Mantras and desires

Sometime during last year I watched my friend Oprah on the television. She had some friends around to chat about visualisation and intent and affiirmation and all that airy-fairy stuff. They had some people on the show who had big pieces of cardboard onto which they'd stuck cut out magazine pictures of things they wanted to happen in their lives and they looked at them alot. And got them. Or something like that. I'm not very good at paying attention and tend to lose concentration and chat through TV shows, or so I'm told (and that above description of the show seems to correlate).

Now, to me, the point of the show was to get people to pull out their scissors and glue and cut up old magazines to make pretty collages, thus taking them back to nursery school days, and possibly the simple joys in life. I could be wrong though. Perhaps there was more to it.

Okay, okay, obviously there was more. Like Oprah would ever just do a show on cutting and pasting. The whole thing was about positive affirmation so, despite my feelings on self-help books, I decided to try it. Dedicatedly. Because, after all, Oprah is never wrong.

I created my own little mantra, to be said in my head each morning on waking, sometimes even twice. I thought long and hard about this (admittedly while half-watching TV. It was a programme on lizard reproduction and how they're cross-breeding with lemurs. Hmm, maybe I wasn't concentrating on that either. Anyway, back to the point) and came up with a sweet little ditty to say to myself each morning, while thinking positively.

I must be honest though, I have not always found it easy to muster up the positivity in the early hours of the morning. Some things are too difficult, even for Oprah. But I did my best. And I did say it (nearly) each morning.

It's been over six months now and, each morning, I mantra myself while grinning (possibly slightly maniacally) in bed, then slowly open my eyes to see if my desires have been fulfilled, as Oprah promised. I tend to open one eye at a time, not to overwhelm myself on the day it happens, because it will, of course.

And yet, each morning since I started, after going through this whole process (and, no, it is not just an excuse to get an extra five minutes in bed), I open my eyes to find that my house has not been magically converted into the one in my mantra - the bricks are not made of chocolate cake, the roof is not wafers, the door handles in the kitchen aren't Jelly Tots, and the chocolate spring flowing into a meandering stream through my garden is just not there (there is more, but I'll stop there, I'm sure you get the picture). It's disappointing.

Then I turn around to check if my last little mantra-request has been granted... No, still no wings. Sigh.

I wonder if I'm doing something wrong?