Pray Rain in Action

(crossposted from the LOA for the Real World)

As promised, here's the story of my first experience with a pray rain journal.

I was in the corporate world and had just gotten out of a staff meeting where we salespeople were told if we didn't turn our numbers around FAST, we were out of jobs. They'd pull the plug on the whole department.

Nothing was going right in the year the department had been up and running. I'd been on board four months and from day one was immersed in the struggle to make something good happen. We were having miserable results. No internal cooperation, our product wasn't well-received, and management had this pool of amazing 401k experts COLD CALLING prospects to try to sell this thing. It was ridiculous!

And nothing was working.

So coming out of that meeting, I felt like I'd been fired. I thought, well, what they told us to do hasn't worked (cold calling, script sheets, etc.) so I may as well try something new.

And I thought about a pray rain journal. I'd heard of it, but never practiced it.

I knew a hairstylist who'd achieved her dream of owning her own salon by using a pray rain journal, so I had reason to believe it could work.

I also knew I didn't have a lot of time to get results, so I needed a very short journal.

Guess what I found in my drawer? A little 25 page $0.88 notebook - maybe 2" wide by 3" long - I mean TEENY. I could whip through that thing pretty fast. Didn't know if it'd be fast enough to save my job, but - it was worth a shot. After all, nothing else was working!

So I pulled out my new notebook, and on the first page I wrote about how excited prospects were to find me. I wrote about how much they loved my product. I wrote about what great instant rapport we had, and how they couldn't wait for me to implement the product, and how perfect it was for their company.

It was pure fantasy! Everything I wrote in there was the exact opposite of what I'd been experiencing.

But for those four minutes it took to write a handful of sentences about what I wanted as if I already had it, I was vibrating alignment with it. (And we all know that's where the magic is.)
So after my first entry I did another unheard of thing. I asked myself what felt good to do next.
"Lunch."

I hadn't had lunch since my first day on the job when the big wigs took me out.

I'd been eating Snickers and Grandma's cookies from the vending machine because we were under immense pressure to make a certain number of phone calls every day and track our results, and report back to management, etc. etc.

So after asking what felt good, I did something different. I went across the street (whoa - left the building! ha ha!) and ate my favorite Greek food at an outside table on a gorgeous spring day. I kicked my feet up on another chair and leisurely fed leftover pita bread to the sparrows. I goofed off. And it felt GOOOOOD!

After an hour and a half of enjoying myself and the beautiful day and the amazing food and friendly birds, I went back to the office. I was feeling refreshed. And better.

In the elevator on the way up, a gentleman asked me who I was. When I told him, he insisted I follow him to his office. 

When we got to his office, he showed me his desk - covered with sales literature from 401k vendors.  "I've been going through this for weeks and haven't been able to make heads or tails of any of it. Can you help me?"

Ha ha!

Can I help him?! It's only what I was born to do!! I mean, in truth, I LOVED 401k plans, I loved talking about them, I loved helping people understand them, I loved helping them figure out what would work best for them.

I finally got to do what I LOVED!

I had my satchel with me and pulled out my sales literature. We had a very nice chat.

After 15 minutes he got up and walked me down the hall to his HR Director. "Sherry, meet Jeannette. Jeannette, meet Sherry." He tells Sherry I'll be implementing their new plan and to sign whatever I need her to sign.

He turns to me and asks "How soon can you get that to us?"

I was more than a little shocked, you can imagine. Where were the objections? Where was the dance to try to get a second appointment? Where were the other decision makers who I had to get on board?

This was supposed to be a six week process to even get to the point where we prepare contracts for signature.

From that day on, I became a pray rain journal junkie. I mean, I didn't even have to get to the end of the BOOK before my first dream came true ... it happened before the end of the DAY!
I've used them on various things ever since. (Building my ideal coach practice in amazingly short time, for one.)

Have fun with yours.

And I just want to officially say thank you, Universe, for being so good to me. That was a really good day. : )