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Premonition or manifestation?

crystal ball manifestationHave you ever had an experience where you knew something was going to happen and then it did? My query is did it happen because you envisioned it or did you vision it because it was going to happen?

Here’s a few situations from my life that make me go, hmmmm …

The first: I knew I was going to graduate first in my law school class.

I saw it happening as soon as I met my boss when I interned at the Attorney General’s Office in College. She graduated first in her class at University of Florida.

Everyone thought she was just the smartest person they knew.

I wanted that. (I’m a 3 on the enneagram.)

Then, I saw myself graduating first in my law school class too. Saw it happening. Knew it would happen.

Then, it did.

(Oddly enough, once in school, I convinced myself I failed every test only to find out I had scored at the top. So, this was not your typical manifestation process. And, I managed to do it despite the fact that my economics paper — No More Free Milk: Why Women of a Certain Age Should Never Live With a Man Without Marriage — was wholly rejected by the male professors grading it.)

Did I make it happen or did I catch the vision of it because it was going to happen?

Next time it happened: I always knew I’d have two kids before I was 30.

It wasn’t the same as the law school time where I could have made a decision that I wanted to graduate first when I saw how much everyone respected my boss. The kids thing was different.

I just knew I would.

And, I did.

Were the choices I made leading to that reality pre-destined? Or did I manifest it?

Most recent time: My bankruptcy.

There’s some part of me that knew I was going to file for bankruptcy before I even knew it was possible to borrow money to invest in my business.

The first loan application I filled out, I was full of shame.

I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, but there it was and as a result, I asked for as little as possible. I would have asked for less, but my banker said I had to ask for at least $50,000.

So, I did.

A year later, I increased the line to $100,000, wishing I would have just asked for that to begin with so I didn’t have to pay closing costs twice.

At that point, I was no longer thinking I’d ever file bankruptcy because I had parlayed the first $50,000 loan into a $750,000 a year law practice.

Now it was time to double down and go for a million.

I didn’t think of the potential for bankruptcy again until 2007 when I was still running my million dollar law practice and created a second company, out of my spare bedroom, training lawyers on my new law business model systems.

I remember being up one night around 2am, kids asleep in the other room or staying at their dads, and I was writing the newsletter we sent out to our clients. I was exhausted. Running two businesses. Single mom. Finding myself as a woman.

I thought of Jack Canfield and how he had filed bankruptcy once before going on to write 27 books and become one of the most well-read authors in the world and a teacher to millions.

I had this sense that it would be my path too. Which seemed weird because at that point I had one million dollar business and another well on its way.

But it felt true.

Fast forward 5 years and I ended up filing bankruptcy. (The story of that bankruptcy, how it came to be, how I rebounded better than ever and how I have rebuilt what I gave up twice over is for another day.)

So, was it the case that I was destined to file bankruptcy? Or did my thoughts about it call it in?

One more time — maybe the weirdest: I’d become a Boulder midwife with dreadlocks

I remember back when I was fully Alexis Martin Neely, straight up lawyer, own law practice or perhaps still an associate at the biglaw firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson, I had a vision of being a midwife in Boulder and having dreadlocks in my hair.

It was weird because I was so far from that reality. But, it felt real.

Today, I live in Boulder. I don’t have dreadlocks, but I do wear a lot of feathers in my hair. And, I’m not a traditional baby-catching midwife, but I do midwife women’s next level emergence in business and life. And I midwife lawyer’s into the law practices of their dreams. It’s not far off.

Did I envision this because I was predetermined to move to Boulder and become a hippie no matter what I did? Or, did I manifest this reality as a result of the process of manifestation?

What’s I wonder about is this: other than the law school graduation situation, I didn’t feel as if I specifically called any of these things in. I clearly saw them happening though.

I do have several situations of what I would call pure manifestation in which I set my mind on something and then bam it happened. But these weren’t quite like that. So I always wonder … premonition or manifestation?

What do you think? And do you have any similar situations you wonder about?