One source of suffering is not having what you want.
(“Stop Suffering, Start Living” is my theme for March. I chose it because it’s the end of winter and the beginning of spring for us in the northern hemisphere. It’s also the label that I’ve given the largest category of my blog posts, from which I’ll be sharing favorites this month).
I write so much about it because it’s such a common human experience – elemental even. When I taught HypnoBirthing childbirth classes, I would remind parents that, as long as the baby is in the womb, all its needs are met by the mother’s body. It isn’t until it’s born that it feels cold, wet, hungry, or alone. It’s why babies cry. They are discovering what it is to want.
How do you solve the problem? Whole religions are based on the renunciation of desires as a way to manage wanting. Some secular religions manage desire by unfettering it completely, glorifying greed and calling it a law of nature – “survival of the fittest.”
Life coaching is not a religion, but it also engages frankly with desire. I see wanting as natural – an essential part of being alive. The presence of it is life, and the absence of it is death. (Think of how reassured we are when the baby cries vigorously at birth or gulps down milk). Desire drives behavior and enables growth and thus can be a force for good.
Even more, I have a belief that persistent desires – the dreams that won’t let you go – are evidence that what you want wants you. It may, in fact, be part of your mission in life to bring it into reality. Which makes some desires actually sacred.
I take wanting so seriously that I interrogate it: is this desire in your integrity, what you truly want? Or did culture teach you to pursue it for status or belonging?
If the desire is true – for growth and for good – then it’s time to set an Audacious Goal.
The Audacious Goal
How were you taught to set goals? In coach training, I was taught to set WIGs – Wildly Improbable Goals – and then work backwards.
It wasn’t enough of a framework for me. I fell short so often that I came to feel demoralized by the very idea of a goal, and so I stopped setting them altogether.
Hope was revived, though, last year, when I read Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything, by Dr. James Doty. I saw right away that it was the same process I had used in HypnoBirthing to manifest – I say with humility and respect to women who have different birth experiences – easy, comfortable, drug-free births.
I applied the Mind Magic process with confidence to the 2024 Be the Heroine enrollment, and the results surprised me. They were wonderful, but not what I expected. I knew there must be something about manifesting that I wasn’t understanding.
Enter Dave Conway. One of my heroines, Amy, forwarded an interview he did on the Just Between Coaches podcast, titled, “Mastering Manifestation: How to Transform Goals into Reality.”
What he shared in that interview filled out the WIG and Mind Magic frameworks, and now I’m a little obsessed. As soon as I began practicing manifestation his way, I began to feel and think differently. Which is the point.
“The purpose of a goal isn’t to get,” Conway says. “It’s to grow.” To grow, you must set an audacious goal: one that you have no idea how to achieve.
Why? Because your current thinking created your current results. To get different results, you need a goal so big that it pushes you to think differently and become a different person. Goals that are “realistic” or “doable” do not have the energy or inspiration to overcome the enormous pull of the familiar, comfortable, current thinking.
“Realistic” goals create bigger caterpillars. Audacious goals create butterflies.
Conway’s Manifesting Process
Setting an audacious goal includes declaring a metric for success – a number, such as income or clients – so that achievement is unambiguous.
After you’ve set your number, create a one-to-two-minute mental scene that shows your audacious goal complete. Make it like a movie and let the “camera” linger over all the sensory details and the positive emotions of your achievement. Include your metric somewhere in there, too. My success scene is flying first class to Paris with my husband; as the flight attendant hands me a glass of champagne, I check our bank balance.
Next, ask yourself, “Who is the person that naturally creates these results?”
Naturally. Anyone can sprint. We’re talking about creating these results as a matter of course.
“There is a version of you,” Conway says, “who knows how to. Who is she?” I love this part! I check in with her all the time. “What would she do?” I ask myself as I get dressed, think about skipping the gym, decide what to eat, feel pulled to pick up my phone, etc. I love inhabiting her.
Now, ask yourself, “How might she be creating those results?” What do you see when you inhabit this audacious version of you? This has been so fruitful for me. It’s like a veil has been lifted. I am seeing things that had been there all along, but I had been blind to. Write the ideas down. Take action as soon as you can.
To recap:
- Set the number. Choose your metric. Make the goal audacious.
- Create the scene. Make it full-sensory. Include the number. Replay daily.
- Ask, “Who is the person that creates those results naturally?” Check in with her throughout your day.
- Ask, “How might she be creating those results?” Brainstorm ideas every time you check in with her. Write them all down and take action as soon as you can.
Here’s that podcast again, so you can hear Conway describe it.
It’s early days for me with this practice, but I feel so good about it that I wanted to share it with you. May it help you this March to feel spring in your soul. May it help you anytime to end the suffering of unfulfilled desires and experience instead the joy of empowerment and achievement.
Let me know how it goes!
