Your question took me back some 20 years to when I was in a similar place in my own life. First I'll share my journey, then I'll share the things I've learned that may help you fulfill your own dreams.

I had always wanted to be a writer and had chosen to study journalism in college. When I was 20, I experienced a spontaneous psychic awakening while pregnant with my first child. For some time I was a stay-at-home mom. During those years, I was intensely caught up in a spiritual awakening; I was exploring lots of different spiritual practices, taking various classes and constantly reading about spiritual subjects.

It was around this time that I began to have lots of spontaneous spirit communication. This would just happen when someone was talking to me with love about someone who had died; it wasn't something I could control. When it did happen, I was very moved by how powerful and healing it was to relay messages from to the grieving from their departed loved ones.

One day I was pondering why I had this ability and what I was supposed to do with it. I had always longed to do something fun such as writing screenplays, but as my life had taken a decidedly spiritual turn, I wondered if I was being led to some path in particular.

At that moment, I had a life-changing spiritual experience. It doesn't sound all that dramatic here, but trust me, it was! As I was pondering all of this, I suddenly felt this immense presence and heard a voice speak to me in my mind. It asked me a question: If you could do either one - if you could succeed in writing screenplays or you could work as a medium and truly help the grieving, which would you choose?

I intuited that this was more than a hypothetical question - that I was at that time being asked to choose between something of a high road and a low road. Without hesitation, I chose the spiritual path, but I did mentally express my concern that I was unable to control my mediumship abilities.

Within two weeks of answering this calling, three different people had mentioned the <i>School of Spiritual Healing and Prophecy</i> in Lily Dale, New York, to me. I took this as a sign that this was something I needed to check out. I visited Lily Dale a few months later, and knew immediately that I would attend this school and that it would be prove to be the missing piece of the puzzle I was looking for. All of this came to fruition.

During the years I was attending the school, my marriage began to unravel, for I was growing and changing by leaps and bounds. I could see the end was near, and for the first time ever, I had to figure out what I would do to earn a living. I found a great apartment practically next door to my best friend's place and wanted to move there, but I was nervous about being able to pay the rent, which was $800/month.

I had recently been introduced to the concept of the Law of Attraction and decided to give it a try. I wrote the story of how I got just what I wanted in the past tense, as though it had already happened. In my story, I wrote that I had gotten a job on the internet that allowed me to work as a writer in the New Age field. It allowed me to set my own hours so I could take care of my kids, and it paid $800/month. Right after I wrote this story, the founder of Psychic Journal (now Kajama) emailed me, and within a couple of weeks, I was the editor of this new publication, and the job paid exactly $800 a month! (I kicked myself for not asking for more money, but instead of worrying about it, I got busy working with the law of attraction again, and within a few months I was making a good living.)

Now I'll try to pick out the key elements of my success so you can apply them to your own journey.

*Follow your bliss. Explore whatever calls to you and honor your passions. Even though many people told me that I'd never be able to make a living as a writer, I knew this was my path so I studied writing in college and sought work as a writer after. Similarly, I trusted that all my spiritual experiences were happening for a reason, so I explored them freely, thus laying a strong foundation for my future career.

*Trust your intuition, ask for and watch for signs, and act on them. This is essential. I realized I was being guided to go to Lily Dale, and I felt a certain charge around this idea so I followed up on it. When I heard from the founder of Psychic Journal, I similarly had a feeling that this was somehow an answer to a prayer, so I gave our correspondence my full attention.

*Be willing to take things other people might call 'risks.' I know many people who would love to be self-employed who feel insecure without a regular paycheck. I don't understand this, for there is nothing to worry about either way. Further, people who take responsibility for how much they make, such as entrepreneurs and salespeople, tend to enjoy a lot more freedom and financial rewards compared to the regular work force.

*Believe that you can have what you want and that you will figure out how to make things work as you move forward. Many people told me that my goals were unrealistic - until I achieved them - then they all wanted to know how the heck I'd done it. To begin, you must believe that what you want is possible and that you can make it happen.

*Conquer your fears to go for what you want. I was scared to support myself for the first time, especially since I had two young children. As I looked around, however, one way or another, everyone was making it, so I decided to just trust that things would work out. By conquering fear with faith that everything would be fine, I set myself free to experiment with doing what I really wanted to do.

*Work with natural spiritual law. Whenever I want to create something new or different in my life, I dig in to working with the law of attraction. It never fails.

*Take inspired action. I know many people who wish that they could do this or that, who never seem to manifest it because all they do is wish. We all get signs, insights and great ideas from Spirit every day; to fulfill our dreams, we have to take action on them.

*Give the very best of yourself to everyone you meet and everyone you work with. To manifest extraordinary success, we have to put in extraordinary energy. If you strive to set yourself apart from the crowd by being willing to work harder, be more creative, more devoted and truly more caring, success will follow you wherever you go. By practicing the Golden Rule - being the sort of person you'd want to work with or hire yourself -you'll naturally align with a smooth journey and lots of wonderful opportunities.

- Julia