A Spell to Help You Go For It

You know that One Thing, that desire or dream or goal

that simmers in your heart and your belly?

Devoting time and energy to that thing can feel

irresponsible, or even selfish.

But I’m here to tell you that we NEED you to Go For It!

Here’s a spell to help you understand why.

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Mentioned:

Revolutionary dancer, choreographer, and badass Martha Graham on the Life-Force of Creativity and the Divine Dissatisfaction of Being an Artist.

OG life coach and straight shooter Barbara Sher on doing what you love.

Make Magic:

We all exist at choice. When we’re thinking about

pursuing our dreams, the choice is

what type of discomfort do you want to feel?

Do you want the frustration of

seeing the imperfections in the things you create?

Or the melancholy of having

never brought the into being at all?

Transcript: A Spell to Help You Go For It

Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here. 

Hello, my love. I am feeling particularly fired up for today’s spell, and it’s a fiery spell, a spell to help you go for it. And go for what? It’s like go for what you really want. Go for your idea. Go for this deep desire that is in your heart and belly, just simmering there. Go for it. 

OK. So, this spell comes in the form of two different quotations from two extraordinary women. I’ll give you the first one, which is one of my all-time favorite quotations. I love this so much, I turn to it so often. And then the second, I stumbled upon recently, but it’s a perfect complement, I think. OK. So, sort of two parts to this spell. 

Here’s the first one, the all-time favorite quotation of mine. This quotation is by Martha Graham, who was a dancer, a choreographer, a total revolutionary and evolutionary in American dance, and just an extraordinary person. This quotation was written, and so it’s rather long. It’s extensive. And I’m going to break it up a little bit as I give it to you. So, I’ll do my best to mark where Martha’s words end, and where my sort of meaning-making begins. OK. So, here’s what she wrote.

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and since there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium. It will be lost. The world will not have it.”

OK. So, for me, what Martha Graham is talking about here, this vitality, this life force, this quickening, it’s desire. It’s seeing that something could be different, could be better. It’s feeling an urge in a direction, an urge to make something, an urge to move somewhere, an urge for more.

And this idea that there’s only one of you in all time, this idea I’ve expressed before in a slightly different way. The way I love to think about it is with my jigsaw puzzle metaphor. Do you remember? It’s like all humanity is a giant jigsaw puzzle, and each of us is a piece. And, like in any jigsaw puzzle, each of us is a completely unique piece of the puzzle. 

No one else has experiences like you. No one else has talents and strengths like you. No one else has your perspective, your contours. No one else is quite like you, and so we need you to be absolutely, completely, thoroughly yourself. If you block the way that life force wants to move through you, if you block your desires, they will never exist through any other medium. They will be lost. The giant puzzle suffers. Right?

OK. So, this is an important extension of the quotation. We’re coming back to Martha’s words here. “It is not your business to determine how good the expression is, nor how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.”

Oh, my gosh. This feels so important as a follow-up to this idea that you’ve got to express yourself, your desires, your dreams fully. This tells me that Martha did this shit. She knows what comes up when you do that, because what comes up is a sense of who am I to do this? What comes up is a sense of but this thing doesn’t look like anyone else’s thing. Right? 

What comes up is a lot of self-doubt—a lot of self-doubt. And that’s natural. In fact, if you haven’t already, or if you haven’t recently, listened to the spell for owning your next level, go listen to that spell because self-doubt is totally part of the process of stepping into your full potential. 

It’s funny. We imagine that when we step into our full potential, we’re going to feel like, yes. But actually our minds, and sometimes the people in our lives too, depending on who you have on your teams, are saying, “No. No, no, no,” when we really step into it; when we go for it for our desires and our dreams.

So, when Martha Graham says, “It is not your business to determine how good this is,” I think Martha is gesturing to the truth that when something is so vital and so new, we actually won’t even know how good it is or how good it can get until we really go for it, we really manifest it. I love that she says, “You don’t even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open.” 

To me, this is a gesture toward the grand co-creativity. There’s a sense in which, here, I think Martha Graham is saying, “Listen, this is all about you, and this is also bigger than you.” This is beyond just you or beyond little-S self. This is some big-S self, some giant shared Emersonian Over-Soul self shit we’re dealing with. [laugh] 

And, so, your job is to keep the channel open, to keep the dream, the desire, the urge open. Your job is to magnetize the support and the opportunity and the co-creation that is going to help you fully find your place in the puzzle; fully find how you fit in, and how your dream influences all of us. Right?

It’s this paradox. It’s only by being most true to ourselves, to our own desires, to our individual expression that we can truly find the place we fit and serve best. Isn’t that something? Because, let me tell you, on the surface, it appears it’s the opposite. Right? On the surface, it seems, no, no, the way I serve best is I ask everybody else, “What do you want?”

The way I fit in is I look at what everyone else is doing, and I do more of that. But any evolutionary will tell you that’s just not true. “Be yourself because everyone else is taken.” That’s an Oscar Wilde quote—not the second quote I was going to share with you [laugh] but it just came to me. 

There’s another evolutionary saying, “You’ve got to be you. You’ve got to be true to you, to your desires, to your dreams.” And when you do that, you aren’t being selfish, and you’re not closing off. You are actually opening up, and you’re opening up not just for you but for all humanity.

It’s true. It’s true. There’s only one way to really know that it’s true, and that’s to actually do it. [laugh] I wish I could help you know that it’s true before you do it. But once you’re doing it, you will see it’s true. When you are fully yourself, when you go for what you want, when you open up that channel, you get to step more clearly, more cleanly into the flow of life force itself. 

OK. One more important piece to Martha Graham’s quotation. First, she tells you there is a vitality. It moves through you like it moves through no others, and you must open to it to manifesting it. And then she tells you, “Listen, you don’t even need to know that it’s good. You just got to keep the channel open.” 

Then she says this, which, OK, at first listen is going to sound a little bit [0:11:52 wah-wah?]. OK. [laugh] It’s going to sound a little bit sad trombone but I promise you this is important too.

After she says, “You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you, keep the channel open,” she says, “No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.” I told you, sad trombone. “There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching, and makes us more alive than the others.” 

OK. I love this. This is so badass, in my estimation. “A queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching, and makes more alive than the others.” So, please note, this is not a keep the channel open, act on your vitality, and you’ll end up with everything you ever wanted. No. 

She’s saying—which, frankly, rings so much more true to me—the wanting is never done. There is no happily ever after here. And, to me, to my own critical mind [laugh], this is balm. It’s like, oh, good, because I look around, and I don’t see life as happily ever after. Right?

But what there is, is the blessed unrest—the blessed unrest—that comes with going for it. I think this is opposed to the suffocating unrest, the very heavy, not feeling so divine dissatisfaction that comes with settling, that comes with playing a role that it appears everyone else wants you to play. In that, there is not a quickening. There is a deadening. In that, there is no vitality. There’s like dissociation. 

There’s a Groundhog Day quality in that place. And what Martha Graham seems to be gesturing toward here is something I say a lot. “Listen, there is discomfort either way you go. There’s the discomfort of staying small, of staying stuck, of staying the same—or there is the discomfort that comes with expansion, with taking a chance, with making change.

So, you are going to be uncomfortable either way. Which discomfort do you choose? And when you look out in the world, when you look at the people that you admire, the ones who shine like beacons, like lighthouses, like the stars that all of us are, but they fully open again and again and again to their own stellar-ness, to their star power. When you look at those people, which discomfort have they chosen?

And that’s important to see. That’s important to see, I think, because—and now we’re getting to the second quotation that is part 2 of the spell to help you go for it. And this quotation comes from Barbara Sher. 

So, I’ve mentioned Barbara Sher before on this podcast. She is one of the OG life coaches. I don’t think she would be offended to hear me call her a battle-ax of a life coach. [laugh] She is such a keep-it-real badass, and I’ll put a recording of hers in the Show Notes to give you a sense of her vibe and her energy. She thoroughly stepped into being the singular piece of the puzzle that she was.

So, here’s what she says. “Whenever there is a worry that if I follow my own dreams, if I chart my own course, if I go my own way, that that is selfish.” She says, “No, no, no, no, no. It is the reverse.” She says, “We depend on each other’s dreams coming true.” 

Think about that, because when we think about how we depend on one another, I think we often default to the paradigm that depending on each other means that we are self-sacrificing. Right? But Barbara Sher says the opposite. She says, “What we really depend on, what we really need is for each other’s dreams to come true.”

Because, she implies, that’s what moves us forward. That’s what helps us all evolve. When I go for my dream, and you go for your dream, when we decide to be uncomfortable in the way of growth rather than in the way of stagnation, when we open the channel of desire, of creativity fully, when we hold it open, when we take chances with it, when we go for our dreams, that is how we help one another most because, in so doing, we create a better way. 

So, again, we depend on each other’s dreams coming true. And here’s the very last piece, the very last point I want to make. When I think about dreams coming true, I do think about it in kind of a Martha Graham way of as my dreams are manifesting, it’s through the channel being open. It’s through enhanced and empowered co-creativity. 

And this is really important because I think sometimes when we think about a dream coming true, we think about it very much like how you make a wish with a genie. Like, I wish for X, and then X happens. But that’s not really how dreams work. It’s not. [laugh] 

With dreams we never know what might happen next, and what might happen next is so astounding. It’s so extraordinary. So, when we go for it, when we go for our dream, it’s not a singular destination or a static product that we are going for. Really, what we are doing is we are entering into possibility. We are entering into a co-creative space in which more happens than we can even imagine. 

[laugh] And, again, I wish I could show you, prove to you that that’s true. But I think it’s something that you’ve got to experience for yourself. And maybe you’ve had glimmers of that. Maybe there have been moments where you have started to open more fully to what you wanted, and you watched as serendipity and opportunity came your way. 

Or maybe there have been times in which you began to open to what you really wanted, and you didn’t get instant satisfaction, like, cup of noodles satisfaction. No, you got the queer, divine dissatisfaction, and you thought, I’m going to shut this whole shit down because I thought I was getting my happily ever after. 

But, my friend, I don’t think that’s how it works. When we go for it, we’re just stepping into a different way of being here. It is still challenging. It is not without fear. It’s not. It entails so much growth. 

And Martha Graham, I think, is really right. It makes us more alive. And Barbara Sher is really right. The strength of the collective, the harmony and the potential of the collective depend on you being you. Right?

If you’ve ever worked a jigsaw puzzle, you know a puzzle with 1,000 pieces, it is whole with the 1,000 pieces, and it is also whole with just one piece. You remember Kevin Miller, my dog? He’s a puzzle piece eater. I have gotten to 999 pieces of an assembled puzzle, and found one missing, and the whole puzzle—the whole puzzle—is in that one piece.

Same with you, my love. There is only one of you in all of time. No one else experiences life like you do. No one else has your ideas. We depend on your dreams coming true. You’re not alone in this. You are fully, wholly supported. Your most harmonious co-creators, they are out there. And the way that you all find one another is by being yourselves.

Now, of course, there’s only one way to find out if what Martha Graham and Oscar Wilde and Barbara Sher and Natalie Miller claim is true. And that is to go for it. I send you tons and tons of love and strength. Thank you so much for listening. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world. 

Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time. 

End of recording