Turn Your Dreams into Reality

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For the last three decades I have been working with the Get What You Want (GWYW) approach to life, which is based on clearly determin- ing what you want, envisioning it, and then getting it. Most recently I used this to decide where I wanted to move, what kind of house I wanted, which part of town, and what I hoped to pay. Then after look- ing at one house that fit the bill, I quickly decided where I wanted to be. Four weeks later that’s exactly where I moved. I have used this same technique to target houses, work, and other goals in the past. So it’s a time-tested approach that I have used myself and in numerous work- shops as well.

Essentially, this approach consists of three simple steps:

1)  You determine what you really want—and can realistically ob- tain.

2)  You see a clear vision of what you want and see yourself achiev- ing that.

3)  You take the needed steps to get it, including overcoming any ob- stacles, making any modifications, and finally, enjoying the expe- rience of achieving what you want.

As you take these steps, you see your goal and the needed steps or modifications in your mind—so your power of visualization is essen- tially your guide to gaining what you desire.

The ability to visualize, or mentally imagine, what you want and what you need to do to get there is like your car engine and steering wheel combined. You rev it up and then drive exactly where you want to go, making changes in your route as need be. By clearly visualizing what you want, you tap in to your creative energy which helps to propel you to your goal and know what to do in order to get there. Plus, you can draw on images and ideas that are already meaningful and powerful for you, such as calling on a spiritual teacher, guide, or imagined real- life mentor to help with wisdom and support. Or you can create new images and ideas you associate with things you want to achieve your goals.

The first part of this book deals with how to tap in to your mind pow- ers and the following sections deal with how to apply them to get what you want in different areas of your life. As you’ll discover in part one, these powerful techniques will help you access the inner powers of your mind and use them to empower yourself  to get what you want, and to feel more satisfaction at work and in your personal life. You can use these powers for everything from being more successful at work or in business to improving relationships and having more fun. Everyone can use these techniques because everyone has the GWYW abilities. You just have to learn to tap in to them and then practice using them until they become second nature.

They will help you:

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•  Feel more powerful, and as you get in touch with your own pow- er you can do more of what you want to do.

•  Increase your confidence and self-esteem as you discover yourself getting the results you want.

•  Develop a greater sense of personal identity and purpose as you clarify your direction and goals, and generally find everything working better in your life.

•  Be more satisfied with what you are doing and who you are.

•  Get more enjoyment out of everyday life—including routine activities and experiences that might otherwise cause upset and stress.

•  Tap in to your inner radar and sense of knowing, which will help you make better choices and better use these techniques.

•  Adjust your energy level for optimum functioning, such as by speeding up or slowing down when you want to, overcoming fa- tigue with an extra energy burst, and discovering a happy balance in how you use your energy.

•  Maximize your talents and increase your skills and creativity.

•  Design the person you want to be by creating the personality or self-image you want, making you more aware of who you want to be and giving you the tools to become that person.

•  Become smarter by sharpening your intellectual powers and memory skills.

•  Increase your powers of perception and awareness so you pay more attention and make better use of that information.

•  Make better decisions and improve your ability to solve problems because you gain more insight about the issue and what you want to achieve.

•  Set specific, achievable goals and attain them.

Introduction 3

•  Optimize relationships because you are better able to understand others and able to communicate with them.

•  Improve your health and eliminate bad habits no matter what the goal—whether you want to lose weight, stop smoking, reduce anxiety, feel better generally, or help the healing process.

•  Turn your problems into possibilities—the flip side of every prob- lem is a possibility, and you can make that transformation by see- ing each problem as a stepping-stone or learning experience, and then using your inner powers to imagine alternatives and choose the best option.

Best Use

To get the best results from this book read the first few chapters for an overview about what the creative force is, how to access it, and best ways to use it. Think about what you would most like to gain from us- ing these techniques and look at the chapters that deal with that topic. You’ll also find a list of exercises after the table of contents.

Use the exercises in each chapter to focus on your priorities and select the exercises that are most applicable to your situation. The ap- proximate times listed for some exercises are just guidelines. You may do these exercises more quickly or may prefer to spend more time than suggested. You can determine what suits your situation best. Use the charts and forms with many of the exercises to record your insights and ideas during or after the exercise. They will help you focus on your choices and alternatives, and guide you to the next step. Spend ten to twenty minutes a day working with these techniques to stay in practice. Make them a familiar, comfortable part of your everyday life. Keep a record of what you do. Review any charts and comments every so often to see what you have accomplished.

Most importantly, recognize that these GWYW techniques will help you become more aware, perceptive, and better able to respond appro-

priately in any situation so you will be better able to do what’s best for you and get what you want.

Part

One

Tapping Into

the Power

of GWYW

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The Dynamics of the

This chapter is designed to show you how these techniques work and the importance of listening to your inner intuition or creative vision for insights, decision-making, and increasing your powers of perception and understanding. For example, besides using these techniques to se- lect where I will live or the house I will live in, I have used these tech- niques to guide me into the film industry, find a business partner, come up with ideas for new books, and most recently, connect with a woman looking for a writing partner to help her with clients building brands for themselves. At any point along the way, these developments might not have happened had I not been open and receptive to them.

These GWYW techniques work because they help you to be more in touch with your intuition, inner voice, true self, or whatever you want to call this. It’s a very powerful force within you. This force is often covered up, downplayed, or discounted in modern society because we

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value being rational and making decisions in a logical way. For example, lawyers, judges, business people, scientists, engineers, and politicians— most of the leaders of our society—are praised for their ability to come up with rational decisions.

While such approaches are fine and necessary for much of mod- ern living, we can also tap in to our intuitive and irrational side to gain insights and understandings. When these are combined with rational techniques or used alone, they can help us make even better decisions and choices. This intuitive part of ourselves is linked to our ability to use mental imagery or visualization—functions that are associated with the operations of the right hemisphere of the brain. The right side of the brain has a holistic mode of perceiving information, whereas the left hemisphere uses a logical, linear mode to reason things out. This holistic style is associated with creativity, visual imagery, dreams, feel- ings, symbols, and synthesis, in contrast to the more linear style associ- ated with mathematics, writing, language, and analysis.

In turn, scientists have been able to pinpoint when people are using this intuitive, image making part of the brain using PET scans, fMRIs, and other brain imaging techniques. These tests show a higher blood flow to the visual cortex, located in the back of the brain, when people work on tasks involving visual imagery.1 So there are real physical cor- relations to what you mentally imagine, or visualize, that are shown by the different parts of your brain that become activated.

These mind power techniques are designed to release and develop this inner force within us, which has an incredible power to help us gain all of the benefits we want. Some of these include:

•  Setting goals and attaining them

•  Increasing your skills and creativity

•  Feeling more confident, self-assured, and having higher self- esteem

Margaret W. Matlin, Cognition: 6th Edition (New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 2005), p. 228.

•  Creating the personality and self-image you want

•  Gaining insight into others to improve relationships and to be more persuasive in them

•  Motivating others

•  Solving problems and making decisions

•  Raising and lowering your energy level

•  Improving your health and eliminating bad habits

This inner force helps us attain these benefits, as it operates power- fully in two main modes. The first is in a receptive mode, which helps you tune in to that inner knowledge and understanding that you don’t pick up rationally. The second is an active mode, which allows you to put into action the insights you have gained from that information. You can use this information to shape yourself, influence others, and affect events. Most GWYW techniques emphasize a combination of these modes, but there are some that do emphasize one mode or the other. For example, in using these techniques to set goals, you first use your receptive powers to gain insights about what you want and need. Then, based on these insights, you establish your goals, prioritize them, and set up a system for achieving what you want.

Commonly, this intuitive perception operates through your ability to create images, visualizations, or pictures in your head, which is a skill that everyone possesses or can develop to some degree. Some people prefer to tune in to this inner voice by listening to the words or their inner thoughts, while others tend to respond more to feelings or sensa- tions. Use what works best for you. However, since the visual and audi- tory modes of perception are most common, the techniques described in this book draw more heavily on the ability to use images or thoughts to tap in to this power of the mind. In turn, as you work with these techniques, you’ll develop these abilities.

Becoming Aware of and Facilitating

To use this inner knowledge, you first have to notice it and pay atten- tion to it. Once you do and start recognizing when it is accurate and when to act on it, it is an extremely valuable tool for getting what you want. It can help you determine whether or not to trust someone at work or in a relationship, to decide whether to enter into a deal, take a job, or become more serious in a dating relationship. If you listen to these inner insights and respond correctly you can create better work opportunities, better personal relationships, and better chances in what- ever you do in life. You have to get in touch with this intuitive and cre- ative part of yourself, and when you learn to perceive this creative force directly, it can be a source of great information and energy.

This intuitive energy is not only a signal to help you to get what you want. It can also serve as a warning to avoid something or someone, such as Henrietta experienced when she ignored some inner warning triggers. It was about 8:30 one fall evening and Henrietta was leaving her of- fice on her way to her car, which was parked a few blocks away. It was a drizzly night and there weren’t many people on the dark streets. She saw four kids turn a corner onto her street about a hundred feet away and a sudden tingling sensation urged her to be cautious. For a moment she was tempted to walk on the other side of the street, but she heard a more logical, reassuring voice override this signal saying But they’re just kids ... It’s early ... There are other people out ... Don’t act afraid by crossing the street ... If you just keep walking with confidence nothing will happen. The thoughts came quickly and she kept going. After she passed the first pair of kids without incident she thought everything was fine. But just

as she passed the second pair an arm reached out, knocked her down, and grabbed her purse.

Fortunately, Henrietta wasn’t hurt, but the experience taught her the importance of paying attention and listening to that inner signal and responding accordingly. What Henrietta’s story illustrates is that your inner force can act like a kind of early warning signal. Respond- ing to it can increase your chances of a favorable outcome, and not re- sponding can increase the chances of running into problems. So as you learn to get in touch with this inner force it’s important to listen to what it is telling you to do, and don’t let your inner editor push this signal aside. If you get a strong, clear signal, listen to it and act accordingly.

When to Use

Your mind’s intuitive abilities can be a powerful tool if you develop and pay attention to them. Once you are able to tap in to them, they are like a beacon lighting the way to a clear path ahead or pointing out the dan- gers along the way. They are signaling where to go, what problems to avoid, or what to do to prepare to successfully cope with and overcome the difficulties in your path. As you learn how to access this part of your mind using the GWYW techniques described in this book, you will find countless ways to draw on these enhanced powers and apply them to all aspects of your life.

It is important to do the following four things to access and use your inner creative force effectively:

Know that you have this intuitive, creative power within you and that you can use it to guide you.

Pay attention when you feel a sense of knowing, energy, or ur- gency rising within you in whatever form it comes to you—as a voice, in pictures, in feelings, or in sensations.

Notice what this force is urging you to do.

Respond according to the way you feel this energy directing you, whether it is to go after what you want even more energetically, or to stay away.

These methods are something anyone can master. They’re not mys- terious or magical. They’re based on sound, psychological principles describing how the intuitive right-brained power within you operates so you function more effectively and can better create the reality you want.

I have been developing and using these GWYW techniques for more than forty years. They have become such an automatic part of my life that I use them without thinking about them. Beginning in the mid- 1980s I have received even further confirmation of the success of these techniques in my own life and in the latest research about the new tech- niques to enhance brain functioning.

I started using these methods in 1968 when I began designing games. I used the pictures in my mind to develop game ideas. This exploration began when I organized a game group, which I started because I loved playing games as a child. After starting this group I soon began having occasional dreams about games. A friend suggested hypnosis to come up with more ideas rather than waiting for random dreams and he led me on my first guided journey into the intuitive part of my mind. I saw all kinds of games in the Macy’s toy department. I began creating hun- dreds of games this way and found publishers for dozens of them.

In the beginning I needed the formal technique of going into an al- tered hypnotic state with him guiding me and then doing it myself. Af- ter a while I no longer needed any preparatory techniques to relax and could instantly access my imagination, not only for designing games but also for other creative projects. Then I began to apply this method

to making decisions and choices in my life, such as what career path to take and what to say to get the job. This led me to become an as- sistant professor in Georgia and to later get a doctorate in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, where I studied several spiri- tual and personal growth groups, which used some similar techniques to further self-development. I later supplemented my explorations with these techniques by attending dozens of workshops on developing cre- ativity, working with hypnosis, using visualization and imagery, explor- ing consciousness, and meditating, all designed to expand the power of the mind. I kept testing what I learned through my own experiences and I kept further refining these techniques. These techniques are liter- ally integrated with what I do, so I use them automatically along with gathering and processing facts about a particular situation, which I take into consideration in using these intuitive processes.

The GWYW techniques in this book are the methods I have found ef- fective in tapping in to this inner creative force. Use the same methods as they are described or adapt them by changing the imagery to suit your own style. The key to success with these techniques is to use a series of procedures and symbols to make yourself receptive to contact- ing the inner force within you. Adapt these basic procedures and tech- niques so they work for you. Then, once you are in contact with this inner intuitive force, actively mobilize it to achieve your desired goals.

In doing so, use this basic three-step process to propel you along in getting what you want:

Be aware and receptive to notice the inner creative power within however it communicates with you—through seeing, hearing, feeling, knowing, or a combination of these.

Consider how to respond to the knowledge and insights you have gained, such as by thinking of and assessing different options to decide what you want to do.

Take action. Draw on your inner creative powers to act to achieve your desired goals, or avoid any difficulties or barriers you have perceived.

Here are some ways to use these techniques to get what you want and you may think of others. In the chart on page 15 you’ll see a list of general benefits you might want, along with an example on how to get them. In the area below the example write down how you might apply a particular benefit to your situation.

Another way to use this chart is to think of a specific result you want and then think of the things you need to do or change about your- self to get it. For example, maybe you want to create a new career for yourself in a different field. You might need to have more energy so you can do the work you are currently doing while you develop that new career, increase your confidence to convince people in the new field you can do the job, overcome uncertainty so you are sure it