The List: Shout Your Dreams Out Loud to Make Them Come True

What an exciting and inspiring book! Yuval Abramovitz turned a website into a Kickstarter project. In that sense, it’s a proof of concept known as The List: Shout Your Dreams Out Loud to Make Them Come True. It works.

Anyone who is an accomplished achiever of goals will tell you that it’s straightforward and simple. Figure out what you want, make it specific, give it a deadline, and tell people about it so that they can help you bring it into reality. Ah, but if goal-setting is so simple, why do so many people try it and fail? This is one of the strengths of The List. Abramovitz has taught this material as a workshop to thousands of people, as well as sharing it with anonymous commenters on the web, and as a result he’s heard every possible objection, criticism, and complaint. For those who tend to be their own naysayers, these chapters should be really helpful.

The author credits his recovery from paralysis as a teenager to the inspiration he derived from creating lists of goals for himself. I find it very hard to believe that anyone who knows he spent two years stuck in a wheelchair would still troll Abramovitz about the power of goals, but heck, who knows what motivates trolls anyway.

Does the manifesting part of shouting your dreams out loud really help them to come true? I say YES, and the reason is my little parrot, Noelle. I took a course once in which one of the exercises was to go to the front of the room and share your “outrageous dream” with the class. I went last because I had no idea what I was going to share. I was deep in grief over the death of a pet I’d had for a decade. When I got up there, a shy person stricken with stage fright, I blurted out that my outrageous dream was “to find somebirdie to call my own.” I explained about the parrot-shaped hole in my heart. “I have an idea,” called out a woman in the back. A couple of phone calls later, somehow, this sweet little fluffball came to live with me. The course hadn’t even finished yet. Now we’ve been together for ten years and she’s the little gray love of my life.

I already published my list of goals for 2018, like I do every year on this blog, but The List got me so worked up that I made another one! I made a list, like the book suggests, of ten goals I want to accomplish in the next two years.

The book itself is a well-designed workbook full of cute illustrations. There are places to fill in your own lists; for instance, I started with the list of “Silly Things I Would Like to Do.” There are also some provocative journal prompts and ideas for general self-improvement, like when the author uses his lists to inspire him to get mad less often. The List offers suggestions for how to reconcile with family members, set boundaries, deal with naysayers, restructure goals to make them achievable, and lots more. If you have an outrageous dream, or even a minor dream, sit down with The List and start planning it today.

Favorite quotes:

“SO WHAT ON EARTH IS STOPPING US FROM SHOUTING OUT OUR DREAMS FROM THE ROOFTOPS?”

“We enjoy whining! In fact, it’s one of our favorite practices.”