Everything Always Works Out for Me! And You?
I have been optimistic ever since I can remember. Maybe this stems from my Italian American descent and upbringing given that many Italians feel joy and a spirit of resilience even when logic or circumstances might predict a glummer perspective. My jovial childhood spirit was enhanced weekly at Sunday dinners and throughout the years amid my large and gregarious family, especially via my grandfather, Gerardo Guarino, (photo with me), whose palpable sense of gratitude came with him when he first immigrated to NY from Naples, Italy in 1920 with just a bag of small personal items in one hand and a fistful of hope in the other. Perhaps my childhood exposure to baseball also played a role through an immediate love of the New York Yankees who enjoyed a renaissance in the 1970’s that included a 1978 record comeback from a 14-game deficit in July to overtake the Red Sox and eventually win it all against the Dodgers. I’m sure the nuns and priests who educated me as a child also contributed through their repeated promise of the ultimate reason to look ahead with glee – the afterlife. While it’s a fun introspective exercise to explore the multi-pronged roots of my upbeat disposition, today I invite you to consider joining me in taking positivity to even greater heights. Wouldn’t it be great if you knew that everything always worked out for you? 😊
Amid some early adulthood difficulty at age 18 in the 1980’s, I was first introduced to the ever-expanding world of self-help that was exploding in popularity. While there was then and remains today a gargantuan range of philosophies and tactics to help someone help themselves, I gravitated more toward the old-school elements within the relatively new movement, resonating with the forward-leaning tenets of having a strong sense of personal responsibility, acting one’s way to right thinking (fake it ‘til you make it, as some say), believing that one can be as happy as one wants to be, and the topless promise of personal and spiritual growth that is inherent in most self-help spheres. I originally drew upon a wide range of thought leaders (before that title became overused) that included William James, Kahlil Gibran, G. Alan Marlatt, William Griffith Wilson, Viktor Frankl, Melody Beattie, and others, in what some self-help participants would call a cafeteria style approach – taking among their offerings what I liked and leaving the rest. I have continued to expand that eclectic list of legitimate influencers over the decades to include Alan Watts, Don Miguel Ruiz, Elizabeth Gilbert, Dr. Michelle Moore, Joe Torre, Tony Robbins (for the steak but not the sizzle), and many others who include personal friends and family members in my now very big tent of role models, teachers, and mentors. While their specific approaches and even underlying assumptions widely vary, I believe their inspirational building blocks are supported by the same foundation of personal responsibility, individual strength, the belief that the human whole is far greater than the sum of its parts, and the spiritual axiom that one can be as happy as one wishes to be.
Thankfully, my life has been continually enriched by my close relationship with self-help circles for nearly 40 years and I remain highly grateful for my healthy and balanced involvement with them, a connection characterized more by blissful want than need. Like many of us, I have had my share of adversity, such as untimely deaths, family issues that included various addictions, divorce, business hiccups, etc., yet I have also enjoyed reveling in the divine joys of raising two amazing daughters (32 & 31), finding a balanced, wonderful, and lasting love south of the border with a Mexican angel, solving the enigmatic puzzles of personal health and economics, and developing deep and beautiful friendships with so many (my real life amici group) along the way. They make me feel like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, the richest man in town. I even love those in the opposing political party! (Don’t worry; we won’t go there today… 😊)
Self-improvement and spiritual growth are surely works of progress rather than perfection, and thanks to a fortuitous meeting with a unique and like-minded gratitude-focused person in 2021, I received a potent boost in my ongoing quest toward increasing positivity through her one simple suggestion. Stephanie Pierucci, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in Aspen, CO., to discuss a potential business collaboration, shared one of her favorite mantras – Everything always works out for me. At first, I admittedly felt my typically restrained sense of self-help snobbery bristle at what I initially perceived as an over-the-top, unrealistic string of self-talk. After discussing her perspective and personal application of this superlative mantra, however, I was happy to squelch my initial shortsightedness and to instead stroll with her awhile down this mental and spiritual yellow brick road.
Stephanie’s premise is based on the very practical aspects of manifestation, a process that many view, perhaps mistakenly, as more mysterious than practical. When interested in a new car, perhaps a specific model, for example, isn’t it uncanny how suddenly you start seeing that car “everywhere?” It’s not really that it appears more often, of course, but that you have focused your mind on seeing it and thus to filter out the “noise” of other cars you are not interested in. After all, most of our mind’s work occurs in tuning out vs. tuning in since there are far too many mental stimuli that we don’t need or want to engage in.
In a parallel way, when I embraced the idea that everything always works out for me, approaching ALL situations, small and big, external and internal, as opportunities for growth, learning, increased awareness and happiness within me, I did, in fact, gain the power to live in the reality of everything always working out for me. And, beyond the very real psychological and spiritual benefits of bringing this mantra to the forefront of the private world of my thoughts and feelings, there was another very real set of gains that also occurred. I started to effect changes in my life on the other end of this chicken-and-egg paradigm by intuitively putting my best foot forward more often and with greater success, thus creating more tangible opportunities. While I had already been vibrating on a high level for years, embracing this mantra at my core produced vast improvement in my work, personal relationships, spiritual awareness, and physical health. The positive results have been unequivocal including during those occasional times when lemons do drop into my universe, I have become expert in converting them to the sweetest shots of limoncello in no time!
I realize that the seemingly magical proposition I have laid out may sound a bit fluffy at first or “out there.” However, I can tell you firsthand after taking many leaps of faith across several streams of doubt in this practice of believing that everything always works out for me, its bounty has yielded beyond what I could have ever imagined. I have continued to build upon it, increasing the magnitude of its benefits via incorporating a handful of other key positive practices in my daily life, such as participating in a gratitude email chain where only items of gratitude are shared, praying and meditating daily with the exclusive goals of increased understanding and alignment with a higher purpose, and actively maintaining contact with others who could use support.
The net results of my decision to ultimately buy into Stephanie’s mantra without reservation and to fully engage in activities that enhance my positive spiritual momentum have yielded among highest ROI of any personal investment I have ever made. Indeed today, everything always works out for me!
Feel free to reach out directly if you’re interested in discussing whether everything always works out for you too! 😊
