I’ve never been a gambler and during the few times I’ve ever been to a casino I’ve taken my $20 bucks, put it in a slot machine and lost it all within minutes. I always expect to lose because Ive always lost.
Which brings me to Vegas. I learned an important Shanifesting lesson first-hand when I took a trip to Sin City with my best friend, Lauren, last week to see the Backstreet Boys live at The Sphere.
From the moment we stepped off the plane, slot machines were dinging everywhere and while Lauren was excited to try them out, searching eagerly for the coolest one, I was less amused. I said it again and again “I hate slots! I never win!”
For someone who literally teaches Manifesting and the power of words, it didn’t hit me until near the end of our trip that my clear and concise focus on never winning was exactly what was driving away even a small jackpot.
Lauren and I hit up the casino in our hotel a few times together and there were two times where she won pretty big (by all means, a big win to me is $50) so I started watching her to see what she was doing differently than me. Also, I know slots are super random but there seemed to be a correlation between her mindset and the fact that she kept winning and mine when I kept losing.
As I sat down at a slot machine a few feet away from where Lauren was on a winning streak, I glumly slid my dirty American $20 bill into the brightly coloured Wheel of Fortune machine and began hitting the spin button. Lose. Lose. Win 10 cents. Lose. Lose. Lose again. I watched the remaining amount in the left-hand corner like a hawk, focusing closely on how much money I was losing with every spin.
The realization smacked me in the face all at once! I was in scarcity mode. I was focusing so hard on losing that I wasn’t even having fun or enjoying the game I was playing. My mindset was stuck on each loss instead of living in the moment and paying attention to the game in front of me.
This same thing happens to so many people in their daily lives! They are so focused on what they don’t have, what they aren’t getting and what is going wrong that they are missing the opportunities and the good things that are right in front of them!
What you focus on truly does grow. And I’m not talking about this in a gambling sense but in our everyday lives, when we focus on things we enjoy, things we desire and things we’d love to have that’s what we call in. Tony Robbins once said “Where focus goes, energy flows” and this is absolutely true. The more you focus on something, whether negative or positive, the more it will grow and the more energy will flow towards it. That’s why it’s so important to have good energy when manifesting. Since we’re always manifesting either way, you decided whether it’s good or bad.
And in that moment at the Wheel of Fortune slot machine, I realized what I needed to change. I had to stop focusing on NOT winning. Scarcity mindset affects so many people and when you’re always focusing on what you don’t have you’re most likely missing the good things that are right in front of you.
I went over the Lauren who was up nearly $500 on a Buffalo-themed machine and I asked her straight up “When you’re playing are you ever looking at how much money you have left?” Her answer was a straight up no. She told me she’s there to have fun, to enjoy the game and take in the sights and sounds. She said she never looks at what she’s losing, only at what she’s winning.
Bingo. I teach this stuff in real life but somehow my brain was wiped clean in Vegas and it took this string of events to wake me up. I decided to put $40 in a machine and not look once at what was remaining. I relaxed, laughed at the funny characters jumping around the screen, and wouldn’t you know it, I won $79! The exact minute I stopped focusing on scarcity and not winning was the moment I won. The next day, I did the same thing and won $30! It wasn’t hundreds but to me it could have been. The money wasn’t what I won in Vegas, the updated mindset I took home was the biggest jackpot of all.
I don’t condone gambling and this article isn’t meant to encourage anyone to take up a bad habit but instead to prove a point that we are always manifesting whether we like it or not, whether it’s good or bad. If we focus on what we don’t have, we will only get more of what we don’t have and if we focus on what we believe is already ours the faster it will come into our reality.
Simply put, what we focus on changes our energy output. When our energy is high, we feel good, we’re happy, we’re winners no matter what but when our energy is low and we feel down, discouraged and unmotivated then it will seem like nothing ever goes right for us.
If you feel like you’re constantly losing at life, the way I felt I was always losing at slots, perhaps this is your wake-up call to be a little but more like my friend, Lauren, and leave the scarcity mindset behind. Enjoy this game we call life, focus on the parts that make you smile and watch as you start winning big.
Because it’s not about winning or losing, it’s about what you’re focusing on that makes all the difference.
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