At a recent seminar with Scott Harris I heard this concept and felt it worth sharing. If you like, check out his video here.
The universe sends us messages all the time. These typically come in one of three forms: feathers, bricks or trucks. You might go to the doctor, and she may tell you that you need to lose some weight and that your blood pressure is elevated so you also need to quit drinking and make some dietary changes. This is a feather – a nice, soft message. Most people are too busy to listen to, or simply miss the feather completely. So next we get sent a brick.
The same person begins to experience shortness of breath and other pains, and perhaps is unable to play outside with the kids or grandkids. This is a brick… and the universe is trying once again to capture the attention of this person and get them to correct their detrimental behaviors. Far too many people ignore the bricks as well, and keep pushing right on, seemingly lacking sufficient motivation to make the necessary changes, or just unwilling to accept that the behavior is the real problem.
In one last attempt the universe hits us with a truck. That same individual finds themselves in the ER, being lined up for a 5-way bypass surgery. Amazingly, most people stop and listen to the truck and from there, make radical changes in their lives. (The alternative is death and it became all too real a possibility, in this case.)
What if it didn’t take a truck to get our attention? What if we could pay attention to and heed the feathers? Perhaps we wouldn’t get stuck on the side of a busy highway with an empty tank of gas. Perhaps we, as a society, wouldn’t have experienced a change in the epidemiology of a disease like diabetes in an astonishingly short time. Watch for (and heed) the feathers… they are life’s easiest (and least painful) lessons to us.