Making Your Dreams Come True (31 October 2009)

What do you wish for? My grandmother used to say, “If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.” What she evidently failed to notice is that an occasional beggar would end up owning—and riding—a horse. Or perhaps even several horses. While I grew up believing in the need to work hard to achieve goals, the Abraham-Hicks materials and a variety of other publications, including Write It Down, Make It Happen, by Henriette Anne Klauser, has persuaded me that there’s a better way. I still agree with the Shaker metaphor, “When you pray, move your feet.” By itself, wishing doesn’t accomplish much. When combined with a willingness to act—to move your feet—the right kind of wishes really can make your dreams come true. In NLP we talk about bringing the resources of your conscious minds and unconscious minds into alignment. Both your consciousness willingness to work and your unconscious ability to dream are required to create the kind of magic that will make your dreams come true.

One of the principle problems is that most people—and you may be one of them—tend to focus on what they don’t want rather than on what they want. As a result, what Abraham-Hicks calls “The Law of Attraction” actually pulls what they don’t want closer. There’s nothing wrong, of course, with being aware of what you don’t want. That’s often the first step in developing a strategy for finding the alternative you would truly prefer.

If all of life were like ordering a meal in a restaurant, it would be a snap to figure out what you want. When you go to your favorite restaurant, you may know exactly what you want. When you are in a new restaurant, however, you need to look at the menu and consider the options. Some of those will undoubtedly be “don’t want” options. Others probably fall in the “might want” category. Others are more definitely in the “this sounds/looks good” category. In some restaurants, you may end up choosing the meal that you dislike the least. In others, you may have to choose what seems best from three or four really good options. Regardless of what you choose, you already know that you have a strategy for making decisions in a restaurant.

When it comes to restaurants, separating what you want from what you don’t want is fairly easy. If the menu is extensive, and you spend your time focused on things you don’t want, you may be there until closing time without getting around to ordering. If you want lasagna, you should know that you’re not likely to find it in a Chinese restaurant. There’s no point in going to a Chinese restaurant, asking the server for lasagna, complaining when you’re told that the restaurant doesn’t have it, asking again, and complaining again, and again until closing time.

When it comes to other aspects of their lives, however, many use one or the other of those strategies. While it is often easier to be aware of what you don’t want, until you use that information as a starting point for determining what you want instead, and then begin working toward it, you’re like the guy ordering lasagna in the Chinese restaurant. If you’re working in a job or industry that you find unenjoyable, what kind of work would you prefer? If you’re living in a house (apartment, condo, part of the country) that you don’t like, where would you rather live? As long as you’re focused on how much fun you are not having, it’s hard to have a really good time.

It’s possible, of course, that where you really want to live does not offer the kind of work you desire. If you want to live in a big city and herd cattle for a living, you may need to think about a long commute or decide whether the big city or the herding cattle is more important and then come up with options to satisfy your other desires. When you consider the possibilities and options available, you can doubtless come up with ways to realize the essential aspects of both your dreams. It’s only when you focus on the absence of lasagna on the menu at the Chinese restaurant that having dinner becomes a problem.

So ... What do you want? Write it down. Make it happen. But a caveat in the form of another adage: “Be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it.” Being careful does not mean that you should avoid wishing for the widely improbable. It means that you need to think through what having the wish come true would mean for you and others. In NLP terms, this is futurepacing, which is a way of becoming aware of how what you have wished for will influence you, your significant others (spouse, lovers, children, etc.), your work, your neighbors, and where and how you live.

If you like what you see and hear while futurepacing, that’s a desire to lock in. If something is missing from what you are seeing and hearing, adjust what you are wishing for until the image of its future implications are fully satisfying. Then ... Write it down. Make it happen.

joel@scs-matters.com
www.scs-matters.com