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The Orange Car Story

By Rosemary Senjem
© February 23, 2008, all rights reserved.

One morning, April 2006, a voice inside me said, “I need an orange car.” Until that moment, my vehicle color had never mattered. It felt like some kind of spiritual clue from the beyond…

This inspiration tickled me and my husband into many hilarious test drives. We played with WHEN to tell the salesperson my number one criteria: orange! New and used. Even drove 90 miles with high hopes, only to discover a car was the WRONG orange. Suddenly Happy Orange was the new standard.

I invited some friends to our house to watch the movie called The Secret and told them how I was running an experiment to manifest an orange car. They all laughed and gave me funny looks as if I’d lost my marbles.

By Independence Day, I lustily ordered a new orange car on sale. When the dealer called, I was thrilled and ran to tell my husband. He said, “It’s your decision.”

As I walked back to the phone, my whole body chemistry changed from the adrenalin rush of victory, through the heaviness of additional debt, into murky frustration. I took the phone and said, “No, thanks.” After all these months, in 30 seconds I realized I would not buy the orange car until I could truly pay for it.

I thought, “Perhaps this is why the orange car idea came to me…”

Two months later, I eliminated $3000 of stale business debt and was back in the black. Was this the lesson of the orange car: get out of debt? I wondered.

February 6, 2007, I had a surreal, snowstorm hood-cruncher car accident, miraculously leaving no one injured and the other two cars unmarked.

Online I found another miracle: a 3 month old ad for my orange dream car was still there for sale, 1000 miles away, only 2 hours from my parents house.

By now, I was really clear about my vision. The car must be:

  • fuel efficient, as in at least 30 miles/gallon
  • roomy enough so my husband did not hit his head getting in and out
  • happy orange
  • a FUN car
  • a bit quirky
  • in my price range
  • in great condition

We prepared to fly 1100 miles to get a great deal on my limited edition, orange “Happy Car.”

The funniest part is that after all the test drives, jokes and research, here we were ready to buy and everyone around us, including the owner thought the sale was impossible.

I kept laughing out loud as another bit of resistance popped up like a carnival target in a shooting range. (You can skip to the end if you just want to see how it all turned out.)

First, it was how can we possibly buy tickets to fly when we don’t know if we’re flying or driving home? Frankly, I just went ahead and bought one-way tickets and figured, I’d take the train or buy more cheap one-ways. Of course, I needed to save my negotiations over the car until I got to actually test drive it. This meant making sure that the owner knew I was not dependent upon the car to get home.

Then, the owner called, after we bought our plane tickets, to say that there was a problem with the bank that held his loan. They were not willing to process our title the same day we bought it. I did my own research and found that in Pennsylvania, it is not so easy to sell a car as it is in Minnesota. Still, I was undeterred. I just kept reassuring him that there had to be a way, that we were indeed coming, and that we would need to be able to drive away with the vehicle on the day we handed over the money.

When we arrived in Pennsylvania, my father was incredulous, “An orange car! You can’t buy an orange car. You’ll be pulled over by the police all the time.” He just shook his head when we told him over breakfast where we were headed and why it was such a short trip. We giggled quietly.

Of course we brought our own resistance on the 2 hour trek to test drive the car. Despite the fact that my husband reads maps for a living and we had excellent directions, we missed our exit on the PA turnpike and took ourselves on a detour.

If that wasn’t enough, my mum decides, after we’ve all done a test drive with the owner, that she’s highly suspicious of him and the minute we are alone with her, she starts rattling off every imaginable (and unimaginable) way he could be cheating us or even turn into a psycho path! I finally just had to take a deep breath and let it out with some noise. Then I asked my mother to PLEASE just try to imagine that this could all work out wonderfully. She stopped in mid-thought as if startled and said, “Well, I guess you could be right. You always do think positively.”

It had been babied by its owner, and he had it decked out with fancy wheels. I negotiated a price that felt good to us and the owner.

Then we dealt with a bit more resistance as he was still unsure how we could drive away with his car, with his license plates still on it, despite the fact that we had paid him in full. Seem perfectly possible to us.

We explained that where we came from people trust each other in car deals every day and we alerted our insurance company that we’d bought this car. And then, he changed his mind. He decided he could just trust us to send his license plates back when the title cleared.

With the car, came the whole set of original, brand new wheels that had no miles on them! Perfect for driving home through the biggest blizzard to hit the Midwest in 2007. We drove home with ease because we were always ready to pull into a hotel for the night, just as the next wave of the blizzard would roll across our path.

Today, a year later, I’m still in the black. Yes, I’m making my payments with ease.

No kidding. Want a ride?

Topics: Inspiration, Law of Attraction, Psychology of Success, Resistance, Special Projects |

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