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Turn Your Dreams into Reality Every Day, by Gini Graham Scot, PhD

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

Turn Your Dreams Into Reality is all about knowing what you want, making sure it is a realistic goal, and then imagining what you need to make those dreams real. I have also called this the GWYW—the "get what you want" approach to life. It's a way to think about coming up with realistic goals and deciding what you need to do to make them happen, while being ready to revise those goals and create new ones in response to changing conditions. While you can work out the steps to achievement using just your reason, you can be even more effective if you draw on your intuition, so you imagine possibilities, decide on priorities, and then imagine what you need to do to achieve them.

I was inspired to write Turn Your Dreams because I have been employing this approach to life since my early 20s, after I went to a workshop that involved learning about visualization. It was led by a woman who was an artist and teacher, and she stressed the need for us to tap into our power of intuition to see what we wanted to do. This workshop was the first time I had tried to use my imagination in this way, and I found this ability to be a very powerful tool that continued to guide me throughout the rest of my life—and led me to write a series of books on using these techniques.

In the first exercise, which opened the door to using the intuition and visualization, she asked us to visualize and experience the energy of the earth rising up into our bodies, while the energy of the air came down into us through our heads. Then, we visualized that this energy would meet in our heart, stomach, or torso (I forget which now), and we could direct this energy out to achieve a goal.

In my case, I had just started to write, so I decide to direct this energy out through my hands to whatever I was writing, which was then on a typewriter, and I imagined being able to use that energy to being able to write quickly and effectively. Later, when I went to the typewriter to write, I used that visualization, and I found I could write my assignment much more quickly and confidently than usual. Though I don't remember now what I was writing, I do remember very clearly that after that day I began to use this approach for all sorts of things I wanted to do, from doing homework and writing for clients to imagining applying for and getting hired for a job I wanted.

Around this time, a friend working with hypnosis "hypnotized" me by taking me down to the basement of Macy's toy department, where I could see all kinds of new games and toys that were still prototypes and had not yet been produced in reality. But they seemed very real, like one could buy them off the shelf and play them. I found the experience very much like my use of visualization and the imagination. Though my friend called the journey to Macy's toy department "hypnosis," for me it was experientially the same thing as what I had already been doing—getting very relaxed so I could readily access my powers of visualization and intuition, though perhaps what I saw in my imagination was a little more vivid. After that, I began designing games by using this visualization of going to Macy's. I also began attending all sorts of workshops on visualization, hypnosis, and shamanism; soon, I no longer needed to go to Macy's toy department or anywhere else for my imagination to work. I didn't even need to close my eyes, though getting relaxed in a quiet place and closing my eyes certainly helped me focus on what I was seeing. Rather, I just began to be able to access my imagination and intuition and apply what I saw in my mind immediately to anything I wanted to do.

Since I am a writer, I started putting this approach into my first book on the subject, Mind Power: Picture Your Way to Success in Business, which was published in 1987. Today, when New Age teachings are everywhere, these notions about using the intuition and imagination seem quite ordinary. But in 1987, the book was initially rejected as being too weird. Eventually, one editor decided to champion it and the book was published, which led to a follow-up book in 1994, The Empowered Mind: How to Harness the Creative Force within You. Years later, after the rights for these books were returned to me, about two-thirds of the combined content was republished in 2009 as Want It, See It, Get It! Visualize Your Way to Success. However, the emphasis in these earlier books was on using these techniques in business, so Turn Your Dreams Into Reality is designed to apply these time-tested techniques to everyday life. Besides work and business, you can use them in your personal life, such as in having better relationships, losing weight, improving your skills in sports, whatever you want to do. You can use them to help you decide what to do next after you experience any kind of negative situation, so you turn that negative into a positive.

Meanwhile, I've been applying these techniques in my own life for all sorts of things. For example, I used them to find and get the house I wanted again and again. When I moved to San Francisco in the 1980s, I imagined living in Presidio Heights, and soon found a place on the main commercial street there, Sacramento. After the landlord decided to do some renovations, I imagined my next place nearby, since I planned to go to law school at San Francisco State. After that, while I was deciding between staying in San Francisco and Santa Monica, I went to a workshop where we were to visualize where we wanted to be next, and I imagined myself living in a house by the water, and within a few days, I found a house near the ocean in San Francisco. At first it seemed it was already rented and I was all set to move to LA. But then the prospective renter dropped out, the property manager called, and I got the house. So I felt strongly I should stay in San Francisco, and I did. Later, about 20 years ago, I used this approach to get my house in Oakland, and after I had to move due to the mortgage meltdown; my visualizations led me to a flat in San Francisco near the ocean. Then, a year ago, after I felt ready to move again (due to rent increases in the crazy San Francisco market) I used visualization to target exactly where I wanted to be—near downtown in a small house in Lafayette, a city about half-way between Oakland and Walnut Creek, about 25 minutes from San Francisco. Within a week, I found the house and rented it—the only house I looked at because I clearly saw where I wanted to go.

Likewise, I have used these techniques to write over fifty books, write about fifteen scripts, connect with the director and co-producer of my first feature script to be filmed, and find a major distributor. These techniques have also helped me in making choices about who to work with or not work with, and how to turn any bad experience into a success story. One good example is a recent client interaction I had; he seemed, by all appearances, to be a wealthy businessman in a private practice, but in reality was struggling to pay his mortgage to keep up the facade. So for me, as a writer, the positive transformation was to use this experience to come up with ideas for a series of new books on workshops on how appearances can be deceiving, dealing with impossible clients, and how to turn negative experiences into gold.

In short, for over 40 years, I have made these GWYW techniques a part of my life, because they have worked so well again and again. And now for the first time, Turn Your Dreams Into Reality is designed to help others apply these techniques on a daily basis in both their personal and work life. All you have to do is imagine what you want, assess that it is a realistic goal that is possible to achieve, and imagine what you need to do that is realistically possible to make it happen for you. Finally, go get it. Make it happen, and it will.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2015. All rights reserved.

I'm writing to see if you have any advice on how to deal with the frustrations of knowing the future, but not being able to get others to listen to you. I'm a professional psychic myself, and while my friends and clients all value my advice, my family just won't listen to me. While they admit that I am very accurate at predicting what will happen and what's really going on beneath the surface, in the moment, they just push forward into one painful experience after another. I know that they have their lessons to learn and their ego issues, and that I can't keep them from these learning experiences. What I'm wondering is how I can deal with the frustration of this personally. How do I sit back and bite my tongue and not say, "I told you so" when this happens over and over again? What do you do? Thanks so much!

- Angela

Dreamchaser:

Angela, your question had me chuckling, for I am a mother as well. I think all of us who use our gift in a professional capacity ask ourselves the same question. We all marvel about how many people pay us good money for our psychic advice, while the friends and family who get it for free just won't listen. The phrase "in one ear and out the other" comes to mind; it was probably invented by someone's mother.

You have to understand that to everyone in your family, you are just Mom. You are the woman who picks up the dirty clothes on the floor and then washes them. You are the woman who can make a sandwich with one hand and feed a baby that you are balancing on your hip with the other hand. You make the food, keep the house running, nag kids about doing homework or going to bed, kiss "boo-boos," nurse the sick, and barely have time to shower and change out of your flannel pajamas.

Let's face it, Angela: we do not look very "psychic" in our everyday lives. When you speak to your family members about their lives and what is going to happen, they don't hear the psychic/ knowing side of you. All they see is the "just Mom" persona they have always known so well.

You say you understand their need to live their own lives and learn their own lessons. That includes making bad decisions. Part of living is making our own choices and then learning right from wrong. Sometimes to learn about ourselves, our lives and our individual paths, we have to go through certain experiences. If someone ALWAYS has the right answer for us, it's sort of like cheating at the game of life.

I do a whole lot of sighing in my house, especially with my daughter, who never listens to me. I just exhale and try not to say anything to her. Then I sit back and relive my youth in my head. I can't point fingers at her for not listening to me when I still fail to listen to my OWN gut sometimes. The apple doesn't fall from the tree, so I have to allow her to make her own decisions, just like I was allowed to make MY own.

All you can do is what every other Mom does when her kids fall down. You dust them off, kiss their "boo-boos," bandage them up and send them on their way. As they grow, the "bandages" start becoming words to soothe a broken heart or troubled soul. You can use your psychic ability in that capacity. You are very good at calming others and helping them find healing, because you "just know" what to say.

I wish you acceptance of all that "family" can and will be.

*****

Astrea:

Oh, Angela! While psychic, you haven't grasped the basic concept that NO ONE listens to unsolicited advice. Trying to tell your close friends and family what is going to happen to them is a futile exercise. Sometimes it's like sitting on a mountain, watching train and car wrecks erupt all over the place below you. You're just going to have to get used to that or go crazy. People close to you aren't going to take your predictions seriously, no matter how often you are proven accurate.

Usually I can keep my big mouth shut and say, "I'm sorry, I'm too close to you to read for you, and what I get would be colored with my own feelings and opinions. I LOVE YOU TOO MUCH to read for you." Flattery sometimes gets people off your tail. It's worth a try, anyway!

I wish I could find a way to remain silent myself. Just recently I tried to tell a family member something that I had "heard" from beyond the veil, and was told I was NUTS! This person had badgered me for weeks for the information I gave her, and went I finally gave in and told her (against my better psychic judgment, I might add), it made her very angry. Now I'm not allowed to visit her home! As many times as this has happened to me, I was STILL flabbergasted that she would take what she INSISTED on knowing the way that she did. Silly me! Being psychic, I should have known better!

That's the most frustrating situation we psychics get into. People in our families ask and ask. Then if we deliver and they don't LIKE what they hear, they take it out on US! Because they don't want to believe it's true, they decide it's our personal opinion instead of trusting that we are tapping the same source of divine guidance for them as we do for strangers. There isn't any way to ALTER what we see and hear in the psychic realm - it comes as it comes. Family and friends are too fragile, and those relationships are too important. We can't win in that situation, even if the news is good!

Another factor here is the "no pay, no value" deal. People will value something based on what they have to pay or give for it. So if you give them advice for free, they will tend to disregard it.

Please join me in my New Year's resolution to NOT to read for anyone I'm personally close to. Let's refer those people to someone qualified, gifted and EXPENSIVE! That way, they can come to us for confirmation only, and feel they got their money's worth.

By keeping our mouths shut, we can keep the peace with family and friends!