I wanted to share something truly remarkable that happened to me recently — an experience that took about 18 months to unfold and completely reinforced my belief in the law of attraction.

Back in 1991, I worked at a grocery store where I had a very good friend named Joanne. After I graduated from university and got married, I moved away from that store, and although we had a great friendship, we never exchanged phone numbers or emails. At the time, I thought we’d eventually run into each other. As the years went by, we completely lost touch. Social media didn’t exist back then.

Fast forward to about 18 months ago. I started rereading The Secret and other books about the law of attraction. Knowing how particular I can be about testing things, I decided to put it to the test in a very specific way: I chose to focus on something that felt nearly impossible — finding Joanne. I searched for her on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, but I could not find anything. Still, I kept visualizing meeting her again, talking, and catching up. I did this almost every night.

Then, two weeks ago, something incredible happened. I was running errands, going from one store to another. I was stuck in traffic and forgetting items on my list. It was the kind of day when everything seemed out of sync. At the very last store, I had all the items on my list in hand, and as I approached the cash register, I realized that I had forgotten one last item. I returned to get it and then headed straight back to the cash register. As I stood on the cash register line with just a few items, I looked up and locked eyes with a woman who suddenly called out, “Mike!” To my shock, it was Joanne!

I dropped everything and rushed to her. We hugged so tightly that the clerk just stood there smiling. She was surprised by my reaction, and I told her, “You have no idea how long I’ve been thinking about you, and here you are!”

When I got back to the car, I realized how many tiny coincidences the universe had aligned for that moment to happen. It was as if every delay and detour that day was part of a grand plan to make our paths cross again. After more than 30 years, the impossible had happened — and I was blown away.

Tomorrow, I’m having lunch with her (and possibly her husband), and we have a lot to catch up on. Now that I’ve seen what’s possible, I’m planning to test the universe again with smaller “requests” and marking the dates to see how long they take to manifest.