A WIG is the brainchild of life coach and best-selling author, Martha Beck. In her book, Finding Your Own North Star, she suggests a WIG for helping you leap ahead on your true path in life. What is a WIG, you say? WIG stands for Wildly Improbable Goals. It recently occurred to me that I hadn’t set my own WIG in awhile and so I took a little time, went through the process of setting my own Wildly Improbable Goal and (gosh darn golly!) it worked yet again. If you’d like to know how to set your own WIG, read on, my friend!
The first step is to think of five things that would make your soul blissfully happy. These are things beyond your ego needs. They are deep down soul desires. In fact, they may be very small things. That’s okay—we’ll use them later. But try to write down some biggies as well. For example, when I started to daydream about my own WIG, an idea sprang forth for an inter-spirituality meditation summit in Seattle. As my soul started to hum and purr I continued to write down all sorts of ideas around this central idea. By the end of my creative process, my sentiment was generally: This would be ABSOLUTELY AWESOME, but I do not have the slightest idea how I would even begin to get started with this, let alone get this done! Not. A. Clue! This is the perfect sentiment a WIG should instill in you. So once you’ve thought up some big WIG’s then choose the one that feels the best right now to you.
The second step is then to let go of it. “What?” you stammer. “Aren’t I supposed to DO something?”
“Why yes,” I would reply, “You do something by letting go.” Say outloud to the universe: Universe, this WIG would be something I would totally LOVE to do. But I don’t have the slightest idea how to accomplish it. So right now, I’m giving the whole idea over to All That Is. I surrender.”
The third step is to wait. See if the universe responds in some way over the next few days. When I set my latest inter-spirituality meditation summit WIG it was a Monday evening and I had said almost the exact same words above to the universe. The very next morning, I opened up my facebook and lo and behold a local business associate, someone I’ve only exchanged emails with and never actually met, had posted, “Does someone want to help me organize a meditation flash mob in Seattle like the one in this video from London?”
Shock is not too much of an exaggeration of the feeling I had as I stared at her post. Since I was pretty sure her post was my cue from the universe, I replied, “Yes, I would.” From there with a few interesting turns, including getting in touch with the main organizer of the worldwide (94 cities, to date) “medmobs” I am now the official Seattle organizer! (Let me know if you want to attend…Here’s the facebook page to stay up-to-date!)
So fourth, after waiting to see if and how the universe responds to your WIG, then take a tiny step that’s very simple. My first step was simply to type “Yes, I would” on the business person’s facebook post. Now note, a flash mediation mob was not exactly what I had envisioned by a meditation summit. What I was thinking about was far more complicated and probably a lot less fun to put together and participate in than a flash medmob. This is why the total surrender and letting go of the WIG is so important. By doing so, you allow the universe to take care of the details and to show you how what you thought was the ultimate idea could be even better!
Even if you wait and the universe doesn’t seem to respond to your initial WIG setting and subsequent letting go, take a tiny small first step towards the WIG anyway and again wait and see what happens. This is the way to accomplish your WIG. Take a step, wait. Take another small step, wait. Over and over. If over time the universe isn’t responding at all, take that as a clue that either it’s not the right time or you need to choose another of your WIG’s or dig a little deeper into your soul to find the sweet spot that will yield an even better WIG. This step, wait, step, wait is a much less stressful and much more exciting way to find and accomplish your true path.
You will encounter fear along the way, even in taking those tiny little steps because you are stretching yourself beyond your self-limitations into the unknown. I had to breath deep several times before I typed in “Yes, I would.” But any fear you feel should be good fear not bad fear, though—the kind of exciting fear you feel on the top of the roller coaster right before it reaches the top of the track and plunges down. If it helps, promise yourself that after taking a small step you will reward yourself with one of the small soul pleasures that came to mind when you were brainstorming back in #1. For me, a small soul pleasure is a fuzzy velour coated pencil. I LOVE those. If even a small step along this medmob path seems a bit too much I might promise to go and buy a velour pencil for myself after I risk and take that small but soul-stretching step. That way I satisfy my soul with little rewards along its true path until it can accomplish fully the WIG that was beyond all that I could even imagine. And that accomplishment will be reward all in itself.
Good luck with your WIG! Let me know how it goes!
