How To Make Wishes That Come True
Published by Andrew Dubber at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Andrew Dubber
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Not so long ago, my friend Stef and I created a simple website on which people could make wishes. Little did we realise that people would use it to reveal their deepest desires, regrets, hopes and aspirations. Inspired by the people whose dreams fill the pages, I sat down and wrote this guide to making wishes that come true. My hope was that in some small way, I could do more than simply provide a place for those thoughts to be aired. I could instead contribute a strategy for realising as many of those wishes as possible. My wish for you is that you use this book to make your own wishes come true.
Table of Contents
How to make wishes that come true
Aligning wishes with principles
Introduction
Not so long ago, my friend Stef and I created a simple website on which people could make wishes. Little did we realise that people would use it to reveal their deepest desires, regrets, hopes and aspirations. Inspired by the people whose dreams fill the pages, I sat down and wrote this guide to making wishes that come true. My hope was that in some small way, I could do more than simply provide a place for those thoughts to be aired. I could instead contribute a strategy for realising as many of those wishes as possible. My wish for you is that you use this book to make your own wishes come true.
~~~~~
How to make wishes that come true
It’s fun to make wishes. But it’s even more fun when those wishes come true. By putting a little thought into your wishes, you can not only have far more of them come true than you would ever have thought possible - but you’ll also become better at making wishes that really excite you, motivate you and pull you towards a richer, more rewarding future.
You want great things for your life - and you also want the little things that make each day just that little bit better. Whether it’s a wish for a million dollars, a dream job, a romantic relationship, a new car, a big screen TV, a trip to France, the completion of a big project, a date with someone you like, a day off work, or just a berry muffin to go with that cup of coffee - you can not only learn to make wishes that have a better chance of coming true, but you can set it up so that your wish success rate goes through the roof.
How? Well, it’s not magic. This is not one of those books that tells you to ask the universe, close your eyes and just believe. There are no superstitious rituals to perform, and nor do you have to believe anything in particular for this to work.
Your religion is entirely your business, and the advice in this book is not in any way incompatible with your current belief systems. Whether you’re Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist, Agnostic, Zoroastrian, Baha’i, Rastafarian, Jehovah’s Witness, Sikh, Pagan, Santerian, Unitarian or Taoist - this book will work for you.
In this book, you’ll learn practical, proven, non-mystical steps that you can take to make better wishes. Not just the ones that pop into your head from time to time - but real wishes. Wishes that reflect your true hopes, dreams and aspirations. And then you’ll learn how to make them come true - reliably, systematically and beyond all your expectations.
Shall we get started?
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1. What are wishes?
To begin, we need to separate a few different types of wishes. There are some that are just fanciful. They’re fun to wish, but if we’re being realistic, it would be absurd to think that there’s any possibility that they will come true.
For instance:
“I wish that instead of the postman, a unicorn wearing a tutu delivers my mail today”
“I wish that I could have afternoon tea on the moon.”
“I wish that my drapes were made of chocolate.”
“I wish that cats could talk.”
“I wish that I was 20 years younger.”
These are what we call ‘fanciful wishes’.
There’s nothing wrong with them, and you should have as many of them as you like. It’s great to exercise your imagination - and who am I to say that one day you may not necessarily be able to enjoy your tea on the moon? But it seems unlikely, and there’s not much you or I could do to bring that dream any closer to reality - except maybe boil the kettle and cross your fingers.
The next type of wish is what we call ‘unfocused hopes’. These are somewhat more realistic than the fanciful wishes, but in truth they’re worse. These are desirable outcomes but with no real tangible or measurable qualities.
For instance:
“I wish to be rich.”
“I wish to be beautiful”
“I wish to have lots of really cool stuff.”
Again, there’s nothing wrong with wanting those things, but the reason these are even worse than the fanciful wishes is that even if you somehow managed to achieve them - there’s no way you would know if you had. You may already be rich. In fact, 95% of the world’s population has fairly good evidence to suggest that you are. You may already be beautiful - and I bet you could find three people right now who will reassure you that this is, in fact, the case. I bet you have lots of really cool stuff too.
So the problem with unfocused hopes is not that they won’t come true - but that you’ll never get the satisfaction of achieving them because you won’t even notice.
Then there’s the third type of wish. These are the ones we’re interested in. We call these ‘attainable goals’. Attainable goals can still be pretty wild, ambitious and exciting (in fact, the more wild, ambitious and exciting they are, the more driven you’ll be to make sure they come true.
Attainable goals have three main characteristics:
1) A clear purpose;
2) A strategy built in to make sure they are accomplished; and
3) A measurable outcome
For instance:
“I wish to have a million dollars in investments within five years”
“I wish to own a Ducati Hypermotard 1100 motorcycle”
“I wish to be able to hold a 5-minute conversation in French with a native speaker”
“I wish to live in an apartment with a rooftop garden in Amsterdam”
You have a clear purpose for wanting them - and it helps to write them down with your wish (I wish to own a Ducati Hypermotard 1100 motorcycle BECAUSE they are the finest bikes on earth, and I want the experience of owning and riding such a miracle of engineering).
There’s a strategy built-in to accomplishing them. If “I wish to be able to hold a 5-minute conversation in French with a native speaker” - there’s no good just wishing it without enrolling in some French lessons...
And these wishes are measurable. It will be absolutely clear when you have achieved them. How will you know that you have a million dollars in investments? You’ll have a statement from your broker. How will you know you live in an apartment in Amsterdam with a rooftop garden? Look out your window.
The main thing here is to distinguish the kinds of wishes that empower you. The ones that are credible and practical - even if they seem an incredibly long way off. Because the simple fact is that these things are true for somebody. There are people who own Ducatis. Lots of people learn to speak French or move to nice inner-city apartments in Amsterdam. More people than you would think have a million-dollar portfolio.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with you that makes you incapable of achieving these sorts of things. You just need to be aware of certain things:
1. It’s easy to get what you want... but wanting what you get is more difficult;
2. The first step to getting what you want is knowing what you want;
3. It’s important to be realistic - but you have to massively expand your definition of what ‘realistic’ means;
4. If someone else has achieved it, it’s definitely possible; 5. If nobody else has ever achieved it, it still might be possible.
And once you have this sort of wish - the attainable goal - you’ll be amazed at how taking simple steps towards accomplishing that goal will bring you rapidly towards having it come true. And you’ll be amazed at how many opportunities and serendipitous chance encounters bring you more quickly to your goal - not because of some magical realignment of the cosmic forces in your favour - but because by getting some clarity about your wishes, you have tuned your brain to spot those opportunities.
It’s like when you buy a new car. Suddenly, you’ll see that car everywhere you go. Not because it’s instantly the most popular type of car on the road, but because that’s what your mind is busy noticing.
And look at all the red things in the room you’re sitting in right now. Just look at them! Stop for a moment, look around the room and take in all the red.
Now, you probably wouldn’t have noticed just how much red is in the room with you if I hadn’t pointed it out to you. I could just as easily have said blue or brown or green. But you noticed a lot of red. Our brains can be focused so easily just with a bit of clarity and instruction.
THAT is what wishes are for.
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2. Improving your life
One of the best reasons to make wishes we can think of is to improve your life. But actually, when you break it down - ‘improve your life’ is actually two reasons. You can improve your life by making your life better, and you can improve your life by making it a better life. Let me explain the difference:
1) Making your life better This is about enjoyment and satisfaction. The kinds of things that make your life better are material goods, high-quality relationships, interesting experiences, and the sorts of things you want in order to have more fun and get more out of life. This is the (perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of) ‘What’s In It For Me?’ motivation.
2) Making it a better life This is about contribution. Making your mark on the world and making the world a better place because you were in it. This is about considering how you can best add to those around you, encourage, support and work with people, save the environment, volunteer for aid agencies, donate to charities, etc. It’s about putting something back. This is the ‘How Can I Help?’ motivation.
Now this seems like really big picture stuff, but it’s important to get a real handle on what’s important to you in order to make compelling wishes that you’ll be driven to make real. So before we even start making lists of wishes, the best thing we can do is to think about your life goals.
What do you hope to be? What’s important to you? Just who is the human being you aspire to become?
EXERCISE: It’s your funeral.
Grab a piece of paper and a pen - or just open a text editor right there on your computer... and imagine the following. After more than 100 years on the planet, you have finally passed away after a lifetime of wild success, massive contribution and a seemingly endless string of wishes-come- true.
Hundreds of people have gathered to pay their respects, and to offer tribute to a life well-lived.
What do they say?
Take five minutes to jot down at least TEN things that people would line up to say about you at your funeral. Here are some thought starters to get the ball rolling:
“He was a wonderful husband and father who always put the needs of his family first.”
“She had an incredible thirst for knowledge - always learning new things.”
“He was one of the greatest novelists this country has ever produced.”
“She was such fun to be around - generous and kind.” “He was always fit and healthy - and enjoyed life to the full.”
“She built a successful business from the ground up and turned it into a wild success.”
You’ve got five minutes - starting now. Go!
Okay. Got that? Great! Weren’t you just an amazing person?
With those things in mind, it’s possible to begin to create wishes and goals that bring you toward that thought experiment, and making it a reality. What you have on your piece of paper (or text editor) is a list of things that are, for now, things that are still in your future.
You’ve just created an image of what you’re working towards. They may seem like distant - perhaps even impossible challenges, but you’ve got two very distinct advantage up your sleeve:
1) Direction Now you know where you’re going, it’s going to be so much easier to get there. Just having a destination in mind makes all the difference when you’re setting off on a journey.
2) Time My guess is that you’re neither dead yet nor 100 years old. So by my reckoning, you’ve got some time to turn the things you imagined into some sort of reality, and you can take the necessary steps that will take you ever closer.
And now that you’ve got the life direction sorted out, the smaller things will start to take care of themselves - at least in your own mind. There are three categories of wish that we need to think about - but all of them contribute towards the eventual goal of fulfilling your life’s purpose.
They are:
Big picture
As we’ve established, you’re perfectly capable of some quite incredible things. The big picture wishes are those things out on the horizon that you’re heading towards. These might involve things like the country or city you want to live in, the dream job you want to have, and the kinds of relationships you’d like to foster -- as well as the big ticket items like a house, a car, a boat, a recording studio, etc.
Medium term
These are your long-held ambitions that will make for a really enriching life on the way to your eventual goal. Perhaps you want to visit India, perform a concert, study at university, go mountain climbing, build schools for orphans in Kenya, learn a language, or write a book. This is also the category for those expensive things, but which might be attainable in a much shorter time frame. Things like a new laptop, a drum kit, or a weekend out of town with the family.
Instant gratification
This is the stuff you want right now. Things that would just incrementally improve your experience of the world in the very short term. Perhaps you’d feel good about donating to a charity that you think is deserving. Maybe you’d like to go out and buy a new pair of shoes. Is there are CD that you want by a band you love? Or perhaps you just want a good cup of coffee, or to take the afternoon off work. This is the category of wish for those things.
Starting with the big picture and working your way down ensures that the little wishes that you make along the way are automatically designed to take you closer to your ultimate life goals. The big wishes should pull you along and take priority over the smaller ‘instant gratification’ wishes.
Because you don’t want somebody to stand up at your funeral and say “Well, she never amounted to very much - but at least she managed to have a big chocolate muffin with her morning coffee each day...”
Sure - that’s a wish come true, but you can do better.
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3. Aligning wishes with principles
I mentioned at the start of the book that the steps you’ll learn here do not require any particular faith or belief system on your part. While that’s true, it’s important that the wishes that you make are compatible with that belief system - otherwise you’ll end up with what psychologists call ‘cognitive dissonance’: when your actions conflict with your beliefs. And I’m not just talking about religious beliefs here. I’m talking about your morals, principles and ethics.
Wishing for a bacon sandwich is all very well and good - but if you’re a vegetarian, then it’s going to cause you some cognitive stress. You’ll feel bad for wishing it - and even worse if it comes true!
So it’s necessary that you have a clear picture of what it is you believe, what you find to be acceptable behaviour and conduct on your own part, and the kind of principles you wish to be guided by. These things will provide the moral compass that will align your daily actions with your eventual goals.
But here’s the thing: Sometimes when you take stock of what you truly believe, you’ll notice that the way you have been living up till now is not quite the way that it should be if those priniciples are important to you. And that might not be your fault, necessarily, but it does cause unnecessary stress.
For instance, you may think that it’s important to contribute to charity to help those less fortunate than yourself. But if you’re in a situation whereby you can’t really spare any of your income because it’s hard enough just paying the bills, then you have a situation whereby you’re not able to live in accordance with your own principles.
Obviously, in this situation, you have two options: you can get comfortable with the fact that you don’t give money to charity - or you can get into a situation where there’s some money left over. Doesn’t have to be a lot - but if your morals tell you to donate, and you can find just a little to donate, then you’re acting in accordance with your own principles, which leads to a happy, well-balanced mind.
I would argue that the principles in this book can lead you to do better than simply have a little bit left over. You can massively contribute to those less fortunate than yourself - and if you’re reading this, you’re at least in the top 10% of the most fortunate people on the planet (you can read AND you have electricity). And with your life wishes in alignment with your principles, that situation will only ever improve - barring act of nature or unforeseen mishap.
EXERCISE: What do you believe?
Get out another piece of paper (or go back to the text editor) and answer the following simple questions to get a clear picture of what your principles and world view consist of.
1) What would you consider to be the number 1 rule of life?
2) Who is the most important person/people in my life?
3) What issue would I be prepared to fight for?
4) On what teaching or tradition do I base my morals and ethics?
5) How do I know when I’m doing good or bad?
6) What is the definition of ‘a good life’?
7) What’s the most inspirational book you’ve ever read?
8) What person embodies your model for good living?
9) If you had a motto, what would it be?
10) Are there ever exceptions to your moral code?
These questions might seem tough, but the first thought that pops into your head - your gut reaction - is probably the right one.
Now that you have some idea of your guiding ethics and principles, here’s something that you might not have considered: you can change them. Motivational speaker and author T Harv Eker compares principles and beliefs to a pair of glasses through which you view the world. Because of your beliefs, you’ll see the world slightly differently from someone who has a different pair of glasses from you. If you were wearing different glasses, you’d see the world differently too.
A lot of people get their understandings and beliefs about the world from their parents and the culture in which they grew up. I’m not suggesting you stop being Christian or Buddhist simply because that was the way that you were raised. But I am saying there may be things that you want to question and reassess about your own beliefs, and ask if they are helpful and supportive beliefs.
Beliefs about money and status are particularly ripe for questioning. A lot of people are raised to believe that they should simply accept their lot in life, act in accordance with their social status, and not try and ‘get ideas above their station’. Chances are you were raised with this idea. And after some reflection, you may well decide that while it was what worked for the generations before you, you’re comfortable with the idea of becoming more successful, and having ambitions beyond your station.
As Eker puts it, perhaps you’re wearing your parents’ glasses and it’s time to exchange them for a pair of your own.
Once you have a clear set and system of your own beliefs, morals and ethics - religious or otherwise - then you can set about making sure that the wishes you make are in complete accordance with those principles. Because there is nothing more certain than the fact that you will not achieve goals or have wishes come true for you that are contradictory to your own deeply held principles. It just won’t happen - and nor should it.
Our brains are way too smart for that. If ever it looks like we’re going to get something that we wish for that deep down we don’t believe we should have, our brains kick into overdrive to find a way to sabotage that wish. We’ll trip ourselves up, do something counter-productive, say something stupid to a key person in our plans, or just get in our own way.
It’s like having a thermostat set at a certain level of comfort. If we start getting our wishes fulfilled at a level of success that’s outside our comfort zone, we’ll engage our brains to bring everything back down to the temperature we’re more comfortable with. If we make a lot of money, but don’t have the supporting belief that we should HAVE a lot of money, then you can be sure that we’re going to lose it pretty quickly.
Set up your beliefs and principles so that you can win the wishing game. If it’s important to you to help those in need, it’s more helpful and productive to believe that having more money allows you to contribute more, than it is to believe that all people with money are corrupt and evil.
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4. Dream large
When we make wishes, we tend to just think about our very immediate and most pressing needs and desires. I’m hungry - I’ll wish for cake. I’m tired - I’ll wish for sleep. I’m attracted to that beautiful woman - I’ll wish for the courage to strike up a conversation.
That sort of thing.
But there are strong reasons for being ambitious about your wishes - and not just because if they come true, you’ll have better stuff.
People are naturally hard-wired to be ambitious. We are problem solvers as a species, and always looking for ways for things to be better. We want more - not just for ourselves individually, but for our fellow people too. We are adventurous and curious beings, and we are constantly striving to reach new heights.
We love to break world records. We are inspired by space exploration and by great adventurers who battle great odds to reach seemingly unattainable goals. Our ambition, and our ability to imagine a better world, is what keeps us going forward, advancing and always improving.
And when we question the great explorers, the record- shattering athletes and the real high-achievers in the world, we find a single common thread in the answers that they give: visualisation.
Now, when we say ‘visualisation’, we’re not saying that if you can picture it in your head, the universe is going to give it to you on a plate (the wish, that is - not your head). It just doesn’t work like that no matter how many books on positive thinking, ‘actualisation’ or ‘manifestation’ you might have spent money on. There may be some amazing forces at work in the world, but if you’re going to close your eyes, picture a pile of money, and then believe it’s just going to be there when you open them again - mostly, you’re just going to be disappointed with life in general.
But that doesn’t mean that visualising your goals doesn’t work.
Having a clear picture of what success looks and feels like is a necessary part of making sure that particular successful outcome occurs. It comes down to the amazing power of your brain... and just how stupid it is too. You can trick your brain into believing that certain things are true. Neuro-scientists, using brainwave pattern readers, have proved that your brain has great difficulty distinguishing between something that actually happens, and something that you have clearly visualised happening. The same electrical impulses do exactly the same things in the same regions of your brain.
So if you engage all of your senses in your vision of success, then your brain will be pretty much completely fooled into believing that this has already happened (except, of course, for that small conscious bit that’s in on the joke).
EXERCISE: Fool your brain
Think of a very simple wish. Let’s say ‘I wish for a berry muffin and a cup of coffee’ (I really like berry muffins, so that’s what I’m going with). Now, close your eyes and imagine that muffin and the coffee. First, what does it look like? What sort of plate is it on? What colour and shape is the cup? Next, in your mind, pick them up - one in each hand. How hot is the cup? How heavy? How soft is the muffin? What’s its texture like? Give the muffin a bit of a squeeze. Now smell them. That rich, coffee aroma & the fresh out of the oven smell of baked muffins. Amazing. Now, take a sip of the coffee and taste it in your mouth. And a bite of the muffin - make sure you get a big bit of fruit in there. Chew it around. Berry muffins are so good. Now take another sip and listen to the sound you make as you put the cup to your mouth. What about when you pop it back down on the table? Does the muffin make a sound? Of course it does. Listen to that.
Okay... and now the vast majority of your brain firmly believes you’re well into a coffee and a muffin - and is probably wondering why you’ve stopped eating it. Your mouth is watering, and you have a memory of all of the sensations associated with the dish.
That’s visualisation. That’s what you need to do to trick your brain into believing that your wish is already true. Because here’s the bit that makes visualisation such a powerful tool for all of those people who accomplish great things: If your brain believes that something is true, it will do its utmost to make sure that it is.
Your brain hates nothing more than being wrong. If it believes something to be true, it will do whatever it can to make sure that the evidence supports its theories. If you have successfully visualised large piles of cash, you’re far more likely to end up with large piles of cash - not because the universe decides to reward magical thinking, but because your brain will go into overdrive making sure that the external world maps neatly onto its beliefs about what is true and what isn’t.
If you dream large - and you visualise strongly, you can guarantee that your brain will put you in all sorts of situations and serendipitous coincidences that will, if you take the opportunities, lead you towards the realisation of your dreams.
The more powerful the visualisation, the more strongly this principle works. And the more compelling, ambitious, adventurous and exciting the wish is, the more your brain will go all out to hang onto that belief about the external nature of reality, and the more it will battle to make sure it comes true.
And you can help that process along on a day by day basis. A lot of self-help books and motivational speakers will tell you about ‘affirmations’. These are a kind of chant that you repeat to yourself in the hopes that the universe will pick up the signals and swoop in like Father Christmas with the toys you were after.
In actual fact, affirmations do work as advertised, but not for the reasons given. Reminding your brain about what it believes to be true, and telling yourself that it’s true over and over just cements in that belief that little bit more strongly. So if you’re going to do the affirmation thing (and, apart from feeling a bit foolish at first - why wouldn’t you?), the best idea is to keep up the pretence.
Don’t repeat the phrase ‘I wish for a berry muffin’ - your brain will suspect something is up. Instead repeat ‘I have a berry muffin. It’s really delicious.’
That’ll be convincing enough for your easily fooled subconscious brain to believe it to be true, and then navigate you into a situation in which there’ll be some proof that this is, in fact the case.
But dream large. While you’re tricking your brain, you might as well trick it into thinking it has that large house by the ocean, or a PhD in Linguistics.
Don’t waste the visualisation on the muffin. Just go get yourself one.
~~~~~
5. Dream small
Having put the case for the big wishes, now let me tell you the advantages of the little wishes. That berry muffin may, in fact, be one of your biggest allies in the struggle to have your wishes come true.
Why? It’s your brain again. Remember how it’s stupid? Well, it can be tricked into all sorts of other things too.
Chances are that right now your brain thinks that wishes are those things that we would like to have happen, but which probably never will. For years, you’ve been training your brain to be disappointed in wishes.
Lots of people wish that Santa will bring them a pony. Santa hardly ever brings ponies. You’ve probably wished that you could have some sort of wild affair with that movie star you like. But the chances of actually meeting that movie star are reasonably slim. You might have wished for a sunny weekend in April. That’s just begging for disappointment.
But right now, you can decide that wishes are those things that you make come true. Your brain loves definitions, and new, more empowering definitions can be installed. Erase the one that says wishes are things that don’t usually come true, and replace it with one that says wishes are things that pretty much always come true.
And then go about proving it.
EXERCISE: Make some easy wishes
It’s the easiest thing in the world to make wishes come true - because you get to decide what you wish for. Pick three things that you could do right now that would make your day just a little bit better -- then wish for them.
You might choose things like:
"I wish for a short nap”
“I wish for a nice cup of tea”
“I wish for a stroll outside”
“I wish to pick up the phone and talk to my best friend”
“I wish to listen to the radio”
“I wish to buy myself a little treat”
Okay - chosen your wishes? Right. Now in the next 10 minutes, I want you to grant them. All three of them.
Your brain won’t know what hit it: “Wait - what? Three wishes? Granted? Like in fairy tales? What’s going on?”
And it’s at that point you start to install the new belief: Wishes come true. But you’re going to have to do this a lot. You’ve spent your whole life to this point demonstrating the opposite. Now you have to get into the habit of making wishes that you have the ability to effortlessly grant on a regular basis.
For this, you might need a list. Go back to the paper or that text editor and start making a list of all of the things that you could possibly wish for that are well within your capabilities to grant.
Things like:
“I wish for a day off this month”
“I wish to start each day with a big glass of water”
“I wish to ring my sister once a week”
“I wish to have a decent cup of coffee"
“I wish to buy that new CD I want this coming payday”
Make the list as long as you can - and make them small, easily attainable and rewarding. These may not be the hugely satisfying, life affirming goals that we’re going to be working towards, but these little treats are just a trick on the brain that will get you into the habit of expecting wishes to come true in a reliable and realistic fashion.