This word is magical because I stumbled upon it while watching Oprah's Super Soul Sunday. She was interviewing Pharrel Williams about his life journey, and he mentioned to her this book that he read called “The Alchemist” by Pablo Coelho. He's written many other books; you should check him out. His writing is so layered with beautiful stories filled with life lessons and hidden gems!

After watching them discuss the synchronization between the book and his own life’s turn of events, I decided to hop on Barnes and Nobles website and purchase the book myself. A few days later, I was curled up on the couch with the book and couldn’t get past the first few pages because I was already annoyed by it.

Without giving too much away, I was bothered that there were already complications and obstacles preventing this shepherd boy from achieving his dreams. Instantly I felt a triggering connection to what he was going through and closed the book. 

Now we all know how this goes, you earmark a book, set it on a shelf, and sometimes never return it. It sat on my shelf for over a year, you guys. It wasn’t until I got past my bullshit that I remembered the book and circled back to the rack to retrieve it. I sat down, older, wiser, and more aware of myself, and started to dive back in. 

A few pages turned, and a rush of emotions flowed through me.  I realized that when I first started this book, I was mirroring this boy. I was at the beginning of a transitional process myself. I was becoming more aware of things outside me and in my everyday life. And finally started to acknowledge that to have things change around me, I needed first to undergo some changes of my own. And had to accept that with change comes tons of uncomfortable moments. 

If you’d like to know about that, I break it all down there; feel free to give it a listen. Maybe there is something in there for you to hear and digest for your personal use. 

                                          TAP TO START LISTENING

                           Listen to The Alchemy Episode as well!

Making the connections in my own life, I felt a sense of overwhelming readiness to take on whatever came my way. I started to recall dreams of my own. Shit that I put in a mental box labeled “Fuck it! It’ll never happen!” and allowed it to catch dust and my passion and fire for it to fizzle up and die as well. Unbeknownst to me, it was the catalyst of my undoing (Shadow Work ep).

Killing those parts of myself that made me feel alive for acceptance and or fear of rejection led me on a path of becoming all over again. I was suddenly aware of all of the alchemy transpiring in my life. I even noticed how the awareness of what I was feeling and processing was massive too! Everything around me started to open up in ways so closed off and narrow-minded before. 

For the first time, I felt alive! Like everything I was doing was genuinely contributing to my big picture!

   Finally, I felt the small steps I made were significant wins. I, like many of us, have my insecurities. Along with that comes an inner critic voice that loooveees to lay it on thick! I had so many fears circling in my head and all around me, telling me about my dreams and how my goals “could be” achievable if I did this and did that. Oh, and if I stopped doing this and that, no doubt I’d be exactly what my dreams consisted of.

No opinion in my mind or around me made me feel rooted in the fact that I could do it. And if I did receive a good word of advice, somehow, someone would find a way to insert their projected fears into it. They were adding more anxiety on top of what was already there. 

Because of this, I naturally felt an overwhelming need to hide and not disclose any dreams to anyone because they showed me they would trample them. And inject negative energy onto anything else I held so near and dear to me. 

So reading about this boy taking a significant leap toward his dreams with no one else knowing about it besides who he met on his path was a beautiful breath of fresh air. It made me realize I didn’t need much just to get started. I didn’t need some stamp of approval from my peers or family members to just fucking get started, Keila. So I did—one thought at a time. 

Whatever your dream is, whatever your idea is, please write it down and put a little action towards it every day and watch things begin to slowly but surely take shape. You’ll observe how getting the thoughts on paper will make them real. You’ll already feel a sense of completion just by now, making that thought physical. It’s physically on paper now. You can see it. And you can read it. You’re no longer just thinking it. And that’s the first step of bringing your dreams into reality. 

I talked about manifesting with paper on my August 19th podcast episode.                  

For now, I’ll take you on a bit of a mind trip and give you a little example of how things can start to unfold with just one simple step of focusing on what you want, then writing it down with intention. 

Day after day, you have this reoccurring daydream of a beautiful welded iron gate with tons of red roses woven between the bars. Its driveway is long and wide and at the end of it sits a beautifully built white house with massive floor-to-ceiling windows and a wrap-around porch with tons of space for outdoor furniture. A detached studio with excellent natural lighting is sitting off in the back of the property. And tons of extra yard space to add anything else.

 You can see and feel this home so vividly it excites you to think about it. So you write all the details down to the gravel in the driveway.

 Throughout your day, you realize how things in your surroundings start to correspond with what you want. You casually come across a tv show with a house similar to the one you just finished writing down. So naturally, it piques your interest, so you watch it for a minute. Seeing all these new features on this home ignites a new desire to add something to your dream home list you just wrote on paper. 

 Which naturally gets you even more excited, except this time, you feel like it’s more accurate. More possible. In turn, it causes you to add a splash more of hopefulness to your day. 

 Noticing the day is still young, you decide to do some errands. On your drive home, your senses are heightened and tuned into even the most intricate details about the homes in your community. Staying with the current energy flow, you appreciate the variety of houses you drive by. Noticing the way the shrubs change shape with each place, admiring the unique fences and window panes. You even appreciate how some people have flowers, some don’t, some have large porches, and some have none. Allowing yourself to drive and wander about twisting and turning throughout this nearby neighborhood, you notice a sign mentioning a home for sale.

 Now ordinarily, you’d pass up the sign. But because you’ve been looking at houses all day, you’re curious to find out what it looks like. You type the address in the GPS, and it’s 5 minutes from where you are currently. You figure what the hell, there’s no harm in looking, and you go. Roughly 5 minutes later, you pull up to the address. You can see a beautiful black wrought iron gate protecting the property from your car and a long, intricately designed driveway. A driveway leads directly to a White House, but this house has black shutters. 

 “Oh, you’ve got to be shitting me!?” you say loudly as you push the gear shift into park. 

 Will it always be that instantaneous? Neh! I can honestly say it won’t be. But I can attest that it can be easy to alchemize yourself into a state of mind to be the exact vibrational match for what you seek. It’s all about allowing it to take place. To find your flow in the current wave of this thing we call life.

 I won’t make you read on and on about everything, but I’ll tell you that your alchemy process will look different as you acquire more and more material things. Because nine times out of 10, you’ve taken on more tasks to achieve these material things. And have to maintain whatever tasks to keep them. 

 But your alchemy process, your understanding of what you need to make something come true, will most definitely be the same. It’ll always be finding the right ingredients to get back to you.

And the beautiful thing about it is it’s uniquely yours. Your method of turning water into wine is your own. 

 The point is God, Allah, The Universe, The All, Your Higher Self, whichever you feel comfortable saying, will always give you the necessities to build upon your dreams. Your foundation and how you build upon it are entirely up to you. Anything worth having is worth cultivating. Beautiful things take time. And big dreams need time to develop. The enjoyment you feel once accomplishing and achieving that dream is due to the knowledge and experience you’ve gained on your journey. 

 The twists and turns it provided you with, in turn, caused you to desire new things that required you to obtain even more knowledge and skill. All the changes you have undergone by the time you have achieved that goal was an alchemy process. You had to add and subtract and wait and calculate and divide and add more to your life to experience what you are experiencing right now. 

 Once you’ve achieved the task you set out to complete, you can continue on your path, trusting that whatever you put your mind to and believe in will alchemize before your eyes. You are magical. And infinitely abundant. Therefore you are capable of making your dreams come true. 

 You have to actualize your thoughts by first getting them on paper. Once you have your list, you will better gauge the distance between you and your dreams. Once on paper, you may very well find that you have all the tools that you need to start making it happen, while anything else you have to acquire to add to your list to help push it along will be a lot easier to come by now that you’ve made yourself clear and concise.

 Allow yourself to get into the vibration of what you want by surrounding yourself with things, people, and places that match your desire. Then pay close attention to how it feels to be in it and carry that feeling. I promise you; that you will start to see the world around you open up and respond in ways you’ve been numb and blind to before.

So anyone currently reading this is going through a difficult change, hang in there. Just breathe; you’re doing great. After all, you’re reading this, so there has to be some alignment for you right now, am I right? 

Stay the course, homie.

Until next time, 💋Ya Homegirl Ky.