Magic works. The secrets of magic give us the power to change our lives. When we speak the affirmations and do the practices, we accomplish whatever it is we set out to do.

Surprisingly, success can be as difficult to handle as failure. Every change brings stress, even very positive changes, like passing a test, winning a contest, or getting a raise. The more change that happens in our lives, the higher our stress scores become. That’s one of the reasons why it is important to take it in steps, moving from one stage to another, instead of trying to make all the changes we want in our lives at once.

It helps to give ourselves time to assimilate a change. Every movement we make in our lives has consequences, both positive and negative, some that we expect, and some that are surprises. We need to work out the ramifications of each change. When the affect stabilizes we can figure out how to point our magic toward the next step in the process, both to avoid the negative consequences of the last change, and to build on our success to gain even more ground.

We may discover that we are afraid of success. It can be disorienting to discover that we have the ability to affect our own lives in such significant ways. We might even be tempted to think we are invincible—we’ll just use magic to solve every problem! Fortunately there are failures and accidents in our lives to remind us that we are not the only power on the planet, the world is full of other people, and there are patterns and forces around us that we can tap into and admire but may never completely understand.

We might even reject success. Every change we make confronts us with the fact that we are responsible for our lives. We can’t control everything that happens to us, but we can control how we respond to our circumstances. Sometimes it’s easier for all of us to blame the world, or other people, than to figure out what we need to change in ourselves.

Success removes our excuses. Almost everyone has thought at some point “if this happens I won’t have any reason not to do that.” For example, if I pay my bills I won’t have any reason not to donate to charity. Or, if I clear my schedule I won’t have any excuse not to go back to school. In these cases we might ask ourselves why we don’t want to donate to charity, or go back to school, and work on those issues, rather than using unpaid bills or clogged schedules as a shield. We can still pay the bills and get some time without having to spend our free money or time on the “shoulds” on our list.

Success challenges us to figure out what we really want to do with our lives. The more we accomplish magically, the freer we become to express who we are in the world.
Affirmation
I embrace success.
Practice: Defining success
Think about a time that you succeeded in the past. What did you do? How did you feel about it at the time? What did you learn from it? How do you feel about it now?

Write a journal entry beginning, “Success is…” What does success mean to you? Do you think you are successful when you accomplish something? Does making friends mean more to you than getting ahead in the world?

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