One woman I interviewed, Nancy Fursetzer, told me about first discovering this guiding principle thirty years ago, when she was barely twenty years old:      

            Once an A-student headed for medical school, I had dropped out of college and was floundering in depression, feeling lost and confused.
            One morning, alone in my tiny apartment, I looked at the poster of the Desiderata poem I had up on my wall, and read the lines: You are a child of the universe / No less than the trees and the stars / You have a right to be here / And whether or not it is clear to you / No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.     
            I burst into tears, wishing with all my heart that I was clearer about my life and my “right to be here.” When I finished crying, I sat back and looked at the lines from the poem for a long time, finally deciding that—for now—I would just try trusting that the universe, especially my little corner of it, was really “unfolding as it should.”
            From that day forward, I took the last line of the Desiderata quote as my motto, and it became a source of strength and inspiration.  As the years went by, whatever happened in my life, I’d always tell myself and anyone else involved, “No doubt, the universe is unfolding as it should.”
            It was the expression of my underlying trust that everything always happened for a reason.  I said it when I discovered I was pregnant with twins—though my daughter was barely one.  I said it when my son was diagnosed with a learning disorder and I had to lobby the local school board to provide special education.  I said it over and over when my husband changed jobs and the five of us lived on macaroni and cheese for eighteen months.
            I said it so often that it became a bit of a joke with my family and friends.  My husband, David, who lived in the “real world” and didn’t subscribe to this kind of “la-la land” thinking, would tease me, rolling his eyes saying, “Yeah, yeah, Nancy, I know—the universe is unfolding as it should.”
            Then one day after we’d been married for 25 years, I received a phone call telling me that David had been in a motorcycle accident and was severely injured.  I rushed to the hospital, where I sat by his bedside as he lay in coma for seven long days.  It was touch and go, but on the seventh day, David opened his eyes, looked right at me and tried to speak.  His first words were hard to understand, but I thought I heard the word, “universe.”
            “What?” I said, leaning closer. “I can’t understand what you’re saying”
            “No doubt…” he said and trailed off again.
            I couldn’t believe my ears. “You mean, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should?”
            He said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, that thing.”
            For the first time in a week, I laughed out loud. “So you’ve been listening to me after all,” I said to him, grinning.
            Since then, our lives have changed dramatically.  Although the accident and David’s recovery weren’t easy, today I feel that it was all for our good.
            David, who was forced into early retirement, has acknowledged that he can see how the accident happened for the best.  He spends more time with me and our family and has a deeper feeling of inner happiness.  As for me, the accident allowed me to shift into work that had far more value to me.  As part of my new career, I’ve developed my own coaching process.  I call myself a Positician and help other people discover the truth I’ve based my life on—that the universe is unfolding as it should.