It Pays To Look Down!

What's the most bizarre way to win the lottery? It's to look down and keep your eyes open! Let me explain what I mean. (This story is all, totally true – except, of course, for the bits I made up!)

I discovered this thing called the Law of Attraction a few years ago. To be honest, part of me thought it was some kind of crazy woo-woo sh*t. But another part of me was intrigued. What if there were some legs to this idea? What kind of games could I play to try it out? And what if I could make some money, and stuff, along the way? I've always been one for playing crazy games and trying out new stuff. And this Law of Attraction thing was no exception.

So, let me tell you about one crazy experiment I tried, that resulted in a nice lottery win for me – all because I just looked down. Was it the Law of Attraction at work? Or was it just a mere case of serendipity? I'll let you decide.

It was a sunny, Spring morning, in the middle of April. I awoke at my usual time, got up and ventured across the hallway of my one-bedroom apartment, in the middle of Birmingham city centre (UK), toward the kitchen.

Coffee! Coffee was the first order of the day. How is a guy supposed to function without that first fix of caffeine? Especially so when you’re not looking forward to the meeting you have with that awkward, hard-to-please, pain in the a** client that you wish you didn’t have, but need because he pays you the most out of all your clients.

And this was going to be a particularly horrible meeting because I’d decided to let the client go, despite the fact that I had absolutely no clue how I was going to manage without his sizeable regular monthly payments. How would I manage to keep up the rent for my apartment that I so loved, in St Paul’s, an affluent part of central Birmingham, within easy reach of the city centre? And then there was the office space I was renting, at One Victoria Square; right in the heart of Birmingham’s city centre. Okay, it was more hot-desking space. But I really loved going there three or four times a week and chatting with my fellow hot-deskers, between doing my writing and taking regular trips to the office kitchen for more coffee.

The guys in the office were a friendly bunch. Sarah Smythe-Soong and Billy Brightly were both fellow writers, like me. And then there were a couple of solopreneurs. Raul Lando was a web guy. What he didn’t know about websites and all things on the interweb was not worth knowing. He was the go-to guy for all our web stuff in the office. He’d even built my website. Stephanie McManson was the office joker. She was a business trainer and wannabe motivational speaker. But, boy, how she loved to pull the practical jokes out of the bag! We all loved her, though.

There were a few more people in the office. But these four lovely people were my homies; the reason I loved going into the office. It was like my second home, and they were my chosen family.

So why would I give up my biggest client, whose monthly payments gave me the core of my money to pay for the lifestyle that I loved? Because he was a total a**-hole; difficult to please and demanded too much of my attention and resources. He was, literally sucking the joy out of my work and I had, on several occasions, considered giving it all up for a cushy, full-time desk job, just to get rid of him. But working for a boss just is not me; however appealing the regular salary might seem.

But on this seemingly serendipitous day, something was about to change. Something that would make letting go of Bullish Bob (as I’d nicknamed my client) a helluva lot easier and delightful. Okay, I still couldn’t walk up to him, punch him square on the nose, and tell him to stick his job where the sun doesn’t shine; as much as I wanted to. That would be too unprofessional – even for me. But, at least I knew – after this stroke of luck (or was it Law of Attraction at work?) – had come to pass, that he’d be out of my life forever.

I remember the night before. I’d been debating with my homies over drinks about the Law of Attraction. Billy and Stephanie were both really into this Law of Attraction thing. Sarah and Raul were in the “this is just crazy woo-woo sh*t” camp. And then there’s me, stuck in the middle. I guess you could say I was a bit of a Law of Attraction agnostic – unable to decide which of the two camps was the one for me.

The following morning, as I walked out of the lobby of my apartment block, stepping out onto the busy street, I could not help but feel a sense of foreboding and dread at how my meeting with Bullish Bob would go down. As I walked to the St Paul’s Metro station, to catch the Metro into the city centre, I kept going over and over in my head what I was going to say. And then I would imagine the barrage of expletives that I knew would come out of Bullish Bob’s mouth. I knew he would not take what I had to say kindly or graciously. Then I started thinking to myself how hard I was about to make my life, once I no longer had Bullish Bob’s monthly payments. Yeah, but at least he’d be out of my life and I could free up my energies to get in more clients, who’d actually treat me with professionalism and respect.

“Goddamit!” I exclaimed loudly into the air. “If only I could just get a couple of extra grand, or few, to tide me over!”

That was when Stephanie’s words from the night before hit me, like a pillow being whacked into my face.

“As long as you keep saying that you’ll only believe it when you see it, things will never change. You need to change your paradigm, and flip the equation. Instead of, ‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ change it around to, ‘I’ll see it when I believe it.’ That’s how the Law of Attraction works. You’ve got to put out the intention and tell the Universe exactly what you want. And then feel it, as if you already have it.”

“Okay,” I thought to myself, “let’s test this thing and give it a go.”

“What if I could find a winning lottery ticket?” I wondered. “It doesn’t have to be the jackpot. In fact, I doubt if I’d be so lucky for that! But, what if I found a lottery ticket or scratch card worth a couple of grand, or few?”

I stopped walking for a moment. People must have been looking at me, wondering what this idiot was doing, as I just stood there, with my eyes closed. But I didn’t care. I just had to stop and take a moment to feel the energy of what it would be like to come into a few thousand pounds. Then it wouldn’t matter at all what Bullish Bob would say to me, when I told him I would no longer be serving him or doing any more work for him.

It must’ve been a good two or three minutes that I stood there, thinking hard and trying to feel what it would be like to have those two or more thousand pounds in my bank account. “I’ll see it when I believe it. I’ll see it when I believe it,” I kept saying to myself. I opened my eyes and carried on walking toward the Metro station, all the while trying to feel what it would be like to find that winning lottery ticket or scratch card.

And that was when some kind of magic happened! Was this Law of Attraction working for me? Or was it just serendipity; plain old lady luck; me being in the right place at the right time, by some strange coincidence?

As I arrived at St Paul’s Metro station, I stopped to get my Metro fare out of my wallet. But my wallet was not in the pocket I usually put it in. I always put my wallet in my left trouser pocket and my mobile phone in my right trouser pocket. But, for some strange reason, on this occasion my wallet was not where it normally is. I patted both pockets of my trousers, to feel what was in them. I then did the same with the pockets on either side of my jacket, and then on my left chest to ascertain whether my wallet was likely to be in my inside chest pocket. Nothing on all accounts!

“Dammit!” I muttered to myself. “I’ve forgotten my f****ng wallet!”

I was just about to turn around to return home when I thought to check in the rucksack I was carrying on my back. I took the bag’s straps off my shoulders, lowered it to the ground and stooped down to unzip the main compartment. As I did, something in the storm drain I’d been standing over suddenly caught my eye. What was it?

As I shifted my attention and focus from my rucksack to the object floating on the top of the muddy waters in the storm drain, I could see it was a clear, plastic bag – the sort that you get from the bank to put loose coins in. There seemed to be what looked like a £10 bank note in it, and something else with lots of colourful printing on it.

“I’m having that!” I thought to myself. It would, effectively, mean a free Metro journey into town, plus my breakfast sandwich from the Meal Deal sandwich bar. And I wasn’t going to let that offer go! “Now, how am I going to fish it out of there?”

Indeed, how? I figured that I’d need a couple of long sticks that I could use to grab it with – kinda like giant chopsticks!

“Hmm,” I pondered, “a couple of small tree branches would do the trick.”

The street was lined with small trees. But, given that it was also lined with CCTV cameras, I wasn’t about to break a couple of branches off a tree and risk getting arrested for causing criminal damage. I needed a couple of branches that were already broken off and loose. A bit of a tall order, I thought. But, undeterred, I walked up and down the street, hunting for broken-off tree branches.

As luck would have it, a few hundred yards along from the Metro station, I came across the site of a demolished building that was about to have a new block of apartments built on the land. The site was cordoned off with flimsy, metal fencing. But on the other side, amongst the piles of rubble and broken cement blocks, I could see an uprooted tree lying on the ground, just waiting to serve me with its branches.

Determined to get to those branches, I completely missed the “Danger! Do Not Enter!” signage on the flimsy metal fencing. I found an opening and went in to get the branches I needed to fish out my tenner from that storm drain.

Success! I’d gotten the tools I needed to fish out my treasure!

As I stood over the drain, poking my two makeshift giant chopsticks, made from tree branches, down into the abyss below, people stopped to see what I was doing.

“Are you okay?” people would ask. And, “have you lost something?”

“Yeah, I’m trying to get my tenner out of the drain,” I replied. As far as I was concerned, it was my tenner. So I wasn’t lying.

Before long, a crowd of spectators had started to gather. As they each watched me trying to fish out my treasure from the abyss. A few of them offered to try fishing it out for me. But I was determined to get the treasure myself. And so I politely declined their offers of help.

After what seemed like an eternity of poking, prodding, and exclamations of, “Ah! Got it!” followed by, “Damn, I’ve dropped it!” I finally managed to fish out my prize, to rapturous applause and cheers from my audience. And then, as quickly as a flash mob disperses, the crowd was all gone, leaving me to check out and relish my prize. But to my great surprise, the colourful printed thing behind the £10 note was, in fact, an unused scratch card. 

I could hear the Metro tram pulling in. So I put the £10 and scratch card in my wallet, which I’d found at the bottom of the front compartment of my rucksack. And then I discarded the plastic bag that my treasure it been in, in the bin outside the Metro station, as I rushed into the station and onto the platform, just in time before the Metro’s sliding doors closed.

Phew! Just in the nick of time! My angels of luck were surely smiling down on me today. For things were all just falling into place. But the big treasure was just about to reveal itself, as I found my seat on the Metro tram and fished out the scratch card from my wallet – which was now safely in my left pocket, where it should have been. Or maybe, it had been where it should have been all along. For, if it had been where I usually kept it, I would not have thought to stoop down to look in my rucksack. And then I would not have happened to look down into the storm drain and spotted my treasure!

Looking at the writing on the scratch card, I could see that there was a first prize of £25,000, and then a second prize of £10,000 and a third prize of £5,000, plus a load of runner-up prizes of smaller amounts of money. There were nine playing cards I had to reveal, behind the silver scratching squares. I needed to scratch off the squares and reveal three Aces to win the big jackpot of £25,000; three Kings to win £10,000; three Queens for £5,000; and then three identical cards of any other kind to win one of a variety of smaller amounts of runner up cash prizes.

As I eagerly scratched off the first square, I saw I’d gotten an Ace of Hearts. Yeah! I was feeling really lucky already! Behind my second square was a three of Diamonds. Not so lucky, but seven more to go! My third square revealed a Queen of Clubs. But it all seemed to be going downhill from there on, as I scratched off to reveal four low-scoring cards. My heart was starting to sink. Maybe I’d had all the luck I was going to have for today.

But wait! I had two more squares to scratch off. What would they reveal? Drum roll, please!

Behind square eight was a Queen of Spades. So no Jackpot or second prize here. But hey! I was still in the running for the third prize of £5,000. It would be enough for me, and would make the wish (or, in Law of Attraction terms, “intention”) that I’d sent out that morning come true!

The final moment of truth came, as I revealed the ninth square on my lucky scratch card. What was it going to be? Wait for it…

A Queen of Diamonds!

“Yes!” I exclaimed loudly and excitedly, as everyone on the full Metro looked at me.

“I’ve won!” I gleamed back at them all. This was followed by excited applause and cheers of well done from the people around me.

“Tickets please,” said the Conductor, as she stood in front of me. “Or a winning lottery ticket will be an acceptable form of payment, sir,” she said with a cheeky glint in her eye. We had a bit of a laugh and an in-joke for a couple of minutes, as I paid her for my return ticket to New Street Station. (I then exchanged phone numbers with her, as I invited her to come to dinner with me tonight.)

For the rest of that day, I felt invincible. Nothing could stop me. And, even though Bullish Bob did rain down a barrage of expletives and curses onto me, as I told him I was letting him go as a client, it didn’t matter. Because I had enough to cover my apartment rent and hot-desking space for the next three months.

So, was this Law of Attraction working for me? Or was it just down to a good ol’ bit of serendipity? Who knows?

But one thing is for sure, every time I walk over a storm drain now, I always take a quick glance down there. Because you have to believe it before you see it, and it always pays to look down.