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Hocus-pocus: The Power of Magical Thinking
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
—Aleister Crowley
I hate the concept of luck, especially when people try to apply it to me. Yes, it’s true: Hundreds of thousands of businesses fail. Mine succeeded. Was that all just because I “got lucky”? I don’t really think so.
What I hate about luck is that it implies being devoid of responsibility. It implies that you can do nothing and then step into success as easily as stepping into a pile of dog poop on the sidewalk. It implies that success is something given to a knighted and often undeserving few. Luck tells us that we don’t control our own fate, and that our path to success or failure is written by someone, or something, entirely outside ourselves. Luck lets us believe that whatever happens, whether good or bad, it’s not to our credit or our fault. That is why I don’t buy luck.
But I do buy magic.
I’m a member of the Magic Castle, which is a private magician’s club housed in an old Victorian mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Its floors are carpeted, its waiters tuxedoed, and its drinks strong. Quite often, my boyfriend and I are the youngest ones there, but in my mind, there is no better or more glamorous place to spend a Saturday night, all dressed up with a champagne cocktail in hand, watching an aging showgirl do a tap-dance shuffle on stage while a man works the crowd with a dove in one pocket and a few card tricks in the other.
There’s that kind of magic, for sure. But there’s also the everyday kind of magic that we make for ourselves. And that’s really not magic at all. It’s just recognizing the fact that we control our thoughts and our thoughts control our lives. This is an extremely simple, totally straightforward concept, but for a lot of people, it’s so alien that it might as well be magic. Chances are that you know someone who is really negative. You know the type: always complaining, getting fired, having her car broken into, his girlfriend is cheating on him. These people are convinced that life is shit . . . and so it is. It’s the age-old concept of like attracts like, or the law of attraction. You get back what you put out, so you might as well think positively, focus on visualizing what you want instead of getting distracted by what you don’t want, and send the universe your good intentions so that it can send them right back.
The success of Nasty Gal has been a wild and fast ride, and I’m not going to lie: There were times when that ride has been absolutely terrifying. For about the first year after the business really started to take off, I felt like a lamb being led to slaughter. We were hiring like crazy and getting tons of attention from press and starting to get noticed by investors. Every day I got up, went to work, and got hit in the face with something that I never could have predicted from a business that I’d originally started so I wouldn’t have to talk to people. I went from doing small tasks with measurable results (selling more clothes!) to abstractions like going on E! News to talk about what’s hot, or speaking at a conference. I didn’t want to talk about my job—I wanted to do my job. But then talking about my job became my job. Even worse, people expected me to be a certain way just because I’d accomplished something. A sizeable part of me resented the fact that I had to choose my words carefully.
I often wondered, Was this a choice? Because it sure as hell doesn’t always feel like it. But I did choose it—even if growing a huge business was never my singular goal, every small choice that I made along the way was something that contributed to where I am now. Every time I got up in the morning instead of saying “screw it” and sleeping in, every time I spent a few extra minutes on a product description to make it perfect, I was choosing my fate and sowing the seeds of my future. It’s really hard to chart the path that led here, but it happened, and I did it.
In my book (and this is my book!) magical thinking is the alchemy that you can use to visualize and project yourself into the professional and personal life that you want. I’m not talking about stuff like The Secret self-help book, which basically tells you to tape a picture of a car to the wall and then sit on the couch and wait for someone to drop it off in your driveway. I am talking about visualization that works when we actually get off our asses and do stuff. How totally crazy is that? Each time you make a good decision or do something nice or take care of yourself; each time you show up to work and work hard and do your best at everything you can do, you’re planting seeds for a life that you can only hope will grow beyond your wildest dreams. Take care of the little things—even the little things that you hate—and treat them as promises to your own future. Soon you’ll see that fortune favors the bold who get shit done.
Chaos Magic
Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
—Roald Dahl
Chaos magic is the idea that a particular set of beliefs serves as an active force in the world. In other words, we choose what and how we believe, and our beliefs are tools that we then use to make things happen . . . or not. Though this comes from a school of magical thought, it actually seems really practical and “no duh” to me. It all goes back to the red string of my imaginary kite—if you believe something, other people will believe it, too. You can’t convince someone else—whether it’s a potential employer, a loan officer at the car dealership, or someone you’ve been crushing on—that you’re amazing and terrific if you don’t actually think you are. This isn’t the false confidence that comes from getting a bunch of “likes” on your Instagram selfies, but a deep-down, unshakeable self-confidence that persists even when things aren’t going all that great.
A big practice in chaos magic is the use of sigils, which are abstract words or symbols you create and embed with your wishes. To create a sigil, start by writing out your desire in a single word, a couple of words, or a short sentence. Then remove all the duplicate letters, then all the vowels—basically, you can do whatever you want here—until you’re left with a bunch of lines that you can combine into one symbol. Then you put the piece of paper in a book, in your wallet, or some other place where it won’t get lost, and just forget about it.
The real “magic” of sigils is that you’re only forgetting about it on the surface level. Taking the time to think about what you really want and doing something about it, even if it’s just drawing some lines on a piece of paper, embeds these wishes into your subconscious, and then your subconscious makes it happen, even when the conscious part of your brain is busy doing something else.
I treat my Internet passwords as modern-day sigils, embedding them with wishes or promises to me, or even financial goals for the company. (Hey, I never made any claims to be normal here.) That way, every time I go to log in anywhere, I’m subtly reminding myself of what I’m working for. This kind of intention setting has worked for me. Dozens of times a day, as I tap out a few strokes on the keyboard, I’m reminding myself of the bigger picture. This ensures that when I’m bogged down with day-to-day bureaucracy and details, I don’t lose sight of what I really want.
I’m not trying to say that this kind of intention setting will always work, because you can’t just type “abajilliondollars” whenever you log in to Facebook and all of a sudden become Warren Buffett. It is, though, a heretic’s version of kneeling by your bed and saying a prayer every night. It’s intention setting. It doesn’t have to be as hard and fast as saying “I want a job at a fashion company,” but it can be something like “I want a creative job” or “I want to have fun at work.” Keep reminding yourself over and over that this is what you want, and you’ll soon find that the more you know what you want, the less you’re willing to put up with what you don’t. One of the best things about life—a reason not to go blindly after one goal and one goal only—is that sometimes it will take you to something that is way cooler than anything you would have consciously set out to do in the first place. I never had one particular goal or dream that I was working toward; all I knew was that I wanted to do something awesome, and was open to whatever shape or form this awesomeness took. I wanted to be a photographer; I wanted to go to art school; I wanted to play in a band; and when I started the eBay store, all of this came in handy even though I would never have associated these things.