sometimes things appear to fall into our laps. And, yes, there are times you get something with no effort. The most likely scenario for a positive outcome when applying the Law of Attraction, though, is that focusing on your desire makes you more likely to act on opportunities to bring that desire into your life. Rhonda Byrne found the Secret, but it required work to produce the movie and write her book.

I’m far from reaching my life’s goals. There are some very personal and improbable things I want to attract into my life. Getting back to Oxford was once a dream. Did it happen because I thought about it hard enough? Yes, sort of. I thought about it, but then I looked at the ways I could make it happen. There were obstacles, yet I recognized the opportunities I had to overcome those obstacles. Taking this trip was the realization of a dream. But this journey was relatively easy to make happen. Some of my other dreams are not as tangible and look to be far from my reach. I hope I can learn to see the pink shirts and the yellow butterflies when I go after those dreams.

I’m in Edinburgh now. I’ve noticed kilts and bagpipes and overflowing tour buses. There are souvenir shops surrounded by whiskey bars and cashmere stores. My flat is just behind the Palace of Holyroodhouse and the flat’s garden border is Holyrood Park and Arthur’s Seat. Perhaps tomorrow I should change my perspective and count how many Queen Elizabeths I see walking along the Royal Mile…