I was watching Wayne Dyer’s new DVD, Ambition to Meaning: Finding Your Life’s Purpose. It’s a feature film with a story and interview clips with Dr. Dyer scattered throughout — altogether viewable and thought-provoking, and parts of it keep coming back to me as reminders to help me grow. His contention is that there comes a time in life when you wake up to the fact that it’s not about personal gain but rather about service. This is a kind of enlightened service that doesn’t stand in the way of personal success (and may, in fact, uphold it), but there is a shift in consciousness that makes self-seeking seem old and stale, while seeking to be God’s hands and feet on earth is ever fresh and exciting. Then Dyer made a comment on the Law of Attraction, that it is often misunderstood to imply that we attract what we want, when it is instead that we attract what we are. I loved that.

And it got me to thinking that, if that’s the case, this might be a great time to take a brief pause from trying to draw more great stuff into your life and applaud yourself for what you’ve attracted already. In other words, you might consider tallying up your “inventory of riches.” You attracted them: you may as well count them, add them up, and get the full impact of their wonder and your good fortune. This is a way to boost your gratitude quotient and your self-esteem, because all these blessings are a reflection of not simply the intensity of your affirmations or the artistry of your treasure map, but the reality of who you are.

For myself, I can say that I have a beautiful, talented, compassionate daughter, and an accepting, supportive (also funny and good-looking)  husband who loves me like crazy and who writes screenplays that are so touching they make the hairs on my arms stand up.  I’ve attracted New York City with its energy and diversity and excitement and possibility. I’ve been given work that I love and that moves people, and when they tell me that it does, I feel as if I could fly.

I’ve been blessed with health and friends and passions: my family, animals and wanting to help them, and movies and theater (especially musicals: in my opinion, life at its best has lyrics and a chorus and a tap routine). There’s feng shui for making my home into a prayer, and natural living and natural food for feeling fabulous, and this life as a female and loving girly stuff, although I stopped being a girl a long time ago. There are good books, of course, and God most of all — this spiritual quest that gets more alluring the longer I’m on it.

This is not to say that if I were inventorying every aspect of my life that there would not also be “the rest.” That would be the goals I haven’t reached yet, the net worth that was, on paper, higher last year, and the imperfections and aggravations I could focus on and  feel crummy about. But I don’t care to focus on those. I’ve been taught that what I focus on grows, and I don’t want that. Besides, staying in touch and in tune with the good stuff is much more enticing and much more fun. And it reminds me of who I am and what I can be.

So do try this, making your own list, in your head or on paper. What have you attracted that’s so dazzlingly wonderful you’re taken aback by it? That’s who you are. Wayne Dyer reminded me, and I thought I’d pass it along.