S1, Ep.10 | Practicing Hope vs. Wishful Thinking

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I really hope that I win the lottery someday.  I have many plans for how I will pay off my parents, sisters and friends mortgages and student loans and invest in multiple high yield stocks and then travel the world stopping only now and again to do volunteer work and a spiritual guide. The one problem with this plan is that I never buy lottery tickets.  I just wish and dream about what I would do if I win the lottery.  <strong>So an essential piece is missing to actually ever seeing my wish fulfilled sans a fairy godmother or a genie coming to grant it. </strong></span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><em>I am a proponent of believing in magick.</em> Magick being the act of making something from nothing, or changing something from one thing into something else. By this definition we are doing magick every time we cook, every time we engage in a creative act, every time we make an idea reality through the four worlds of idea, thought, plan, action.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">What is not this type of magick is what I call "wishful thinking" or Magical Thinking.  This is just sitting on your butt wishing for things to come to you and not doing anything to make them happen.  My lottery ticket story is an over-simplified example. Another example is when people send “thoughts & prayers”  to something - as they are choosing magical thinking versus doing something about the tragedy.  Or someone saying <em>“I wish I had more money.”</em></span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But they do not go out and get more money via a better job, implementation of an entrepreneurial idea, or even a side-hustle. <strong>The key piece missing in any type of wishful thinking is responsibility (i.e. acknowledgment of the ability to respond) and personal agency i.e. action taken based on the acknowledgment of the ability to respond.  </strong></span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><strong><em>Magical thinking</em> is the abdication of personal responsibility, the