Meet Barbara Dickinson

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Barbara Dickinson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Barbara below.

Barbara, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

I didn’t find purpose in a single “aha” moment; I found it by following a pattern. My entire 34-year career as a strategic executive at the US Federal Reserve was about identifying systems, optimizing processes, and helping people succeed within those structures.
What I eventually realized was that the most powerful system we can optimize is our own internal one. My purpose wasn’t just to manage infrastructure for an organization; it was to manage and coach human potential. This led me to my certifications in Focusing and the Gallup StrengthsFinder. Once I retired, I was able to blend in another passion – wishing as the path to a more fulfilling life.
Now, my purpose is simply to take my great passions—the understanding that what we put our attention on is what we attract to our lives, the disciplined action of the Fed and the deep wisdom of the Felt Sense—and translate them into tangible tools. Whether it’s through teaching someone Interactive Focusing to navigate a difficult relationship or showing someone how to craft a wish for their Wish Work, the purpose is the same: to help people access their own inner process for life-forward movement.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I focus on Applied Inner Wisdom. This means I take the subtle, powerful skills of the body—like the felt sense—and use them as practical tools for business, leadership, and personal growth. Most recently, with my co-author, Margie Herrick, we have published our proudest work, “The Encyclopedia of Wishing,” delivering the best of wish work, including how to get started, what wishes to make, and stories of wishes come true. And I have partnered with LearnFocusing.org to bring what we know about creating more fulfilling lives to school students and their families.
What I do now is actually a synthesis of my long career:
Process and Strategy: My foundation is the strategic planning and organizational behavior expertise honed over more than three decades at the US Federal Reserve. I teach people how to realize their hearts’ desires, access their inner wisdom, and run their lives with confidence and competence.
The Inner Tool Kit: I teach the world’s best inner communication tools: Focusing (deep self-awareness) and Thinking at the Edge (TAE) (innovative conceptual work).
The Wish Work: As a Wish Maven, I help people apply that inner wisdom to intentional creation. We look at the blocks and the felt sense of intention to craft meaningful wishes. The most exciting thing is seeing a wish come true through an unpredictable, yet perfect, path—a path the wisher could never have rationally plotted out.
I’m currently thrilled to be collaborating with a team on a new Interactive Focusing On-Demand Video Course—a project we call “Focusing-Oriented Project Management: Reimagining Teamwork from the Inside Out.” It’s an innovative model of team building that uses Focusing principles to manage projects from the inside out.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

The three most impactful things have been:
Pattern Recognition: For years at the Federal Reserve, I was trained to look at organizational flow, risk assessment, and process bottlenecks. Now, as a coach, I look for patterns of energy in people’s lives—the subtle habits and beliefs that either create blocks or lead to success.
Advice: Become a curious detective of your own life. Don’t just analyze results; analyze the patterns that led to them. Use your body as your data source. When a pattern works for you, keep it! When it doesn’t, find your heart’s desire for change and implement!
The Language of the Felt Sense (Deep Listening): This is the heart of Focusing—the skill of listening to the subtle, implicit knowing in the body. This allowed me to move beyond analytical thinking to accessing genuine wisdom.
Advice: Learn to pause. Before you react, decide, or plan, intentionally create space to check in with the whole of your body’s felt landscape. Trust that the most authentic information you need is already present there.
The Courage to Go All-In on Strengths: This is an area of knowledge anchored in my work with the Clifton StrengthsFinder. My success, from climbing the corporate ladder to launching the Wish Work, came from leveraging my natural talents—not from grinding away at my weaknesses.
Advice: Take a strengths assessment. Don’t wait to find your purpose; start by identifying what you are already great at. The question isn’t “What’s wrong with me?” but “What’s right with me, and how can I turn that volume up?”.

Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?

I believe it is far more effective—and frankly, more joyful—to go all in on our strengths.
This philosophy is the foundation of my work as a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach. The core premise is: You cannot be anything you want to be, but you can be a lot more of who you already are.
Think about it this way: if a child brings home a report card with A’s in English and Social Studies, but an F in Algebra, where would a parent instinctively spend the most time? Almost universally, we focus on the F. We spend all our energy trying to drag that F up to a C—a journey that is frustrating and draining for everyone involved.
When I first encountered the Clifton StrengthsFinder, the number one most important takeaway for me was that everything I was told was wrong with me were really strengths I just didn’t know how to leverage! Once I understood that universal wisdom, I set about applying my strengths in the most productive ways, and the results were beyond my imagination.
The Strengths approach asks a revolutionary question: What would happen if we studied success? What if we spent that time coaching the child to become an even more powerful writer, historian, or speaker? You get a much bigger return on investment by maximizing what is already a talent.
In my own life, I transitioned from a highly structured Federal Reserve environment to the creative, independent world of a writer and coach. I didn’t try to become a “better detail manager” (a potential weakness); I leaned into my strategic, futuristic systemic thinking (a strength) and applied it to a completely new domain—the internal process of my clients. The result is a career where I get to use my unique blend of talents every single day, which is the definition of life forward movement.

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Barbara J Dickinson

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