Return of the Jedi was released in theaters when I was four years old. Although I was young, I will never forget the opening scene from this cult classic. Princess Leia in disguise enters Jabba the Hutt’s palace and attempts to free Han Solo. Of course, she gets captured. Luke Skywalker, now a Jedi, comes to save the day using the Force. I always remember big Jabba the Hutt saying, “he’s using an old Jedi mind trick.” From then on I was intrigued by the power of the Force.
We are a lot closer to using the Force than we think. In fact, at Genuine Recruiting we have used the Force to achieve our sourcing and recruiting goals, and you can use it to achieve your goals too.
You’re probably thinking, that sounds crazy! But let me tell you a story.
We recently had a goal to acquire a new client and make a certain number of placements. One weekend I decided to use the Force to accomplish this task. I spent lots of time over the weekend focusing on achieving it. When I returned to the office on Monday, my phone rang. It was an existing client asking me to help place a position that they were hoping to get filled that week. Later that day I was focused on sourcing a possible candidate that I knew because her company tried to recruit me in the past. Strangely enough the next day she sent me her resume. She was perfect for the position, and we made the placement.
That same day I received a call from a former employee that recently worked at a company we had been gathering intelligence on as a potential client. My old colleague employee gave me some valuable information. The very next day, the owner of that company called me and asked me for a proposal.
Finally, on Wednesday, I had a meeting with a company to discuss a book that I’m writing. But when I arrived the owner spent the first 45 minutes talking about sales positions he needed to fill and, believe it or not, he asked me if we could help him. It was not a coincidence that all of these people were contacting me out of thin air. It was because I had used the Force.
So how did I do it?
First off, it starts with a goal. You must know what you want to use the Force on. Goal setting is an incredibly magical event that taps into the Force. Locke and Latham wrote a book called Goal Setting: A Motivational Technique That Works. In this book, they cite over 18 years of studies across multiple companies in various industries in regards to goal setting. One of their major finds was that “people who are given specific, challenging goals perform better than people who are given specific, easy goals, vague goals (such as do your best), or no goals.”
There you have it. Set a goal and you will outperform others. Set a more challenging goal and you will outperform other goal setters. Part of a Jedi’s ethics is to use the force not just for anything but for the greater good. So it is used to accomplish bigger, more challenging goals.
Second, once you have a goal, you must channel into the Force through your mind. The mind can create results. Author James Allen states in his book As a Man Thinketh, “every action and feeling is preceded by a thought.” And body language and vision board expert Kirk Duncan, who is the founder of 3KeyElements, says that “thoughts create emotions, emotions create actions, and actions create results.”
It’s a simplistic ideology. However, the biggest problem lies within negativity. According to psychologists as cited by 3KeyElements, we have over 65,000 negative thoughts a day on average, which makes up roughly 80% of our thoughts in a day. Isn’t that amazing? A vast majority of our thoughts are telling us not to accomplish our goals. You can be much more successful if you’re able to turn that 80% of your negative thoughts around, or even just a larger portion of them.
This leads us to the third step of using the Force. Duncan further explains that once we have a goal in mind, we must do three things to make it a reality. We must see it. We must hear it. And we must feel it.
The best way to see it is to draw a picture of your goal, cut a picture out of a magazine, or print an image off that depicts your purpose. Stare at it often and envision your goals becoming accomplished. Next, create phrases that that express the accomplishment of that goal and say those phrases often. Such as, “people want to do business with us.” Last, find a way to feel it. I prefer music to play along as I envision and declare my accomplishment of that goal. Those three key elements as he calls them will help you transfer your goals and your thoughts to reality.
So that’s how I did it. That’s how I used the Force, an old Jedi mind trick, to accomplish my goals that week. Would you enjoy more help to achieve your goals this week? It may be time to embrace your inner Star Wars geek and tap into the Force yourself.