Ziv: I’m Ziv Shalev, and this is On the Journey. Every Week On The Journey explores the intersections of wellness, spirituality, inquiry, mental health, personal growth and purposeful living through the eyes of the people we interview.

The conversations explore what it means to be human, to live well, and how we interact with each other and our surroundings. To begin, I’d like to hear a little about your spiritual background growing up and how this evolved in your life to this day.

Esther: Thank you, Ziv. So my name’s Esther McCann of the Law of Attraction coach based in Bristol. I’m also a spiritual mentor. So growing up, I was brought up in a really Christian background. I still identify as Christian, but when I kind of reached the teenage leaving at home years, I really moved away from my faith. But when I got to the end of my 20s, I initiated a divorce. I wanted to go through a divorce process.

This is a really difficult time for me. And within that process, I ended up coming back to my spirituality and I discovered the law of attraction. And then through that, my life really started to change. And that’s why I’ve become so passionate about teaching other people the law of attraction and using it in their own lives today.

Ziv: Wonderful. So, I would love to hear what your perspective is about the law of attraction. But before that spirituality, what is it for you?

Esther: For me, spirituality is connecting to our higher purpose and connecting to the consciousness of the planet. I don’t believe that, you know, all religions, we’re all talking about a different God here.

And so although I’m on this stream that may not resonate for somebody, if we all have the common goal of living in love, living in harmony, treating each other right, treating the planet right, and also wanting to grow, to me, that spirituality. It’s the “us all connecting through that common goal.”

Ziv: Wonderful. So, you know, when I listen to you, I feel I just want to go and love everyone and you talk about the ocean of love and it resonates with me deeply.

And in five minutes, I will go out and someone would just annoy me so much.

This gap between a like an inner belief in that we are all connected and then the day to day life where people just drives us crazy. How do we overcome this gap?

Esther: It is tough. I’m not going to sit there and pretend that it isn’t because it is. For me, the gap is the judgment. The to the part where I have judged that person and I have made that I’ve labeled that person as being annoying or I’ve labeled them as being horrible or whatever it is about them.

At the end of the day, I’ve placed that label on them. And I think for me, a lot of it comes down to mindfulness, bringing myself back to the present moment, a lot of self-reflection, saying what is it about this person that I find annoying? Why is that? Is there something there within me that that is triggering, that that’s setting off, that actually maybe needs some healing within myself, but also then trying to then see them through the eyes of love and see that they are just a person like everybody else, and they’re going through their own things.

They maybe they can’t help the way that they are. That really helps me to just sort of try to come back to seeing them through loving source universalize rather than seeing them through my worldly ego eyes, based on what I’ve labeled them as I really do try to do that. It’s not always easy. You know, I’m not going to sit there and pretend I’m the saint. But I also think in my reactions, if you would if somebody’s upset you, is shouting back, is arguing back, all those kind of reactions is not productive and trying to respond to that person with the most loving response as well.

Ziv: I really connect to that because I remember myself sometimes before I go out, which doesn’t happen a lot with this COVID. But and then I, you know, standing next to the door and say I’m full of love and full of love, I’m all love, love. And it goes away so fast when I go outside. What kinds of practices habits one needs to work on so it will stay longer and longer and it will be really part of who you are?

Esther: I think for me, just from a law of attraction angle, every time I have, say, a negative thought, like we can’t escape negative thoughts at the end of the day, they’re natural part of our process, we shouldn’t judge ourselves for them. But sometimes if I’m having negative thoughts and it’s consuming you, it’s consuming your day, it’s normal tap ones that fleet in and out.

But if it’s really consuming my day, I will always say to myself, what am I attracting right now? What am I attracting into my experience? Because I know that if I’m just giving my focus to all the things that are winding me up or the things that I say negative in my day, when I think about that it makes me go, you know what? This really isn’t worth getting stressed over, because at the end of the day, everything is temporary anyway. They always say if it’s going to matter, is it is it going to matter in five years? Of course, it’s not so and so. So I always try to think like that.

Like, this is not permanent. This is a temporary situation. I find a lot of relief in that. I also like to think, OK, what am I attracting right now? And if it’s if it’s not good things because I’m just judging a person and concentrating on all the things I don’t like about them, I’ll then think, OK, what can I maybe appreciate in that person? So try to switch it up and think, if it’s somebody that you know, it’s a family member, what is it that you do appreciate about that family member? What is it that you do like about them?

If it’s somebody that you. Don’t know, and it’s that they’ve just upset you, I then try to think, OK, what could the lessons be from this situation? I’m always looking for the lessons, the growth, the expansion, the perspective from every interaction that I have, particularly if it’s a negative one, because obviously it kind of flies up to you. So I always try to think, OK, what has this interaction taught me about myself, about how I want to move forward with my life and how can I make myself feel better in this situation? I’m very, very big on being intentional about the way I want to feel.

And in terms of mindfulness, that is about training your mind to come back to being in the present, and I think that does take time. You know, mindfulness is not an overnight thing where we suddenly have a full awareness of, when we’re being like this. But I think like doing little things like what they say when you’re doing the washing up or you’re brushing your teeth.

I only concentrate on the feeling of your toothbrush on your teeth, the taste of the toothpaste in your mouth, the motion where you’re holding the toothbrush, little things like not really bringing yourself back to the present and using all of your senses rather than I suppose it’s like monkey mind and just allowing yourself to wander, it takes some practice. But I think it all pays off if you’re willing to put the effort in.

Ziv: So we’re practicing mindfulness through the day to day things that we do anyway, and then you talked about reflection, like looking back at how we behaved or thought or felt, and then see if it’s aligned with who we want to be. And so I think you touched a bit about what is the law of attraction for you, but can you elaborate?

Esther: Yes.

A lot of people talk about your thoughts, creating your reality. But for example, I feel somebody that said they don’t really love themselves at a core level. There’s a there’s a deep limiting belief there that they don’t love themselves. Sometimes just saying I love myself is just not enough. You know, the thought I love myself isn’t enough because you need to heal what it is that’s behind it.

So actually, I’m very much focused on the way that I feel and concentrating on caring about that, caring about the way that I want to feel daily. If I could break it down and be super intentional and be like hour by hour, minute by minute, but caring about how I want to feel on a daily basis and setting that intention every day, saying this is what I want to feel because I want to attract more experiences into my life that match those feelings. That is the law of attraction emotion for me.

Ziv: Great, Esther, it’s really inspiring and sounds like a daily long term work that we all need to do.

Esther: Yeah, definitely, it’s like I said,

You know, there’s a lot of times we think, oh, is that the most mindful response I could have given?

And the same goes with law of attraction. The two go hand in hand because you are creating your future through how you feel in the present. So really concentrating on the way you want to feel, the way you want to respond in every present moment is going to impact your future. So when they say, you know, your power is in the present, for me, that is a very, very true statement. It couldn’t be more accurate.

Ziv: Great. We are heading to the end of this interview, and just before we finish it, I would love to ask you what question I didn’t ask you that I should have.

Esther: What question you haven’t asked me, what would be the biggest piece of advice I could give to somebody right now?

Ziv: So I would like to I would like to ask you something. What is the biggest piece of advice you can give to somebody?

Esther: The biggest piece of advice I can give to someone in 2020 is please don’t feel limited by what you perceive to be the reality that is going on around you at the moment, because law of attraction is all about having faith in a future that is unseen yet, but it can come through for you. That is law of attraction, it’s having faith, despite you not seeing the physical evidence yet of what it is that you want.

And obviously with everything that is going on in the news and in the world, we really are bombarded with quite a lot of negative information.

But when you are manifesting in using the law of attraction, what you desire can come to you in some very unexpected ways, some very interesting stepping stones. And I just want to encourage people not to lose faith. Please keep dreaming and keep having faith that what you want is still possible despite the outside circumstances possibly telling you different.

Ziv: Esther, thank you so much. You’re beaming love and positivity. And it’s so great to see it. Thank you for your experience and for sharing it with with us. Thank you.

Esther: Thank you for having me.