 |
TEN PEARLS |
|
— Evelyn C. White, editor of
The Black Woman’s Health
Guide INTRODUCTION In
a Shell: Where
This Strand Came From, What It Is, And
What It Does It
is 1971. Looking up from my
typewriter, I glance around the busy office where I work.
For the tenth or fifteenth time that day I feel a surge of
discontent well up in me. Trying to shake it off, I put my fingers to my temples and
hang my head for a few minutes. Finally
I am able to get back to my typing.
Driving home in the rusty ‘55
Chevy I had bought two years before, I imagine I can smell the whiffs of
carbon monoxide I had been told were seeping inside whenever I drove the
car.
“Bad problem,” the mechanic
had said, “and it needs to be fixed fast.
It’ll be about four hundred dollars.”
“Will it hurt me if I keep
driving?”
“Sure will.”
Still I hadn’t done anything
about it. After paying my
rent, gas, and light bill out of my once-monthly paycheck of two hundred
and seventy dollars, I didn’t have the money.
Savings?
That was a laugh. And
how many times can a grown woman keep asking her father for help?
I had gone to my father so many times of late that my pride had
finally kicked in. Wasn’t I
a grown up? When was I going
to be able to stand on my own?
I got home, sat on the couch in
my living room, and burst into tears.
Hours later I found myself still sitting there with my coat on.
Finally I crawled into bed and stared at the ceiling.
“What’s wrong?”
I asked myself.
Only a few weeks earlier, on my
twenty-eighth birthday, I had looked in the mirror and decided that I
didn’t look bad at all. I
had a good, steady job as a clerk at the health center.
My friends considered this a major achievement.
Most of them were still on the jobs they had taken just out of high
school. Some of them were
married and had children and still did quite well; they paid the rent on
time, wore attractive clothes, and drove new cars.
I had been married.
I had no children and my married friends thought that I was lucky
to be able to spend my salary on just myself.
What was my problem?
As far as relationships went, I
was between boyfriends by choice. A
month before I had ejected from my life a fellow I had been seeing who had
quit the job he had when we met and was not aggressively pursuing
re-employment. When he turned down a job at a neighborhood gas station
because, as he put it, “I’m too good to be a gas jockey,” I realized
he didn’t share my work ethic and that ended the relationship for me. There have been other times when I had no steady companion,
so I didn’t think that being single was the reason for my malaise.
“What is it then?” I asked
myself as I began to doze off.
Later that night I awoke, sat
up, and started to think.
“I want my life to be
different, I want to be more than I am,” I thought.
“But you are okay now.
For someone of your class and circumstances, you’re doing
fine,” I told myself. “You
have a high school diploma and have completed a year of college.
That’s great. You’re
the only one in your crowd who has been to college at all.”
Back and forth I argued, but it
didn’t help.
“Stop reaching,” I told
myself. “What you have is a lot better than what a lot of people
have. Plus you’ve got a
family and friends who like and respect you.”
I got up and went to the
bookshelf to find something to read.
Years
Later It
is 1983. I look up from my
desk and survey my large, lovely office.
A feeling of pride and accomplishment pervades my being and I
smile.
“Well, well, well,” I
think, “this is success.”
And it is.
In the short space of twelve years, I have climbed to the top of my
chosen profession. I am the
executive director of an agency in one of the major social services
systems in California. I am
in charge of a large staff and responsible for a budget of a million
dollars. My colleagues in the
field concede that this kind of rise is unusual.
Usually it takes two decades or more to reach the top position in
my field of work.
How
did it happen? How
had I done this? I was an
average person from an average station in
life, and I did not begin working in my profession until I was over
thirty years old. Many of my fellow executives had gone to college right
out of high school and to graduate school immediately after that.
Plus, it usually took ten years before one even became a candidate
for middle management, let alone hold the post of executive director.
How had it all happened to me — and in twelve years? Back
to the bookshelf Remember
the night in 1971 when I went to the bookshelf to find something to read?
Well, what I found was a book I had picked up at a garage sale
about psychic power and how it can be used in everyday life to achieve
everyday goals. That book
equated psychic power with the gut feelings, notions, hunches, flashes,
and impulses that people get that seem to come from nowhere.
It explained that these instincts or intuitions are natural to all
of us and that picking up on them, paying attention to what they are
saying, and letting them guide us can help us as we make our way through
life.
The information in that book
was exciting. At an early age
I knew that I got what I called impressions, a sense about the people
around me or the situations I was in, from out of the blue.
It felt kind of funny to me when it happened, and I usually ended
up putting those thoughts aside and forgetting about them.
The failure of my marriage, too, made me question myself. After
that book I started reading other self-help books.
Many of them had common themes or guidelines, and I began to study
certain points more frequently than others.
Eventually I put those books aside and concentrated on the
inspiration I received from my own heart.
My belief in myself became
unshakable. That belief
became the core grain of sand that I used to cultivate my pearls of
wisdom.
It took time The
growing of my pearls of wisdom did not happen quickly.
It was at least a year after reading that first book before I came
to trust my instincts and use them on a daily basis.
My self-training began like a game.
I would stop myself in the middle of an activity and pay attention
to what my feelings were at that moment.
At first the impressions arrived sporadically.
I’d stop and think, “Am I getting a hunch?” and sometimes I
couldn’t feel anything at all. But
gradually I began to get strong, clear impressions about the situation I
was in or the person I was talking to.
I’d find myself thinking
about a specific course of action and
the thought would occur, “No, don’t do that” or “Do it this
way.” I’d follow through
on that thought and whatever it was would turn out just the way I wanted.
At work I could be finishing a report and be about to turn it in
when I’d get a flash to “check page seven again.”
When I did, I found a mistake there, even though I thought I had
proofread the document carefully.
One time I was dressing to go
to a concert that I had been looking forward to and for which I had bought
a very expensive ticket. As I
picked up my purse and my keys I had a flash that said, “Don’t go,
stay home.” At first I brushed it aside and told myself, “I’m going
to this concert and that’s that.”
But as I went out the door and turned to lock it, the flash came
back. I stood for a few
minutes, mulling it over. Then
I decided to heed my hunch. I
went inside, undressed, and stayed home.
The next day the morning paper reported that there had been a melee
at the concert and five people had been hurt.
Later, talking with friends who had attended, I learned that the
fracas had started in the same row I would have been sitting in had I
gone.
Another time I was listening to
a girlfriend rave about a new man she had met and as she talked I blurted
out, “He’s married.” This
led to a big argument because I had never seen the man and was only saying
what I felt as I listened to her description of him and the encounter they
had. I forgot about this
incident until about a week later when my friend called me to say that she
had checked out the man and found out he was married.
In the beginning I didn’t
talk about what I was doing with anyone.
No one else in my circle ever talked about psychic powers and I
didn’t want to seem odd. But
when I thought more about it, I remembered that when I was growing up my
grandmother would often say things like, “Uh, oh, I’ve got a funny
feeling about [something or other]” or “Cousin Eva was around me all
night and she let me know I should [do this or that].”
Her cousin Eva had died as a young girl decades before I was born.
Even so, I still wasn’t
comfortable talking about my feelings and instincts with others.
Maybe my father influenced me.
He had a habit of reacting to his mother’s premonitions by
saying, “There you go again, Mama, with that ‘ole timey’ mumbo
jumbo. We modern folks
don’t go by all that stuff.” I
didn’t want to be considered an “old-timer,” so at first I simply
kept my mouth shut about what I was doing.
But, after a few years, when I
felt increasingly confident of my own powers, I started telling friends.
I didn’t feel that I was special or gifted in a way that others
weren’t. When I was asked
for advice I would usually respond with, “Listen to your heart and
follow your mind first.”
Almost two years from that
night in 1971, I decided to test my self-training by imagining a dress
that I wanted for a party. I
had always been plagued with having champagne taste and beer pockets, so I
often had trouble finding an affordable dress that I liked.
If anything I was doing had any meaning or power, such powers would
surely guide me in small matters such as choosing a dress as well as
important ones. So I decided that it would be fun to try my self-training on
what was really a nonessential item.
As I got out of the car at the
shopping mall and entered the store, I kept telling myself that I would be
led to the right dress. It
took a half hour to find the perfect dress, in the right size, and at a
price I had in mind. I
laughed at the fun! But,
looking back years later, I point to this occasion as the time when I
absolutely knew my self-training worked.
After that, day by day, week by
week, month by month, and year by year, I continued to set a goal, pay
attention to my instincts and gut feelings, follow that guidance, achieve
the goal, and move on to the next one.
I began to see myself differently, too.
No longer did I feel at the mercy of circumstance or fate.
I began to realize that I could mold and shape circumstances to my
own personal desires. About the goals My
goals were wide ranging. Shortly after the successful dress-buying incident I began
having trouble with a supervisor at work who did not seem to appreciate
me. I respected her, but her
lack of praise for the projects I thought I had done well hurt me. Resolving this matter became my next goal and I began to pay
close attention to my interactions with her.
I eventually realized that I was being thin-skinned in my reactions
to her cut-and-dry acceptance of my completed assignments.
Even though she was not effusive, she was always courteous.
I realized that my need to be
praised was coming from my own lack of confidence.
It was my own low self-esteem, not her manner, that was causing my
discomfort. I began to be
more careful about my work, and I learned to praise myself when I had
completed my projects to the best of my ability.
The more I congratulated myself, the more assured I was by the
knowledge that my work had passed my own personal standards.
And I did not find myself mentally asking her, “Well, what do you
think, is it all right?” I
got to the point where, when she did offer a compliment, it was like icing
on the cake rather than something I had to have for my own well-being. More goals I
got my first brand-new car about three years after I started my
self-training. Despite all
the Band-Aids my mechanic had applied to my rusty ‘55 Chevy, she had
died. I had it with car
trouble, but buying a new car seemed like an impossible dream.
So I spent some time taking the bus before my dream could be
realized.
Not having credit was one
stumbling block and I was determined not to ask my father to co-sign a car
loan. After weeks of brooding
about this goal, I mentioned to a coworker at the health center my desire
for a new car. She said,
“Didn’t you hear? Our
center has been made a part of the credit union for State employees.
Why don’t you apply for a loan from them?”
I contacted them and received
an application form that seemed complicated with long pages of fine print. My first thought was that it was hopeless.
But my instincts told me that if I took the time and read the
application line by line I would be able to complete it correctly.
I told myself not to become intimidated by the request for
established credit information that I didn’t have.
I finished the form, answering all the questions as best I could.
Then I had a flash that said, “Add a page explaining that even
though you don’t have credit, you’re a good risk because of your
steady employment and positive job evaluations.”
I did that and included a copy of my latest job performance report,
which I also talked about with the loan officer when I returned the
application in person. Following
my instincts worked. I got
the loan.
Relationship goals included I
used my pearls of wisdom for relationship goals as well.
My sister and I used to fight a lot when we were in our twenties.
We were both strong willed, and we’d scream at each other until
one of us would end up hanging up the phone on the other.
We’d stay estranged for days at a time.
Then I decided that our arguments were silly. Besides, we really liked each other’s company.
And my sister could make me laugh no matter what particular angst I
was experiencing at the time.
So I set a goal of following my
instincts that told me to hold my tongue and not pick fights with her.
When she was bossy, I’d take a deep breath and count to ten
before I responded. Or I
would deliberately turn my mind to something funny she had said or some
favor she had done for me. My
efforts led to a much more harmonious relationship.
Help yourself After
twenty-five years, I am ready to tell you how to use the pearls of wisdom
to achieve your goals, whether your goal is finding a husband or wife,
finding a new job, or achieving professional success.
If you are feeling a gnawing inside to be more, to achieve more,
despite the fact that what you have is acceptable, I think my ten pearls
can help you. If you have
reached a certain point in your life where you have looked around and
asked, “Is this it?” I think my ten pearls can help you. |
|
Main
Page
Eleanor's Bio 
A Note from Eleanor