The 3 Keys to Miracle Success
The “3 Keys to Miracle Success” involves integrating 1) the Practical Key (entrepreneurship, wealth-creation, leadership, philanthropy, and skills related to these areas, as well as skills related to health, relationships, and enlightenment), with 2) the Blueprint Key (the practice of “cleaning” or undoing negative mental patterns and habits), with 3) the Inner Genius Key (the practice of being miracle-minded through tuning into the inner source of ability and guidance).
3 essential Keys
Daily practices that lead to amazing, life-transforming synchronicities and miracles:
1) The Practical Key
Here, we explore entrepreneurship for best practices in wealth-creation, leadership, and philanthropy, and health, relationships, and enlightenment.
2) The Blueprint Key
Here, we explore cleaning: we are looking at removing the subconscious impediments to entrepreuneurial success, as well as removing the impediments to peace and joy in other areas of our lives such as in health and relatonships, for instance. In essence this is about cleaning up the shadow side in all of us.
3) The Inner Genius Key
Here, we explore being miracle-minded: we are looking at increasing our ability to be guided powerfully and unerringly into miracles and positive synchronicities by our inner GPS (the Inner Genius) in leadership and entrepreneurial success, in health, and in our relationships.
Metaphor of 3-Legged Stool
One way to understand this approach to Miracle Success which uses these 3 Keys is through the metaphor of a three-legged stool. In order for the stool to be a stable resource to sit on, it needs to have all 3 of its legs. If it only has one of it's legs, or even if it has two of its legs, it won't be very useful. In a similar way, when it comes to Miracle Success, it's best to have all 3 Keys. Thus if we are obsessed with achieving our practical goals - to exercise more, overcome an illness, serve more clients and make more money, improve our relationships, or become more spiritually mature, as examples - sure, we can establish our metrics, and forge ahead doing the practical things required to accomplish our goals. In my experience, this is how most ambitious and successful people pursue their goals. This is also how most educational institutions go about teaching and training people. There's a lopsided focus on training for practical skills, even when the pursuits are of an intellectual nature. There is very little emphasis on how to get in touch with, and undo, any underlying patterns of self-sabotage, or blockage to the goals being pursued. This type of undoing can yield exciting results fairly rapidly, but there appears to be quite a bit of resistance or unawareness about this second Key to Miracle Success.
A Personal Example of My Nightmare with German
Here's an example of the 3 Keys at work in my own approach to my goals. This is an account of how I stumbled into this recipe for miracle success when I was faced with a nightmarish barrier that I couldn't seem to surmount. It's the foundation for what I have refined over the years into my approach to miracle success.
When I entered the Ph.D. program in Psychiatry and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 1992, one of the strict requirements I had to be prepared to fulfill was to pass scholarly translation exams in 2 foreign languages in the first semester. In my case, the 2 languages were French and German. While I was a bit nervous about being able to pass these exams, I forged ahead and signed up for a date to take the French exam. I was elated although mildly surprised when a few weeks later I received the results of the exam and had passed it. I signed up right away for the German exam, and when I took it a week or so later, I knew right away that I was in serious trouble. I couldn't even get through translating one sentence calmly. I was in a state of turmoil and panic, and all I could think of was how I would be kicked out of the program because I couldn't pass a measly 2 hour German exam.
The Deepening Nightmare
My focus then became how on a practical level I could turn this growing nightmare around, and pass this German exam as quickly as possible. I started my own self-study regimen using German grammar and vocabulary books. I scheduled a date for me to re-take the exam. On the appointed day, I re-took the exam and failed it just as miserably as I had the first time. I was now in my second semester of the Ph.D. program and felt seriously at risk for being expelled if I couldn't pass this exam.
I considered moving to Germany for 6 months to a year to absorb the language more organically, but in the meantime, I joined a summer course for other students preparing for their German translation exams. I had a miserable time during the 8 weeks of this course: I felt sleepy in the class all the time; I hated doing the in-class drills and quizzes, and I hated the homework. However, I kept going because I felt like I was doing what I was supposed to in my efforts to pass this exam, and I expected I would somehow be rewarded with a passing result. At the beginning of my second year I re-took the exam and failed it again with no appreciable improvement in my results.
Most people who knew me around this time, knew about my German exam impasse; it was all I could talk about, and I obsessed all the time with everyone about how to get through it. At the same time, I was a full time Ph.D. student working on my courses in psychoanalysis and religion so I could qualify to move on to my comprehensive exams, I was also in full time psychotherapy training. When I first started the Ph.D. program, I had intended for my main focus and doctoral topic to be on "The Problem of Evil." As I continued to struggle with German and got more and more involved in the topic of the problem of evil, and for additional reasons to be described in another blog post, I switched my main focus and doctoral topic to "Synchronicity and the Miraculous."
Higher Guidance Towards Self-Hypnosis
One day during my second year, and with the German exam problem very much still hanging over my head, and with no clear path to success with it in front of me, I was browsing in a bookstore in New York City as I often did. I came upon a carousel with various self-help audio cassettes mounted on it, and you can imagine how intrigued I was by the one entitled "Learn German." I purchased it for around $14 and when I listened to it at home, I received an education in self-hypnosis. The instructions with the tape prescribed 30 straight days in a row of listening to the hypnosis program. In addition to the self-hypnosis component, there was a subliminal component to this audio program as well, and I started using both of these in earnest.
Childhood Wounds with German
Now, this doctoral skirmish with German was not my first struggle with the language. I was aware, as I struggled to pass this exam, that perhaps, my difficulties with it were due to my first real encounters with the language when I was ten years old. Let me explain. When I was ten, my Dad sent me to the same boarding school, Accra Academy, in Ghana, that he'd attended as a youngster. I had no idea what I was in for when I got there.
To make a long story short, I was in school with eight hundred other boys ranging in age from from the young ones like me to the older ones, some of whom seemed to be in their very late teens if not early twenties. All around, it was a scary place: I had to wake up at 5 a.m. every morning to a clanging bell, take a cold shower or use a bucket filled with cold water, do my chores cleaning the compound, prepare for and go through morning inspection, and then head off to breakfast and then morning assembly and then class. I was unprepared for the constant bullying and sheer emotional terror at every turn as I navigated from one unknown to another when I first arrived there.
My first day in class, I wasn't quite clear what subjects I was taking, and was especially confused when, in one of the classes, the female teacher, had this written on the board: "Was ist deine name?" I thought to myself: "This is crazy!! She has the "s"s and "t"s in the wrong place, and she's also missing some letters. I didn't realize this was my introduction to the German class. Needless to say, I had a horrible time navigating this class, amidst all the other bizarre and often painful things going on at this school. I would end up spending 7 years in this school, leaving to go to university in the United States at the age of 17. While at Accra Academy, I eventually mastered both the academic and social pathways to success, and came to enjoy my time there. I now suspect that this was the essence of my Dad's approach all along - just throw me into the deep end and have me figure out how to survive and then to thrive, just like he'd had to in his day.
From Nightmare to Miracle Success
Now back to my study of German in my doctoral program. While I was vaguely aware that my difficulties in passing this exam as a 33 year old adult were related to my experiences with German way back in boarding school when I was a scared and unprepared ten year old, I was not clear on how closely connected these two phases of my life were. With the hypnosis program, I became aware that I was doomed to repeat this kind of traumatic experience, because the psychological pattern for it had been laid down in my mind, and until it was brought to the surface and worked through, I was doomed to stay stuck in the kind of nightmare I now found myself in.
With continued use of the hypnosis program, I began to let go of the worst of my fears and traumas around German. As I calmed down more and more from week to week, I discovered a highly personal approach to studying German and preparing for the exam that allowed me to monitor how well I was actually doing. At the same time, I was developing an inner serenity about the exam, because I could tell that I was actually learning the language and could understand it better than I'd ever done before.
As I took the exam my final time, I knew from within that I had passed it, and sure enough when the results came I had.
So again, here are the 3 Keys at work in the process I've described above: First, I had a huge goal, i.e., earning my Ph.D. - this was my Practical Goal. Second, I had a negative repeating pattern, i.e., my traumas with German, that was endangering my ability to achieve my goal - this was my negative Blueprint Pattern. Third, I was guided to a resource, i.e., the self-hypnosis program, that connected me to my inner abilities to surmount this obstacle, this nightmare, and move on with achieving my goal - this was the Inner Genius at work, navigating me towards resources and pathways that would speed me towards the miraculous attainment of my desired goals and destinations.
Application to Business
How does all of this apply to taking your leadership and/or your business from nightmares to miracles? Here's an example of how all of this works in leadership and business, and how it could work in your leadership and business too. I started my executive coaching and leadership development business, SynchroMind, in 1999. One of my first significant miracle breakthroughs in my business came in 2002 when I was working with a small business in New York City. When I started with this client, they had been in business for about 5 years, and had returned a loss on their bottom line each of those years.
At a practical level my strategy with the owner of the business was to support stronger functional differentiation in the business, so that there would be regular weekly meetings of the CEO (the owner), with the heads of finance, marketing, and operations. When we started, there were no regular team meetings of this nature around the functional units, and no particularly distinct departments or identified heads of departments.
Our overall focus during these meetings was typically how to increase sales. At one of our meetings, the head of marketing mentioned that she had met someone from Oprah’s organization at a trade show, and that she thought there might be a benefit to maintaining contact with her.
In both individual and team coaching sessions from week to week, I ran the head of marketing through 5 miracle coaching questions based on my coaching methodology. This methodology deliberately focused on my client's practical goals, as well as blueprint patterns, and Inner Genius guidance, in order to nurture conditions in which we might experience a miracle of some kind through Oprah’s organization.
One day, while I was at home, I received a call from the head of marketing. She explained to me how she had just received a call at the business from Oprah herself. She told me that she had been unable to contain herself while on the phone with Oprah, and that Oprah had had to calm her down. Oprah explained to her that a product from this company was going to be featured in the holiday issue of O Magazine. Sure enough the product was featured in O Magazine, sales took off, and the company made a decent profit on its bottom line for the first time in 6 years. At the time, this business was at about $3 million in revenue per year.
I have strengthened, refined, and simplified the basic recipe and formula of the 3 Keys outlined here, over the years, applying the recipe again and again to problems, nightmares, and goals (my own and those of my clients), that have at first seemed impossible to solve, but which through the application of the recipe, have yielded amazing results. If you're interested in learning more about my 3 Keys to Miracle Success program and how it can help you break through from nightmares to your achieving your most cherished aspirations, click on this link and my course "From Nightmares to Miracles" will show you how.
