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I believe in manifestation. You know, the idea (based on the Law of Attraction) that your thoughts and feelings directly affect or even dictate what happens in your life. Manifestation is quite mainstream in my age group. I know very many people that consider it a way of life. In the spaces that I occupy, both in real life and online, manifesting seems to be a given, but I’ve had a strange thought recently.
What if Manifesting is a Hoax?
What if it’s a lie perfectly curated for millennials, and we’re all just falling for it? When I first thought about this, it made me laugh. A topical laugh that was doing a bad job of hiding a growing sense of panic that the possibility might prove true. But, with further analysis, I realized that I don’t care. Even if manifestation proved to be the biggest of woo-woo scams, I would still choose to believe in it. Why? I have 3 very good reasons.
1. It Forces Me to be Mindful
Believing in manifestation means you hold the belief that ‘what you think about, comes about’. This makes you ultra-aware of what you’re thinking about, which I think is a good thing. In the beginning, you can spin yourself into a frenzy of being constantly worried that every bad thought is about to cause disaster in your life- but this is only while you don’t understand the concept of mindfulness in its entirety.
Being aware of your thoughts isn’t about creating a boogie man who lives in your brain. It’s actually about detachment from identification with your thoughts as yourself. It’s about creating space between your thoughts, and then creating space between yourself and your thoughts until you come to see them as something completely separate from you.
So, if you have a bad thought, you can detach from it without trapping yourself in the belief that it makes you a bad person. You learn that you are not your thoughts and that they do not govern you. You govern them. This provides an unparalleled level of freedom.
If this was all that believing in manifestation granted me, I’d be thrilled, but there’s more.
2. It Makes Me More Positive
This is tied to the first point, but it’s slightly different. When I’m hyper-aware of my thoughts and feelings, I naturally know that negative thoughts and emotions make me feel bad. They drain my spirit and my energy levels. Over time I’ve come to identify the physical tells that my body gives me when I’m veering into a negative thought pattern; I feel tense, often in the pit of my stomach; my heart rate goes up- my body becomes an unpleasant place.
By training myself to be sensitive to these changes, I can stop that tide of emotions and sensations before they take over me. I’ve found that I can often achieve this by just asking myself one simple question- is that true?
For example, say I watch a TV show that portrays an awful, narcissistic, self-absorbed husband who treats his wife rather terribly. (TV is a great example because the things we see can easily penetrate our psyche and give us the illusion that we’re experiencing what we see. That’s why we get attached to fictional characters). If I’m absorbed in the show, I can quickly forget myself and my reality and start to use the filter of the show to color my own life.
In this way, I can start to look at my own husband and see the narcissistic husband who ill-treats his wife. Suddenly, right as I’m watching the show, I become angry at him for all the terrible things the man on TV is doing.
This is obviously idiotic, but it’s still something that happens because of how porous our brains are. We tend to just let things in and let them affect us, especially when we haven’t developed the skill of mindfulness. When we are aware of our thoughts and actions, it becomes easier to stop ourselves from being swept by a wave of negativity.
In the above example, mindful me would catch myself as I was beginning to get angry at my husband and ask myself- but is any of this true? This would allow me enough space to come back to myself and my reality, and realize that no, it’s not. My husband is, in fact, very loving, empathic, and treats me wonderfully. So my anger dissipates and I’m able to treat the show on TV as just that, without my emotional involvement.
Zooming out of this example, not only does being more mindful of my thoughts and feelings help me to recognize negativity as it comes up so I can purposefully release it, but it also allows me to actively choose positivity instead.
Being positive is all the rage in manifestation communities, and it can quickly get out of hand with people trying to be positive about every shitty situation in their lives in the name of ‘good vibes only’. This is stupid, unrealistic, and harmful. It’s what the internet has branded ‘toxic positivity’ and it’s not what I’m talking about here.
I’m talking about giving yourself the space to recognize (and experience) your negative emotions, and then to choose differently. How long you allow yourself to stew in the negativity is often a question of how quickly you can catch those negative thoughts/ emotions and how disciplined you are in their acknowledgment and release. I like to do this as quickly as possible because, generally speaking, feeling negative sucks, and feeling positive is great. It feels good to feel good.
In the above example, after releasing my misplaced anger at my husband, my mood will naturally rise from the depths of the negative space to a neutral place. I could stop here, but I also have the opportunity to raise it even higher to a positive space. I always choose this option.
In this case, I would do this by spending a few minutes thinking about all the great traits that my husband has, how much I love him and how grateful I am for our relationship and our life. Just a few minutes of these positive emotions and I’m bursting at the seams from joy and gratitude.
I invite you to take the time to acknowledge the gap between where I started (being mad at him) to where I ended up (being grateful for him). That is the power of mindfulness. It makes me more positive and much happier.
3. It Makes Me Feel Empowered
I think believing that I solely have control over what happens in my life is the most empowered viewpoint that I can have. There is no grander way to take ownership of myself and my actions and their outcomes. Again, this viewpoint, if done carelessly and without the filter of a discerning, adult brain, can become toxic and disempowering.
For example, taking ownership for all that happens in your life doesn’t mean blaming children for being abused and reasoning that they brought that into their lives, or whatever other obviously harmful claims.
I like to think of this principle as applying to people from the time that they are actually self-aware and actively connecting their thoughts and emotions to the outcomes they experience in their outward lives. This excuses most children, who tend not to have that level of self-awareness until it’s taught to them (if they’re lucky), or until they grow up and stumble into mindfulness teachings all by themselves (like happens with so many of us).
If I have a bad day, I alone am responsible for framing it that way, and I can as easily shift to framing it differently. If I don’t like my life, I can sit non-judgmentally and acknowledge all the decisions and steps I took to get me to this point. I can assess my thoughts and feelings on the areas of my life I want to improve, and more than not, I’ll likely find that they are negative. From there, I can work to release the negative views and work to develop positive ones.
A positive mindset on any topic leads to different actions than a negative mindset on that same topic. Different actions lead to different outcomes. Consistent action in the direction I want to go in leads to traction towards my goal, which eventually leads to the achievement of that goal.
It really can be that simple and, for me, being a part of the manifestation movement has helped me to see it that way. Sure, it can get silly (and fast) because it’s an easy space for people to sell all sorts of gimmicks. This is where personal responsibility comes in, where each of us can decide what we want to intake based on what resonates with us. Not all of it is true, and some of it is just straight garbage. But, some of it is perspective widening, which can be life-changing.
My journey into the world of manifesting has made me a better person. I am more mindful, more positive, and more empowered as the reality-making force in my own life. I think that’s worth the occasional nonsense, and that’s why I’ll keep believing.
What do you think? I'd love to know.
Happy manifesting,
Nonjabulo
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