Check out this Q&A with Dr. Dave Asomaning and Brittany New on the topic of his new book launch for Nightmares to Miracles, now available on Amazon.
Q: Thank you, Dave, for doing this interview with me today in honor of your recent book launch for Nightmares to Miracles. My first question is: what got you interested in this topic in the first place: the combination of “miracles” and coaching?
A: The journey to studying miracles and developing a “miracle mindset” in combination with my executive coaching enterprise is a long journey that I will try to summarize quickly. It parallels my own personal biography, intellectually and spiritually. I was raised in Ghana, West Africa and was on my way to medical school after high school, as it is done usually there. But in 1977, I had the opportunity to come to the United States for college where I was introduced to a liberal arts curriculum. This was very different and more diverse compared to the heavily science-focused curriculum I was used to. I was then exposed to a number of new fields that interested me. This, in combination with a spiritual awakening I experienced in 1980 during my senior year, drove me further toward the subjects of religion and philosophy. My interest in medicine diminished as I pivoted toward, at one point, the direction of becoming an episcopal priest. I even considered law school and business school before this. Eventually though, I became a psychotherapist in New York City for a number of years with a focus on integrating psychology and spirituality. I then became interested in helping my clients with their leadership projects, and with the input of a mentor of mine, I moved into executive coaching. During my Ph.D. work, I was delving deeper into the relationship between synchronicity and the miraculous, and at some point it became apparent to me that I should combine all of my passions into one career path - i.e., miracle-minded executive coaching. Furthermore, A Course In Miracles became a cornerstone of my spiritual life which added to the foundations of my coaching methodology.
Q: Would you have described yourself as a spiritual person always or was that something you adopted later in life?
A: I grew up in a secular household. My father had a Ph.D. in botany (plant physiology), and he taught me about plants as a child, but he was not a “believer” so to speak. I never attended church with my father once. I remember attending church one time as a youngster with with my mother. At 10 years old, I went to an all-boys boarding school where I was introduced to a very strict and traditional Christianity and I felt pressured to convert. I did convert under that pressure and for fear of a fiery hellish afterlife. Later on, my spirituality developed into something more tangible and ecstatic when I had my epiphany. I vividly remember this experience during which for 5 to 10 minutes I felt my mind expand and felt a sense of aliveness that I had never felt before. This launched me into a quest of discovery on the theme of spirituality. It didn’t feel explainable from a traditionally scientific perspective, so I sought out other pathways of explanation for this phenomenon. All in all, this discovery has led me to the work I do today.
Q: That’s incredible that you were able to find that spark of curiosity at such a young age! Speaking of curiosity, what other interests, hobbies, and passions do you have in your day-to-day life?
A: My main hobby is studying and playing the guitar. I’m no Jimi Hendrix, but over the years I get better and better, and I can pretty much play any song that I enjoy - and have fun with it! I’m still working on my skill and it’s been a rewarding journey. In addition, I truly love watching movies. I even watch the same movies over and over again - sometimes 20 times - and I find it incredible how each time you can glean something new. Another one of my favorite pastimes is what I call “therapy driving.” This may not be the best for the environment, but I find it extremely therapeutic to go on a half hour drive to allow my thoughts to flow.
Q: I can definitely relate to that! Living in LA, the traffic was horrible and “therapy driving” was essential to get through it. So why don’t you tell us, what your book, Nightmares to Miracles, is about?
A: The book is a direct outgrowth of my coaching practice. It is structured pretty much in the same way that I introduce clients to my work and how I conduct each session with them. The book is an attempt to capture what I understand to be the “secret sauce” of my coaching method. My course, by the same title as the book, has many parallels to the book’s content. As far as the content goes, the book is about supporting CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs, and other leaders to develop their miracle mindsets, but anyone can get value from it if they are interested in miracle mindsets. (I have selected the audience that I’ve chosen for the book simply because those are the types of clients that I coach in my executive coaching, and that’s what I am familiar with from over 20 years in this field, but anyone can benefit from my method). So what I mean by “miracle mindset,” is a way of thinking and practicing mentally, such that we live more and more in a zone of “limitless release” or freedom from all limitation in life. This is a state of mind in which we release ourselves from all of the illusions of life, including especially fear, guilt, anger, resentment, and grievances, and derive power from the Divine to find solutions to problems that seem impossible to solve. Living with a miracle mindset is the practice of being connected to this Source in order to generate such solutions.
Q: So what would you say that you are hoping to achieve on a greater scale or in terms of your “legacy” with this book?
A: Thank you for that question. Just like any author, I would like to reach as wide an audience as possible with the book. I hope to reach as many people as possible that would be open to this kind of information, and I will do everything in my power, and with Spirit’s help, to reach that audience. In one of my mastermind groups dedicated to A Course in Miracles, we use this excerpt a lot from Lesson 97 in A Course in Miracles: “Spirit am I, a holy Child of God, free of all limits, safe and healed and whole, free to forgive, and free to save the world.” This is saying that as a miracle worker, or a leader, increasingly you get more and more confident that this work is helping your life to settle down so that your primary concern and challenge can be to help others to achieve the same state of contentment, and so they too might be spreaders of light in their own communities, creating a ripple effect of light. That would be my greatest intention with this book, simply to help as many people as possible get to that state of true peace and leadership.
Q: That’s so profound and important. You are spreading this message of love and light in 2021 for today’s audience so that they can perpetuate the same messages in their lives and beyond. With that said, do you have any tips for readers aspiring to publish their own books, especially in the self-help or personal development realm?
A: I have a couple of tips. From my own experience, it took me 10 years to finish the Ph.D. process, and the outcome was my dissertation called Signs and Wonders about synchronicity and the miraculous, but I was in the grip of the ego during that process: full of fear, guilt, resentment, and pushing and pushing through rather than surrendering to Higher Power. The journey can be done through pushing and struggling or it can be done with surrender to Higher Power and and thereby with relative ease. I know that there was more struggle in my doctoral process than there had to be. So I encourage our audience to be aware of the distinction between doing something through the effort of the ego or doing something through surrender to High Power. That might mean waiting on timing and inspiration, and prevailing through the perception that things “not working” exactly as you’d like them to or expect them to can all be to your advantage if you allow Higher Power to be in charge. Surrender to Higher Power for better work flow and results. Ask Spirit, “What is my purpose in writing this book? Show me my purpose. Guide me in what to say. Introduce me to the right people,” and so on. Lean in and rely on Source to help you through every step of this very large and seemingly intimidating journey of manifesting your book or other purposeful projects. The right people, ideas, and resources will show up miraculously at the right time.
Q: That’s great advice! So to conclude this interview, how can people find your book online?
A: The book is available on Amazon at this link: www.amazon.com/Nightmares-to-Miracles. If you want to search for the book using the search bar, type in my name David Asomaning rather than the book’s title because there is an older and obsolete version on Amazon which will also appear for that query.
You can also learn more about the book on my website www.nightmarestomiracles.com/book. I’m also very happy to add that, as a breakthrough for the whole team of people helping with this book, we managed to reach the Amazon Bestseller designation in about 4 or 5 different categories right after we launched!
A: That’s amazing! And I saw that there are lots of raving reviews already! Congratulations, truly, on your book launch. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Q: If you like the energy of what we are doing, please get involved through our social media channels. If you’d like to go deeper, check out our YouTube channel where we have monthly “Miracle Conversations” going much deeper into the theme of developing miracle mindsets using A Course in Miracles. And finally, thank you, Brittany, for all of your help, and our partnership during this process.
