There Is No Magic Pill
But this formula comes pretty close
“Don’t you ever read anything just for fun?” came the barb from my younger sister.
Having shared a bedroom with her until I was around thirteen, we’d been best friends during our childhood and would still have each other’s backs today if push came to shove, but by the time we reached our teens, our differences—especially in our approaches to and outlooks on life—couldn’t have become more stark.
Me, the optimist. She, the ‘realist’ (aka pessimist). Me, the spiritual-but-not-religious. She, the staunch atheist. Me, a serial seeker of everything to do with human nature, optimal living, and our ultimate purpose for being. She, an ardent skeptic of anything that’s not (yet) scientifically proven, who’d spent most of her career working in a dark fishbowl of cynicism (known as the production room for the 6 o’clock and 11 o’clock news).
If there’s a book about how to live better, work better, think better, feel better, or be better—Wayne Dyer, Louise Hay, Napoleon Hill, Eckhart Tolle—I’ve probably read it. If there was a teacher running a workshop, hosting a retreat, leading a mastery course, or publishing a new framework—chances are good I’ve found my way there too. Tony Robbins. Barbara Sher. Mike Dooley. Martha Beck.
The complete list of people and philosophies I’ve sought to learn from is much, much longer.
These kinds of books and programs were ‘fun’ for me, although I wasn’t looking for entertainment. I was looking for a key. The thing—the practice, the principle, the breakthrough—that would finally help me make sense of life and being human—and give me some reliable way to navigate it all—especially through the tougher stretches (with which I’m well-acquainted).
I’d been driven hard in that search for a long time, most intensely after one particularly long and challenging stretch of losses many years ago—not the least of which was when my sweet and gentle mom, after years of struggle and years of us thinking she’d put the worst behind her, tragically took her own life.
It steeled me in my determination to find tools that worked, not just theoretically, but practically and reliably enough to actually change the trajectory of a life.
The pattern hiding everywhere
What I found, after years of studying and sifting through everything I could get my hands on—East and West, old and new, ancient wisdom and modern science—is that almost every credible teacher and researcher was pointing at the same handful of practices.
Not necessarily presented using identical techniques (at least not on the surface), and certainly using all kinds of different languages and terminology. But they were the same underlying ingredients and principles. Repeated, in slightly different forms, by people who had often never heard of each other—across centuries, across continents, across radically different traditions and disciplines.
Eventually I started writing them down and rearranging them in different orders, playing with what might emerge as I tried to find a way to remember them all. I wanted a go-to formula, a guidebook, some kind of system that would help me not just ‘get through’ my days, but ideally, master my life.
What I came up with was an acronym that captures all of these ‘ingredients for optimal living’—and it happens to spell out the words MAGIC & MIRACLES. Each letter represents one of the ingredients.
I call it the Magic & Miracles Formula.
Every ingredient is a practice that’s accessible to practically anyone, anywhere, regardless of income, age, gender, or belief system. Each one is supported by serious work across multiple traditions—from contemplative paths thousands of years old to neuroscience research being published today. And together, when practiced with even modest consistency, they reliably produce something I can only describe as the conditions under which your life gets better. The conditions that create happenings that might sometimes feel like ‘magic’ and ‘miracles’ in your life.
Not in a dramatic, overnight, before-and-after kind of way (although sometimes that can happen, especially once you’ve been practicing for a while). Not always in ways that are empirically measurable (although more and more, they are). Not in ways that make you impervious to all the painful things in life (although more and more, you will be—not from being hardened, but from being so deeply rooted that you’ll be able to weather the storms that pass through your life without letting them break you—at least not permanently).
And always in real, noticeable, and sustainable kinds of ways.
So I put the formula together and made it available for free to everyone—you can find it at the link in my P.S. below.
But first, I want to share the deeper story of where it came from. And what else I think it actually points to.
Why I think these practices keep showing up
Here’s the part that fascinates me—and that I’m still exploring, with a kind of curious devotion that I’ve come to think I’ll probably never outgrow.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these particular practices keep surfacing across so many wildly different teachers and traditions. I don’t even think it’s just a function of the core elements of human nature being relatively consistent across cultures and eras—although that certainly is part of it.
I think these practices keep surfacing because they’re all pointing at something true. Something woven through all the different vocabularies and frameworks—including my own Magic & Miracles Formula—that we humans have developed over thousands of years. Something that the ancient contemplative traditions each described in their own ways, that modern neuroscience is now beginning to explain in other ways, that mystics and physicists and poets and therapists have all been circling around with their own particular tools, for all of time.
There’s something consistent and true that underpins all of it.
I approach life now with my working hypothesis that “magic and miracles” are just the words we historically—and still currently—use for the things that science can’t yet explain. Every year, more evidence emerges about how these practices actually work—what they do in the brain, in the body, in the nervous system, and in the energetic fields that surround us that we’re only beginning to be able to measure. Many of the ingredients in this formula have already been explained by current-day science, and I believe the rest of the ingredients will eventually—even if not in my lifetime—be too.
You don’t have to be mindful about the fact that gravity is at play in order to make sure your cream finds its way into your coffee every morning, rather than into the air. You don’t have to be able to explain technologically how an app on your smartphone lets your voice and image travel instantly through the ether in order for you to talk to your friend who’s on the other side of the planet ‘face to face’, in real time. So until the day comes—if ever—that we’re able to officially explain all the mysteries of the universe, I’m content to use what we already know works...even if we don’t yet have the means to substantiate it.
And what works, beautifully and consistently, are the practices in the Magic & Miracles Formula.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts
When I started using and sharing this framework, I noticed that people often gravitate to using one or two of the ingredients in particular, and they lean on those more than the others. I often fall back into that habit too. It happens, and it’s fine. No harm, no foul.
But what you’ll discover is that using the combination of practices does something none of the individual ones do on their own. It’s as if each of the ingredients amplifies, accelerates, and deepens the others. As if the morning and evening practices bring more liveliness and authenticity to the all-day practices, and the all-day practices make the morning and evening ones feel almost effortless. All the practices foster feelings of presence and connection and love. They feel joyful and easy, not tedious or painful. They feel like play, not work.
The recommendations that come from the wisest voices—across time, space, geography, culture, and discipline—often focus on what’s different in their approach, arguing how the other methods fall short, or for how theirs is superior.
But if you strip away the surface appearance and proprietary language around the principles and practices that universally make life feel meaningful, peaceful, and joyful, it turns out they’re remarkably consistent—across time, space, geography, culture, and discipline.
The irony isn’t lost on me that I’m now offering you yet another version of ‘proprietary language’ with my Magic & Miracles Formula. But a memorable framework is a more useful tool than a vague acknowledgement about universal truths—and I’d rather give you an easy-to-remember doorway into the house, than leave the collective wisdom locked away in separate rooms.
The invitation
If you’re curious what’s in the Magic & Miracles Formula, it’s yours for free. No strings attached. If you download it (link in the P.S. below), you’ll get an email each time I post a piece of writing like this (once a week or so), or when something special or out of the ordinary is happening at Dreamsmith®, but you can unsubscribe anytime—even instantly after you download your free PDF. No hard feelings. I want everyone to have access to it, no matter whether you choose to stick around or not.
Inside, you’ll find an explanation of each of the practices, plus the research and reasoning behind them, and suggestions for how to incorporate them easily into your day without taking up much extra time at all.
It’s a booklet I would have loved my younger self to have. It’s a guide I wish I could go back and place lovingly into my mom’s hands when she was younger. I can’t do either of those things now...but I can pay it forward—to you, to others, to our children and grandchildren, to all our future selves.
The Magic & Miracles Formula is both practical and philosophical. It’s a synthesis of what’s worked for a very long time, for a very large number of people, across countless different paths and backgrounds. It gathers wisdom that runs deeper than any one single tradition or discipline, yet honours all of them. I’d love to hear how it works for you.
These are the kinds of things we’ll keep talking about here in The Chrysalis.
And if someone in your life could use a simple, accessible framework to help them move through these complicated times with more grace and internal peace, share this post with them today.
There are magic and miracles waiting for you. 💫
Let’s gently become together. 💛
Kelly
P.S. The full Magic & Miracles Formula is available as a free, instant download at kellywagnerkw.com/magic-miracles. Ready for you whenever you’re ready for it. And don’t forget to hit ‘Subscribe’ below to get notified next time I post here. It’s free too.