Deja Vu? Have You Considered Hooking Up With Your Past?

Okay I was skeptical.  One day I got an email from someone I "sort of" knew in high school wanting to connect for coffee.  "We live in the same town, why not connect?" she suggested.  I was the same age as her brother, but I still had a picture of her perched on the backseat of my top down VW convertible in the parade for our rivalry football game in the Rose Bowl.  Debi Frausto.

With some hesitation I agreed to meet her for coffee, despite being slightly worried that this was going to be like my ten year reunion; awkward and weird - coffee with someone I had glommed onto in high school for pure survival.  When we greeted each other, I noticed she seemed a little nervous too.  After about thirty minutes, I started to remember why we had been friends. Now in 2008, she was way cooler than my memories.  An added benefit was that she had lived in Seattle a long time and seemed to know everyone.  I was still trying to grow Alchemy's business here in Seattle.

One by one, Debi introduced me to some of her network, each person more creative, smart and unique than the last.  These "contacts" gave me new ideas, leads, hired me for work, and made my head spin with delight.  When I landed my first job through a contact of hers, I asked Debi if she wanted a referral fee?  "No, I  just like connecting people," she replied.  How lucky was I?  New work contacts and a really cool new/old friend who was always scheming new ideas and projects.  Finally I gave her a copy of Now Discover Your Strengths so I could know what made her so good at networking.  She, in turn, gave me more contacts and a terrible picture of me from  high school for Christmas.  Bleeech!

When your high school "friends" send you a note to connect, how do you respond?

What was your experience? I'd love to hear about it.  If you haven't connected yet, it might be well worth your time, you may end up as pleasantly surprised as I was.

Dreaming Your New Reality From the Inside Out

Last week I introduced you to how to use the Snapshot of the Big Picture map to set goals.  In the snapshot process, you embed drawings and words of what you want in your new desired reality into the right side of the snapshot template.  Then you determine some bold steps you need to take to get yourself there.  This is just the first part of the equation for successful goal achievement.  To fully realize your dream, you must live it from the inside out with the full belief that this is your new reality; you have become that which you dream.   

I know, I know, things don't always happen in the time frame you expected.  Since we live in an age of instantaneous results, it is hard to wait for things to happen.  In the absence of tangible proof, many of us begin to question the process; problem-solve and subsequently "think it to death."  Instead of spinning your wheels worrying "Am I am doing this right?", I have another suggestion for you:  step more deeply into that new reality you created in your map and dream it from the inside out.  David Bohm in his work on quantum physics Thought As a System wrote "Thought is constantly creating problems (that way) and then trying to solve them.  But as it tries to solve them it makes it worse because it doesn't notice that it's creating them, and the more it thinks, the more problems it creates." (p. 18-19)  Don't think it to death, dream it to life.

You've had that experience where you were reading a good book and then suddenly you began to feel like you were living that story, you may have even wished the book would never end, that you never had to come back out.  Recently I read a blog post by writer, Kim Falconer, someone I have been following on Twitter.  In her post Immersion, Bringing Readers Into Your World,  Kim writes "If you experience the participation mystique in the act of creation, your readers will in turn be affected in the same way.  This is where the magic happens, where we immerse in a world co-created by author and reader."  

In the same way, when you become immersed in and begin to experience your own desired new reality and fully live it like a fantastic story, it begins to take on a life of its own.  Suddenly one day you wake up and it is no longer a dream you had to be a _______, it is what you are now.  You and I accelerate making our dreams real when we access the "as if" principle; living the dream as if it is our reality, until it becomes so.  Life is both a push and a pull, a push from your part that creates a pull in the universe, bringing all that you want to you.  Sound complicated?  Remember these lyrics?  "Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream."   Why not live inside your dream?  Gently.  Merrily. Sounds a lot easier to me than worrying all the time, doesn't it?

Take your Snapshot to a new level.  Look at the images and words you have put on the right side of your template and then begin to imagine living within it with every ounce of your being.  Now watch the Alchemy as it takes shape - your life now; part science, part magic.

The Alchemy of Planning

You've heard the myth that extensive planning breeds the best results?  At Alchemy we are involved in all types of planning, but extensive, tedious - that strategic plan that becomes a book and remains on the shelf - isn't one of them.  We believe that by marrying visuals with a simple planning process you can build the excitement and commitment to get you better and faster results.  Each of our alchemists work with individuals, teams and organizations around the world to help them kick-start their engines of change and burn rubber taking off in that new direction.

How can you accelerate change in yourself, your team, or your company?  We have developed and refined a process called  the Snapshot of the Big Picture.  In short, getting a snapshot of where you are right now, your Current State, where you want to be one year from today in the best possible Desired New Reality, and identifying the 3 Bold Steps that will get you from here to there.  Rocket science?  Not likely.  Download the template above and try it for yourself.

All of us make plans in our head.  At Alchemy, we marry this naturally intuitive process with an external visual to accelerate making that "picture in your mind" happen.  In our work, we actually draw on huge pieces of paper 4' by 8', and that picture packs a powerful punch.  But even if you are simply using a small visual like the template above, when you put that visual in a place where you can see it everyday and take action on your 3 bold steps, stuff happens.  That's the alchemical process - part science and part magic.  Check out what people have been saying about using our Snapshot of the Big Picture process and let us know how it worked for you.