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INTUITIVE VISION

Imagine Unlimited Possibilities to Capture Your Vision

The world always steps aside for people who know where they're going.

MIRIAM VIOLA LARSEN

See the change you want to be.

VICKIE L. MILAZZO

Women and intuition go together like cats and curiosity. The concept that women are more in touch with instinctive inner guidance is so intrinsic to our culture that most people (even men) accept it without expecting any scientific explanation.

On the side of science, the larger splenium of the corpus callosum accounts for greater interconnectivity between the left and right hemispheres of women's cognitive brains. Some scientists believe this broader connection enables women to access both sides faster and easier than men. Women are not more “right-brained,” as is the myth; their brain functions are actually more holistic and generalized. We fluently engage the limbic brain, where higher emotions are stored, and the instinctive brain, which is responsible for self-preservation. This holistic combination of emotion, instinct and cognition equates to women's intuition.

Does it make sense to have such an extraordinary tool and not use it? Not in my book.

Regrettably, it's drilled into us to not trust our intuition, especially in the workplace. Around male CEOs, when I intuitively whip out a great idea, presumably from thin air, I see them fidget. Uncomfortable with my rapid response, they want me to gather my facts before I make a move or decision. But here's the reality: If you always wait for facts, you'll rarely make a move. And when the facts fall into place, which facts will carry the most weight in your decision-making process?

I've learned to trust my intuition. I've also learned to pull together the factual and statistical data to give the person I'm trying to persuade a measure of comfort.

Intuitive vision does not mean going to a psychic to find out if that hot new love interest you met on Facebook is Mr. Right. Intuitive vision is about connecting with your imagination, paying attention, trusting, perhaps experimenting a little and seeing where that takes you.

By trusting my intuition I created a new industry where a void formerly existed. My intuition told me lawyers needed nurses, even if they didn't know it yet themselves. A focus group of attorneys might have discouraged me, and if I'd let them, where would I be today?

Think about a situation where you totally trusted your intuition to guide you, and it worked out perfectly. Think about a situation where it didn't. Was that really your intuition or someone else speaking to you—parents, boss, lover? Follow your gut and you'll be right more often than not.

That's not to say that intuition is infallible. We can passionately desire to go in a particular direction, and even have a clear vision of where we're going, only to be rerouted by circumstance.

As an example, when I first realized that my nursing career was not taking me where I wanted to go, I imagined a new path. Since teaching was my lifelong passion, I envisioned a business teaching patients how to improve their health, something hospitals had little interest in. A need for that service clearly existed, and I acted on my idea, but there was no insurance reimbursement for patient education, so my idea was not realistic, at least not as a way to make a living. I imagined a passionate future only to hit a solid wall of disappointing but indisputable facts.

Then I decided to become a legal nurse consultant, and was thrilled to realize I'd be teaching attorneys and their clients about the healthcare issues in their cases. Redirected and rekindled yet again, my passion burned even brighter when I expanded the concept and began teaching other RNs to become legal nurse consultants.

Sometimes your vision doesn't materialize exactly as you imagine it, but trust it anyway. If you feel passionate enough, and continue to refocus your vision as circumstances change, you'll find your true path can lead to more wicked success than you first imagined. It's intuitive.

INTUITION IS COGNITION ON STEROIDS

After I was in business for a number of years, the legal nurse consulting profession I created caught on, and a related industry association sprang up as a result. That association did not, however, align with my vision to create a certification program. Knowing that certification was important for the industry's future, I created it myself.

Fired by my passion, trusting my intuitive vision and unwilling to accept the group's limiting beliefs, I created an entire curriculum, a certification credential and an even larger industry association. The National Alliance of Certified Legal Nurse Consultants (NACLNC) remains the nation's largest legal nurse consulting association (NACLNC.org). My intuition proved to be cognition on steroids. I jumped off the slow train full of mundane thinkers, defined certification standards, and in what seemed to others as lightning-fast, put my own unstoppable train in motion.

Sure, I had facts and experience to back me up, but not enough to convince a group that was afraid of change. Sure, their inability to see what I could see tested my beliefs, but my vision was so strong I had to go for it. After investing enormous amounts of time, money and energy in the certification, I achieved staggering success, not only for myself but for thousands of women who have achieved certification status.

If anyone ever tells you one person can't accomplish anything big, or you shouldn't go against the odds, don't believe it. Intuition worked for me. And it will work for you. It all starts with your intuitive vision.

IMAGINATION TRUMPS KNOWLEDGE

Anything ever invented had to first be imagined. Topping the list of visionary geniuses are Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein.

Da Vinci imagined many inventions that were made possible only after technology caught up with his vision. He was 40 years ahead of Copernicus when he wrote, “The sun does not move.” To study the stars, da Vinci imagined “a large magnifying lens.” Sixty years later Galileo made it happen. Da Vinci also envisioned parachutes, armored tanks and helicopters, often including detailed drawings in his notes.

This one person's imagination was more advanced than an entire world's knowledge.

Albert Einstein's thoughts took simple form, but with far-reaching possibilities. He imagined what a light beam would look like if he were to race alongside it. “Imagination,” he wrote, “is more important than knowledge.” Eventually, his mental images led him to form his world-changing theory of relativity. Years later science finally proved what Einstein had theorized based on his studies and intuitive vision.

A female genius you may not know was Margaret Knight. Mattie's talent for invention emerged when, like many children of the 1860s, she worked in a cotton mill. After witnessing a mill accident at age 12, she envisioned and designed a shuttle-restraining device to prevent workers from being injured. Later she envisioned a paper bag to replace the tall envelopes being used to hold groceries and other purchases. At 29, she invented a machine part that would automatically fold and glue the flat-bottom bags we use today. Dubbed “the female Edison,” Mattie Knight eventually patented 26 other inventions, including rotary engines and automatic tools.

Despite the “fact” that many important discoveries resulted from intuitive vision, rigidly left-brained, fact-focused thinkers often dismiss intuition as useless. Don't let them intimidate you.

Women need to tap into their intuitive intelligence. Even data-dependent “experts” often disagree about which facts to rely on, as well as the interpretation of so-called facts. Every set of facts is subject to as many interpretations as there are interpreters. If you wait for facts to weigh in with your vision, you might be waiting long after someone else has grabbed the vision and run with it.

J. K. Rowling's imagination defied all the facts. The facts were emphatic: Children today don't read, and even if they did read, Rowling's book was too long, too dark and much too complex. Rowling's passionate vision told her that children would indeed read her book. In any case, her passion compelled her to write it. Despite the rejection of her first book by numerous publishing houses, her Harry Potter series has enraptured children and adults everywhere with its imaginative plots and vivid characters. Harry Potter is also the biggest movie franchise in Hollywood history, and Rowling became the first author to become a billionaire from the sale of her “unreadable” books.

Our intuitive vision is uniquely intelligent, bigger and more powerful than any set of facts. If imagination was good enough for da Vinci, Einstein, Knight and Rowling, it's good enough for me.

If I could successfully imagine a classroom of students that didn't exist, then I could imagine consulting with an attorney. I could imagine teaching a real class of future Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. I could imagine a national association of more than 5,000 members. And I did.

As children, our imaginations are boundless. As adults, we become practical and stop imagining. Let's face it, talking to make-believe friends as a child is called imaginative. Talking to imaginary friends as a grown-up elicits, “The psych ward is right down the hall.”

Or we only imagine the worst: Your spouse is late coming home; you don't think traffic, you think multicar collision. Your mother-in-law drops by; you don't think she wants dinner, you think she wants to move in. We all have imaginations; we just don't always use them with productive intention.

Your emotional brain, the limbic region where passions and fears battle each other, cannot distinguish between reality and intuitive vision and your rational, thinking brain, the cortex, cannot feel those emotional battles. Since the limbic brain cannot think, but only feel, it reacts to your dreams as it would to a real experience. Knowing this, you can impassion your mind with any desire you actively envision, and that passion will, in turn, drive your positive actions toward making the vision a reality. In other words, if you vividly envision the desired result, and reinforce that desire by frequently revisiting the vision, your passion will make it happen.

ORDER OFF THE RIGHT MENU

My husband and I were having dinner with my dad at a favorite Italian restaurant. After an animated discussion with the waiter, Dad, always a picky eater, ordered a pasta dish that wasn't on the menu, telling the waiter exactly what he wanted in it.

The food arrived beautifully presented and prepared exactly as requested. Bits of scallion, tomato, garlic and peppered chicken glistened over a bed of fettuccine, all infused with a light tomato-basil sauce and dusted with Parmesan cheese. My father's dish looked so good I wanted his instead of my own.

I expected him to be delighted. Instead, he compared it to a different pasta dish from a different Italian restaurant. Rather than enjoying his dinner, he found fault with the waiter, the restaurant and the chef for not serving this other recipe. The dish was prepared wrong, he said: too many tomatoes, not enough garlic and the sauce wasn't right!

I sat stunned and amused. Gently, I interrupted his litany of complaints, reminding him that he had received exactly what he ordered. In fact, after tasting it, I liked it better than the dish he compared it to.

“I may have gotten what I ordered,” Dad replied, “but it wasn't what I wanted.”

My father expected the waiter to read his mind and bring him something other than what he ordered. Eventually, Dad's appetite got the best of him and he enjoyed his meal to the last bite. After all, when you're hungry, even the wrong dish fills your stomach.

Are you making your choices off the right menu? I see women every day who are living the wrong life, working the wrong career, because they ordered off the wrong menu. Haven't we all done that at times? We want different conditions in our career or relationships, but as long as we stay where we are, physically or mentally, the changes we want are not even possible.

Do you feel cranky about your situation and environment? If your life isn't where you want it to be, you may, like my father, have expectations about what you're being served. You may have tried your best to order exactly what you wanted. Yet what's on your plate is not what you expected.

As an employer, I love hiring young people, because I enjoy their enthusiasm and energy, but I prefer to get them after they're seasoned by at least one other job experience. Otherwise, their expectations lean toward a naive vision of what being an employee is all about, and they become dissatisfied.

If the dish you want is not on the menu, perhaps you're in the wrong place or space. Be open to ordering off new menus. If you stay at your same job and order off the same old job menu, don't be surprised when you get what you've always gotten, even though it's not what you want. Remain intuitively open and you might find a new, greater career passion.

One reason I and other women battled our way successfully through the recession is our intuitive ability to order off new menus. By being open to new possibilities you'll discover life is an adventurous banquet filled with tasty, satisfying experiences and unexpected passions.

It's your meal—you get to choose. Feast often at a brand-new restaurant.

SHOW UP WITH NO GUARANTEE

Intuitive vision doesn't mean blindly stepping off a cliff or dropping your paycheck on lottery tickets and trusting you'll win. Skydivers carefully pack their own parachutes, scuba divers check their own gear and entrepreneurs write their own business plans. When you start any new venture, you can and should strategize, but you can't guarantee the outcome. Skydivers break bones, scuba divers get the bends and business owners fail. If you want a guarantee, forget it.

You have to trust in your intuitive vision enough to show up and invest the full effort, with no guarantee of the upshot. That might feel scary, but the only certainty is this: If you do nothing, you'll achieve nothing.

Since I was 4 years old I've been playing penny poker with my family. We were serious about our poker, so serious that we'd toss our allowance in the pot. As a poker game heats up, winning players stack up their chips until they think they have a really good hand. Then, cockily or quietly, depending on the player's personality, someone pushes all his or her chips to the center of the table and says, “I'm all in.” This heavy bettor is hoping not only to capture a big pot, but also to take some of the others out of the game.

The other players are wondering, “Does she really have a winning hand, or is she bluffing?” Eyeing that big pot in the middle of the table, they're questioning whether to fold or go all in, too.

The excitement builds around the table, and the risk taker inside you comes out, especially if you believe you've got the winning hand. You push your pile of hard-won chips into the middle.

That's what “go all in” is about. To win big, you play big.

Tom, my family and I were playing quarter poker—we've upped the ante since I was 4—and Tom showed me his hand. Having already dropped out, I whispered, “Go all in, Tom.” He said, “Vickie, I could lose everything.”

If you haven't guessed, Tom's the conservative, penny-pinching member of the family, who probably wouldn't go all in if he had pocket aces (that's two aces in his hand) with two aces on the table. We were playing with quarters here, a pot total of $3.75.

Between his hole cards and what was on the table, Tom had a winning hand but was afraid to take a chance on it. To my dismay, Tom didn't go all in. Even though he eventually won the hand, he won a much smaller jackpot than he could have. Being the risk taker I am, it left me shaking my head at his timidity.

Don't Wait for a Royal Flush

Then recently, I found myself sitting at a dollar poker table in a real casino, playing Texas Hold 'Em. I sat there holding pocket aces. Now, all you need to know about poker is that pocket aces is a “go all in” kind of hand. It's not a guaranteed winner, but it's as close as you can get in the poker world. It's a hand that begs you to take all of those treasured chips in front of you and, win or lose, push them to the betting pile. I sat there, holding back, weighing the odds in my head.

Did I go all in? No. I didn't want to lose my dollars. I was acting as timid with my dollars as Tom had with his quarters. It wasn't just about losing the dollars; it was about being knocked out of the game. Those aces offered no guarantee I would retain my place at the table. Only a royal flush could guarantee a win. Uncertainty froze my hand to my chips.

Isn't that what really holds us back from going all in? Aren't we frozen in fear by the possibility that we'll be knocked out of the game? And there's no guarantee we won't be.

No world champion ever attains such status without going all in. A sure win is an impossibility. Professional athletes are willing to risk everything to become world champions. They're willing to go all in, with no guarantee of success, risking being knocked out of the game; and sometimes they will be. But if they intuitively play the right cards, they'll win big.

That's why I define success as showing up and stepping out. Showing up today, and paying the price today, determines tomorrow's success. If you want a guarantee, forget it. Trust your intuitive vision, make the investment. Eventually the payoff will come, even in a recession.

What happened to me at the dollar poker table? Instead of boldly demonstrating the strength and confidence in my hand, I merely raised and ended up winning a smaller pot than I should have.

What about you? When pocket aces come your way do you show up with no guarantee, or do you hold back waiting for a promise of success?

Don't hold out for a royal flush. Those don't show up often. A world-champion poker player draws a lot of bad hands. Even if dealt pocket aces, a champion might lose. You'll draw some bad hands too, but think intuitively, think like a winner and put your chips out there on the table. You've probably already been dealt the hand you need to win. Women who play big and win show up with no guarantee.

Thankfully, I was a much better player when I launched my legal nurse consulting certification program. I had no guarantee that anyone would show up, but I did it anyway. Starting any new venture, you have no assurance of success, satisfaction or profitability. You possess only passion, whatever facts you've gathered and your intuitive vision.

Promise to play big anyway. Go all in every day, every hour, every minute, every second, and I promise you will achieve wicked success.

USE SILENCE TO AROUSE IMAGINATION

You can't illuminate your vision in the darkness, but without even realizing it we try to do just that. We wake up daily to clutter pouring in—constant television, texts, email, Facebook and the Internet at home, talk radio in the car, TV news programs at the airport and loud music in restaurants. Soon our senses become dulled and our vision lusterless. How can a woman connect with her intuitive vision when she can't even think straight, constantly bombarded as she is with thousands of outside messages?

To conceive any vision you must first get quiet. Create the space and consciousness that allows your intuitive vision to flourish. Push the clutter aside, turn down the volume and purge your space of pervasive noise. Silence arouses imagination.

Make it your goal to eliminate clutter from your mind, your day and your life. I started with my physical environment, which is the easiest to control. My day is so busy that I created a minimalist, quiet home, a sanctuary I return to at the end of the day.

I then uncluttered my office. Walk in, look around and you'd think I have no work to do. There's plenty of work, but the uncluttered office keeps my big, fat to-do list of clutter from blocking my creativity.

Next, and hardest of all, I began to unclutter my mental environment—banishing negative thoughts, worry and the like. I'm still working on that one.

I rarely watch TV or listen to talk radio, and I don't crave an hourly update on current events. I appreciate that these activities are popular ways to relax. But you cannot wake up to clutter and a day of real or virtual bombardment, then go to bed with that same level of intrusion and still have the mental space to find your intuitive vision.

I have my own clutter addiction to battle—movies. We have a home theater system, but nothing beats sitting in a dark theater with a big bag of popcorn. My addiction got so bad for a while that I found myself going to really bad movies, wondering later why I'd wasted that time and money. I still love going to good movies, and I must frequently recommit to not sitting in a movie theater just to get away from it all. No more bad movies for me—starting next Friday.

Choose renewing ways to relax, such as strolling through a park, soaking in the tub, gazing up at the stars or reading a great book.

Jane shared that she wakes up, goes to work, comes home and goes to work again while taking care of two daughters and a husband. She said, “I don't get one minute to myself. I've lost the connection to me.”

I encouraged her to start with five minutes, and she did. She sat in her closet where no one in the family would think to look for her. Now that's creative!

How much time do you spend daily in silence? What will you give up to get five more minutes? How will these five more minutes help you to connect with your intuitive vision?

As with most ambitious endeavors, eliminating all the clutter in your life can seem overwhelming at first. The trick is to start small and get creative. Try these three easy steps:

1. Clear your space. Take 10 minutes daily to unclutter your physical environment, at home and work. File that stack of papers that's been sitting on your desk for months. Devote 15 minutes a day to cleaning out a closet or room that's only slightly less attractive than the city dump. Don't tackle the whole space. Start with one corner, then move on to another until it's done.

   Susan shares what clearing did for her:

   I tend to shop without a plan. I buy what I like without thinking about where the item will live once I get it home. So, after living in my home for 11 years, I was out of storage space. There was not an inch to be found anywhere.

   I made a conscious decision to purge. My agreement with myself was that I would clean out one bag of stuff every day. After only one month, I was truly amazed with my progress. There was something about purging all those things, many of which I hadn't seen in years, that lifted a weight off me.

2. Cut the brain clutter. We're bombarded by brain clutter from the moment we wake up to a jarring alarm. Start small. Eliminate one outside stimulus, one TV show or a half hour on FarmVille or Facebook. Then eliminate another. Instead of reading three newspapers or magazines, read one. While driving, replace talk radio with inspirational music that stimulates ideas and opens a space for success. Meditate as you fall asleep, or read something relaxing that brings you peace, not agitation.

   Eliminate one recreation or hobby that no longer satisfies. Tom asked me one day, “Do you want to go to the art festival?” I used to enjoy this event, but that day it didn't appeal. I said, “No,” and in that single word eliminated potential recreational clutter, opening that space for a more satisfying type of fun, such as a visit with friends or a walk through the Japanese garden.

   Be equally selective about how you spend time with friends and family. You might not think of a relationship as clutter, but it can be. It's easy to get caught up in other people's stuff. Are casual, unsatisfying relationships keeping you from your vision? Would fewer, more meaningful relationships in person and in social media satisfy more? Do you truly value your 300 friends on Facebook?

   Consciously assess your relationships, and when you find one that you don't value, eliminate it, or at minimum, reduce the exposure. Don't succumb to guilt—especially where family is concerned.

   You do want to love your family, but you don't have to like every family member, and you don't have to spend your annual vacation with them when a weekend will do. Uncluttering is about making choices in all the areas of your mind, space and time.

3. Put off procrastination. Procrastination leads to worry and anxiety, which is mind clutter. You're anxious about the upcoming meeting because the report due is still rough, at best. You worry about overdrafting your bank account because you've put off balancing your checkbook. Instead, just put off procrastination.

   Tackle one area of procrastination each week and eliminate it. Schedule it in your calendar, as you would any important appointment, and when that time arrives, do what needs to be done. Your mind will feel refreshingly alert and uncluttered.

   Yet procrastination is not always bad. I hear people say, “Finish what you start,” or “You had that idea, where did you go with it?” Every day I wake up with new ideas, but there is only so much time, and selective procrastination allows the best ideas to rise to the top. Misplaced stubbornness, as in “I started it, I have to finish it,” not only exhausts you, it creates clutter.

   Use your intuitive vision to weed out idea clutter. In the emergency room all nurses learn the value and skill of triage. When several patients come in at once, nurses treat the sickest ones first. That's triage.

   You can triage ideas. All ideas are not equal, so match your ideas to your intuitive vision to determine which to focus on first.

GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD

It's so easy to overthink an issue and talk ourselves out of things we really want, and into things that we don't. Wickedly successful women are quick and decisive.

Many entrepreneurs I mentor share how much time and effort they spend setting up their business, creating the perfect logo, the perfect office and the perfect conditions for getting started. They're convinced that they must be perfectly ready or they won't have that perfect chance, so they accomplish nothing more than moving the tchotchkes around to the perfect positions. The problem? They're overthinking.

Almost every time I've done the opposite of what my intuition's told me to do, I've regretted it later. This includes hiring and firing employees; dealing with clients, subcontractors and vendors; and even in personal relationships. I've often known what was right, but when I sat down and overanalyzed it, I ended up making the wrong rational decision for all the wrong reasons. If I'd stayed with my intuition and acted on that decision, I'd have spared myself the pain.

We rationalize out of fear of change and because we don't trust ourselves to make the right call at the right time. We can justify anything given enough time to think about it—staying in a job we hate, sticking with a toxic relationship, not standing up for ourselves because we don't want to hurt the feelings of a friend or family member, or not getting out and moving forward with our business.

The emerging entrepreneurs I described know they're ready but do everything they can to talk themselves out of their vision. After they finally hit the market and snag their first client, they realize the peril of living inside their heads. One entrepreneur shared that when her first prospect called back, she was mentally rehearsing excuses for not taking on the project.

As Jane says, “Everything positive that happened so far in my life has been because I trusted my gut. You do not have to be a genius if you trust your intuition, but you can be a genius if you do. For sure, if you don't get out of your head, you can get lost.”

Joy says, “When I took tap dancing 20 years ago I tried to break down the elements of the steps, and I couldn't dance a step—but when I just let go and stopped thinking about it my feet would fly!”

What about you? Are you spending too much time overthinking a situation in your career or life instead of simply acting on what your intuition tells you? Our intuition is usually much smarter than we realize or allow it to be. Look back at your past decisions—those made by your gut versus those made by your rational mind—and see which has the better track record. How often have you known the right decision, but made an alternate decision and ended up regretting it?

Avoid analysis paralysis. Next time I start to overthink something, I'm just going to trust my wicked intuition and step out for what I already know is inside.

TRUST YOUR WAY THROUGH THE CHAOS

Every nurse has known patients who lived when they should have died and patients who died when they should have lived. What made the difference? A nurse will say it's all about what's going on upstairs, the powerful mind-body connection. Many health obstacles are mental.

The mind-success connection is equally strong, and many barriers to our success are also mental. Your intuitive vision enables you to bypass such obstacles. Some women rely more on facts, while others rely more on feelings. There's no “right way” to be, but we all have the inborn perception to “feel” our way successfully along an unlighted path.

I learned this when I was stuck on a curb in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). My objective, a restaurant where my husband and lunch awaited me, stood on the opposite side of the street. Crossing the street sounds like a simple task, but my objective might as well have been the far side of the moon. Tu Do Street was crammed with motor scooters, bicycles, cyclos (pedaled rickshaws), cars, trucks and buses. The fewer wheels on a contraption, the more passengers it seemed to carry. I saw a family of five riding a Honda scooter—sans helmets, of course.

Even the center lines contributed to the confusion. Rather than dividing the traffic into two lanes, each moving in opposite directions, the yellow lane markers apparently served only to indicate that you were on a paved road. People passed, stopped, turned around and crisscrossed center lines with utter abandon. Traffic flowed both ways in the same lane, more traffic merged from side streets and even more people pushed their scooters off the curbs into the flow. Traffic bore down on me from as many as eight directions—front, back, sides and all angles—everywhere, it seemed, except from above. It was incredible chaos.

The traffic signal lights compounded my problem. In Saigon, they serve only advisory, or possibly decorative, purposes. Even when the signal light turned red, traffic continued to flow, as drivers blatantly ignored the signal. The lanes of traffic impatiently waiting at the green light would edge forward into the traffic that was ignoring the red light. At some point traffic trying to move with the green light would build up enough momentum (and vehicles) to stop the traffic running the red light. Traffic would then flow correctly until the light changed, and the whole process started again.

Above this onslaught the flashing “walk” sign serenely taunted me from the far side of the street. I was ready to abandon lunch with Tom and look for a baggie of lemonade and a roasted lizard on a stick when a mature Vietnamese gentleman took my arm.

In English, he kindly said, “Crossing the street is not a problem, but a dance.” With that we stepped off the curb and into the maelstrom. My heart pounded as we walked slowly across. Instead of greeting us with blaring horns, irate shouts and screeching brakes, drivers saw and adjusted to us. As long as we made no sudden movements (like diving for the curb), we were fine. I felt like we were gracefully swimming through a school of fish. The tempest flowed smoothly around us, in all directions, and before I knew it we were across.

Tempt Mystery Not Certainty

The streets of Saigon are a metaphor for life. There's a sort of graceful chaos, everyone going in their own direction, some traveling with traffic, some across it and some against it. Buses and trucks barrel through, stopping for no one. Certainly collisions and accidents happen, but people generally reach their destinations, and life goes on. The best way to survive is not to struggle against the flow, but to approach it like a dance.

Learning to dance through the chaos of Saigon's traffic is much like learning to follow your intuitive vision. It's a combination of intention, timing and trust. Do you dance gracefully through the chaos of your life and career? Do you struggle against it, exhausting yourself, colliding with others and keeping yourself from reaching your chosen destination? Or do you detour, avoiding possible collisions altogether?

In Saigon, I chose to cross the street with my newfound guide and enjoyed the reward of a wonderful lunch. Then I plunged back into the chaos, feeling more comfortable with it all. Every day in my business I face the traffic, dance with it to the best of my ability and hope to enjoy continued success.

A professional colleague asked, “Vickie, what's next for you?” She knew I was in the middle of this book and that I'm involved in an upcoming event with Stedman Graham. “Where will these two projects lead?” My response was, “Just as I didn't know Stedman would call me to do an event together, I have no idea what will come next. I'm okay with not knowing.”

I'm a very grounded person, more a doer than a dreamer. I like to plan, but there's no way I can fully plan for what comes next, especially during an unstable economy. When the time comes for me to know, I trust my intuitive vision enough to know I will know. In the meantime my job is to do the work and dance through the chaos, preparing myself to be open to the next Big Thing.

An artist friend's description of creating art describes perfectly how an intuitive woman creates her life. “When I am in the process of conceiving a new image, I have to make sure that some part of the process is unclear to me. It has to be like a mystery. There's got to be something that I don't know, don't control. If there isn't, I don't feel I'm doing anything that means something either to me or to anyone else.”

Develop your intuitive vision and learn to trust it. Certainly, collisions and accidents will happen. Even when things are going well, a big truck may hurtle out of the blue, forcing you to stop or change directions or maybe running you over. But guided by instinct, emotion and cognition, you can dance your way through your chaos and find the lighted path.

RELAX YOUR WAY INTO WICKED SUCCESS

Having been interviewed on TV, radio and for print many times, I learned the hard way that there's no room for tension in wicked success.

Laura Sydell of National Public Radio's (NPR) All Things Considered, scheduled me for an interview on an upcoming program. When I first learned about it, I was ecstatic! It was to be my first national radio show.

I began preparing, and then the undesirable happened—I started worrying. Figuring I'd only get one chance to be on NPR, I covered every base. I thought out questions, typed out and revised my revised talking points, rehearsed and rehearsed some more.

I arrived at the NPR station on the dreaded, rainy day and sat in the lobby, relentlessly practicing and editing my perfect script. These were the same points I'd edited just two hours earlier at the office. Little did I know Laura would see through them in an instant.

I entered the soundproof radio studio through a door that wouldn't have looked out of place in an airlock on the space station. An intrusive microphone was suspended in front of me like a spider on a web of antivibration cables. Even though I was extremely prepared, I was uncommonly tense and more than slightly on guard.

A technician told me to sit in a chair, be careful to not thump the microphone and for sound quality purposes, be sure and keep my mouth no more than four inches from the microphone. I'm Italian; asking me not to move around or gesture with my hands while I talk is like gagging me.

The disembodied voice of Laura Sydell suddenly came out of a speaker near the ceiling, like the voice of the great Oz. Rather than talk about the safe, impersonal subjects I'd prepared (women in business and entrepreneurship), it turned out that she actually wanted to talk about me. I had prepared notes on everything but my own life. Suddenly, I was acting like I didn't know the subject at all: me.

After a few routine questions, this piercingly perceptive woman, accustomed to interviewing the best, accurately judged my answers to be canned, and suddenly asked me, “Are you reading notes? Do you have notes?”

“Yes.” I admitted, holding onto those notes like a life preserver from the Titanic.

“Put them away and relax. We're just two friends talking.”

Yeah, I thought, just talking over 1,500 miles of high-speed Internet cable in a dark room with an airtight door. I put my notes away, but still within arm's reach, tensing up even more.

Despite knowing the information in my notes, and knowing myself inside and out, I did just okay. I never hit the interview out of the park because I never relaxed into it. I allowed the disembodied voice coming over the big speaker in the dark room to get into my head.

I fell back on the testifying rules I'd used and had coached others in using for depositions. “Answer only the questions,” I'd tell them. “Usually, yes or no is good enough. Don't elaborate. Two words are one too many when one word will do.”

When Laura asked if I had a family, I answered, “Yes.” I didn't say, “Yes, I have a wonderful, supportive husband and many best friends.” She asked me if I had any trips or vacations planned, and I answered, “Yes.” She had to follow up by asking me to where, and I said, “New Zealand and Fiji.” Not, “I'm taking a bicycle trip across New Zealand then going to Fiji to scuba dive with hammerhead sharks,” or anything exciting and fun. Just “New Zealand and Fiji.” I must have sounded like Eeyore, the morose donkey from Winnie the Pooh cartoons.

When it was over, I asked Laura when she thought the interview would air. I still recall the lack of enthusiasm in her voice, and to her credit she didn't say, “Probably never,” but she did hedge and told me she'd have to judge after it had been edited. How much editing of “yes” and “no” would be required, I wondered.

I walked out of the studio with nothing left but a wet drive home and all the eloquently structured ideas I hadn't expressed. In retrospect, I blew it. The interview was never aired, that I've heard of, and frankly I'm glad.

I thought back to all those radio programs where I'd listened to Laura have conversations that sounded like two best friends chatting over a cup of healthy green tea, and I realized my interview sounded more like I was a murder suspect being questioned on Law & Order: Criminal Intent for murdering my own chances of getting on NPR.

This I Believe

Later, I got a second chance to do it right for NPR when they asked me to write an essay for “This I Believe,” another feature of NPR's national news program, All Things Considered. This time I nailed it perfectly, because I did for that essay what I've been telling women to do for 29 years—relax.

By then I had a number of national radio and TV interviews behind me and had seen behind the wizard's curtain. Dark studios and spiderlike microphones no longer intimidated me.

I walked into that same radio studio with a different attitude. I stepped through the airlock and embraced that hanging microphone. After speaking with their recording engineer, I stood in front of the mic and gave a terrific reading. You can still hear it to this day if you want.¹ I talked about my childhood and how those experiences shaped my attitude toward life and business. I hit it out of the park because, this time, I was relaxed.

Relax and be yourself. I know this is sometimes easier said than done (like having a photographer tell you to smile for the 477th time). But this I believe: The more relaxed you are, the more relaxed everyone around you will be. And if you're alone trying to connect with your passionate vision, you're more likely to relax right into wicked success.

PRACTICE MENTALLY EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO ACCOMPLISH

To become wickedly successful, you must first see yourself as successful. Visualize the process of attainment, embellishing your imagination with sensory details. This practice is commonplace in sports and the performing arts.

Great performers such as Alicia Alonso and most stellar athletes practice in their heads even more than they do in the physical world. A basketball player mentally throws thousands of baskets, dancers mentally dance thousands of steps. The mind can withstand a rigor the joints cannot. This mental practice is as important to success as time spent actually playing or dancing.

I was going to attend a reception which I knew Richard Gere would also be attending. I could have planned to just hang in the background, ogling him from a distance. But how often does a woman get to be in the same room as Richard Gere? So for weeks in advance I practiced mentally what I wanted to accomplish.

I imagined walking up to him without tripping, talking without stuttering and starting a conversation without drooling in my wineglass. Vividly imagining how it was going to happen built the bridge to make it happen. Because I imagined it so vividly, I actually had a great conversation with the man that other women were admiring from afar. If you think it was easy for me, it wasn't. But that's the power of practicing mentally everything you want to accomplish.

When you do see it, it's okay if no one else does. When I started my business, some of my family and friends couldn't see the future I so clearly envisioned, and they were afraid for me. I got everything but the encouragement I was expecting—warnings, all the reasons not to do it. It was my vision. I had to see it, even if they couldn't.

Do you struggle against your own vision, exhausting yourself because approval is important? Are you living your vision, or another person's concept of what your vision should be?

We all know someone who succeeded that probably should have failed. We all know someone who failed yet should have succeeded. Why does one person succeed while another doesn't? The mind-success connection: Most successes are sown in the mind. What successes are you sowing? Most failures are sown in the mind. What failures are you sowing?

Envision your success over and over again—approaching, taking action, succeeding—playing a melody on your favorite instrument, getting that promotion, building a simple table or a flourishing business. You must see the change you want to be and where you want to go. It doesn't matter if nobody else sees it.

Even if you don't believe visualizing works, even if you believe only geniuses like Albert Einstein and performers like Alicia Alonso have such powerful imaginations, or you think it's too “out there” to be useful in everyday life, try visualizing anyway. It's totally free and there are no harmful side effects.

GET DOWN WITH BEETHOVEN

I'm a big advocate of brainstorming, and often some of the best ideas for Vickie Milazzo Institute (LegalNurse.com) come from brainstorming, both formally and informally. Staff at the Institute brainstorm in the hallway, in each other's offices, at each other's desks and even in the restrooms. The ideas are sparking and the atmosphere is almost incendiary. When we come together and engage in a conversation, we raise new questions and think of things at a level we would not have reached on our own. Collaboration is genius.

Nevertheless, some of my best ideas come to me not in the midst of a passionate brainstorm, but when no one else is around and I'm writing.

I confess, I write best alone—just me, Beethoven, my laptop or favorite pen, a legal pad and a stack of sticky notes for company. Even Tom knows to stay out of my way when the pages start flying. Sometimes, I even tune out Beethoven.

I love writing not only because it releases the creative energy that fuels ideas for my business, but because it also feeds my creativity, which in turn fuels my endurance, allowing me to create longer and produce more. Plus, I'm always careful to capture any random thoughts, even those that seem unrelated, so as to not lose them. (Note to self: Get bigger sticky notes!)

Sometimes a stray idea is pure gold. Other times it's only a sieve through which to mine the gold. And sometimes it's nothing more than fool's gold—but what have you lost beside the keystrokes or a sheet of paper? The idea may not even be ripe for the time, but by capturing it, you can hold it until the time is ripe. Nothing gets lost.

Even if you haven't had any training in writing, you can still write. Buy a journal or notepad. Clear a space, sit down and take a stab at writing an opinion; or write about a recent trip, a funny experience or your last day off. Better still, just write what's on your mind. You'll be amazed how new ideas for your life or career emerge even when you're not consciously thinking about such things.

Here's a tip: Put on your iPod and play the score from Slumdog Millionaire, or “La Vie en Rose,” or Beethoven's 9th, and write away—write now. And watch your intuitive vision soar.

ACCELERATE ACHIEVEMENT WITH HYPNAGOGIC IMAGERY

Testing experts tell us that to better retain information we're struggling to learn, we should study it 30 minutes before bedtime. Our mind absorbs the information better when at rest.

How many times have you said, “I need to sleep on that”? While you may have meant that remark as a figure of speech, it actually helps to let your subconscious mind work on ideas, problems and decisions independently of your conscious mind. That state immediately preceding or following sleep is fertile ground for imagination.

To germinate ideas, envision a desired result as you're falling asleep. Incorporate images, sounds, smells, textures—whatever comes to mind—but avoid thinking and trying to impose logic. This will only keep you awake. Simply let your mind drift off after envisioning what you want to have happen. When you awaken, recapture that vision, along with any fluttering ideas that accompany it. As quickly as possible, jot down your thoughts for your conscious mind to ponder later.

I know a writer who plotted a short story using hypnogogic imagery. Her visions were so distinct and rapid, they kept waking her. To avoid losing them, she jotted down her thoughts, then lay back down to sleep. Minutes later, she woke again, envisioning the next twist. That went on for nearly an hour. The next morning, her paper was filled with scribbles, mere threads of ideas, but salient threads, which she quickly developed into a prize-winning story.

Why not put this powerful process to work for you? Try hypnogogic imagery tonight. You'll be astonished at the outcome.

SPEED UP TO BE MINDFUL

Tom jokes with me that I have two speeds—fast and off. It's true that I work fast and that I have an innate way of grasping a concept and moving forward with it. I can also switch back and forth between complex issues with a speed and mindfulness that baffles people around me. At the end of the day though, that speed catches up with me, and I switch to off, usually right after a glass of healthy red wine. During the day, I move like quicksilver and expect the same from my staff—the business world moves rapidly and we need to stay ahead of it.

I never cared for those self-help books that claim you must act slowly to be mindful. After all, most of us can't and don't live a Buddhist monk's life in this fast-paced world. During a trip to an ancient Buddhist monastery in Kyoto, Japan, it was the monks themselves who shattered the “mindfulness” myth perpetuated by many self-help authors. Buddhist monks are the epitome of mindfulness, and on this trip I observed them mindfully walking the grounds, ringing the prayer bell, meditating, sweeping or gardening, all in the slow and deliberate manner we associate with mindfulness. But to get to that mindful state, they must first wake and eat. That's where the myth gets shattered and where speed comes in.

Well before dawn, when the waking bell rings, the otherwise peaceful monastery becomes a beehive of frenzied activity. The monks rapidly roll off their pallets, “thump,” fold and store their bedding then stream down the hall to the meal room, rice bowls in hand. There they pass wordlessly through the line, receive their food and shovel it into their mouths with a speed and intensity that makes a new mother's lunch look leisurely. The monks accomplish all of these tasks quickly, but at the same time, in a fully present and mindful state—despite the speed.

That day reinforced my belief that doing something quickly doesn't mean you have to abandon mindfulness when you do it. You can be fully present in every state and at every speed so long as you have the intention to be mindful.

Practice mindfulness at whatever speed is required, even if it's the speed of light. Start practicing speedy mindfulness today, and you'll join the wickedly successful women who've mastered moving at the speed of light.

LINK YOUR VISION TO YOUR PASSION

When your intuitive vision and your passion are richly connected, your decisions will lead you quickly to success. Connect your passion to your intuitive vision in three ways:

1. Create an environment for success. Match your vision to something you're good at. One of my passions is dance. I love dance in all of its variations—modern, ballet, jazz, tap and even interpretational movement. I admire the strength, athleticism and ability of dancers to contort their bodies into all kinds of impossible positions. If you've ever thought those male ballet dancers don't measure up to other testosterone-laden male athletes, just ask your husband to lift you over his head and dance across your living room. Tom is still recovering from that move.

   I took dance lessons after college, and I always thought it would be cool to be a dancer. But I'm just not that talented on my feet. I had to match my vision to what I could actually do. I could be passionate about dancing, but taking it to a professional level never would have happened. Time and energy wasted and a life of disappointment.

   When your intuitive vision matches your personal strengths, you're more likely to take the necessary action to make it happen and succeed. Have you created the environment for your wicked success? Are you doing what you're naturally good at?

2. Give every success an encore. You're already successful. As you venture into new success, don't forget your past successes and all you learned from them. What do you do today that's easy but was hard when you first attempted it?

   When your intuitive vision challenges you to grow or change, give your past successes an encore. Anytime you need a shot of courage, relive the applause and the good decisions. Get the visceral boost you need, then apply what you learned to your new vision. New challenges put you back in the limelight, and that place can be scary, but every time you encore a small success, the applause sets you on fire and the next success comes easier.

   Success promotes success. The more you succeed, the more you will succeed.

3. Your brain doesn't remember failure; neither should you. In growing my business, I focused on my strengths and successes, not my weaknesses and mistakes. I could write the book on the mistakes I've personally made. Maybe you can too. Now though, there's hard evidence that it's our successes that have the most impact on the brain. If you do something the right way, the brain remembers how you did it.

   In fact, the study suggests that failure has no impact on helping us to succeed. That's because if you do something wrong, the brain doesn't know how to process and store it (unless there's a strong negative association, such as pain, embarrassment or electrical shock). Since we typically absorb more from success than failure, this might explain why successful people learn more from their experiences and continue to succeed often, while people who fail learn less from experiences and continue to fail often.

   Think about the people around you. We all know someone who keeps making the same mistakes—in love, at work or in business. It's because they're not learning from their failures. They fail to learn as they would from a success.

   Keep succeeding and stay focused on your past successes. If your brain doesn't know how to process your failures, why should you bother to relive them? I say, you shouldn't.

BE READY WITH YOUR NEXT VISION

A writer friend spent several years accomplishing the big goal of becoming a published author. She followed her intuitive vision, and attributes her success to staying focused, believing in the vision and rehearsing mentally what she wanted to achieve physically to make it happen. When success came, she celebrated and jumped into her new lifestyle with both feet running. But she became so caught up in her success that when the glory and excitement waned, she realized she had no vision of what came next.

And what happened? Nothing came next. Yes, she published more novels, but she no longer had an audacious goal pulling at her. Her career leveled off, then began a downward slide. To start the process over again, she retrieved her deepest-held passions and summoned a new intuitive vision of her literary future. Now she continues to renew and extend her visions, anticipating success to follow success.

What's the next success you passionately want to achieve? Success is a journey. Always assume more success will come, and be ready with your next vision.