Living according to the “The Secret” and hating it

 

It’s hard to pin point the exact moment when I started to project my life in America. My earliest memory of this kind is from college, when I developed a habit of looking up on Google Images for stunning, obviously digitally enhanced pictures of Chicago’s skyline and save them as a desktop background, which I then stared at whenever I was feeling down. It offered me free, instant pleasure.

Later, I got really into Oprah and the hype surrounding her “Law of Attraction” principle.  She suggested thinking and acting as if our biggest wishes already happened. So I started doing that.

Laid on my bed, eyes close, I would imagine a vivid scene taking place in Chicago. It was either me strolling down the Magnificent Mile all the way to Millennium Park, bathing with all my senses in a swirling vortex of scents and colors, or both of us, serving dinner in our comfy three bedroom house in ”The Windy City”. I felt high just from doing that.

My addictive personality immediately clung to these simulations exercises, as if they were crack. Any free time between classes was spent sitting on a bench in a nearby park, jotting down random ideas about America.  Phrases like “I’m already there”, “This is a fact” or “Chicago is waiting for me” found their way into my school books.

 

Here's what my current Dream Board look like. I look forward to: get a tattoo, eat sushi, watch the fireworks on New Years Eve in Downtown, visit Oahu, buy a Fitbit and, most important of all, work for Chicago Tribune

But instead of seeing progress, something bizarre happened. I would go to school and sleep my way through seminaries. My once favorite public garden seemed like a dump when I compared it to Millennium Park. The Romanian peanut butter I ate for breakfast tasted like Vaseline. Nothing was good enough as the American version. I feel trapped in a world I didn’t want to live anymore. Things got so bad that I couldn’t function without movies, YouTube videos and songs, all in English. Apparently, I attracted the wrong live.

The day we found out none of us had been selected on the Diversity Visa Lottery for second year in a row, I hit rock bottom. Getting to a better place took months, but I did it by using the same tool that got me there in the first place: my thoughts. America was not a moving train; it would be still there after one or ten years. With that in mind, I enrolled in an imaginary rehab. My husband held me accountable. Every day after work, we would chop veggies to go with scramble eggs, while I named at least three things I was grateful for. It went like this for several weeks, but it eventually came naturally. The habit of keeping a gratitude list stuck with me to this day. 

What I know now- Oprah actually mentioned about this – is that you don't let fantasies sidetrack you from the actual work. My new strategy involved sending e-mails to U.S. companies, asking for a job, opening a blog in English and hanging out with Americans living in Romania. In the end, what brought us here was The Diversity Visa, but if The Secret it’s a real thing, then it wasn’t pure luck; I earned it.