Patience! How Long Do You Wait On Your Dream to Appear?

I have been working on manifesting my Dream Career for 17 years now, since I was 28 years old and read: "Do What You Love The Money Will Follow" and "Creating Money" and "Think and Grow Rich". My biggest challenge is patience and knowing when its time to give up and get another dream or keep waiting. An equal challenge, having a desire for more than one dream.  So let's look at my timeline and dream seeking and see if you can help me out as to what to do. I will do the same for you if you post here or email me your story.

1. 1993-1996: after soul searching and reading the above books, and asking the question over and over again: "If I could have anything I wanted, do anything, live anywhere, be successful what would it be?" I decided I wanted to teach and travel. So I applied to Ph.D. programs (had always wanted to get my Ph.D. and become a professor, my Masters in Psychology was just a pit stop.) Very quickly I got accepted at California Institute of Integral Studies in SF in Women Spirituality: WSD/Ph.D. Perfect.

I began the external degree program (I went to SF once a month for a weekend class) and loved it initially. But I was also supporting myself with my contract work as a Vocational Rehabilitation Consultant for Worker Compensation Claimants and Insurance Companies (this was what I was doing before and really had grown to dislike the work). I also moved to KC from Wichita.  Within a year, I realized I couldn't manage everything: the study load was enormous because I was deficient in lots of areas, costly to fly back and forth and pay for it all and having a hard time keeping enough business coming in to support myself. Something had to go. It was the Ph.D. program. Very sad but didn't know what else to do.

2. 1996-1998: I still knew I wanted to teach and help people and wanted to help with others with Following Their Dreams so I started my business Knight Vision Career Counseling and Follow Your Dream Workshops. I still was supporting myself with the Voc. Rehab Contract Work. I then moved back to Wichita for  personal reasons. After trying to do Knight Vision and work part time jobs (Kinkos, Harry's Bar & Grill), I had to make a change I just  wasn't making enough money to support myself. I was crushed! It is so hard to believe in "Do What You Love the Money Will Follow" and be teaching it, but not be able to make it happen in your own life...yawzaa! So I got a full time job at New Horizon's Computer Learning Center as an Account Executive (paid the most $ with the most interesting service for company and a job).

3. 1998-2000: I thought I was going to do the New Horizons job and keep doing my Follow Your Dreams workshops and counseling, but I found I was too tired from the day job to keep that going, plus I felt like a fraud in the Follow Your Dreams genre. After a year or so, even though I was doing very well at New Horizons, I couldn't stand working in a cubicle and making calls all day and a friend of mine wanted to move to KC and so did I. Not knowing what I was going to do to support myself next, I took a leap quit the NH job and moved to KC and started looking for work. I got brought on with National Seminars as a Contract Trainer and Professional Speaker.

4. 2000-2008: I was an immediate success and a natural at this position. I was delivering programs on Creativity: Creative Leadership, Creative Marketing, Creative Training, Business Speaking Skills, Layout and Design Skills (while I was at Kinkos and New Horizons, I learned all the Adobe Graphics Programs) I loved the training and entertaining and the traveling. I got to go everywhere in the US. I have been to every state in the US at least once. I was also encouraged at that time by friends and colleagues to market and book my own speaking & training business - Shenanigans: Conform to Creativity: Play at Work was born. I was getting booked once a month which was great, but not good enough to just do that. Even though I loved training and traveling with National Seminars, I didn't like the high pressure selling of books/audio at the back of the room (we had to sell a certain amount or we would not be booked) and the travel after 5 years, a different city and hotel room every night, got tiring - I was wearing down. I spent a lot of money and time trying to market Shenanigans then Franny Knight, Inc. so I could travel less and not do the pressure book sales, but I just couldn't get it off the ground (I hear this a lot from other speaker-trainer colleagues of mine).

5. 2008-2010: I got married to my husband in 2009, was burned out on the travel and not sure how to make my own business go and I wanted to get a dog and be at home with my husband, maybe grow a garden, reduce my carbon footprint. My husband suggested I become a Realtor - he was doing this part-time as a retirement vehicle for himself and thought it was a perfect career for me with my personality, sales skills, desire for freedom and flexibility and to make good money. At first I was resistant (I had never ever thought about being a Realtor. Not on my radar at all!) I became interested in it when I learned about Eco Realtors - Green & Sustainability Homes. Now, that, I could sink my teeth into, but still not the same passion and dream of being a Teacher, Trainer, Speaker, Counselor. But I just was too burned out on the travel, and the trying to market my speaking-training business so I took the leap and got my Realtor license.

For two years I have been slowly building as a Realtor specializing in Eco Realtor activities, but am no where near being able to support myself and realize some of the physical things I would like as well as the travel I would like to go on. And its not feeding my soul, passion, purpose, dream. But two years of quite a bit of $ spent and time is hard to let go of, so I just keep plugging away. I do enjoy helping people find homes they love and purchase them. I love looking at cool houses and learning about Kansas City neighborhoods. But I don't enjoy having to list homes for sale that the sellers have to have a certain amount and the market won't support it. Its a tough market for sellers. The way to grow business more quickly in Real Estate is to go after expired listings and for sale by owner listings. These are typically homes and people that cannot sell at market price because of their mortgage or need for enough money for down payment on next house or something else.

Present Day: so I continued to ask myself, "if I could do anything I wanted and be successful at it, what would I do?" And I keep coming back to teaching, counseling, consulting, speaking - I love to do these activities. I also would still love to get my Ph.D. So 2 weeks ago, I made a commitment and an posted an Event on Facebook: 30 Days to Follow My Dream Commitment so I could have a public commitment and support. My commitment was to state every day and do something everyday towards my Dream - programming my subconscious mind for 30 days, consistently. My Dream Right Now: I am a successful Human Potential & Capital Consultant, Trainer, Speaker, Counselor for Organizations, Leaders and Individuals. As soon as I made that public commitment, a friend of mine from Wichita arrived in KC and over a night of catching up and discussing my past training and her past management experience and a week later, we decided that she could really help me re-launch this consulting and training business - that was quite synchronistic.


I was going along fine with my new goal-commitment, until my husband said that he didn't think I could do both things successfully: Realtor & Consulting-Training Business. That both would suffer and that I needed to make a decision. So that is where I am at today - trying to make this decision. And not sure that I need to make the decision. I would love to take a leap and go full 100% into my Consulting Training Business, but am fearful that it won't work, again. That I don't know how to market and get business. That I don't have the ability to do good follow up and manage the business side of it. I know my friend is there to help, but I have fears that she may not stick with it. And then I am alone doing it and am not sure I can do it alone. I am also having a hard time letting go of the parts of being a  Realtor I love - helping people find their Dream Homes and Green-Sustainability Home Education.

So what do you think? What's your opinion? Intuition? I would love to hear from others.

What is your story, dilemma, challenge, dream commitment, patience?

Yellow + Blue = Green or Ask & You Shall Receive

When you are wanting to Follow Your Dreams lets say in a new career and you just can't seem to get off "Start" or it just never seems to manifest for you - you are probably experiencing the "Law of Reverse Effect". You are saying one thing consciously, but your subconscious is stirring up other thoughts sometimes without you knowing it. So if you ask for Yellow and you get Green its because you also somewhere in your life have been asking for Blue. Yellow + Blue = Green. And then you wonder why the heck did I get Green?

Let's take an example. Let's say you are a salesperson for a pretty decent company that you like okay and you can make really great commissions for your sales. So you use the "Law of Attraction" and ask for what you want - "I want more clients and more sales". Or "I am a successful salesperson".  But after lets say a year your client base has actually decreased even though you said your affirmation every day. What happened. Well typically you are secretly wanting something else, like a different career. Maybe you really want to be a trainer not a salesperson but just don't have the training or skills or confidence to apply for the job or there's no opening at all at your company.

I have been fighting this problem ever since I first read the books "Creating Money" & "Do What You Love the Money Will Follow" and it gave me the idea that I could go after anything I wanted with the right mindset and manifesting skills. I started doing all the exercises, starting with asking the question over and over "If I could be anything with a guarantee of success what would it be?" At 28 years old I asked that question and decided I wanted to get my Ph.D. and Teach. I know that even though I have taken many paths that is ultimately my calling - teaching Human Potential, Cognitive-Perceptual Psychology, Consulting for Human Potential-Capital. But....I have not arrived to where I am doing that full time yet, because I always have to get a job or something else pops up as a way to make money. So I say I will do this for a while make some money and that will support my dream. I fear that this has been the wrong approach. Because whatever job or money making activity I am in that isn't my Dream takes a lot of my energy and I am manifesting skills to make that work at the time.

I think it is very important, as soon as you figure out what you really want, your purpose, calling, passion etc...that the sooner you can be doing it full time the quicker it will actually happen. I know it is hard when you have to pay bills....etc...but just saying it will speed the process up.

Ask And You Shall Receive: Good Questions are Better Than Affirmations for Achieving Big Dreams - Part I

I have been working on Following My Dream of being a Human Potential Consultant, Trainer & Speaker for 15 years using many self help programs: "Do What You Love the Money Will Follow", "Law of Attraction or Secret" "Think & Grow Rich" to name a few.  And have had minor success (not as much success as the authors said I would have). I believe it is because these programs are based on affirmations from the conscious mind vs. reprogramming the 4x as powerful subconscious mind with questions, pictures and emotions. 

You can think 4 x as fast as you can talk: 1200 words a minute vs 300 words a minute (no wonder we get bored with speakers and trainers so easily). Essentially your subconscious mind has 4 people talking to you and your conscious mind 1 person. Your subconscious mind has stored up millions-billions of information starting in childhood coming from your parents and family (most of these messages have not been very empowering). From this information it creates programs to make life easier to react and respond. So until you address these subconscious programs, no matter what you tell yourself you want to change (conscious mind) the subconscious is just too powerful to overcome all the information and programs it has created. The power of the subconscious mind is that it creates pictures or images to convey the program - easier than words. And the most powerful images come when it is based on an emotion. All behavior is emotionally driven usually based on fear, guilt, anger and love.

So if you are wanting to Follow Your Dreams in a new job/career/purpose you are going to have to reprogram millions of pieces of information and images that you have stored up about yourself and how you see yourself in your career if it is different than what you are wanting to accomplish in the future. All of this started from the information your parents/family gave you about the world of work, career and purpose and continued with cultural messages, heroes or heroines (or lack of), church messages,  school messages and so forth. Most people do not achieve Career or Purpose-Mission Path "Follow Your Dreams" success based on two very powerful subconscious messages:

1. Lack of Money & Resources
2. Lack of Confidence in your abilities

So when we start dreaming and thinking what we would really love to do with our lives, we immediately have sabotaging images and thoughts about the ability to do that. For instance, I want to get my Ph.D. and every time I think about that and state it, all I can think about is all the debts I have and how I can't afford to pay for the program.  Or when I think about my Creative Training & Speaking Business and attempting to get  business again, I think about how I failed at it last time or how I don't know how to make calls, or how to convince people in companies they need something as fluffy as creativity and the list goes on.

Affirmations or some form of it (Law of Attraction and the Secret use these heavily & primarily) are supposed to overcome these negative subconscious thoughts and images. I just don't think that works. Remember the conscious mind where the affirmations are coming from is like 1 person  (pretty weak person)  going against the subconscious mind (all the information, messages, images and programs from your past) that is like 4 very strong people. Affirmations are just not strong enough to overcome the 4 people. So what do we do?

There are two subconscious components that activate an emotional state which in turn determines your behaviors:

1. You must talk to yourself which usually begins with a question and
2. By asking yourself a question your subconscious mind will always give you an answer which in turn produces a correlating picture. It is from this subconscious picture that your emotional state is determined and in turn decides your behavior. 

The most affective means of changing your self-talk (subconscious) is to intervene and change your negative self questioning into positive empowering questions.

So as soon as I make my statement of my Dream or Goal: "I am a successful Human Potential Consultant, Trainer, Speaker" and all the negative self doubts, questioning, and thoughts start coming up, I turn those thoughts into a question. All you have to do is learn what questions to ask yourself to achieve the results you want. Ask and ye shall receive.  Part II I will explain how to ask the right questions and to start visualizing the answers.

Books are my LifeBlood for Following My Dream

I would not be where I am today if I didn't have a ferocious appetite for reading. Books have inspired me past my own limited beliefs, others limited beliefs and given me the courage and inspiration to make a creative and inspired life for myself. What am I reading now you ask? That is such a funny question because I am always reading 4 or 5 books at a time. So here is what I am reading right now that I love!

Crush It! Gary Vaynerchuck (A short read on following your passion no matter what, then taking it and turning it into millions with social media tools - a very getter done book!!!) I am incorporating many of his ideas. Gary turned his father's discount liquor store in New Jersey from a $3 million to a $10 million business using the suggested techniques. What I love the most is his belief that you can be passionate about the most obscure, strange thing and still make money if you are passionate about it.

Keys to Yourself, Venice Bloodworth This book was written in 1952 long before the popular Secret and Law of Attraction books of today. She believes in training your subconscious mind to deliver all that is already yours. She has some very powerful affirmations and ideas that really take me to another level in my belief system and the possibility of making it all happen for myself.

The other 3 books that are not related to passion, living your dreams, training your mind to get what you want that I am reading right now.

Grown Up Digital, Don Tapscott a book about the Net Generation (30 and under) and their positive attributes that are contributing to a massive shift in how we work among other shifts.

Social Media Bible, everything you ever wanted to know on Social Media & Marketing.

The Four Day Win: End Your Diet War and Achieve Thinner Peace, Martha Beck, PhD I'm really fascinated right now with our problem with obesity and being overweight even though we all know what we should be doing - masses of people are unable to win this battle. I believe it is all a subconscious mind problem and so does Martha.

Managing Innovation: Integrating Technological, Market and Organizational Change: Joe Tidd and John Bessant I'm wanting to provide Human Capital Consulting Services to organizations and this book is the perfect book for getting my skill set sharpened. Unfortunately its a textbook so very difficult to read.

Following is a list of most of the books I have read that have helped me to stay on the path to Follow My Dream.  Let me know if you would like a recommendation for you with where you are in your life right now.

Your Heart’s Desire, Sonia Choquette

Think and Grow Rich, Napolean Hill

Building Your Field of Dreams, Mary Manin Morrisey

Creating Money, Sanaya Roman

Psychic Pathway, Sonia Choquette

Return to Love, Marianne Williamson:

Alchemist, Coehlo

A Whack on the Side of the Head , Roger von Oech  

Wishcraft, Barbara Sher

Reinvention of Work, Matthew Fox

Recovery of Your Inner Child, Lucia Capacchione

Finding Your Perfect Work, Paul and Sarah Edwards

Creating Prosperity, Shakti Gawain

Find Your Calling, Love Your Life, Marth Finney

Do What You Love the Money Will Follow, Marsha Sinetar:

Hope for the Flowers, Trina Paulus 

Emperors New Clothes

The Lemonade Stand, Emanuel Modu: 

Creating a Life Worth Living, Carol Lloyd

True Work, Justine Willis Toms and Michael Toms:

Crush It, Gary Vaynerchuk

Keys to Your Success, Venice Bloodworth

Law of Attraction,  Hicks-Abraham

Orbiting the Giant Hairball, Gordon MacKenzie

Day 2 of 30 Day Commitment to Follow My Dream

My activity today towards being a successful Human Potential CCTS (Counselor, Consultant, Trainer, Speaker) is to create a Franny Knight, Inc. Blog on Tumblr because it can act as my website and interacts with Facebook better than Blogger and to provide support to anybody here who is making their 30 Day Start. If you are just joining us could you post a comment here or on the 30 Day Event Page on Facebook:  
what your Statement-Claim for Your Dream Process - it helps everybody to read others claims - very inspiring. Remember, you don't have to believe its possible yet - go for the seemingly impossible not necessarily the possible - its an 30 Day Subconscious Mind Experiment.

I remember reading Marianne Williamson's "Return to Love" for the first time and her saying you don't have to believe in God (which I didn't at the time - agnostic) to have miracles happen in your life, you just have to do the exercises. And she said just experiment for 30 days and then decide. I did took her up on the experiment idea and  somewhat sarcastically and not totally believing (but hoping and wanting to believe) in the things she was suggesting. Guess What? My life literally changed in 30 days and upturned in 90 days. A Miracle is "Just Seeing It Differently" in my opinion and that was what she was getting me to do. And which I think is the power of the subconscious mind.   So that is what I am up to in this 30 day experiment - what are you up to?

        If you haven't read the book yet: "Return to Love" I highly suggest it!

30 Day Commitment fo Follow My Dream. Will You Join Me?

I am starting today making a 30 Day Commitment to Follow My Dream of Being a Successful Human Potential Counselor, Consultant, Trainer and Motivational Speaker. Everyday between October 11 & November 11, 2010, I will feed my subconscious mind affirmations and claims of my Dream and conduct 2-3 hours of activities, mostly marketing, but also getting and providing support to others joining the commitment journey with me every day. Check back here to see the daily log and blog. Join here with me and make your own commitment with comments and/or join me on Facebook: 30 Days of Following Your Dream Commitment Event.

You are infinitely bigger and more powerful than you can imagine.

The law of the subconscious mind is suggestion. The subconscious mind does not think, reason, balance, judge or reject. It simply accepts all suggestions furnished by the conscious mind, whether they be good or evil, constructive or destructive. Therefore the secret of success is to store your subconscious mind with desire, ambition, courage, determination, enthusiasm and faith in yourself. Add to these indispensable attributes love for your all people and faith in the ultimate good of all things. Have faith in your inherent power to achieve. Our mental attitude is the magnet that draws to us everything we need to bring our desires into being.

Find out how much your ideas are worth to you. You can image big things as easily as little ones: put your creative imagination to work. Start something! Imagine things, not as they are, but as you would have them. Create a place for yourself in your imagination and hold it steadily. If you want a certain position, claim it as your own and "SEE" yourself doing it. Do not let any lack of training, education, or any kind of "BUTS" get in  your way.

Here is my statement to myself, my subconscious mind and the universe!
"I claim for myself that I am a successful Human Potential Trainer, Speaker, Consultant. I have plenty of business from companies, organizations and leaders who are wanting to achieve more with their people processes creating enough money to pay off all my debts, fix house, buy new house, car and get accepted into a PH.D. Program."

What is your statement? What do you wish for? Don't hold back. Don't worry about the how - just say it. You are infinitely bigger and more powerful than you can even imagine.