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What if there was a way to get everything you wanted? Better yet, what if you could get it with minimal effort and ease? Enter manifestation. It’s become a hot topic in the personal development world. As people become more open to the woo (the more mysterious parts of life), manifestation has become a technique in and of itself. In some situations, it’s replaced the effort needed to reach the success you desire. I tried it for myself, and I’m here to share all the lessons I learned. Bottom line, it didn’t work, but it’s not all bad. I did pick up some strategies that I love, but manifestation is flawed in its current cultural understanding. So let’s talk about that.

I wanted manifestation to work. I really did. I was a big believer in this idea that if you think it, you can have it. If you set your intention, if you cast your vision, believe hard enough, visualize enough, it will happen.

It’s an intriguing idea to think that we can create within so much of what we want, and out of that internal creation, it will manifest a physical representation of it.

What is manifestation

If you don’t know what manifesting is, here’s the primer in this context. Manifestation is the concept that when you set your intention, vision, and desires, remove the blocks, and align yourself to the energy of what you want to manifest, it will happen. This may be oversimplifying because if we wanted, we could dive into the metaphysics and quantum physics of it all. It’s super fascinating, and I can geek out on quantum physics application to our inner world with the best of them.

Manifestation has become popular personal growth lore, but it isn’t new. In fact, I’ve read books published 100 plus years ago talking about the subject. Movies and books like “The Secret” have captured people’s attention on the subject for decades.

Depending on who speaks on the subject, they will cover anything from spirituality, Jesus, laws of the universe, vision boards, mansions on the beach, and so much more.

I believed the hype for years.

I got caught up in the hype for many years. My experiment with manifestation has been at least a decade in the making but amped up in the last five years. I wanted it to work because it seemed like it worked for all the experts and gurus, so if I believed hard enough, it could work for me too.

I fluctuated from believing to attempting to hating to indulging to obsessing about manifestation for a long time. I tried all the tactics. I set my intentions. I created visions boards. I repeated affirmations multiple times a day. I create subliminal tracks recorded in my voice with affirmations that I plated on loop. I visualized, in detail, regularly this life that I wanted to create. I wrote it down. I made vision scripts, and I busted through limiting beliefs and doubts and worked hard to align my energy to the energy of what I wanted. (Quantum physics stuff, remember?) I consulted God, crystals, source, universe on the matter. I went deep into manifesting.

In fact, I spent so much time, effort, and energy on manifesting that I had no time, energy, or effort left to do the work. And here lies the biggest problem that has emerged out of manifestation going mainstream.

Somewhere in the messaging, we’ve lost the narrative that effort, consistency, diligence, determination, and resilience are all needed for success. And let’s define success before we go further because when I was the word success, I’m referring to your idea of success.

Success, for me, means that I’ve created a life that is balanced between making money doing what I love, being engaged with my life, being present with people, and embracing the entire human experience. (In a nutshell.)

For others, success could mean excelling as a parent, getting the promotion you’ve been wanting, staying sober for one more day, or getting out of bed even when your depression wants something different.

Success is personal and fluid, so let’s acknowledge that success defined by culture is unhealthy. Keeping up with the Joneses isn’t a success. You and you alone determine success.

So manifestation has become a technique taught to people to help them reach their version of success. But unfortunately, the messaging has become so polluted with the fun parts of manifestation that it left the rest out. Conveniently. I don’t want to delve too far into some of the corruption of personal development, but let’s not forget, it’s a business—a 39 billion dollar business in 2020 alone. Personal development companies need to make money just like the rest, but sometimes it comes at a cost to people. People like you and me.

Let’s look at two principals that are part of the manifestation narrative that individually are wonderful, and then a third principle that is missing from the conversation. (Spoiler alert: the third one is the most important but rarely discussed.)

First, know what you want.

The very beginning of manifesting the “life of your dreams” is to get crystal clear on what that is. What do you want your life to look like? What is a perfect day for you consist of? Your current situation in this step doesn’t limit you. You’re free to dream, to imagine, to indulge.
Manifestation teachers say that you first have to get crystal clear on what you desire so that you can put that desire out into the universe for delivery on your doorstep. How will the universe bring it to you if you don’t know? (This language is nearly word for word in what I’ve heard taught.)

From the beginning, we’re setting the stage for minimal effort and maximum results. In this first step, we’re creating an expectation that simply knowing what we want, and being crystal clear on it, is enough. Unfortunately, it’s not, but I’ll get to that soon.

This step was always my favorite. I’m naturally a visionary. I’m imaginative. I have a unique ability and skill set to see what isn’t there yet and translate it into words. I’ve used this professionally at organizations I worked with to help create plans and strategies to get us to the next level. Vision is fun for me. It’s natural. I have no problem closing my eyes and visualizing a perfect day. It’s almost as easy as breathing for me.

But vision, without action, doesn’t create results. When I was younger, I was sharing with my business mentor a visual that kept coming to my mind. I kept saying, “It’s like I’m standing on a mountain peak. And I can look at and see another peak nearby. That peak has everything I’m wanting. I’m the version of myself that I want to be on that peak. I’ve reached goals. I have the income, the status, the influence. It’s all on that peak. But I can’t get there. I see it all. It’s right there. But I can’t get there from here.”

She looked at me in her kind but assertive way and said, “Gentry. How do you get from one mountain peak to another?”

She paused while her words sank in, and I realized where she was going with this.

She continued, “You have to climb down the mountain your on, go through the valley, and climb up that peak. There are no shortcuts.”

Manifestation teaches a shortcut that doesn’t exist. If you want to get to the next peak, you have to go through the valley.

So, knowing what you want is the first step in manifestation, and it’s powerful. It’s necessary. It’s important. Having a vision gives you direction. Knowing what you want intimately helps you recognize when it’s happened. It becomes a north star that guides you. Picturing the life you want will help you take opportunities and pursue action that leads you there.

But creating a vision board, and staring at it all day without any other effort, will not manifest anything on the board.

Second, you have to remove the blocks.

Another valuable lesson in manifestation is identifying what helps you back and keeps you tripping over your feet. These limiting beliefs are programs that exist in your subconscious mind that cause you to sabotage whenever you’re close to getting what you want.

Limiting beliefs exist in most if not all of us. They form when we aren’t aware, usually in childhood, and they follow us around sabotaging our efforts.

I had a limiting belief that I was never good enough. It doesn’t matter who I am. I’m not enough. This played out over and over in my life. It kept me from giving my all in situations or opportunities because I was nervous that people might realize I was not good enough to have this position or influence. I didn’t want to be in a relationship because no one would ever love me, and I would get hurt repeatedly, so I didn’t date.

Ironically, the limiting belief that I wasn’t good enough caused me to act as if I wasn’t good enough.

When we address our limiting beliefs and the internal automatic programming of our subconscious mind running the show, we can have powerful breakthroughs, so I’m all for this teaching and the strategies that come with it. I’ve gone through numerous exercises from different leaders about removing limiting beliefs. Some have worked, and others haven’t. At the end of it all, however, I believe it’s important to know these exist. I don’t, however, think you have to overcome them to get what you want.

I think we can get so caught up in addressing our limiting beliefs that we aren’t putting effort into the action that takes us where we want to go. Are you sensing the theme yet?

I thought that if I overcame every limiting belief, I would be aligned energetically with all the goodness that the universe was bringing to me.

I know now that no amount of personal development will make you good enough because you are already good enough. Your existence makes you good enough.

So figure out what holds you back, yes, but not at the expense of pursuing what you want. It’s BOTH/AND. You can both put in action that overrides limiting beliefs and work on addressing the root cause of the limiting belief simultaneously.

There is so much to say about this specifically, but this introspective work is essential, as long as it doesn’t consume all your time and energy that you need to get into action.

Third, you get into action.

Now, manifestation teachers will have us believe that action is important, but the action they often talk about is the things I’ve mentioned: vision boards, affirmations, visualizations, mantras, journaling, etc. I love all of these things, but it is not the action that will manifest your dreams. And this is where people get stuck. This is where I got stuck.

I believed that my dreams would happen by getting clear on what I wanted, removing blocks, and then putting into action things like mantras, affirmations, vision boards, and visualizations. I thought that action was the only action I needed to take.

I want to shout this front the top of a mountain: Dreams don’t work unless you do. (This is a quote by John Maxwell.) Now, hear me out. I believe hustle culture is toxic. I think the message that working harder will produce bigger results is toxic. But I think that if you want something to be different, you have to get into the right kind of action to see it happen.

A vision board can’t be a replacement for diligence.
Mantras can’t be a replacement for consistency.
Affirmations can’t be a replacement for resilience.

No amount of manifestation strategies and techniques will cause you to float from one mountain peak to the next. If you can see that peak, and you want that peak, you have to climb down, go through the valley, and climb back up.

They’ve all done the work.

I can guarantee that every manifestation teacher has done this, but they don’t talk about it enough. People often talk about Oprah in manifestation circles because she is big on setting intentions and being clear on what you want. But, you know what else she’s big on – working her ass off to get there. She didn’t become Oprah because of a vision board. She became Oprah because she showed up day in and day out and did the work needed to create the life she saw in her mind.

Jim Carrey is another one that gets mentioned a lot because he wrote himself a check for 10 million dollars, dated it for ten years in the future, and kept it in his pocket. Do you know what he did in the ten years between writing that check and being able to cash it – he took action every day towards what he wanted?

When you look at manifestation as the act of creating the life you want, it’s harmless. But when you look at it as a way to think your life into existence, it’s destructive, and it doesn’t work. This is how we’ve come to understand it culturally, and it’s not a complete message. It’s caused many people to grow frustrated, weary, and hopeless because they do not see their desired results. They start to think it’s something they are doing wrong or that something is wrong with them.

Nothing is wrong with you. The manifestation system is broken. So let’s fix it. Let’s reclaim manifestation for what it is – getting clear on what we want and putting in the effort, energy, and time to see it happen.

That’s a version of manifestation I can get behind.