Want to make your wish come true? Tell everyone about it!

Since I personally don't know anyone with their own genie lamp or fairy godmother I sometimes wonder what devices are left for making wishes come true. Blowing on eye lashes, throwing coins in fountains and wishing on shooting stars just hasn't really produced great results for me and I can't help but wonder if the reason why is because part of the ritual is keeping these precious wishes to ourselves. 

There is a problem with the film "The Secret" and it's Law of Attraction claim that if you wish and think positive thoughts your wishes will come through via some magic hand in the cosmos. What it is missing here is the power of human intervention. 

Through many years of making wishes I've come to realize that there is one wishing mechanism more than all others that has reliably come through for me: making a wish and then telling the world about it. 

So how does this work? Well, it first involves deciding on a wish that you are truly intent on manifesting. Perhaps its regarding a new apartment you want to find, a better job you are yearning for or a type of person you are hoping to meet. It can be any wish, but it needs to contain the essential ingredient of your intent on really making it happen. 

And now for the magic part: tell EVERYONE about that wish! Tell your mother and your brother, strangers you meet at parties and people you work with, the person sitting next to you on the plane and the children of your ex's new boyfriend. Post it on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and send out emails to all your contact lists. Tell as many people as you can and take note of everything and anything that sparks your interest, creates a new thought or connects with someone else who may have an interest in your wish. Notice what attracts your attention when you walk the streets and which conversations draw you in. Notice the opportunities presented to you that get you one step closer to your wish and take them on, making the most of them and keeping focused on your wish throughout. 

You see, what happens is that your position and frame of reference in the world start to shift. The world after all, is really just a blank slate of potential onto which we project our own inner state, opinions, experiences and memories. When we start to see the world through the filter of our wish we notice with greater clarity those moments that are most relevant. We start noticing that all around us is everything we need to actualize our dreams. We see that we can start immediately acting towards shifting opportunities in our current reality to bring us closer to our future desired one. With only a maximum of 6 degrees of separation between you and whoever you need that could help you fulfill your wish, the power of communicating wishes with full conviction and dedication will inevitably make them come true. In their book „The Art of Possibility“, Ben and Ros Zander breakdown this formula of manifestation into 4 steps:

1. Imagine that people are an invitation for enrollment.

2. Stand ready to participate, willing to be moved and inspired.

3. Offer that which lights you up.

4. Have no doubt that others are eager to catch the spark.

In the first step we experience a kind of opening up to the world in which we believe in the possibility that there are others as charged by our wish as we are. In the second step we throw ourselves into that world, fully opening ourselves mentally and emotionally to all that is present. In the third step we share our wish with passion and lightness. And in the fourth we experience those who are meant to become part of our core tribe welcoming us with open arms and bringing us a step closer to actualizing our dream.

The problem is that many people keep their wishes to themselves or otherwise make a wish but then don't act in accordance with it. They proceed with business as usual, staying at home awaiting a knock at the door, a sudden call on their phones or an invitation in the mail. They hope, pray and fantasize but to an outside viewer would appear entirely unchanged. You would have no way of knowing that internally they are actually possessed by a dream. Unfortunately, wish-granters don't arrive on their own to silent-wishers. Wish-granters travel on the backs of the people you know and the people you're going to meet. 

So the next time you catch a fallen eyelash and hold it up to your lips, ready to blow it into the universe, take a moment to make your wish and then start sharing it with the world! This method works so well that you might just need to be careful what you wish for.

Active listening vs. Real listening

With a culture so focused on leadership and public-speaking, much of our Western education model makes sure to offer plenty of opportunity to develop our capacities in these areas. However, very little if any attention is given to counterpart roles of followers and listeners. As a result, we are living in a society where our understanding of good followership is nearly non-existent, and our capacity for listening is mostly summarized under the skill-set of “active” listening while missing the much more profound capacity of “deep” listening.

“The most alarming side-effect of active listening is the power of listener to manipulate what a speaker actually talks about.”

Active listening often involves a type of participatory, affirming set of techniques that has the listener employing behavior like regular eye-contact to show connection, head-nodding to demonstrate understanding, the use of “uh-huh, mmm, yes” to encourage and support, and the use of lots of supportive questions and paraphrasing to make sure the speaker feels heard. While this approach to listening is great in many circumstances and is a sure-fire way to make a speaker feel heard, there are also unrecognized side-effects. 

The most alarming one resides in the power of listener to manipulate what a speaker actually talks about. Through our use of affirmations, paraphrasing and body gestures, we send strong signals about whether we approve and agree or not, and this can often lead a speaker to continue their course of thought or shift and change to another one, accordingly. Active listening also suggests that a listener must somehow demonstrate their level of participation and engagement, and this often leads to a “thinking about what I’m going to say/ask next” monologue. We often try to jump in with opinions or stories to show how we can relate. The problem here is that while we are busying ourselves with all the effort required of actively listening, we aren’t fully paying attention to the speaker and tends to keep conversation at a relatively generic level. It also often leaves listeners feeling tired at the end of the conversation, suggesting that active listening also requires extra effort and energy. Active listening can be attributed to Level 1 or Level 2 listening, sometimes called downloading or factual, and remains on the level of polite conversation or debate, often producing results by the end of the conversation that could have already predicted by everyone at the onset.

“As such, active vs. deep listening is a matter of paying attention to our attention, and practicing and experimenting with the various levels of listening whenever possible so that we can fine-tune or sense of how to best use all 4 levels.”

Deep listening on the other hand requires a whole other set of techniques and presence, and allows for Level 3 and 4 listening, when empathic or generative dialogue are sought after. In this case, the goal of the listener is to give full and undivided attention to the speaker in a way that holds space for the speaker’s greatest possible wisdom to emerge and remains curious about essence and source from which the speaker shares. The invitation here is to restrain from any verbal or physical affirmations and simply support the speaker in following their own deep sharing thought-process. In deep dialogue, we often encourage speakers to imagine they are speaking from their gut, rather than their head, and to only share the truth that comes out from there. Many people often notice that the volume of a conversation often decreases when people start speaking more from their bodies than their heads. Additionally, listeners pay attention to their own inner monologue and notice voices that can distract them from deep listening, such as voices of judgement, cynicism, or fear. When the listener notices the voices he/she simply lets them go and returns to giving full attention to the speaker. Lastly, the listener focuses on staying fully mindful and embodied in their own presence, and only asks questions that feel truly in service of the speaker and the generative dialogue. Often the results of these types of interactions are a new understanding and emergence of wisdom on whatever topic is being explored. Results are often different than what participants had expected and energy is notably higher. People note a sense of speaking from the whole rather than from their own individual perspective or needs.

Ultimately, it is the quality of our attention that dictates the outcomes we see and experience . As such, active vs. deep listening is a matter of paying attention to our attention, and practicing and experimenting with the various levels of listening whenever possible so that we can fine-tune or sense of how to best use all 4 levels.

MOVE workshops always use education and practice about deep listening as a foundation for our work with clients. For more information about deep listening you can also check out this fantastic brief article by Alan Seale.