Such an important topic to ponder and discuss!

It's not something that I like to talk about, mostly for fear of being judged as...well, mentally unstable :( ... but I'm convinced that the unconscious mind is far more powerful than we give it credit or believe it to be. To elaborate, I've grown to accept the possibility that the unconscious mind can literally change external circumstances and outcomes.

One example happened about eight years ago. Just for the heck of it, I decided one day to experiment with a self-hypnosis program, a book of affirmations designed to help the reader to create a mindset of expecting to be lucky, with the instructions to read it aloud to oneself daily for at least one week.

Fast forward about three weeks and roughly 21 self-hypnosis sessions later, I, a guy known around the poker table to be "Mr unlucky" himself (usually losing on bad-beats), won four straight Texas Hold 'em poker tournaments (IIRC, in what turned out to be a five game tournament, there were between four and six players in the first two games and three players in the last three games) on mostly bad-beats for my opponents (I was often losing before the river card) before capping off the fifth straight win on back to back to back trip hands: 666, 777, and 888, respectively; always getting my three-of-a-kind on the last turn card (river), each time beating out a hand that was the statistical favorite before the river. I find it fitting that the "come-back-win" on the last hand was three eights, seeing as eight is associated with luck in China.

I kid you not, I went into those tournaments expecting to win and expecting luck to be on my side. I could just feel it. I knew that I'd win. I didn't know how or why, I just knew I couldn't lose. And right before the back to back to back trips happened, I felt an energy inside of me that I'd never before experienced. My hair stood up and I had goosebumps all around my body. It felt like I was charged with electricity powered by pure joy and excitement and I had what I can only refer to as "tunnel focus", for lack of finding the proper words to express the sensations, on the next three series of hands. At that moment, I anticipated something amazing was about to happen. Again, I couldn't explain how or why I knew, I could just feel it inside of my bones, like a deep intuition - I was prepping myself for the big finish; the grand finale.

Two or three minutes later, after the first two trips happened and right before I went to flip my cards to reveal that it had happened for a third straight time, both my brother and my friend (the two other opponents in the sixth game) mentioned that they had goosebumps. I believe one of them said something to the effect of "I can feel a weird energy in the air". It was truly a surreal experience, one unlike any else that I've ever had.