Do you keep your wishes secret?

Have you ever hoped that someone would notice your good work and give you more opportunities? Would that have been even more meaningful than if you asked for what you wanted, and got it?

“Make a wish and blow out the candles — but don’t tell anyone what it is, otherwise it won’t come true!”

This common ritual and its cousins — wishing on a coin in a fountain, or blowing on a fallen eyelash — are very confusing to me.

The idea of keeping your wish, something you really truly want, a secret is odd. I understand that it may be vulnerable to share your deepest desires, so people may resist it. Or perhaps knowing that you won’t have to share it with anyone lets you dig deep and wish for the big scary things that you’re too afraid to say out loud. But that we tell children over and over again not to tell anyone their wishes because then it won’t come true just seems absurd.

And I imagine that it also sets people up for a lifetime of disappointment.

Imagine wishing for something specific from your significant other for your birthday, hoping that they’ll know you so well that they’ll choose exactly that present.

Or imagine hoping that if you put your head down and keep working super hard, someone will notice and say “hey give them a promotion to leadership and a raise — they’re doing so well!”

Years ago, as an engineer, I waited for a long time, hoping that someone would notice my good work, and it would be obvious that I’d make a good tech lead or manager. It never occurred to me that I should tell someone that that’s what I wanted.

Religious influences?

Where does this idea of keeping wishes secret come from? Perhaps the origins are religious or supernatural in nature, that you need to only let a divine being know what it is you want, and your wishes will be answered. And then if your wish is granted, it reinforces that belief in a divine being’s existence, since how else would it have come true? Parents who tell their children about Santa seem to reinforce this by intercepting letters to Santa and buying items off the wishlist.

I’m not a religious person, but I do sometimes appreciate the moments and rituals related to religion. In college, I sang in the chapel choir, and appreciated the many moments of awe and reverence in the beautiful gothic chapel with stained-glass windows. Recently in Japan, I noticed how nice it was to pause and think of an intention/wish/prayer before throwing my coin into a deep wooden box at a temple.

I imagine rituals around prayer or going to church on Sundays create a lot of structure where you have the opportunity to think about what you want. That seems healthy. In the absence of a religion, I imagine meditation, journaling, and mindful moments could serve to create regular moments like that.

But as a non-religious person, the idea of wishes and prayers that are not spoken or shared with others, but you expect to come true, makes very little sense.

Manifestation and the universe

The idea of supernatural intervention shows up as well with the idea of manifestation, the idea that you can manifest your dreams into reality. When people who use the term manifestation talk about manifesting, there’s always this sort of supernatural element in the language, that if you put your ideas out into the universe, the universe will conspire to help you get what you want. Even the word seems to imply a magical conjuring.

This language somewhat bothers me because it credits the work to supernatural powers rather than yourself. If you’ve done the work to get really clear about what you want, you become more open to opportunities that lead you to it, and you finally get what you’ve been working towards, I think it’s you who deserves a lot of credit, not the universe.

My version of manifestation / goal-setting

When I hear people talk about the universe, instead of imagining supernatural powers, I think of my universe as being the network of inter-connected people all around me. When I think of making my dreams into a reality, I think about getting really clear about what it is I want, and then letting people know about it. Who knows when an opportunity may arise, and someone will think of me.

This is how I quickly built a successful coaching business a few years ago, slowly nurturing and watering my garden of connections, regularly reminding them of my work and my expertise. Coaching clients came through from unexpected places — a referral from someone I briefly worked with years ago, another who had read one of my regularly published pieces about engineering leadership that was shared through a company slack, people who had followed me on twitter for years with zero interaction.

Maybe manifestation and goal-setting are basically the same, with different respective languages appealing to different types of people.

I’m typically not a very goal-oriented person, but when there is something I want, I will go after it. Roughly, there are three pieces that need to exist for my version of non-woo manifestation (where I leverage “the universe” aka everyone around me to help me get to where I want to go):

1. Getting clear about what I want

2. Doing the mindset work so I believe I can actually do it

3. Telling people what I want and what support I need

Step 1 is pretty self-explanatory, but it may take time and a lot of exploration. It may end up just being an intention or direction (something like “I want more ease in my life”), not something concrete, and that’s ok.

Step 2 is often overlooked, but people come up against the roadblock often. A classic example is when someone starts a new business, but they don’t post about it anywhere, and when people ask for a blurb to share, they say “yeah I’m working on one,” but never send it. There are so many negative mindsets that hold people back from what they want — perfectionism, fear of failure and embarrassment, not being ready, needing to do X and Y before attempting Z, scarcity of attention (if I share about it now, I can’t share about it again).

Step 3 is critical and is the piece that is completely missing in the ritual of secret wishes.

Getting what you want at work

Looking back, the situation I was in years ago, where I was waiting for someone to notice me and put me in a role with more impact, seems ridiculous.

First of all, people have so much going on at work, that absolutely no one except me was tracking my work and achievements very closely.

Secondly, I assumed people would know what I wanted, which was to move into a leadership role, leading a project or a team. Having another decade of work experience under my belt, I absolutely do not make that assumption about anyone—plenty of people want to stay just where they are, or grow technically but not into a leadership role. There certainly have been times when I’ve fantasized about being an individual contributor engineer again.

So if there is something you want—whether that’s working in a specific area, working with specific people, growing towards a very different role, or taking a step back at work to deal with personal challenges—let people you work with know, and keep those conversations going.

And you don’t have to do Steps 1 and 2 on your own. A supportive and skilled manager can help you navigate Steps 1, 2, and 3, helping you gain clarity around what it is you want, doing the mindset work to believe you can do it, and telling others or nudging you to tell others what it is you want.

Fun stories about wishes

I’d like to leave you with two fun stories about wishes — one that unfortunately didn’t come true, and one that did.

—

When my son Jackson was just a few years old, I gave him a coin to make a wish at a fountain.

I leaned in to see if I could make out what his wish was, in case it was something easy to make happen…ice cream, perhaps.

However, he clutched the coin, closed his eyes, and very seriously whispered, “I wish I were a dinosaur,” before tossing the coin into the fountain with a splash. Sorry, can’t help you there, buddy (though we have had many dinosaur costumes for Halloween and dress-up)!

—

Years ago, I off-handedly told my now-husband about a small delightful fantasy…a piñata, but instead of being filled with jolly ranchers and tootsie rolls, it’d be stuffed with ferrero rochers. I completely forgot about that conversation. Two years ago, on my birthday, he made this wish come true!

ferrero rocher piñata prep

So let’s normalize talking about our wishes and dreams, to both get the clarity around what it is we want, and so that those around around can help us make those wishes into realities. In that way, when you want something perhaps the universe will indeed conspire to help you achieve it¹.

Do you find the language around goal-setting more relatable, or language around manifestation and the universe more relatable?

1. This language is from The Alchemist, by Paulo Coehlo. I sometimes find the universe language very romantic and beautiful, so I am always finding ways to bridge the language to my belief systems.