About seven years ago I tasted the best chocolate chip cookies ever! A friend of mine brought me a plate of them, and I’ve been hooked ever since. They are made with real butter, oatmeal, wheat flour (believe it or not), and the BEST milk chocolate chips I’ve ever tasted! They are almost golden brown, soft and chewy, and are loaded with yummy, melt-in-your mouth chocolate.
What’s the secret to these delectable treasures? Of course the ingredients matter. They are, in fact, vital. But, believe it or not…the secret is the time in the oven. For real. After tweaking the time, we found that eight and a half minutes in a 350 degree oven, and baking for an additional minute outside of the oven before removing them from the sheet, makes them absolutely perfect. Any shorter time leaves them doughy. (Gross.) And any longer time makes them hard. (Grosser.) Honestly, unless my cookies are baked to perfection, I won’t even eat them. My kids will settle for the mediocrity, but not me. These divine dainties simply need the proper amount of time to deliver the greatest goodness!
Everything in our lives takes its own designated time to develop and become its very best. And it’s worth the wait.
This idea is actually the essence of The Law of Gestation. “What’s that?” you ask? It’s something I learned from Leslie Householder. Every idea, every dream, every creation requires a certain amount of time to “cook” before it is fully developed. We wouldn’t want our dreams to be realized before they reach perfection. I know you want to argue with me. But seriously, we wouldn’t.
I recently set a really scary goal to get ten new customers for my business in two weeks’ time. The deadline was a training I was doing for my team on the Laws of Thought, and I wanted to share with them the success that I experienced. My other purpose for setting this goal was to meet the qualification for an all-expenses paid vacation with my husband (Yah baby!), and to qualify for free product from my company.
Being tempted by failure lurking in the shadows, nothing happened during the two weeks until the day before the training. You can imagine how excited I was when a new customer called me out of nowhere. I placed his order, and I hoped that maybe it was the beginning of good things to come! But, alas. No.
The next morning as I drove into the training I tried to figure out what it all meant, and I wondered why I didn’t get my ten customers. I couldn’t find an answer, so I chose to feel gratitude for my one new customer. Then I thought about all the free product I had received in the past and for all of those customers that made it happen, and my gratitude increased. I felt more at peace and chose to be content to learn the lessons of prosperity one step at a time.
Suddenly a thought popped into my head about why I didn’t get my ten customers. “This is just The Law of Gestation.” Oh! That’s right! And then it became clear. My real purpose was to qualify for the vacation, get free product, and inspire my team. I could still do all three of those things if I reached my goal by the end of the month. I still had four days!! Happy dance!
I chose gratitude and belief that the goal would still be met.
And it happened! It was still a process, but along the way I didn’t see any evidence that it would come through. And yet, by eleven o’clock at night on the last day of the month I had all ten customers! It just came together in the end. I met all the qualifications, and I was still able to share my experience with my team to inspire them to believe they can succeed as well.
We have to have patience and trust that Life will deliver our greatest desires in the right time and in the right way. Remembering The Law of Gestation instills hope when we feel like the wait is endless. (And sometimes it is!) But it’s a great reminder that our big goals will be worth it in the end.