Good morning from New York City. What’s on my mind this morning is pattern recognition and the conversational nature of the universe. These are both things I’ve talked about before. As it relates to pattern recognition, I think the story I told on a past pod was about being an executive recruiter and noticing when a person popped into my mind more than once. I trained myself to notice and to act. I’m convinced that it was a contributing factor to my success.  I think it was in part pattern recognition, meaning I was thinking about a certain brand or a certain group of people or certain group of jobs and people would pop into my mind. But the point I want to make here is that it’s the ‘more than once.’

I do strongly believe, nurture and participate in what I consider the conversational nature of the universe. I believe that God or Source or whatever you want to call it is always trying to communicate with us. That’s why my awareness practice is so important to me. I do think you need to cultivate awareness, and to pay attention to pattern recognition, I also believe that when you put a question out to the universe, when you talk out loud to yourself, when you think to yourself what next or what should I do, your job is to be looking for a response.

Now on to the story. I’m really thinking about pattern recognition here. I’ve heard the same comment two or three times in the past 48 hours, and I want to share it with you. I was listening to an interview, and the person referenced Lori Gottlieb. She’s a therapist and she wrote the book ‘Mmaybe You Should Talk to Someone’. She is also the advice columnist for The Atlantic. Anyway, what I heard more than once is this. Lori Gottlieb said pay attention to what you’re envious of.  Pay attention to envy because it gives you clues to what you desire and what is important to you

Now the first time I heard that I thought hhhm. It didn’t initially resonate because – I don’t know – I’m not a jealous person. I can honestly say that jealousy is not an emotion that I have ever struggled with in my life. So when I heard envy, I was perhaps confusing those two words.  I think of jealousy as very other focused and very negative towards another person, but when I heard that the third time I thought, well, there is a difference between jealousy and envy. Let me think about what she said.

It’s indeed really true when you think about it. Envy can be a source of clues – an indicator of sorts of what’s important or what you desire. What is it that strikes an ‘ Ooh, I want that’ chord. It could be about a lot of different things.  So think about it. What strikes envy in your heart, and might there be clues in there?

That’s what I’m noodling today. I don’t know who may need to hear that, but I thought I’d share it. Until next time, from my heart to yours.