Many moons ago, I took a great big leap of faith and subdivided my section in Wellington and built an architecturally designed house on an “unbuildable” section.
I bought my first home when I was pregnant and only 24 years old. I used savings, a small legal settlement from the travel chain Flight Centers after their horrific treatment of me, and a $20,000 kickstarter from my mother and her husband Ted. The purchase price was $135,000. It felt like a million dollars back then. Gosh, how house prices have soared. I was lucky to be able to buy a home.
I renovated that house, restoring the verandahs that had been ripped off, heightening the ceilings that had been lowered, and returning the colonial villa back to her beautiful glory. A year after purchasing it, I found myself single-parenting with no financial support from my daughter’s father.
Luckily, when we purchased the house, it had been divided into two properties. I tented half the house, keeping my independence and income for the longest time.
Later, I subdivided the back section—despite my mother trying to instill the fear of failure: “Why can’t you settle for less? “
Why couldn’t I settle for less? Because I wanted to be in the light, the sun, and to be elevated. I had courage, vision, and fierce desire. When I decided to take a great big leap of faith, The Universe sent people to help me.
The home that Cassie built (with the help of award-winning architect Gerald Parsonson)
Pictured in this photo, Flow, Cassandra Gaisford, https://shop.thejoyfulartist.co.nz/product/flow/
Pictured in this photo, The Three Joys, Cassandra Gaisford, 2008 (painted on an art retreat with Max Gimblett in Maui, Hawaii) You may enjoy this article:https://www.thejoyfulartist.co.nz/max-gimblett-cassandra-gaisford-and-inspiration/
I loved being high amongst the trees, especially the gracious Pohutakawas. The water feature and the sculpture I carved from Omaru stone during a workshop with Bodhi Vincent, came with us to our new home.
I was clearing out some of my old journals one day when I came across something I had written back in 2000.
“I will live in a house that is elevated with lots of sun and which is surrounded by trees. It will be elegant and streamlined, with simplicity at its core and feng–shuied to make sure it is the best it can be.”
What amazed me was not what I had written but the astonishing realization that seven years later, I was actually living in the house I had created in my imagination. And, now, in 2024, after a move from Wellington to the Bay of Islands, I’ve achieved the same vision on a bigger scale.
Now that’s powerful creativity! It’s also one of the principals pf the law of attraction made infamous by the DVD “The Secret.” But guess what? There is no secret! What there is instead is a lack of conscious awareness re how to tap into the law of attractive to make your dreams and goals a reality.
In this blog, I’ll share with you six simple strategies that have worked for me and many of my clients. I hope you take away some helpful techniques to put into practice.
Issues:
Something to think about!
What is still lacking is scientific evidence that visualization can create “coincidences” in the physical world outside one’s immediate control. Of course, this is hard to test in a lab.
But thousands of scientists and millions of other people in the world do believe in this because they have experienced it in their own lives.
In short, just because an effect cannot be tested in a lab does not mean it does not exist.
Some of the greatest thinkers in the world – Einstein, Edison, Jung, Carnegie, and Goethe (the man with the highest recorded IQ, 210) – all believed in the power of the mind to create coincidences.
“I believe that the mind has the power to affect groups of atoms and even tamper with the odds of atomic behavior and that even the course of the world is not predetermined by physical law but may be altered by the uncaused volition of human beings.”
~ Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington,
English mathematician and AstroPhysicist
Dare to dream!
Bring into being all the things that you yearn for. As author George Bernard Shaw once said, “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will.”
The following questions may awaken some dreams:
What have you always wanted to do but never thought you could?
What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?
Imagine your way to success
Some people have estimated that we have 80,000 thoughts a day and that up to 80% of these are negative. Keep your mind on what you do want and off what you don’t! See your way to success. Create a mental image of what you want to accomplish or obtain by imagining the desired outcome in your mind. At the same time, repeat a positive, present-tense affirmation about the goal.
Don’t get stuck on the term “visualization”. Different people have different dominant senses. The most common dominant sense is the sense of sight. This is why, for most people, the process of visualization works well. Some people, however, may have a dominant sense of touch, hearing or smell. These people may have difficulty “visualizing” but may be able to accurately imagine sounds, smells, or feelings. Work with whatever works for you! Ideally, try to engage all the senses – imagine what you will see, what you will hear, what scents surround you, how surfaces feel, etc.
Intensify your desire
Create a dream board. According to mind-mapping and creativity expert Tony Buzan…we think in images, not words. Surrounding yourself with images that symbolise or reflect the things you want to create not only allows these images to inspire and excite you it also brings them into being. Adding a dose of color and engaging all your senses makes this technique even more powerful.
Maintain the faith!
Stay positive and keep away from cynics. Tap into the awesome power of meditation to help you maintain a positive expectancy, manage stress, and increase your intuitive, creative powers.
Associate only with positive, success-oriented people. Get around winners. As we say, fly with the eagles. You can’t fly with the eagles if you keep scratching with the turkeys. Get away from the go-nowhere types and, above all, get away from negative people. Get away from negative coworkers. If you’ve got a negative boss, seriously consider changing jobs. Associating on a regular basis with negative people is enough in itself to condemn you to a life of underachievement
Be prepared to do the hard yards
Pursuing your dreams isn’t always easy—if it were, more people would be doing it. What are you prepared to give up in order to achieve your dreams? Free time? Money? Short-term gain? Laziness? Comfort? How will you feel when you have achieved your dreams?
Trust your gut!
As Einstein once said, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” Listen to life’s whispers and act on your intuition. Intuitively I always “knew” I could build a house on the back of my section. Rationally I had no idea how!
Allow your intuition to guide you to the higher ground as Oprah does, “My business skills have come from being guided by my higher self or my intuition. I am who I am today because of… intuition, my ability to feel what is right for me and allowing that to be the strongest guide in my life. Intuition is akin to God. It is akin to being led by that which is greater than yourself. My intuition, my intention and my passion have allowed me to be who I am and will take me to higher ground…”
Everyone is intuitive—many of us have just forgotten how to listen.
“Your power to choose the direction of your life allows you to reinvent yourself, to change your future, and to powerfully influence the rest of creation.”
Dr. Stephen R. Covey, from The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness.
“All successful men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.”
– Brian Tracy
“A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.”
“Faith is expectancy. You do not receive what you pray for, nor even what you say you have faith in. You will always receive exactly what you expect. “
Eric Butterworth, Author
“The more clear and definite you make your picture then, and the more you dwell upon it, bringing out all its delightful details, the stronger your desire will be, and the stronger your desire, the easier it will be to hold your mind fixed upon the picture of what you want.”
Wallace Wattles, author, and pioneer success writer
“It’s not your work to make anything happen. It’s your work to dream it and let it happen. The law of Attraction will make it happen. In your joy, you create something, and then you maintain your vibrational harmony with it, and the Universe must find a way to bring it about. That’s the promise of The Law of Attraction.”
Abraham Hicks, author
“Synchronicity brings you opportunities, people, events and circumstances exactly when and where they need to be. When life flows naturally, the universe’s natural state of abundance follows automatically.”
Owen Waters, author
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought”
His Holiness The Dalai Lama
“This formula is a law of nature which no man has yet been able to explain. The name by which one calls this law is of little importance. The important fact is, it works.”
Napoleon Hill, Author, Think And Grow Rich
Making my dream of building a brand new house meant staying in a job stressful. At the time I was the National Manager, Careerlines for Workplace Support, an EAP provider.
It also meant taking on a second job to generate extra money and going into more debt than I was comfortable with. My second job had a silver lining I hadn’t seen at the time; I started my own business, Worklife Solutions, and began writing a newspaper column for New Zealand’s National paper, The Dominion Post. Later, I expanded these columns into my first book, Happy at Work: for mid-lifers: A Practical and Inspirational Guide for Job Hunters and Career Changers>>
I was so delighted when Max Gimblett wrote the following foreword:
~ Max Gimblett, visual artist
You may enjoy reading some of the other testimonials here>>
Later I serialised Happy at Work: for mid-lifers: A Practical and Inspirational Guide for Job Hunters and Career Changers into my popular Midlife Career Rescue series:
Mid-Life Career Rescue (Employ Yourself)
I’ve noticed there’s one constant to all the homes I have owned—creating a home and income has always been important to me. No doubt, because I was a single parent with no other financial support.
As I shared earlier, the first home I owned was divided into two self-contained flats. I lived in the two-bedroom flat, which had a beautiful garden, and rented out the one-bedroom flat. The lower floor in the new home I built in Wellington was designed as a self-contained studio apartment.
When I went full time in my business, Worklife Solutions, and left my salaried job I worked from home as well as from serviced offices. Later, when my daughter left home and went to university, I rented the whole studio apartment out to creatives working for Weta. It’s always handy to have diverse sources of income.
For many years I loved my home. When I met my current partner, I went and lived with him, and later, we purchased a property together in The Bay of Islands, where we live now. This time, my home and income are derived from a wonderful art studio where I sell art directly to buyers and run art retreats. Our home-home we get to enjoy all to ourselves. You may enjoy this post about my art space>>
Taking a great big leap of faith meant managing incredible stress – anyone who has built a house will know what this is like. It was especially stressful because I was a single mother, working full time, and had to make all the decisions on my own and deal with builders who, at times, tried to bully me into paying more than we agreed. At times, it seemed like I was battling everyone—including the council and the architect who thought my wish to ensure that the building EXCEEDED, not just met, current building regulations. Later, when I came to sell my house because I had insisted on having a cavity system installed before the building regulations had mandated they were non-negotiable, I was validated.
It was tough, really tough – but it was oh, so worth it!
For ten years, I lived in that gorgeous house and created a very valuable asset from what used to be a pile of unused soil on a very steep site – so steep that nearly everyone told me that I would never be able to build on it.
But I maintained the faith, kept on visioning my dream house, and when one day a wonderful valuer name Cho Chan told me he believed I could build a house up there, I took active steps to research and plan for success. Sometimes, all it takes is one other person to believe in the beauty of your dreams.
I dreamed of an inspiring place where I could flourish
THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF ART: HOW CASSANDRA TURNS HOUSES INTO HOMES
Posted in: Blog
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