Some of you might remember the movie the Secret from about ten years ago or so. It was basically about manifestation. In recent years it seems there has been an increased interest in manifestation, or perhaps I’ve just noticed it more in recent years. Some may dismiss it or think it’s not real, but I assure you it is. It doesn’t matter whether you believe in it or not, you manifest all day every day. If you look around and aren’t 100% thrilled with the current reality in which you find yourself, you might want to keep reading because I am going to discuss manifestation and how to improve your ability to manifest your desires in your life.
If you’re like me, your first intro to the concept of manifestation was the movie the Secret. One of the big takeaways I remember from the Secret is that manifestation is essentially comprised of three steps: ask, believe, and receive. While it is truly this simple it’s not as easy as this implies at all and I have found there is a little more to it. I would say there are eight steps to or stages of what I call positive manifestation:
- Get crystal clear on what you want.
- Declare your desire to God/the universe.
- Visualize receiving your desire.
- Feel your desire.
- Trust and believe that it is yours.
- Align with the desire.
- Embody having the desire.
- Acceptance and gratitude.
I will never forget when the Secret first came out. It is really more of a documentary and it featured a number of different people, from writers to philosophers, and some in between. I was so drawn into this movie and I remember the three steps to manifesting they discussed: ask, believe, receive. It was a time in my life when I was still married. We had just had our first child and he was only a month old or so when my ex-husband and I watched it. We were in the process of selling our old house and buying a new one. I applied the concepts in the movie and manifested my last house, which I lived in for a decade.
For whatever reason I never really tried to apply this to anything else and eventually I kind of forgot all about it. Even though I wasn’t consciously doing it all the time, I was continuing to manifest things over the years. In the years following seeing the Secret I manifested four different jobs. Again, I didn’t realize I was doing this, but we are manifesting constantly, we just don’t realize we are.
Looking back I now know that I also manifested a lot of the things I didn’t want in my life. I manifested becoming a single mom, simply from having an underlying fear of it that I entertained in my thoughts more than I realized. I manifested periods of scarcity where I didn’t know how I’d make ends meet. I manifested every heartbreak and wrong man I’ve ever been involved with because of my underlying fears and feelings of unworthiness, and because of the way I talked and spoke about what my truths were.
This may sound harsh and I certainly don’t mean to be harsh, but it’s an important first step in all of this: your reality reflects your manifestation and what you think about and/or believe about yourself. This was one of the hardest pills for me to swallow in life. I truly, completely, wholeheartedly believed that things had happened to me and that people had hurt me and wronged me. True, they had, but what I couldn’t see was that they were simply reflecting back what was already inside me. I simply didn’t know better. I had no idea this was a thing. So it took me a minute to allow myself to really process that my reality was my own doing from my thoughts, beliefs, and the resulting energetic vibration of these.
Now, I hope you won’t get too stuck on the seemingly harsh truth that your reality is your making, because that’s the worst part of it. The good news is that you can change it. The first step is accepting that you have created whatever current reality you have and you can absolutely create a completely different one if you wish. If you really boil down the concepts of manifestation, the Secret did have it right. It really is a matter of asking for what you want, believing you can have it, and receiving it. However, in actual practice it isn’t as easy as this makes it sound and that is because it is an inside job; there is a lot of internal clean-up that comes along with this for most of us, to decondition ourselves of a lifetime of conditioning that tells us we cannot have what we want and we are powerless to create our reality.
After a bit over a year of doing deep internal work and learning how to apply the concepts of manifestation, I would say I’ve experienced eight steps or stages of manifesting. So, let’s jump in to what these are.
- Get crystal clear on what you want.
First and foremost is to be really clear about what it is you want. If it is money, be specific about the amount of money. If it is a car, be specific about the car, the year, make, model, and features you want, right down to the color. If it’s a house, where, how many bedrooms, what kind of neighborhood, does it have a detached garage, is it one story or two?
Another important aspect of this is to be clear about what you want it for. I highly recommend you don’t say “bills,” because it’s hard to get excited about paying bills and I’m guessing you don’t want more bills, right? Instead, answer what you will do with the money. For example, will you be taking a trip somewhere? Perhaps you will buy that beautiful designer bag you just love. Maybe you want to get some things for your kids. It can be multiple things. The key is to also specify how you will use the money for desires rather than responsibilities. - Declare your desire to God/the universe.
Once you get clear on what you want to manifest, declare your desire to God and the universe. Think of it kind of like making an order. I know this sounds funny and it tripped me up a little at first too, but this is part of posturing yourself as ready and deserving. It’s also locking it in. One way I do this is after I think about what I want in step one, I will then write it down. If it’s a specific amount of money, I write the amount and then I list what I will do with it.
Be mindful of how you feel as you do this as well. Take note of whether things like guilt or shame come up and clear that away immediately. (Refer to Seven Steps for Healing Emotional Triggers for the framework for doing this as it applies to this as well.) You may need to ask yourself what the source of it is, where does it come from? When did you start feeling that way about wanting certain things for yourself. If it feels bad, it is a lie. So long as your desires are from the heart and in alignment with God, there is nothing wrong with them. In fact, the desires of your heart were put there by God. The heart and the way God designed it as your compass is a whole episode in itself. It is also a focused service I provide to clear things like shame, guilt, and sorrow so you can receive more. - Visualize receiving your desire.
Now that you have gotten crystal clear on what it is you want, the next thing you want to do is visualize having it. Close your eyes and imagine having what you are manifesting. See yourself in the house, driving the car, buying the thing. Visualize at least once a day, more if you can remember to do so. - Feel your desire.
Next, as you are visualizing, take it to the next level. How does having the car, the house, the money feel? You are looking for an emotion or emotions here. As you visualize having it, you are there, it is yours, who is with you? How do you feel? Where do you feel it? Is it butterflies in the stomach? Is it a soothing, peaceful feeling? Is it giddy? Are you giggling? Are you jumping up and down? As you visualize through each day, make sure are feeling these feelings and sit in the feelings of it for a few minutes. This attracts the thing to you, and it speeds up the process. - Trust and believe it is yours.
The next stage is faith, belief. You’ve asked, you’re clear on what you want, and you know how it feels to have it. So, now you move into belief. This is the hard part in my experience, because most of us will start to get into the how and the when in this stage. We start trying to figure out how it’s going to come to us. We start wondering when it will arrive. As you start to notice this creep in, release it and remind yourself it is already yours. Your job now, is to start moving forward as if it’s already done, because it is. Your job now, is to do things that make you feel like the feeling of having it. If having it feels like security, what makes you feel secure? Do that. If it feels like joy to have the thing, what brings you joy? Do that. This brings us to the next step or stage. - Align with the desire.
This is all about being an energetic match for what you are manifesting. Again, it’s finding ways to feel the way having that thing feels as often as you can. This is where the internal work becomes really important. For example, you cannot be resentful, envious, angry, and ungrateful and peaceful, blissful, happy, loving. These are emotions on opposite ends of the spectrum and they cannot both occupy the same space. If you are complaining all the time or telling yourself how nothing ever works out for you, then guess what you’re going to see in your reality.
So, in this stage it is really important to become aware of how you are feeling most of the time, how you are speaking to yourself, what your thoughts are comprised of, etc. and make efforts to shift these to be aligned with the feelings of having the things you are manifesting. - Embody having the desire.
As you start to identify negative thoughts and limiting beliefs that are in opposition to what you want, you will need to start shifting back into the state of the positive feelings associated with what you want. In the beginning you will likely have to do this multiple times through the day. This is because most of us are not naturally conditioned to positive manifestation; most of us are conditioned to negative manifestation and we self-perpetuate it by continuing to do things like complain and focus on what’s not working instead of what is. This leads me to the last step or stage. - Acceptance and gratitude.
As you ware working through step seven, you will find you are confronted with a variety of emotional triggers. For example, the first time I manifested multiple five-figures, once I knew the check was in the mail, literally, I started to feel guilty and shameful like I had done something wrong. Having had tons of practice with emotional triggers on my self-healing journey I knew this was my body signaling something I hadn’t uncovered yet that needed to be cleared. It was something from childhood.
Growing up it was always what we needed; we couldn’t have things that weren’t necessities as kids unless we earned it or unless it was special occasion like birthday. Even clothes. We were not allowed to pick our clothes and we couldn’t get clothes from certain stores because they were too expensive. So, I had this thing that having money to get something I truly wanted for myself and for my kids was somehow bad. It was like I was doing something wrong for the way I was choosing to use this money I had received. So, I had to work through this and recognize it as the lie it is, forgive it, forgive myself, and release it. I also had to do a lot of work when I deposited the check. I had to sit there and look at the amount in my account and thank the money for arriving and tell myself and the money that it is ok for it to stay there in my account for a bit.
Another critical component is, of course gratitude for the money or the house or car or whatever you manifest. When it arrives express gratitude and celebrate. But you don’t wait until you have the thing to be in gratitude. You get in gratitude as soon as you start manifesting. Speak about it in present tense; express gratitude for the thing before it arrives in your reality. It is also important to be in a state of gratitude for everything you have and everything good. Practice speaking aloud to yourself all the wonderful things you have to be grateful for. Challenge yourself not to complain and when you catch yourself complaining, flip it around into something you are grateful for. Gratitude is one of the most powerful feelings and practices for both manifesting and for raising your vibration and feeling better in general.
So, these are the eight steps or stages I have learned in my own practice of learning to manifest what I truly desire instead of what I don’t. Our culture and society, maybe even your parents or grandparents growing up would have you believe that there is not enough or that only certain people can have wealth and abundance, but where is this written? Who are these special people? You won’t find the answer because it is a lie. There is no law or eleventh commandment that you cannot have the things you desire. God is not up there in heaven condemning you for wanting abundance and happiness and security. He placed your desires in your heart for a reason and it’s not so you can spend your life dreaming of things that are our of your reach. The truth is quite the opposite. I hope this blesses you and helps you with some practical ways to start practicing positive manifestation in your life. You are loved. You are supported. You are worthy. You are a child of the most high. Don’t ever forget that.
If this has piqued your interest, I would invite you to get into my new Facebook group, Faith Fitness Joy, and check out my free live event happening from July 11-13 at 7 PM MST in there. The video will be available in the group through July 22. It is called Believe: the Art of Walking in Faith and I dive deeper into manifestation and some of these steps I’ve outlined here in this event. I hope to see you there!
I would love to hear from you, so please share your thoughts in the comments. If you find this helpful and want to continue the pursuit of faith, fitness, and joy with me, please like and subscribe. You can also find Faith Fitness Joy on Facebook and Instagram or check out the Faith Fitness Joy Podcast. Thanks for stopping by and I hope to see you in the comments and on the socials!