I’ve been a personal development advocate since the late ‘90’s when I read the books Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, Success Engineering by Phil Gosling, and The Science of Getting Rich, by Wallace Wattles. All of these books pointed to two common themes that helped me shape my future:

1.You can change your physical reality, by changing your mental focus

2.Good and bad are human labels. The Universe doesn’t distinguish between the two.

In the beginning of my exploration into the world of personal development, I wanted physical proof that the concepts I was intrigued by in the books, actually worked in real life. My first experiment began while I was standing on a train platform in Askim, Norway, waiting for my daily train to Oslo.

I wanted to see how much of the physical world I could control with my mind, so my first experiment was to see if I could stop the train. Not a ‘jump in front of the train and stop it with my super powers experiment,’ but see if I could get the train to stop so the doors would be in front of me on the platform.

Prior to the experiment, the doors never seemed to stop in front of me or even come close to me. I was always in the middle or back of the pack as everyone scrambled onto the train and got the best seats. My first experiment was simple; I would get the train to stop so the doors were close to me. I would be one of the first ones on the train and get one of the best seats.

At the start of the experiment, things seemed to be the same. Regardless of how focused I was, the train doors still opened too far away. But then it slowly started to change. The doors would open close to me and sometimes directly in front of me. As time went by, the train would stop so the doors were close to me three out of five days a week.

As it became second nature, I tried standing in different spots on the platform. The statistics remained the same. Three out of five days, the doors opened close to me and I got a good seat.

But then it occurred to me. Since I was able to control a train with my mind, what if I thought about an accident, or my house catching on fire? What if everything I thought or accidentally thought, came true?

Fortunately, I had a friend in New York that also practiced many personal development disciplines. He explained to me that although it seemed like I was controlling the train, I was actually just positioning myself on the platform according to where I subconsciously knew that the train was going to stop. Instead of controlling the train, I instinctively knew where it was going to be.

It was a relief and an awakening for me. It opened the door to more personal development in many aspects of my life. Since then, I’ve become a published author, a business owner, and a speaker at several business and marketing events. I feel very fortunate to be living the life of my dreams and I wish you the same good fortune that I have received from the Universe.