Oh Hell… How My Card Game Came to Validate the Law of Attraction

It was a warm summer evening and both of my children were home from college. We were sitting at the table doing what we do when we all have time together… playing cards. I was in my usual spot at the kitchen table, in between the two of them, with my daughter on my left and my son on my right. I’m not a competitive person by nature, I think, and a game of cards has only been interesting to me as a vehicle by which I spend time with my children. Things were going as usual, which means I was losing badly. This evening, though, that would all change.

We were the third round into a night of ‘Oh Hell’. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the card game, it requires guessing the number of ‘tricks’ (or hands) one might take (high cards and the trump suit generally take the trick), and the difficulty lies in the fact that one never knows what cards one’s opponents have or the order in which cards will be played. Points are awarded when a player’s guess is on target. Suffice it to say that I’ve never considered playing ‘Oh Hell’ a particular strong suit of mine, pun intended, and so far this evening was no different. I’d lost all 3 of the first rounds, either taking more or less tricks than I’d originally guessed, and my score was a whopping zero. It was as had been typical for many years. I sadly lamented to myself that the neural patterns for my losing at ‘Oh Hell’ must surely be firmly ingrained in the recesses of the minds of each of us, myself and my two children. So I decided to do an experiment.

I knew that in order to change the course of this particular game of ‘Oh Hell,’ I must feel extremely successful about my performance. No thought of losing could enter my mind. It was just a game and there was, after all, nothing to lose so to speak. I set about to feel like a winner, thinking of all the ways I truly feel successful in life, telling myself things like ‘I am a winner’, ‘I am successful in all that I do’, ‘I’m simply masterful at Oh Hell’, ‘All my guesses are on target’, and so on and so forth, allowing myself to enjoy a childlike playfulness, a sense of scientific experimentation, and a complete disregard for the actual circumstances of the moment and my current score of zero. I didn’t allow myself to be concerned about winning or losing. I simply felt successful, like a winner. I closed my eyes, paused for a moment, and let these feelings sink into the depths of my being. My daughter asked ‘Mom, are you manifesting?” (they’re accustomed to these sorts of things from me, though not typically in the context of a card game), and I simply smiled. What happened next was truly extraordinary.

I won round 4. To everyone’s astonishment, my guess was on target. I was amazed, wondering if, in fact, the Law of Attraction could work immediately as had seemingly been the case. I’d previously been of the opinion that there was a lag time for manifestation of my thoughts, meaning that what I think today could influence events days, weeks, or months, into the future. But here it was with an apparent immediate effect. I knew better than to allow myself to be concerned about the possibility of whether this could have happened by chance, or some similar thought. Gratefully, I allowed this to strengthen my resolve that I was truly successful and a winner. The rest of the game was amazing, and the results are as follows:

My ‘Oh Hell’ Results

I lost rounds 1, 2, and 3. I won rounds 4-7, lost round 8, and won rounds 9-12.

It was between rounds 3 and 4 that I decided to change my thinking. Suffice it to say that for me it was an amazing demonstration of the immediacy of the power of thought. 

The Science

At the most basic level, science experiments have variables that are manipulated and variables that are measured. The manipulated variable is typically considered to cause a change in the measured or observed variable. Science investigations also have factors that are controlled that stay the same throughout the experiment. In the context of my game of ‘Oh Hell’, my feeling of success was the variable being manipulated and I increased my feeling of success beginning with round 4. The measured or observed variable was my score in each round. Remember, I began to practice feeling successful in between Rounds 3 and 4 (see the scorecard). The controlled factors would be things like my innate ability to play ‘Oh Hell’, as well as the innate ability of my opponents (in this case, my children). The controlled factors were constant in all of the Rounds 1-12. 

So, in retrospect, the hypothesis was as follows: ‘If I change my thoughts to induce feelings of success, then my score at ‘Oh Hell’ improves’.

The degree of accuracy inherent in a scientific investigation is related to the number of data points (n). Though it admittedly happened inadvertently, my investigation with ‘Oh Hell’ would survive at least basic scientific scrutiny in this regard, because repetition of data points was present. The number of data points before I began to intentionally manipulate my thought processes to feel successful was n=3 (corresponding to Rounds 1, 2 and 3), and the number of data points afterwards was n=9 (corresponding to Rows 4-12). 

Successful scientific investigations also come with a conclusion, and this one is no different. I won 0 of the 3 rounds of ‘Oh Hell’ before I changed my thoughts and feelings, and I won 8/9 of the rounds of ‘Oh Hell’ after I changed my thinking. While a detailed statistical analysis of these results is beyond the scope of this paper, the conclusion remains clear:  My thoughts and feelings of success clearly had an effect on the outcome of my game of ‘Oh Hell’. The hypothesis of this experiment was validated.

The Implications

The implications of this are far-reaching, as they clearly demonstrate an immediate effect of the change in my thinking. No longer was the Law of Attraction an abstract idea. Here it was, in the present, affecting the results of the card game within minutes. The card game provides a unique opportunity to demonstrate the effect of my thinking in real time, and to see it in such a tangible way. Of course, one’s thinking always affects one’s reality, it’s just that it isn’t always so directly and immediately observable in the physical realm. These results are a great reminder of the power of thought. As for me, I’ve been reminded to feel successful, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.