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“If the doors of
perception were cleansed,” wrote the great poet and mystic William Blake “everything would appear to man as it is.”

I remember the first walk I took with my daughter. As
we walked past the tree outside our gate her little eyes widened noticeably. I
went closer to see what had caught her attention and saw that she was entranced
by the leaves, seeming to look at every detail – the shades of green, the
different shapes and sizes, the movement of the branches. How beautiful it was
to her, and how magical to experience a tree for the very first time.

Children have a natural curiosity about the world and
seek to explore it fully through their five senses. As Aldous Huxley, godfather
to the hippie generation, pointed out: our senses are our own “doors of
perception”. Our eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin are our only true points of
contact with the world around us.

Sensing Our World

Our senses enrich our lives in a myriad wonderful ways
each day: the comforting smell of freshly baked bread in the morning; the
simple happiness at seeing the glorious colours in summer gardens; the flood of memories that
are carried in the sound of an old favourite song.

We also receive vital information about our world
through our senses by noticing what we see, hear and feel in different
situations. When we pay attention to our inner responses to those things, we
can use it as feedback and a way of learning more about what is beneficial to
us and what doesn’t work for us at all.

This is almost the “magic wand” of goal-setting,
because it makes what we want to achieve quantifiable: abstract goals such as
happiness, success and getting healthy are almost impossible to realise unless we’re able
to experience them through our senses.

Try this exercise:

Pick something you want to achieve – it could be
anything at all. What does this look like to you? What do you see or imagine
yourself doing when you have this? Do you look different in any way? What
environment do you see yourself in when you’ve attained your goal?

And how does having what it is you want sound to you? Do you hear yourself
speaking? How is your voice or language different? What feedback do you imagine
you’d be hearing from the people around you?

And how does achieving your goal feel in your body?
How is your posture different? Your breathing? The level of tension in your
muscles?

The more intensely you’re able to imagine your goal, and the more often
you do so; the more tangible it becomes. Give yourself permission to daydream!

Using your senses to help you reach your goals gives
your body and mind a deep experience of what it would actually be like to
achieve the desired outcome. And you’re a strongly magnetic being: when you can
fully imagine experiencing something, you are able to begin to attract exactly
the situation you need to support that experience.