This is episode 99 – The Alchemy of Possibility.  Usually when you have a huge vision or goal for yourself, it triggers doubt, a lack of belief that it can happen, and more specifically, a lack of belief in your ability to create it.  In this episode we’ll explore why that happens and how to turn it around. Hi, I’m Carla Rieger and this is the MindStory Speaker podcast.

Over the years, people have come to me to help them achieve certain goals or big impossible visions not just because I can help them strategically to break it down with them step by step and keep them accountable, but mostly to keep their head in the game. Usually I’m helping them build a business, or their leadership skills, or develop content as an expert. When I first started coaching, I would give them the strategies, the step by step process, the accountability to stay focused, but only about 30% would move forward to manifesting their goals and visions. 70% would not. At first, I thought it was the strategies that I was giving them. In a very small percentage of the cases, maybe that strategy wasn’t the best for them at that time. But I found in most situations I could distill it down to one thing, and one thing alone. They just didn’t believe it was possible.

They started out with an idea, a longing, vision, goal of what they wanted to achieve. I call that being in the archetype of the visionary, whose core script is That’s Totally Possible. On other podcast episodes I’ve talked about how we run our lives according to MindStories, with core scripts and characters I call archetypal characters – all of which provide instruction sets, perspectives, motivations that we live by. For example, most of us can access a Visionary archetypal character. It’s the part that drives us forward with our big goals in life. Its the part that sees beyond preconceived ideas, consciousness bias, to see possibility where others only see impossibility. All the great inventors, creative geniuses, business innovators often access this archetypes. But all archetypes comes with their opposite.  The opposing archetype to the Visionary, which I call the Myopic. Their core script is – That’s Impossible. The word literally means someone who can’t see distances that are far away. But it can also figuratively mean having restricted or rigid views, being unreceptive to new ideas, not thinking about how to properly provide for the future, not perceptive about what’s needed in order to move forward.

So, we all have both, and they often duke it out. In fact, usually soon after  a person comes up with a great vision for themselves, a clear purpose for moving forward, it actually triggers the opposite: the myopic, pessimistic, small minded archetype that just doesn’t believe it’s possible, and mostly that’s because they don’t believe in themselves. It’s like creating a vision for something it excites you is like a spring flower starting to bud in the soil. It then starts a process where you have to push through the muck, the mud, the soil, the rocks to get into the sunlight. But what usually happens is people have vision, then all their doubts, fears, lack of belief come up, which is all part of the alchemical process of going towards your vision, where you have to have both archetypes going through an alchemical process in order to manifest the goal. But people get thrown off by all these doubts that weren’t there when they didn’t have a vision, when they were staying safe in the comfortable and familiar. Now that they vision, they have to deal with its opposite. That’s when a lot of people give up, go back to the comfortable and familiar, and let the myopic archetype win.

For example, I studied playwriting in university so when I graduated I decided to write a play. It was a kind of a sketch comedy. I had these visions of putting on comedic plays, going on tour, getting standing ovations. So the Visionary within went for it.  I wrote it, hired actors, director and producer, got a venue, started promoting it. But the closer we got to opening night, every fear I ever had came up to bite me. The Myopist within needed to have it’s day in court. It’s not to be ready on time, there’s going to be technical issues, it’s going to bomb, I’m going to lose money, my actors will choke up, no one will show up, and mostly…I just don’t believe that I can pull this off.  It came on so loud and so strong, partly because I’d been pushing it away the whole time, not listening, not processing it. And it got so big and so huge that I canceled the whole show 4 days before opening night. All that time, money, effort for months and months was all just wasted, because it really hadn’t dealt with the inner Myopist right from the start.

Now, whenever I have what seems like an inspiring vision of something I want to accomplish, I know to invite The Myopist to tea, to have a clear, open and honest conversation. I want to hear from this part right from the get-go. I want to hear that archetypal character out in all its doom, gloom, doubt, pessimism, lack of belief in me, in the project, in life. It’s okay. It’s part of the alchemical process of creating anything. It’s actually part of the creative process. Most people think it’s a block to creativity, a form of sabotage for creativity, but is not. It simply the rocks, soil and mock you have to push up through to create any vision.

So here’s a quick, 4 step process you can do to invite this part of yourself forward, to have a conversation between the Visionary and the Myopist within.

1. Embody the Inner Visionary and write down a vision, something you’ve always wanted to create, no editing. It could be the kind of lifestyle you want, the kind of business, the kind of health, looks, relationship, creative project, whatever. Allow yourself to really dream, especially allow yourself to imagine something that seems impossible. I say this because of that old phrase – shoot for the stars and if you only hit the moon is better than never having left Earth. If you have a mediocre, practical, vision that’s just a little bit of a stretch, something that would probably be something you could accomplish, then it’s not going to seem as compelling, as exciting, as much of a growth opportunity, than if you really choose something that lights your heart on fire. Because that light, that fire is what you need to push through the soil and the rocks. Without that, the first problem that comes along and you’ll just throw in the towel, let it all go.
2. Invite the opposite of the Visionary to tea, which we’ll call the Myopist. Or you can choose your own name, like the pessimist, the saboteur, the loser, the skeptic, the doubter… Whatever words have meaning for you. Now, have an open and honest conversation. Make a list of why this is impossible. All the things it could go wrong. Where you don’t believe in yourself, judgments you have about yourself, about the project, about others involved, look into the past for all the evidence that it’s never worked in the past, so it’s obviously not going to work now. Think of things you’ve never forgiven yourself for, like past failures. This is where gets juicy, get all that out on paper. Write down things you try to hide from, things you’re ashamed of, get them out of the dark recesses of your mind, air them out, have a look at them. This is very important step in transforming the alchemical process of transformation.
3. Now it helps to explore the limiting beliefs from many angles. If know Byron Katie’s work you might be familiar with this. For example, say you want to write a book. The Visionary writes down all your ideas about what’s going be in it, who’s going to be your ideal reader, what it’ll do for your career, how fun it will be to create, where you do your research, everything that excites you. Secondly, the Myopist will come up with a series of doubts and skeptisms. So, say the Myopist says “you’re not a very good writer.” So you take one at a time, and you look at it from many angles. Ask yourself is that true? Yes or no. Can you absolutely know it’s true? Yes or no. List three reasons why it’s true I’m not a good writer. I got that bad review on my last book. In my writing class, nobody seem to like the passage I wrote. I wasn’t able to get my article published in the magazine. Then, list three reasons why it IS untrue I’m not a good writer. In fact turn the sentence around, I AM a good writer, how is that true? Three reasons or examples or facts. I won a writing contest when I was 21. I got 13 five-star reviews on Amazon for my very first book within the first month. I’ve been asked to be a regular contributor to the Wemberly Magazine. So what you’re doing here, is just breaking yourself free from one perspective on each of these situations. Every belief you have could be proven wrong or right, which just proves that it’s just an opinion. It’s just a possible perspective. So if it’s all arbitrary, why not build the beliefs or I like to say…. manufacture the beliefs that get you what you want? Often the only reason someone is successful at anything is because they believed in themselves, they believed it was possible. Belief is the engine and belief is arbitrary, so you can choose it or not. We often think our arbitrary beliefs are actual indisputable facts but we’ve chosen consciously or subconsciously to believe.
4. Now, it helps to do a visualization. If you don’t tend to visualize very well, you can do this by feeling it, hearing it, imagining it. And by the way, if you are a person that says you don’t visualize very well, here’s a quick exercise to see if you do or not. I want you to think of the front door of your home — did you see it, did you see the color, the texture, the shape where the handle is, what it looks like? If so, then you do visualize very well. Most people do, they just may be don’t do it in a lot of specific detail. But that’s just a matter of practice. So, I want you to imagine that all the negative beliefs, thoughts, doubts, skepticism’s from the Myopist within regarding your vision are like lumps of coal. Put all of those lumps of coal into a basket. It’s like one of those woven baskets that kind of like a sieve. Now, imagine you had shower hose with warm liquid. Imagine this warm liquid is like the milk of human kindness. It’s like this full force of compassion, acceptance, universal love, understanding that’s pouring all over the coals. What happens is that they start to break down and disintegrate until they are black sand, and the particles are so small that they fall out of the bottom of the basket and go back to the earth for recycling. What’s left are pearls of wisdom. So the bottom of the basket are just these gleaming, precious, beautiful pearls of wisdom. Because within all doubt, negativity, skepticism, judgmentalness are always some pearls of wisdom. So you just keep those in a safe place, for safekeeping, to be used moving forward; but all the unnecessary negativity, the dross has been cleared away. And you can do a final rinse with water so that all the black sand has completely disappeared and all you have are these gleaming beautiful pearls of wisdom. This process is to help you remember that all negativity from within your own mind or from external circumstances such as people or situations, are all gifts. They were there to help you understand how to deal with challenges, how to have compassion for others going through the same thing, helping you to build strength and resilience, and that without these pearls of wisdom you’ve uncovered, through this processing of the negativity, you wouldn’t have what you need to create your vision. Both voices are needed.

And to make this work it helps to understand the power of decision. So when I work with someone who comes through any of our programs, and they want this alchemy of possibility, to create more in their life, and of course that’s different for all of us. And in that realm of creating something that you previously thought was impossible, there’s a superpower I call making a unified decision. This is as opposed to an unified decision, where you make a decision, then you unmake it. The Visionary makes the decision, then the Myopist unmakes it.

So the inner Myopic is often stealing away life force energy and the superpower of making a unified decision. So the first thing we do together is look at where this sabotaging is going on, helping you see the thinking that’s causing this block, this suffering, and how to discern which thinking is true and untrue. And then the moment you actually see untrue thinking, you start the transformation process, you because you can’t unsee it anymore. For example, sometimes the Myopist part of you won’t outright block everything the visionary wants, but will subtly create problems. Like it will tell you that if you’re going to achieve this vision, you have to get this huge list of tasks done…like…today! And if you don’t there’s this inference that you won’t get there, you will fail, it’s not meant to be.

But when you examine that kind of thinking from this wiser part of the brain, this wholistic, whole brain, detached, neutral, compassionate place you see…well, that doesn’t make much sense. There’s 2 weeks of things to do on my list for today. I’m not supposed to get everything on this list done today. And no, I’m not at risk of not achieving my vision if I don’t get all this done. That’s just silly. What’s true is that I’m supposed to just get done what I can get done today, and then I turn it over to life for tomorrow. There’s this co-creation with life rather than struggling with, or fighting against life. The scarcity of time illusion that gets people in knots of tension, is actually this Myopic part of you at work. It’s a force of entropy or sabotage of challenge, to build your stamina against, like a heavy weight in the gym there to help you build more strength of resolve, better discernment over truth. So once you really see that, every time you experience overwhelm again, you can see what’s untrue quicker and quicker until you just don’t go into overwhelm anymore.

Now, the moment we make a decision to change the bad habit of getting lost in overwhelm or to move towards the vision, we actually create a mental image of it. And the brain starts to operate off of that image. As I’ve talked about on other episodes, there’s been many scientific studies to show how ‘making a decision’ will actually change your brain, you’ll build a series of neural networks that represent the experience that you’re imagining. And it’s actually the willingness to do that, without needing to know the how that reveals the How to you. Because now you start to operate as if it’s already done. And that brain change starts to give you the thoughts, the ideas, the necessary perceptions of your external reality, so you pay attention to the things that you need to notice in order to make that thing happen.

And it activates coincidence in the quantum reality. So decisions are very powerful. And one of the reasons some people manifest goals so much quicker than others is that they actually learn to give themselves permission to make new decisions without needing to know how to get there, which is what activates the power of imagination.

To end with, I’ll just quote a short story that was told in the movie Soul, which is a recently released animated film about a jazz musician who has one singular goal which is to make it as a jazz pianist. He’s a middle school music teacher but wishes he was playing with the top jazz band. Finally he gets an opportunity to play with top jazz band, and he dies just before he’s about to perform. Most of the rest of the movie takes place in the afterlife where he tries to go back into his body so he can fulfill his dream. Spoiler alert here, he does actually get to go back in his body and perform and he gets a standing ovation, everything he always wanted, and afterwards he standing outside with the head of the band and he is wondering why he doesn’t feel better were different. He got what he always wanted, now that he had it, he didn’t feel different. She says to him

I heard this story about a fish. He swims up to an older fish and says, “I’m trying to find this thing they call ‘the ocean.’” “The ocean? the older fish says, “That’s what you’re in right now.” “This?” says the young fish. “This is water. What I want is the ocean!” 

I think it’s a good reminder, that our visions and goals, where we think they are taking us, is usually to a place that was always there to begin with. It is just the illusion that we don’t have it, that drives us. So, all these alchemical processes we go through between the inner visionary and the inner myopist or just a game we play. It’s the journey of getting there that’s the most important, the interplay of the dark and the light, the challenges and the opportunities, the wins and the failures, the dreams and the disappointments. It’s all part of one big ocean known as life.

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By the way, our next episode is #100. It’s a special episode because I’m going to cover frequently asked questions from previous podcast episodes. So, if you have a question you’d like me to answer simply send it to Carla@MindStoryAcademy.com.

Okay, that’s it for today. Please hit subscribe if you’d like to hear about other episodes. And in the meantime, enjoy building the beliefs you need to create the life you want. For more info on our offerings at MindStory Coaching Academy go to mindstoryacademy.com, get our book and two free sample audios to get more tools on building the beliefs and mindstories that serve you and others. See you next time.