When I have a moment, I'll comment on how amazing our 24-hour Global Grassroots (thanks, @adultorphan) Twitter Idea Party was. (I'm still catching up to the rest of my life. Oh, and there's another one going on right now, because it's TWIP Thursday! (Twitter Idea Party to you.)
I just wanted to tell some great #DreamLaunch es that happened at Idea Parties in the past. Like the one I ran in Greenville, N.C. maybe 15 years ago.
I had gotten to that point halfway through the workshop, after the one break, where I make believers out of everyone by letting the audience pull miracles out of their hats.
"We can solve anything, launch any dream, with the people in this room, right now. Give me your impossible dream. The only requirement is that you are sincere and really want it."
A woman raised her hand, stood and said, "I want to dance with Patrick Swayze."
There was some laughter and a few voices that murmured, "You and every other woman in the world."
Then a woman a few chairs to the dreamer's left stood up, raised her hand, and when I called on her, she said the following:
"Patrick Swayze's mother has a resort about 30 miles from here. He visits often. I work there. I have danced with Patrick Swayze. He's coming on Wednesday. If you'd like me to take you there, I'd be happy to."
The dreamer's (and everyone else's) mouth fell open, and then the noise filled the room: laughter, cheers, and "Wow! Good for you!" and "Can I come, too?"
And they were believers. (If I hadn't been on a workshop tour, leaving that night, I'd have stood in line with the rest of them. Oh my.)
Just found this letter in my files. If you want shivers, read it all the way through.
From: Kathryn Moon
Subject: Testimonial: How I Became a 40+ year old Dancer
I was always too old
I met you several weeks ago at DeAnza College. I thanked you for helping me become a dancer in m 40’s, and you asked me to send you my story. Here it is.
I have held mostly clerical jobs most of my life. I have always known I was smart and could probably do anything, but never could figure out what that might be. Several years ago I mustered the courage to go to graduate school in sociology. I got A’s but was miserable and finally dropped out after 3 years. I went back to word processing, feeling more dissatisfied than ever. I read several “do-what-you-love” type books, but they didn’t help at all because I couldn’t figure out what I loved except dancing, which was of course out of the question because I was too old.
I had been too old my whole life. I wanted to be a ballerina when I was 5, but my parents didn’t let me take lessons for financial and other reasons. By the time I was 9, I believed it was too late, because I had heard that ballerinas had to start their training very young. When I was 18, I met some dancers who had started at 9 or 10, and I realized I had been wrong. But I knew 18 was too old. When I was 25, I met a dancer who had started in college. I wished I had stared in college but now I was too old. And so on.
I was always too old. I even signed up for a ballet class in my late 20’s. When I didn’t catch on right away, I chalked it up to my age and dropped out. In graduate school I started folk dancing. This was wonderful, and it didn’t require years of training. But the fact that I liked it and was good at it only increased my resentment about the great ballet career I never had.
So whenever I would get depressed by my work situation, I would start feeling sorry for myself that I never got ballet lessons and that now it was too late. I put lots of energy into trying to think of other types of work that would make me happy, but I always drew a blank. I knew I had to ‘get over’ this ballet idea and move on, but I was stuck regarding what to move on to. I thought about teaching folk dancing or ballroom dancing, but I didn’t want to teach.
I think I was 40 when I read your book. In my word processing job, I had become somewhat interested in computers. My partner had offered to help me go back to school in computer science, but after my graduate school fiasco, I was reluctant to plunge in again. I couldn’t bear to try something new and be disappointed again.
I was commuting by train to my job in San Francisco, about 50 minutes each way. I spent my commute reading your book and writing and reflecting. I had ‘aha’s’ in almost every chapter Your assertion that I probably already knew, secretly, what I wanted to do made me realize I would have to deal with this dancing thing. I had always thought that if I were somehow miraculously to become a dancer, it would require dropping everything, risking everything, and plunging in. I wasn’t about to do that, since I expected zero chance of success!
But you urged a would-be writer to write a little before or after work, not to quit his job to write the Great American Novel. I began to formulate a plan.
I would go back to school and take computer classes — and dance classes ‘on the side.’ So I did. The computer classes were lots of fun, and the dance classes were life saving. I started with jazz and modern dance, then began studying ballet. I found that, as I had suspected, I seem to have some talent. At first, this only increased my pain as I realized that maybe I really could have been a ballerina. I was grieving the life I never had. I had never felt so much pleasure and so much anguish over the same thing. But as time goes on, the pain has become much less and the joy of dancing has filled my life. This is a miracle!
Now I am 43, and I have been dancing for 2 years. I call myself a dancer because that’s who I am, even though I don’t do it for a living. The fact that I am finally actually dancing has broken the bitter spell and free me to enjoy my new field, computer network administration.
My plan was to hedge my bets — study computers and dance, and hope one of the other would work out. Instead, I have both!!
Thank you for inviting me to tell my story. And a ***million*** thanks for writing that wonderful book which changed my life!
Best regards,
Kathy Moon
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.
 It’s hard to believe that 30 years have passed since I held a copy of my first book in my hands, staring at the name WISHCRAFT on the cover and, right under it, my name. My life didn’t change, not at first. I was still a hard-working single parent of two boys, as I had been for over ten years, and I was still scraping by financially, to say nothing of the fact that I was almost 45 years old at the time, which in 1979 was considered a bit old for anyone, especially a woman, to be starting anything.
But on that day, as far as I was concerned, I was Cinderella at the ball because I had become a published writer. It was like a dream. I’d always had a secret fear that I would just pass through this life and no one would ever know I’d been here. Now everything was okay. It was on the record. I wrote a book, and I knew it was a good one because it was based on a painstakingly designed, 2-day workshop I’d been running for almost three years. I knew how much my workshop helped people. I watched them use my techniques to help each other turn impossible dreams into realities right in front of my eyes – setting up small businesses, finding ways to perform their plays in New York theaters, getting grants to travel the Appalachians taking photos of children, getting into (and through) good law schools, finding reliable help for adopting children — dreams as unique as the people who dreamed them.
I hoped WISHCRAFT would help people just as much as my workshops helped them, but I wasn’t sure if that was possible. I had recorded every one of the workshops (and at 12 hours each, that was a lot of audiocassettes) because I knew they were well worth saving, and I used those same words in the book. But people worked face to face in the workshops and I was worried that a book wouldn’t have the same impact.
I didn’t have to worry for long.
A few weeks after WISHCRAFT was published, letters started coming into my mailbox, handwritten letters in hand-addressed and stamped envelopes, a few every week at first, and then more and more until, after six months, I had cardboard boxes filled with letters piled high in my closet. Readers wrote to thank me for being so practical and down-to-earth, for understanding the reality of their lives, and for helping them pinpoint their dreams. They appreciated the fact that I told them to expect fear and negativity and they loved the complaining sessions I advised.
Some people sensed the workshop origins of WISHCRAFT and turned it into a reading group selection, spending up to a year going through the pages together and achieving all their dreams. Others told me WISHCRAFT was the text in one of their college courses and others asked for training to lead special ‘Success Teams,’ using WISHCRAFT as the guide.
Most people read the book on their own, but wrote that they no longer felt alone. Their letters invited me into their lives and they wanted me to know that they finally felt seen and understood and helped by WISHCRAFT and that certain passages were the key to getting them into action and taking steps toward their dreams. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before.
Thirty years have now passed and I’m still getting thank you letters, some from first-time readers, some from people who re-read WISHCRAFT after many years and want me to know that it has helped them again and again. I’m even hearing from their grown children.
I’ve been able to keep only a handful of the letters the post office brought me in the first 20 years. I’ve saved a few more of the emails that started coming 10 years ago, and continue to arrive almost every day. But no matter how many I receive, I’m still thrilled and honored to read them, and I personally answer as many as I can.
In publishing terms, WISHCRAFT is a success. It has never been out of print since that first hardcover copy I held in my hands in 1979. Publishers were happy to look at my later manuscripts and published five more of my books, which have also done well.
Because of WISHCRAFT I became a ‘somebody’. Freelance writers call to quote me in their magazine articles. I’m invited to speak in front of hundreds of audiences, from Fortune 100 companies and international outplacement firms, to parents at “unschooling” conferences, and classrooms of gifted children in rural schools. I’ve spoken in the US, Canada, Australia and Western Europe, Israel and even in countries that had just stepped out from behind the Iron Curtain and wanted to learn how to dream again.
At this writing I’ve done five public television pledge specials and plans are in the works for more. Occasionally, people even recognize me in airports, which surprises me because I’m usually flying in from overseas, tired, tousled and carrying a dog. I don’t look like a celebrity, and, happily, they never treat me like one. They talk to me as if we’ve known each other a long time. That is exactly what I would have wished for.
Because in personal terms, WISHCRAFT is a success greater than any I could ever have imagined. I’ve actually been given the rare opportunity to help people go after their dreams by offering them a non-mysterious, nuts-and-bolts way of reaching their goals -- even if they think they don’t know what their goals are, don’t believe in themselves and can’t sustain a permanent positive attitude. In fact, I want to give them a rarely-stated dose of happy reality: You don’t need to change yourself to change your life.
So I try to make everyone laugh at their negativity and realize that have everything they need inside them to create the life they want, and to see that the reason they haven’t achieved their dreams so far is because humans can’t sustain positive thinking, they need structure, accountability and support. Isolation and a lack of structure can create disorientation and fear. That’s why I repeat, over and over, ‘Isolation is the dream killer, not your lousy attitude.”
By now that message, first stated in WISHCRAFT, has rung a bell with millions of people. Because of their responses I’ve been able to earn my living for decades doing the work I love best. Like everyone else, I’ve been high and I’ve been low, but I’ve never been bored. Not for a moment. That has made the last thirty years fly by.
And it all started with WISHCRAFT. I hope my first book will give you the same engaging, meaningful life it has given me. Even more, I hope it will inspire you to help others go after their dreams, too. That would make me happiest of all.
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