TL;DR: The author relates a story of a client, a college maintenance manager, who faces two setbacks during work. But by shifting perspective, he demonstrates a key aspect of alignment, and in doing transforms these “setbacks” into joy, abundance, and vibrational sovereignty.
There’s a subtle art to living a sovereign life — an art few ever know about let along consciously choose to master. It begins not with rearranging outer circumstances, but by observing the unfolding of experience. Observing it and discovering one’s agency within it. That agency, in the Positively Focused practice, shows up in three primary stages:
Post-Manifestational Awareness: When we realize, after something has already happened, that we could have influenced the outcome — but didn’t. The awareness comes after manifestation, but still offers wisdom.
Mid-Manifestational Awareness: When something is unfolding, and we know we could shape it… but we don’t. Not because we don’t want to, but because dominant momentum — emotional, habitual, historical — keeps us in reaction mode rather than creation mode.
Pre-Manifestational Awareness: When we recognize the unfolding in real time, remember our agency, and consciously activate it — transforming the experience before it completes, thereby alchemizing the moment into something aligned, sovereign, and beautiful as a manifestation.
What one of my clients — let’s call him Kyle — recently demonstrated was a shining example of that final stage. And it all started with a leaf blower.
Stormy Weather and the Setup for Contrast
Kyle works at a college campus, where part of his job is groundskeeping. On a recent Saturday, he showed up expecting a team effort to clean up leaves scattered across the main quad.
But the weather had other plans. It was cold, windy, and wet — the kind of day where even committed coworkers mysteriously “get sick.” One by one, Kyle realized: no one else was coming. He took a breath. And he got to work.
For hours, he methodically cleared the entire quad of autumn leaves — solo. His muscles ached. His feet throbbed. But he pushed through, determined to finish the job. And finally… he did. The quad looked pristine. He stood back to admire the work. There was a sense of accomplishment.
Then — like a perfectly scripted slapstick comedy — a massive gust of wind ripped through the campus. It left leaves everywhere. In one gust, nature rendered the entire morning’s labor undone. In seconds, the wind reversed everything — leaves blew back across the freshly cleared space. The wind erased Kyle’s efforts. Seeing this, his body tightened. His thoughts stirred. He felt a tinge of annoyance….
This was a mid-manifestational moment: he felt the contrast. Kyle knew he had agency — but hadn’t yet fully activated it. Not yet. Still, something inside him shifted. He took another breath, then began clearing leaves again.
Another Opportunity to Choose
He worked harder, faster. Kyle was determined. He got all the newly fallen leaves up. And then…another wind gust. The quad was covered again — completely. That’s when the deeper stories surfaced in Kyle: What if my boss thinks I didn’t do anything when he arrives to work Monday? What if I look lazy? What if I get in trouble for something I actually did right?
The second gust brought more anxiety and frustration, but also fear. Kyle’s emotional momentum got stronger. This time, however, Kyle didn’t just notice it. He took the reins.
He remembered that this wasn’t personal. It was vibrational. The wind was just feedback. A lovingly crafted opportunity to choose his state of being before the story crystallized. And that’s what he did.
He paused. He smiled. Then he got inspired.
He saw what was happening as a pre-manifestational doorway — an invitation from the Universe. It said: choose alignment before the story completes itself. And Kyle did exactly that. He paused. He breathed. And then he reached for a better-feeling thought.
He remembered a scene from The Secret, where the narrator describes imagining money falling from the sky like autumn leaves. And suddenly, Kyle began to imagine each leaf — not as a burden — but as a $100 bill. With this shift in perspective, the wind wasn’t working against him. It was showering him with abundance.
Turning Work Into Wealth
That’s when Kyle literally became a different person. He raced to collect the leaves like a joyful scavenger hunt. He laughed at the storm. Kyle stuffed his trailer like it was an overflowing bank vault. He even timed himself like it was a game.
By the end of the day, his body was still sore — but his vibration was radiant. Kyle not only did his job, he also achieved new heights of vibrational alchemy. What could have been a story of bitterness and burnout became one of alignment, joy, and confidence.
That’s the power of pre-manifestational awareness: it lets us shape the mirror’s image before it fully forms. Most people believe life is happening to them. They react, cope, survive. But Kyle’s story reminds us of the deeper truth: Life isn’t happening to us. It’s responding through us. When we become aware of this — even after the fact — we begin the process of reclaiming our agency.
When we become aware in the middle of a moment, we start to practice holding our power even when momentum is strong. But when we catch it before it lands — when we see the wind blow and realize, this isn’t personal, it’s perfect — that’s when we step into the real magic of deliberate creation.
Everyone Can Do What Kyle Did
You don’t need to work at a college. Nor do you need a windstorm. Life will deliver everyone their own tailor-made “leaf moments”. They may show up as a conversation that doesn’t go the way we planned. Or maybe it’s a task that feels thankless, a delay that disrupts our schedule. Or a storm that blows in at the worst time. These all are portals, opportunities to chart a course through to the divine.
And if we’re paying attention — if we remember who we are, even for a moment — we can choose. We can choose to see the leaves as money and laugh at the timing. We can choose to align before the mirror hardens. That’s pre-manifestational mastery. And like Kyle, we’re more ready for it than we think.
All it takes is a little foreknowledge and awareness and a desire to be happy above all else. It all begins with seeing everything in a positive light. That’s the foundation of the Positively Focused framework. Because positivity is a constant of the Universe. Nothing happens in the Universe that isn’t positive. And if it looks like what’s happening isn’t positive, that’s only because we don’t have a big enough picture to see it the way it actually is.
Want to know more? Reach out. Let’s talk.
