Whether artist or activist, whether Margaret Thatcher, Mark Zuckerberg or Madonna, we’ve read the success stories of people who live big, bold, brilliant lives. So what’s their secret?
As Mark Hanson said, “What you think about comes about,” and that is key. In short, if we crave a life filled with joy, adventure and success, if we dare to get off life’s treadmill and onto life’s fast-track, we must open ourselves to out-of-the-universe thinking and shift our expectations from so-so to go-go! Life coach Jennifer Galvin Anderson concurs, “New adventures begin with new ideas!” So how do we unplug ourselves from mainstream thinking and step into big dream living? We get creative!
Step 1: Get Creative
Use collage, journaling, or Socratic dialogue (have a friend pepper you with 20 questions about your likes, dislikes and dreams while you paint a portrait or bake a cake) to determine what it is you want for yourself and your life.
Whether you fantasize about flying, dream of deep-sea diving or have ambitions to become an astrophysicist (and be able to spell it) a foray into creativity will unlock your subconscious and those deep-seated desires.
Iris agrees. “One day, I grabbed scissors, glue and a few old magazines and began collaging my dreams. What I unearthed was an aspiration to travel to Italy and complete a cruise. I was surprised that it took a little collage to reveal my heart’s desire.”
Inspired by the collage, Iris signed up for a cruise around Italy and has since visited Italy several times. “Seeing images of what I wanted was invigorating. I’ve made sure that I collage my goals every year since.”
Getting creative is not only fun, it shoves that endless ‘must do’ list aside and allows us to focus on ourselves and our needs, while igniting the right side of our brain which connects us to our intuition and the voice of the soul. That’s when we are most likely to have those ‘aha’ moments like Iris, which clarify where we really want to be.
Step 2: Hello Handwriting
So how do you take those goals from dreamland to do-land? With a little bit of long-hand, of course! A study at the Dominican University proved that people who hand-wrote goals accomplished significantly more than those who didn’t. That’s partly because, as Deborah Yaffee notes, “Writing forges new neural pathways in the brain.” Neural pathways promotes behaviors (what we say and do) that ensure we arrive at our goal destination. The more you write about your goal, the stronger the neural pathway forged and the greater the likelihood your dreams will be realized.
Says Lori from Denver, “I’m a childhood abuse survivor and journaled my pain into a book. When it was finished, I realized that a lot of people might like to write to heal. I wrote an outline for a workshop and sent it off. Next month my workshop launches at a local community college. Writing out my dream turned a good idea into a success story.”
Step 3: Affirmative Action
If hand-writing goals neural pathways an action-oriented road to success, then visualization and affirmation pave that road. The power of our will to believe and succeed is used from the locker room to the board room. As England’s Cricket Captain Andrew Strauss affirms, “If you think positive thoughts, then those thoughts will come about.” The truth is that the adage ‘seeing is believing,’ is wrong! As Norman Vincent Peale The Power of Positive Thinking or The Secret’s Rhonda Byrne attest ‘believing is seeing.’
Of course most of us are more comfortable with the self-put-down than the self-pull-up. Replacing those negative ‘I can’t or shouldn’t’ thoughts with positive ‘I can and will’ beliefs may take practice in the short-term, but down the road the benefits reaped will be tremendous.
For Steve* positive thinking was the key ingredient to his academic success. “I was accepted into a graduate program in counseling without an undergrad in psych’!” says Steve. “Sitting in my first class my heart sank. Psychology has its own language and it was all Greek to me!” Determined, Steve used visualization and affirmation to get him through. “I held strong to a vision of myself as a grade A student.” Fourteen months, 54 credit hours and 280 counseling hours later Steve graduated Magna cum Laude. “I’ll never forget my graduation day. I felt so proud. Positive thinking works. I’d recommend that everyone uses affirmations and visualizations to bring their dreams alive.”
People say “Life is short!” Whether short, medium or long it’s the quality of our lives that counts. So settle for ‘super’ this year. Roll up your sleeves, pull out that glue and get ready to think big, better and best. And as you paste those pictures, hand-write your goals and visualize your fabulous future, spare a thought for Margaret, Mark and Madonna and remind yourself that every day another star is born!
