FORGET POSITIVE THINKING - ISOLATION IS THE DREAMKILLER, NOT YOUR ATTITUDE

From the transcript of my appearance on Sandra Schubert's BlogTalkRadio show on May 5, 2009 (Part 1). Click here to listen to a recording of the interview.

Sandra: Barbara Sher is a NYT bestselling author who's been on major shows such as Oprah and the Today Show, with many of her books. The first one, Wishcraft, which has never been out of print since it was first published in 1979, celebrated the 30th anniversary of its publication on March 25th. To celebrate the 30th anniversary, Barbara used Twitter as it's never been used before: a 24-hour networking party where thousands of fans from all over the world joined her in her mission to make sure that [each and every one] achieve their dreams, find jobs, begin new careers, start their own businesses. You can see some of this on Twitter by going to Twitter and typing #Ideaparty. You can find everything you need to know at the special website she set up for this 30th anniversary event [www.Barbarasherwishcraft.com].

I'm delighted to have Barbara on the show today.

Hi Barbara. It's so good to have you on and to celebrate your book. 30 years, that's amazing.

B: Yes, it is. Believe me, I'm much more surprised than you are that so much time has passed!

S: Tell us what WISHCRAFT is all about.

B: Sure. First, let me explain where it came from, because I never really intended to be a writer. Everybody works hard to write a book and get it published. I had no notion I could ever do a thing like that. It all began because in 1967 I was in therapy groups with a very unconventional psychiatrist. He had adapted the techniques from a drug program, where they had invented some kind of scream, holler, attack, take no prisoners therapy.

He hired me after I'd been in those groups for a while, and I ran them very happily (it seemed normal to me that everybody would scream at each other - that was my Dad's hobby, and I gave as good as I took).

I won't tell the whole story here, but it's on the BarbaraSherWishcraft.com website. The short version is that one of the groups turned into a team that was helping someone fulfill a dream. Week after week I noticed that not only did they help this person, but they also started acting in a new way: they stopped being fussy and self-centered, they seemed less neurotic. And I thought, "Hello! I think I've stumbled on the secret to motivation."

It turned out that my hunch was right. Success turned out to be unrelated to positive thinking. I'd tried all that--never worked for me and apparently it doesn't work for a lot of us. At best, it just isn't strong enough. But worse, it promotes the notion that you can change the world by thinking differently. I don't understand how pretending you have that kind of power is about reality. It makes me uneasy.

And worse yet, if you couldn't manage to maintain a positive attitude, you felt like the worst kind of failure, the kind who brings all the hard luck on yourself. That's not fair, and it doesn't make any sense. Putting on a happy face was the exact opposite of what we worked on in those groups. Everyone was learning how to understand their feelings, how to be emotionally authentic. When you knew what you were really feeling, your life became so clear and you knew what you wanted and what you didn't want. The whole idea of pretending you were happy because that would somehow make things better seemed like the worst thing you could possibly do. Like throwing away your compass when you were lost.

What would work? From what I could see, if you come together every week like this group was doing, and you promise to take a step, and everybody wants you to succeed and is willing to help you, then you can come in each time having taken another step. The combination of support, the structure of regular meetings, and the accountability involved (you had chosen some 'homework,' and everyone was waiting each week to see how it went) was better than any motivator I'd ever seen.

And then I realized it was just like going to school: you have to show up, and you have to do your homework. That's the deal. How many of us would have gotten through school without that?

Now I wanted to see if we could put our dreams on that list of things we have to do. Instead of being required to do what the world wanted, how about being required to do what *we* wanted?

For over a year I tried this out on every member of the group, and in other groups as well, and it worked! So, I decided I was going to change the world by showing everyone how to go after their dreams, just as all of us had done. I designed a 12-hour workshop (it took me a long time because I was a single parent with 2 tiny children, 2 jobs, and I'm not very orderly on my best day!) But I carefully designed this workshop using storyboards for every action, and then I ran it for all my friends and everybody loved it. It didn't make any money--lost money, actually. But I asked everyone to bring anyone they knew who worked for a magazine or was on the radio--because I knew I had no money to advertise anywhere.

They were like my team: they brought in one freelance writer or columnist after another, and one day an editor from the New York Times came in and she followed a team and wrote up a story in the New York Times. I got calls from five different agents the next day, saying "would you like to write a book?"

So I was all excited, and I picked an agent and started banging away at this book. I came up with 400 pages somehow. I turned it in, and the agent said, "This isn't how you talk."

That was a revelation. It forever changed the way I write my books, and it's at the core of my 'WriteSpeak' classes. [http://www.writeyourownsuccessstory.com]

I had taped everything I said in the 12-hour workshop and I gave all the cassettes (10 workshops worth!) to one of the freelance writers who'd written a good article about the workshop. She organized and polished the material, and it turned into Wishcraft! Every hour I'd designed for the workshop became a chapter in the book.

When I handed in that manuscript, they liked it and suddenly I had a book. I was a published author.

S: That's an amazing story. So, what do you think the staying power of Wishcraft is? It sounds like you're the forerunner for the law of attraction in some way.

B: Yes and no. The truth of the matter is that I'm at polar opposites with anyone who either believes that it's good to have a positive attitude, or that you can draw things toward you by some sort of energy. I just don't go for that. A lot of people do, and if it works for them, great. But I don't. I'm so serious about this, that I wrote a cartoon booklet once called "How to get what you want, even if you have no goals, no character, and you're often in a lousy mood."

Because all this stuff about "I love myself, I can do it!"--I always knew it didn't work. When I was in college (I have A.D.D., I know that now) I had to study so hard to get a decent grade on an exam...and if they moved the exam one day, I'd flunk it. I'd walk into these exams feeling great, thinking, "I can do this," and next to me would be these sorority girls, saying, "Oh my god, I'm gonna flunk," and they'd come out with an A, and I'd get a B. So I thought, "Well so much for positive thinking."

That's when I figured out what makes us do things that are hard to do: it isn't the Law of Attraction, which I don't understand anyway. You know, I'm not a scientist, but I have a profound respect for science. And when I see something universal, something that's happening to everyone, I think, "This is Darwin, let's find out what's going on."

So I asked myself, "How do people manage to go to work, to raise children without a positive attitude or loving themselves or attracting anything?" Now maybe you can attract things, I don't know, but you can also attract the flu and flat tires. I never depend on the universe. It seems to have its own agenda.

And then I realized you have to show up at work or you'll get fired, you have to do your homework or you'll flunk, and you have to feed the kids or they'll tell the neighbors. I thought, "Wow, look at that," and that's when I came up with the idea of Success Teams, which is a place where 6 people get together, they meet once a week, and the only goal of the team is to make sure that every single member gets whatever they want.

We're all told to take a little step at a time, but for some psychological reason it's still very hard to do. We look at the size of the task to be done, and we're overwhelmed. At least, that's what we do when we're alone. No amount of positive thinking can help that, partly because no mood lasts as long as a big project. But it's worse than that: for one thing, no one can do it, so sooner or later you always fail; and now you've failed at two things: you haven't gotten your dream and you can't maintain a positive attitude. You never blame the people who taught you, you blame yourself. That makes me angry, I have to be honest. It's one of my missions to debunk that Positive Thinking philosophy whereever I see it because it's really terrible to blame yourself. It's like you've been handed a bad map and you blame yourself for not arriving at your destination.

But what bothers me even more is that, most of the time, believing in positive thinking is the same as believing you can do it on your own. All you need is the right attitude.

So my slogan, and I repeat it over and over, is this:

Isolation is the Dreamkiller, not your lousy attitude. You can be sloppy, obnoxious and self-hating, and still get everything you want if you have to, if there's a group of people who want to see you make it, and who won't let you get away with anything no matter how you're feeling.

And it's proven true again and again. What happened on that score with Wishcraft is interesting: When I was writing the book my publishers told me to take out everything about Success Teams because books for teams don't sell. (I didn't believe them, so in a later book I wrote everything I knew about how to create teams, and guess what? They were right. That book is the only one of my books to ever go out of print.)

But readers got it anyway! I got letters from people who were reading Wishcraft in groups, and doing all the exercises in the book. "Hi Barbara. We've been working from your book for a year and everyone in the group has gotten their dream, so now we're going around a second time!"

I've written several books since then, but this one stays the favorite for almost everyone, year after year. And it makes me feel wonderful, that it's made a difference like that.

S: Well that's a real feat. Something in that book must be working really well.

B: Yes, and except for that book about teams which came out in 1989, not one of my other books went out of print either. It's 2009 now and I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was came out in 1994, Live the Life You Love in 1996, It's Only Too Late If You Don't Start Now in 1999 and Refuse To Choose in 2006, and every one of them continues to sell quite well, all around the world in lots of languages.

You know, it's tricky for an author like me to write more than one book: You don't want to copy yourself, but if you write something radically different, the publishers say "That's not what we want." So it's been quite a challenge making sure that very book was about something new.

Because I have only one message: If you do what you love, you will be using your DNA--it's what nature intended you to do. You will feel satisfied and you'll be giving your best to the rest of us. I honestly believe that you owe your gifts to the rest of us for the gift of life itself. So whenever someone feels guilty about doing what they love, I say, "Hey, if you don't do what you love it means you're stingy and you're not sharing. And that's not right. We need you."

S: Right. And so much of getting what you want is just asking yourself what it is. I wanted to go to the book expo, but didn't have the money. So I went on Twitter and said, "I can help you sell your book, I smell good, and I have a winning personality." I figured, what could it hurt.

B: You know that's the hardest thing to do, I think the difference in people's lives comes from whether they can feel comfortable enough to ask. And the more we care about something, the harder it is to ask for help.

TECH ENDS ISOLATION
I just love technology. You know, after those scientists who helped us understand the universe and our planet and our selves, the people I love most are the techies who gave us the internet. I was waiting for it for years. In 1984 I was on a New York bulletin board called Echo -- this is well before the Internet, and used something I didn't understand (and still don't) called Telnet. I never could have found it or figured out how to use it, but someone emailed me and said, "We're starting a Wishcraft discussion group. Would you like to be on it?" And I said, "Sure!" She came over, got me set up and wrote down instructions: "Hit 'J' wait 2 seconds, hit 'L' then start typing." I thought, "Oh I can do that." And I did.

I saw my dream of many years materialize right in front of me. I saw that we could all reach each other, find our people, find help, and I felt like cheering out the window as if we'd won the World Series. I got so excited I couldn't leave the computer.

We talked about interesting things, and that was great. You could find a decent dentist in New York who wouldn't charge too much, and a good movie to go to -- nothing huge, but I thought, This changes everything! It's here! Because I already knew that ISOLATION IS THE DREAMKILLER. I'd talked to these brilliant, interesting clients through the years who described their isolation when they were young, how they felt different and thought they were weird because everyone they knew did.

And I realized I was the same. Until I ran off to go to college (all on my own, but that's another story) I didn't know anyone who was like me. And people like this, grownups, are surrounded by people who think they're weird, so they try to go after their dreams and shake their sense of isolation with a positive attitude!! That's just nuts! You sit alone in your apartment, trying to have a positive attitude, when what you should be doing is letting everyone know who you are, what you need, and what you have to offer, and you should all be helping each other go after your dreams.

So when the internet finally showed up for everyone (i.e., laymen like me) to use, I thought, "Home stretch. Oh god, I'm glad I took care of my health." It's so wonderful, more wonderful than I ever imagined. You don't have to beg uncomprehending business people to give you a radio show because now you can have one right here on www.blogtalkradio.com (and I've got one myself!) Now you don't have to say, "How do I find the right doors to knock on, and why am I so sure they won't let me in." Now everybody can get in those doors. I just love that.

S: I'm a big Twitter fan. Social tech allows me to meet people I wouldn't be able to meet normally. I'm chatting with people on different continents! It's incredible. Why don't you talk a little bit about the Twitter Idea Party you got going? People would love to hear how you can use the internet to generate support and enthusiasm.

B: I'm very single-minded: everything I see, I think, "How can this help some genius sitting in Podunk, where everyone thinks he's a weirdo? How can this help that person connect up with other people who understand him perfectly and know someone who knows someone he should be talking to. That's life changing. That's world changing!

My son reminded me how every time I hear about a disaster of some kind, with lives lost, I always say, "My god, think about all the talent that got lost and we'll never know what it was."

And I knew there were still so many people out there who didn't know we all wanted to help make their dreams come true. I could see there were millions of people using Twitter, and I got so excited I got dizzy.

But when I finally jumped into Twitter, my heart sank. All I could think was, "This isn't what I meant! This is boring. I don't care what people are doing minute to minute." Someone writes "I just had a cup of coffee," and I think, "Congratulations." Or they're selling something. People got more help on my own bulletin board!

But then I realized how easy it would be to do an Idea Party on Twitter -- brainstorming, networking, that sort of thing. On a dare, I tried out the idea, took the problem of someone I knew personally and tossed it out to Twitter for a solution. The result was amazing. The problem was solved in hours and I had lists of resources and names and suggestions for how to achieve that dream. [The full story is below*]

Idea parties in person, face to face, are like magic. When I do one of my 3-hour workshops, live, there's a point where I say, "Does anyone have an impossible dream they want to share? Give me your wish and give me your obstacle." For example, I was in Greensboro, NC years ago, and a woman raised her hand. She said, "My dream is to dance with Patrick Swayze." Everyone laughed and I could hear murmurs of, "Yeah, you and every other woman alive," and then a woman raised her hand.

"Do you have an idea?" I said.

She said, "Yes, I have an idea. Patrick Swayze's mother has a resort 30 miles from here, I work there on the weekends, I've danced with Patrick Swayze, he's coming on Wednesday, I'll take you there to dance with him...if you like."

You can read a dozen stories like this one at barbarasherwishcraft.com. But let me tell you what happened the first time I actually tried to do an Idea Party on Twitter.


It was late at night on a Thursday, and I put out a wish for a client. He was a recent grad and couldn't figure out what to do, and he didn't like anything. But I remembered he said that when he was a kid he was mad about baseball. So I threw it out there, and within about a 1/2 hour, people were writing, "Here's a private baseball club in my town..." They came up with the most brilliant ideas I'd ever seen. And my friend went, "Wow," and I went, "Wow!"

And that's a very modest example. I could tell you amazing stories but there's no time today. I've put them up on blogs, though. Go to http://www.barbarasherwishcraft.com and you can read a bunch of them there. Because that kind of thing happens all the time.

That's when I realized that I could do a 24-hour global Idea Party, one that went through every time zone in the world, and make the same thing happen! I know from my travels that no matter where you are in the world, you probably have access to an internet cafe. And if you tell us your dream and your obstacle to achieving it, people from all over the world, strangers, will try to help you. I knew that if we had the numbers, there wasn't a problem we couldn't solve.

(We got those numbers. We 'trended' on Twitter for a few hours, meaning that lots of people were paying attention.)

But before it began, there was no knowing what would happen. We combined an open conference call with Twitter so that people with only a phone could come to the party, too, and every hour was run by two volunteers, telling each other which wish and obstacle was happening so they could toss it to each other. You could hear them talking on the conference call, and you could see solutions appearing in the Twitter boxes.

It worked. All of us, dozens of volunteers and my assistant Andrea and I at Command Central in my living room, were exhausted but happy.

I've gone on too long, but let me bring this around to where we started: None of this happened because of Positive Thinking. I want you to know that every single person who launched a dream that night came into the Twitter Idea Party with a totally negative attitude. They did not believe that anything would happen. Most of them were skeptical at the least, and usually down in the dumps.

Their negative attitudes were absolutely no problem at all. We launched their dreams anyway. And by the time they'd received dozens of ideas, contacts and offers of help, they were much more positive. :-) Of course, if they were humans and not robots, their new found upbeat feeling would come and go, over and over. But now they knew what they were supposed to do when they got stuck: not look in the mirror and say I love you, just call out for an Idea Party.

That's why I never stop saying the same thing, over and over: Isolation is the dream killer. Forget positive thinking (always done in Splendid Isolation) or you'll never see that everything has finally changed. The real secret to success has arrived and it has nothing to do with your attitude. And it has everything to do with the fact that you're not alone anymore.