In all my workshops -- the 12-hour ones that turned into Wishcraft, and the 3-hour ones I do for public TV and IBM and everybody else -- there's a point at which I demonstrate the Idea Party. Someone at the Memphis public TV station workshop reminded me last time of an amazing session we'd had at the previous workshop:
I asked for an impossible dream and a woman raised her hand to say she wished she could go on a cruise.
-What's your obstacle? I asked.
-I have 3. First, I have no money. Second, my adult daughter is ill and staying at my place, and I'm looking out for her. And I'd rather not tell you the third obstacle.
At that moment a man in shorts ran quickly from the back of the room up the central aisle waving a piece of paper:
-I just won a cruise for one person by running for the heart association, just a few hours ago. I don't want to go on a cruise. Anyway, I'm married.
and he gave the certificate to the women. We were wowed. She was very moved. She said (she was standing so everyone could see her) That's so nice of you I don't know what to say, but I can't leave my daughter.
A woman on the aisle a few rows back raised her hand and said, I'm a public health nurse and I have to give 10 days pro bono every year. Would that help?
The woman was flabbergasted (so was everyone but me, because I'd seen it so many times before. But this one did turn out to be unusual.)
- I think you'd better tell us your third obstacle, I said.
She sighed and said, My daughter's being stalked by her ex-husband and can't be alone.
The room fell silent and then a man's voice came from the very last row:
- I'm a cop. What's his name?
And everyone started laughing and cheering.
She went on the cruise.
And that's an Idea Party.
I've told you my harrowing tale of the first day I held Wishcraft in my hands and the near-mugging in Central Park that made me glad the original title was in Kabbalah lettering. (below).
I told you all about the pre-Wishcraft 12-hour workshop I designed and ran until I went broke -- but it lasted long enough for lots of women's magazines to attend and write it up, and for the New York Times to send a reporter who got in a column at the 11th hours -- whereupon 5 agents called me the next day to write a book (which had never occurred to me).
I told you about the old, typed workbooks and scanned them into my computer (with some difficulty) and put up here.
I love the Internet so much. Have I told you that lately? On abebooks.com I found a copy of the original Wishcraft (mine had suffered a bleaching by the sun and didn't look so good) and put it up below, too.
And now I'm tweeting and Facebooking and lots of fans are finding me and writing me lovely notes. I figure they've done so much for me already, they owe me something, so I'm asking them to send me emails or (even better) videos of themselves saying how Wishcraft worked for them, the ideas that helped them the most.
The bulletin board was hacked so I dragged it over to this blog but it's not readable yet.
(Did I mention how much I love the Internet yet?)
Have I repeated 'Isolation is the dream killer, not your attitude,' lately?
I’m still digging through the boxes of Wishcraft stuff I’ve saved. In the back of the old workbook there’s a loose page, yellowed, with typing on it, labeled only “QUOTES. “
But I recognize it and every name under the quotes. These are from the members of the first-ever-pilot-practice Success Team.
I think it was about 1975. For a few years I'd been one of a number of people chosen to run a kind of informal 'coping group,' that was being tried out by a psychiatrist. In one of the groups, the Tuesday night group, I could tell that something very special was happening. One of the members, an unprepossessing fellow (he had been described as 'Woody Allan without a sense of humor,') had admitted to his first feeling: he was unhappy because he was lonely and wanted a girlfriend.
At first they shook their heads and told him to forget it. "Women hate you, Ronnie," one of the members said.
"I know," he said. "Fix me."
They started to protest that everyone had to fix themselves when I interrupted and said, "It doesn't look like Ronnie is going to be able to do that. Why don't you all help him out?"
And they did! The Tuesday night group, instead of talking about their own problems, decided to get Ronnie a girlfriend.
I watched with amazement, week after week, as they reported that they'd taken him to a store, showed him how to dress, and asked him to buy new clothes. The men went with him to a gym to build some muscles but mostly so he'd stand up straight. During the sessions, they made him rehearse how to say hello so women wouldn't hate him immediately (as they usually did.) Finally, when they figured he was as good as he was going to get, they set parties to which they invited all the women they could find -- until Ronnie finally found his mate.
Even more amazing than this accomplishment was how terrific the members of the group had become as they worked on this project. Before that time, they had all been unmotivated, fussy complainers. This had transformed them!
I realized that I might have stumbled on a fantastic motivator, better than any kind of positive thinking or mantras, the kind of ongoing concern and support that a few lucky people are born with, but most of us never have. A team that makes us do what we want to do, and refuses to let us lose.
Every week, step by step, they rolled up their sleeves and put another piece in place. The combination of support and the structure and accountability of the weekly meetings created a motivational miracle.
Right then and there I got it: orphans don’t make it. Isolation is the dream killer. You can get what you want even if you don’t love yourself and don’t feel positive -- as long as you have an ongoing team to help you think and back you up and help you over the hard spots. And what did these helpers get in return? The same thing. Everyone, even Ronnie, helped every member go after their dreams, too.
And that turned out to be another miracle. Instead of only being the problem, the one who needed help, each person was often the solution, the one who helped each of the others, the smart, supportive person who knew how to help someone else's dreams come true. And that raised their self-esteem like no lectures, no mantra could ever do.
I knew I had something special here.
So I pulled together a small group of friends and positioned myself as a member, not a leader, so I’d know what it felt like to go after my dream, and to feel the resistance and fear everyone feels, and that way I could test what worked and what didn’t.
We met for almost a year. The team’s entire purpose was to make sure that every member got whatever she wanted, plain and simple. I wanted to create a 12-hour workshop that would help strangers form support teams, the workshop that, unknown to me, would some day turn into my first book, Wishcraft.
The stories of every one of their adventures are wonderful. All of them, at one time or another, wanted to back down, make excuses, you know the routine I'm sure, but we wouldn’t let them. We were warm and friendly, but we were tough.
For example, my workshop design wasn't finished when, in the middle of that year, I had major surgery. A few days later, when I was in the hospital bed, barely sitting up, my team came to see me. I was very glad to see them and touched that they’d taken the time to come by.
“How are you doing?” they asked.
“Not so bad,” I croaked.
“How are your hands?”
“My hands?” I said, confused. “They didn’t operate on my hands.”
“Great!” they said, and rolled the bed table up until it was over me, pulled out the notebook with the half finished notes in it, slapped it on the table and said, “Get to work.”
One of them remembered to give me a pen.
I was laughing so hard I was afraid I’d pop my stitches.
But I finished the workbook.
I could tell you a dozen stories just like that from the first group: how we made Caroline go to an art class and stood outside the door for 3 hours so she couldn’t leave. We knew she wanted to be in that class and that she was scared. But after the first night, she was hooked.
Then, on hearing Diane, who wanted to go to grad school to become a city planner, claim that she couldn't get to the bookstore to buy the G-MATs study book because her office job didn't give her enough time during the day and the bookstore closed at 5, the group bought it, went up to her office one afternoon, walked over to her desk and, in front of the whole room full of co-workers, handed it to her. “There you go,” they said.
(She studied, got into grad school, and before even getting her M.A., at a time when New York was so broke they were laying off policemen, she was offered three jobs as a city planner!)
I remember every one of the stories, each is better than the last, and maybe one day I’ll have time to tell them all. But I'd like you to see what these women handed me when I finally finished designing my workshop, to help me promote it:
QUOTES:
I would do a painting a year, a sketch a year. If it was only me I know I would never do it. Having to tell you makes all the difference. It’s crazy why I didn’t do this years ago, it’s so easy all of a sudden.
Caroline R.
Personnel Executive
Macy’s Dept Store
I’ve wanted to do this for five years. Now I’m out there learning everything I can about Urban Planning. People in the field have been very helpful to me, something I didn’t realize till my team believed in me.
Diane C
Secretary
Chemco Corporation
I learned when I joined Women’s Success Teams that talking about things and actually doing them are two different things. To do a thing you have to take step one. Then step two. And do it. I’ve had enough rehearsal. Now the show is on the road.
Barbara P.
Actress
Having a team to report to and hearing what everybody did each week is very exciting. It’s kept me moving all year. In the past I made some good starts on my own, but found, every time, when the energy ran out, I ran out. Now it doesn’t run out.
Jade G.
Children’s Playroom Therapist
New York Hospital
Women’s Success Teams is different from anything I’ve been to before, and I’ve been to them all. The other lectures and seminars I’ve gone to were very inspirational, but a week after I left them I really was in the same place I’d always been in. I walked out of that week-end belonging to a team of terrific women. I felt terrific too. I knew who I was, where I was going. I finally was off the long, lonely road of success. These women needed me and I needed them. We are doing it together.
Jeanne L.
Interior Decorator.
...............................................
I’m going to try to scan a few of these yellowed sheets of paper so you can see them yourself. I hope they make you smile as much as I’m smiling right now.
It was 1979 and a sunny afternoon when a messenger sent by Viking Press rang my doorbell and handed me the first copy of Wishcraft. I was so overwhelmed I took the book and went to the park to just think about it.
I sat down on a bench a few hundred yards from the entrance, away from the noise of traffic, took the book out and just stared at it, trying to grasp what it was, what this moment was, and who I was. I don’t remember everything I was thinking, except that I didn’t understand why they had decided to put the title and subtitle in a strange-looking typeface, some echo of Hebrew lettering. I guessed it was probably to evoke the Kabbalah as some kind of ‘witchcraft’ echo, and wasn't sure I liked it. But who cared? This was my book. I had become a published author.
After awhile I looked up, dazed but happy, and noticed down the walk, only a few hundred feet away, a very worrisome sight. A group of about 6 teenage boys was walking up the hill, most of them holding some kind of stick in their hands. The leader, a pale, skinny kid, was smacking a good-sized stick into his palm and looking straight at me. And all I could think was, Oh boy, I’m in a lot of trouble.
At this time in Central Park’s history it was considered very unwise to go into the park at night, or deeply into the park at any time. But it was only about 2:30 in the afternoon (before any of the local schools let out) and I was within sight of the busy street just outside the entrance. All the same, I knew this wasn’t good and I knew it would be a bad idea to get up and try to get away, because things could get physical.
They got up to where I was sitting and stopped, facing me. The leader sat down beside me and said, “I hope you have some money on you.”
And I said, trying to come up with something, “No, but you should come back in a few months because I’m going to be incredibly rich.”
He was faintly amused and didn’t stop smacking his palm with this unpleasant-looking stick. “Why are you going to be rich?”
I picked up the book and showed it to him and said, “This is my book. It was just published today. It’s going to be a huge seller.”
He looked at the book for a moment, squinting to read it. Then he suddenly bolted to his feet, a startled look on his face.
“Witchcraft?!” he said, in an alarmed voice, “My mother’s into Witchcraft! Listen, never mind, we don’t want any money. Good luck with your book, lady,” and he turned to his gang and said, “Let’s get out of here! Move!!” and they walked quickly away.
I decided not to push my luck, got up and went home. As I recall, I was thinking that the cover was pretty good after all.
Tonight I’m continuing to assemble all the various Wishcraft papers I’ve been gathering in preparation for 2009 and just came across I had forgotten: the original Success Teams workbook that goes with the original 12-hour workshop, the workshop that turned into Wishcraft.
I've been planning to do a special workshop for Wishcraft’s 30th year in print, and had in mind a 3-day virtual program, which I figured I'd design one of these days...maybe go through the book and pull out some highlights, I wasn't quite sure.
But looking through this workbook that I'd typed on 3-hole sheets of paper 33 years ago made me realize that I didn't have to pull anything out of Wishcraft because the book came directly from the workshop. All the words had been recorded on audio cassettes, all the charts were on blackboards, everything had moved straight from that workshop into the book, with very few changes. Not only don't I have to design anything new, this is the right workshop to celebrate Wishcraft's 30th year in print.
This last remaining copy, about 40 sheets of paper, is in a paper folder with a transparent front. As I turned the pages, it brought memories back. I remembered the year I developed the workshop so carefully, using storyboards and stick figures to choreograph what would happen -- when I’d speak, and when people would work in groups, and when they’d raise their hands for questions and when they’d stand up and walk up to each other in the high-speed brainstorming game.
That reminded me that even before the storyboard I had run a pilot Success Team at someone's home (who was that?) to see if they really worked, to figure out how to get everyone to find a goal they cared about, and suss out the right timing for making a plan and taking steps, what to do when resistance raised its head and panic set in, finding the elements and the right words to make everyone feel safe and brave enough to actually go after a dream.
I also remember how I sat on the floor of my living room, pounding away on my red Selectric typewriter while my kids and the dogs were playing Let’s Be Boys and leaping over me, the phone was ringing, the dishes were waiting in the sink.
In the middle of that chaos, writing up the workbook I planned to hand out (if I could get anyone to attend the workshop) four wonderful little thoughts popped into my mind, and I wrote them down on their own blank pages, each one to introduce a different section of the workbook.
Here they are. They weren’t used in Wishcraft (I never imagined there would ever be a book) so I almost forgot them. But I remember writing them now. They’re a little awkward but I haven’t changed my mind about what they say:
1. INTRODUCTION (pg 1)
If your life isn’t all you wanted
you can blame yourself,
blame circumstance,
or get all the help you need and change it.
2. SELF-IMAGE AND RESOURCE SEARCH (pg 4)
Genius is that combination of unique gifts,
that universe inside each of us which, when it
is respected and nurtured by our environment
and trusted by ourselves, gives rise to a life
that is a work of art.
3. TIME MANAGEMENT (pg 21)
Energy: The only path that will truly absorb you is
your own path. It will generate all the creative energy
you will ever need. If you lack that energy
you have not found your purposes. It is your duty
to yourself – to your one life – that you find your
path and follow it.
4. THE USE OF OTHERS IN YOUR LIFE
Support: There are no self-made people. Behind each
person who has realized her or his potential, you find
a string of crucially placed individuals who believed
in the person, encouraged and aided her or him and
helped smooth the way. Assuming that you should have
made it on your own by now with no support is de-
bilitating and unrealistic.
....................
I'll write more tomorrow as I continue to sort through all these archives sitting on my shelves.
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