Me: I wanna sandwich! Sandwich!
Inquisitive and loving me, who might also be a fairy godmother: That seems like a reasonable thing to want. If I could wave my magic wand and get you one this very instant, would you take it?
Me: Yes! But I want it with pickles. And cheese! But … actually I really want the essence of sandwich, of having someone make it for me. Being cared for. Being given something warm and happy-making. So I guess if you’re waving the wand, I want half a sandwich, a pickle and to feel cared for and loved.

The yes-but is where all the useful information is. Always. Yay, caveats.

Once you bring out the wand, you find out what you really want.

Me: I want twenty five lovely people at the Shiva Nata teacher training.
Inquisitive and loving me: And if I could wave my magic wand and make that happen right away, would you take it?
Me: Of course, but then we’d also have to get more yoga blocks and more cushions, and more zombie apocalypse juice glasses, and if the training keeps growing beyond that we’ll need a bigger space. So I want 25 people and the resources to handle it. Hmm. I guess I need to map out what this entails and how it might work.

Like that.

I’m always looking for the yes-and.

The yes-and. The yes-but. I look for the caveats. Because that’s where desire gets both simple and complicated.

The I want it but I want it like this.

That’s where the real information is hiding. Everything that’s helpful about what you really want and need.

One of my clients: Can we work on getting me ten new coaching clients?
Me: Absolutely. So, if I waved my wand and ten new coaching clients showed up right now, would you take them?
Client: Mmm. Maybe. I mean, yes. Of course I would. But. You know, assuming that they’re the kind of people I like to work with, and they pay on time, and I still have time for my kid, and this is kind of freaking me out.

So then we know.

We know that it’s not the time to work on how we’re going to get ten more clients. At least not directly.

It’s time to set up systems in the business to ensure that this woman gets paid in advance. It’s time to make sure the copy she writes speaks to people that she adores working with. And to set up boundaries, buffers and rituals of spaciousness in her day so that her business supports her life instead of taking giant bites out of it.

Mmm. Sandwich! I may be slightly obsessed.

That’s what we work on in the hard.

But it’s not enough.

We have to work in the soft too. Because (saying this for the thirty seven millionth time), there is no biggification without destuckification.

In the soft, it might be time to talk to some monsters, do some negotiating and invent some metaphors. To head to the safe rooms.

To create safety. To invoke curiosity and play. To do what needs to be done so that we can get to the point of the unequivocal YES.

The YES of wanting.

The caveats are useful. They tell us that we aren’t at the yes.

And everything in the way of the yes is both extremely important and extremely individual (because People Vary).

There might be old painful stuff my client is dealing with about not good enough yet or what if I’ll never be ready or I don’t belong here. Probably some anxiety about growth and sustainability, and the usual fear-of-success brigade.

We don’t have to deal with it directly. We can play at the edges. We can work on all of this in sneaky and unlikely ways.

But whatever we do, we’re going to make sure that she gets clients in a way that means she’ll actually want them and be delighted about having them. Because that’s where the real work is. In whatever is hiding underneath the desire.

The main point here. Or one of them.

The thing about magic wand is that all of its power is in acknowledgment.

It doesn’t say, “You shouldn’t want that.” It doesn’t say, “That’s not what you really need.”

The wand says: “The thing you want is legitimate. So. Is that what you want? Tell me more about how you want what you want. Tell me more about the essence and qualities of what you want.”

Wanting is one of the scary, scary things. It brings up all of our pain and past experiences of hurt, grief and loss.

And, as we know from the Very Personal Ads, it is invariably conflicted.

The wand is a way in.

This unpacking-the-wanting is part of what happens at Rally (Rally!).

Not that we have wands. We totally have wands. But we play with possibility. We recognize that committing to a project is saying YES to desire, and that this means it’s going to be a little crazy for a while.

Last night we began Rally. Rally #9! And today, everyone is going to accidentally discover what their walls are. The yes-buts. The yes-ands. The what-ifs.

There will be hiding in the Refueling Station and eating of pretzel sticks and flailing the flail to find out what the patterns are.

There will be secret post-it notes and stone skipping and calling silent retreat!

Today is the day that I will find out what I want about what I want. And what needs to happen for me to feel comfortable wanting it. And that’s scary and hard.

So sparklepoints for me. And for everyone asking these hard questions.

And comment zen for today.

I sometimes think there is no topic as hard or challenging as desire.

We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. It’s a process, and sometimes that process is kind of a pain in the ass.

So we make room for other people to have their own experience, and we don’t give each other advice.

And we ask lots of questions. If you want to play (with big or small wants), I have a magic wand. So if you could have the thing, would you take it?

If there’s anything other than an enthusiastic YES, what changes/qualities/understandings would help you get to there?

Collect the caveats. Love the caveats.

p.s. Thanks to Carolyn for the magic wand question, which I use about six hundred times a day.