Stop Playing Small and Start Manifesting Your Wildest Dreams
By Garrett Rokosh
Authentic Relating practices leaning into vulnerability to become self aware of your desires, set boundaries, and make requests. These fundamental skills can also be power moves to manifest your wildest dreams.
Increasing these numbers today will help manifest your dreams in the future:
- # of moments you give yourself permission to dream big
- # of times you say “no” to anything not aligned with your dreams
- # of bold requests you make in pursuit of your dreams
When done right these three actions feel vulnerable, take little time, and are highly impactful. Just imagine how different your life could be in three years if today you discovered what you REALLY want, said “NO” to something that is wasting your energy, or made a BOLD request of someone that could help you get closer to your dreams.
Over the past year, I followed this recipe with my new company to land clients like Mindvalley, Masterclass, Burning Man, and Chan Zuckerburg Initiative, to have the #1 remote work thought leader as a mentor, to speak as a thought leader in human connection twice at the world’s largest remote work conference, and get paid $1,000/hr as a facilitator.
It’s vulnerable to give myself permission to dream big in my wildest, darkest desires and fantasies. It’s vulnerable to say “no” to relationships and opportunities that get in the way of my dreams. It’s vulnerable to identify the people in my network that can help me get what I want and make bold requests. The more times I do these power moves, the more I can get closer to making my dreams a reality.
1) Dream Big
At this moment, you are probably not being fully honest with yourself about your dreams. Your dark, secret, kinky, and wild fantasies are likely blocked up by unwillingenss to turn off practical thinking or fear of acknowledging that you actually do have the power to manifest your dreams.
Remember that Marianne Williamson quote, “our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
Good life and business coaches are highly skilled at creating safe containers for clients to dream big. Some of the most powerful coaching sessions I receive are when I’m asked over and over again to dig deeper into my dreams for the future.
When I had my first “dreaming big” session I was surprised by how resistant and uncomfortable I felt. It felt like I was clawing at my soul. I kept feeling small and wanting to hide. Then I would start yelling, pacing frantically around the room, pulling my hair, and covering my face. Feelings of shame and anxiety kept coming up. My coach kept reassuring me and celebrating every step I took to express more. By the end I felt extremely relieved and alive. My nervous system was super relaxed and my friends commented on my “glow” over the next couple of days.
When I really dug into it I discovered that I want to model in a conscious porn film, build a network of epic intentional community with my best friends in Western Canada and Central America, mediate USA Presidential debates starting with candidates cuddling and getting vulnerable with each other, provide executive team building to the largest companies in the world, publish a book about the “Art of Revealing Withholds”, and a bunch of other desires that are not ready for the internet 😉
Do this:
Ask someone you feel super safe with to hold space for you to have a 60-minute dreaming big session. Basically, you’re going to tell them everything you want to do or be. Get wild and be willing to get messy. Ignore practical or logical reasoning. There will be time for that later. Your friend or coach’s role is to hold a curious, challenging, accepting, loving, and compassionate presence. They should be prompting you with questions to dig deeper into your visions and desires. They should be challenging you to dream bigger, policing any logical/practical thinking parts to kindly go away, and showering your awkwardness with love. The intention should be to WELCOME EVERYTHING. I’ve found that it’s nice for me to be somewhere that I can move around a lot and yell loudly. This can be extremely cathartic and fun.
Some sentence starters to get you started in your dreaming big session are:
- “My deepest darkest fantasies are…”
- “What I really want that I’ve never said out loud before is…”
- “The ways I’m playing small right now are…”
- “If money and [insert any other roadblocks] were not a problem, I would…”
- Every week, I also fill out a self coaching form with three questions:
What opportunities exist, or can you create for yourself this week? - If you were to dream bigger for a moment, what additional goal would really make a difference to your life? How could you expand an existing goal?
- If you were fearless this week, what action would be a STRETCH for you? (e.g. a sales conversation, approach an alliance partner/celebrity, make a confession)
The key to answering the above questions are:
- Take your time with flushing out every question before moving on to the next.
- Give yourself permission to dream big WITHOUT logical and practical reasoning.
2) Say “No” to Everything Else
Say “hell no” to people, activites, and things that get in the way of your dreams is the same as saying “hell yes” to your dreams. This step is easier to do if you know what you want. So if you don’t know what you are a “hell yes” to, go back to step 1 and figure out your dreams.
My coach listens every week to the list of things I’m doing and tells me when he thinks I’m wasting my time with something. He’ll often ask me why I’m doing something and challenge me if he thinks it’s not in service of my integrity and what I’m wanting. This is often painful as I defend myself BS with reasons that it’s important and then we both smile as I realize that I am in fact wasting my time.
Do this:
Write a list of all the projects, relationships, and things that you currently spend time and energy on. Then write down a simplified version of your big dreams for the future. Then go back to the list of things and highlight everything that is getting in the way of your big dreams for the future. Then ask someone you trust not to BS you, to read through your list and tell you if they think you should highlight anything else. Then with your trusted human, brainstorm and list what saying “no” to each of the highlighted things would look like. Then make an agreement to say “no” to all of those things by the same time next week or else you will pay your friend $100 for every highlighted item you didn’t say “no” to. Best to have a coach to do this with every week. Eventually everything you’re doing in your life will be way more aligned with your dreams and you will have a sharper eye for batting away things that get in the way.
3) Make Bold Requests
I like to imagine that I am just one bold request away from all of my wildest dreams coming true if only I knew who to ask what request. I like to imagine that I am surrounded by so many invisible “yes’s” that would greatly transform my life and the way for me to discover them is by making bold requests.
For example, in my early days I got to attend several conferences that cost thousands of dollars just by sending the leader one email stating that I would like to attend, can’t afford the ticket price, but am happy to trade amateur photography skills. I’ve asked people I barelyf know for introductions to Tony Robbins, Oprah Winfrey, Brene Brown, and several other celebrities. Most of them don’t reply or make an excuse for saying “no”, but hey I went for it!
Do this:
Start a spreadsheet to track your bold requests with four columns labeled, “Person, Request, Request Date, Response”. Brainstorm ten people in your network that have the resources (relationships, money, unique position, influence, knowledge, skill, etc) to help you manifest your dreams. Write the bold request you would like (feel vulnerable) to ask of them. Choose at least three to make your requests over email, text, phone call, or in person. Strong requests give a clear motivation behind your intention (perhaps sharing your dream), have a specific requested action for them to take, and gives them an easy out. When you ask the request, it should lead with “would you be willing to…” or “may I…”. If it’s really random and big, you can even tell them that you have an intention of making three bold requests this week and choose them for one of them. So they have the context of, ‘ok cool, they’re aware that this is a pretty bold request.’ Then when you hear back from them, record in your spreadsheet if they said “yes” or “no”. I love looking back at my tracker to think, “holy shit if I didn’t make that one request two years ago I have no idea where my life would be!” I’m always surprised how many times I receive a “yes” and the track record of “yes’s” gives me more confidence to keep asking. The power of this exercise actually kind of scares me, since 94% (yes I counted) of requests I’ve recorded have replied with some version of a “yes”. So everytime I write a new request in there I imagine that I am writing the future. Dangerous!
Words by Garrett Rokosh of Social Architect
Garrett Rokosh is a Managing Partner, Workshop Facilitator and Conscious Leadership Coach with Social Architect, and facilitator at The Who-Man Experience men’s retreat by Tama Taane. coming up in Nicaragua May 31-June 4, 2021.
Through his consulting work with Social Architect, Garrett helps business leaders create high performing and connected teams. Some of his clients include Masterclass, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Mindvalley, and Burning Man. He was a high achieving business school student and upon entering his last year of university he felt depressed, lonely, numb, and lost. He started diving into personal growth and found conscious community. There he discovered acro yoga, contact improv, ecstatic dance, clowning, authentic relating, and integral circling. He started to live life on fire with an abundance of play, intimacy, and relationships that he felt safer than ever to be himself. After attending an advanced authentic relating facilitator training in Austin, TX it became clear to him that his mission was to bring the essence of authentic relating into the most powerful businesses in service of building a more compassionate world. Right now his main three projects are Social Architect, writing a book called “The Art of Revealing Withholds”, and a research project on communication in intentional communities.
Garrett has studied masculine psychology primarily through “King Warrior Magician Lover” by Robert L. Moore, and “The Way of the Superior Man” by David Deida. He is fascinated by his own inner darkness and shadows. He believes that the fast track to personal growth and living in fierce aliveness comes from surrounding himself with humans that are highly self aware, radically honest, and playful.
