Making Miracles

"I don't care how much power, brilliance or energy you have, if you don't harness it and focus it on a specific target, and hold it there you're never going to accomplish as much as your ability warrants." -- Zig Ziglar

A colleague recently contacted me, asking for advice about starting a health regime. He expressed frustration with his weight and complained that he could not understand why he couldn't trim down. "Ok," I said, "Let's look at your situation more closely and see what we can figure out."

I asked him, "What do you normally have for breakfast?"
He answered, without a trace of self-consciousness, "A doughnut, sometimes two."
"What kind of exercise do you do?"
"Well," he said, "I don't usually have time to work out."

"I realize," I told my colleague, "that you are still under 40. But surely at some point in your life you have heard that foods high in fat and sugar are not conducive to weight loss? And perhaps you also heard something about exercise being useful for improving health?" He admitted that he had heard these things.
"But you didn't think that eliminating doughnuts for breakfast and going for a walk or jog a few times a week might help you with your goals?"

This simple reality hadn't occurred to him. He acknowledged knowing that this information was true and could be helpful in these types of situations, but he just didn't believe that by changing some of his habits, he would see progress in his goal of becoming healthier. He seemed to feel that there must be some mysterious secret, unknown to him, that would solve his problem by the wave of a magic wand: that pure effort and discipline couldn't possibly be the solution.

This is a perfect example of the problems people often have in their professional lives, as well. A client called me recently, distraught that she could not seem to get a new job.
"Well, let's look at the situation and see what we can do," I said. "Have you read my book, Mastery At Work?"
She said, "I've read most of it, though not in a while."
"Did you re-write your resume to include your recent accomplishments and to focus your work history along the lines of the new job's requirements?"
"Well, no," she said.
"Did you put together a portfolio of your work to show the interviewer?"
"No," she said again, more quietly.
"Did you at least familiarize yourself with the industry and corporate officers of the companies you want to work with?"
Again she said, "No."
This went on for several minutes. Finally, it became clear that all she had done in the way of getting a new job was to sit around and pine for one. And despite this obvious fact, she was mystified as to why she hadn't been hired.

These stories are both absolutely true, and these types of scenarios occur with surprising regularity. For the record, nothing in life worth accomplishing will just miracle its way into getting done. If you want to lose weight, get a promotion or a new job, or achieve a worthwhile goal of any kind, you will have to expend some effort to achieve these things.

If goals like being thin, rich and professionally successful could be manifested by simply desiring them, the world would be filled with happy, fit, successful, rich people with nothing to complain about, ever. That would be a fun world to live in. Unfortunately, none of us does. So a certain amount of effort and discipline are required in order to move our lives along in the directions we choose.

When we set ourselves goals, it's important to consider all the possible actions we can take to achieve them. And only when we feel we have truly exhausted all potential solutions, without success, can we begin to scratch our heads and look for the mysterious secrets that seem to have eluded us. Anything else is disingenuous and lazy.

If you want something, set your intent and make it happen. Don't mope about miserably, wondering why you can't ever get what you want. As Ben Franklin wrote, "God helps those who help themselves." If you believe in miracles, just remember that. They're likely only going to appear to those who have already taken the challenging first steps towards life's highest goals.

Life really is filled with magic. Not the least of which is found in our own untapped capacity to make miracles happen for ourselves.

Nicole Grace
September 2007

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." -- T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom