Yo, Manifest This!
Oh the power of manifesting! Creation of desires, wealth, love and other cool stuff can be yours if you know the magic words or incantations or maybe burn the right candles while saying something or other incantation and spell like. Maybe?
I get it. Manifesting seems kind of woo woo new agey right?
Manifesting, turning a dream into reality or taking an idea in your head and making it exist in the physical world.
The movie “The Secret” really gave this concept the PR it lacked. This kid dreams and yearns for a red bike. “Oh please oh please oh freekin please!” Bamm, like some lightning bolt out of Aladdin's lamp the universe conspires to give this nice kid a red bike! Well, it was more like someone gave it to him which is kind of magical, right?
Lots of new age thought leaders talk about manifesting things. The Oprah book club is loaded with this subject. Law of attraction baby. That's the ticket!
At this point you probably think I view this as bullshit. Some cooked up mumbo jumbo to sell to the suckers. Hmm, well not really.
I’ve manifested lots of great things in my life and I bet you have as well. I just think it's not so woo woo magical as it is human nature and the power of intention. Scientists would call it pseudoscience as it doesn’t exactly follow scientific methods.
Wait, the power of intention is pseudoscience as well. Damn it!
Well I’m a big fan of what works so the hell with those smarty pants know it all! I’m about to manifest how I manifest. Brace yourself!
Ok to back up a bit, the power of intentions. The first time I heard of this was from Dr. Wayne Dyer. But isn’t he a bit woo woo? Hey I never claimed that I was allergic to the woo in some cases and yes, he is all about the law of attraction.
Intention is defined as “a thing intended; an aim or plan.”
The meat behind this is the power of a focused mind. More mental energy focused, the more the odds go up that you will come up with the solution you are wanting. Pretty simple right?!
There are many ways to manifest what you want. It could be
using a simple goal setting system. Truthfully that was really never my jam. I’ve certainly made a goal and achieved it but for the more complex I found a much more effective method.
I accidentally came across a simple but extremely effective system that I could stick with. I say accidentally because it started as a simple journal. I was working in a clean room at IBM…picture a sterile lab with a semi space suit. I didn’t really know anyone and was going through a big life change. I was super stressed and a counselor had recommended I write down my feelings.
So what started as an emotional dump turned into a master plan to right the ship and lift myself out of this self created darkness.
Future journaling. Now I could get into a long winded explanation but there are many takes on this subject available on the Google.
Simply put its a way to engage with your desired future self and situation. Your future you has achieved the desired result and is more than happy to show you the way to get there. This future you has pulled it off and can help you follow the path. Think reverse engineering of this successful you.
Here is a hard and fast truth. If you like to think of your future self making way more money, being way happier and having the love you’ve always wanted, your current thinking probably isn’t going to cut it. Your current thinking has got you to where you are now. You’re obviously very successful at being you at your current level.
In his book “Think Again'' by Adam Grant, he talks about how we are always updating our tech but not our belief system. Out of all the technology at our fingertips, how we run our own system should take top priority. This little shift in thinking opens you up to reaching a belief that will get you to the future self you know you’re capable of becoming. The bottom line is if we aren’t updating our limited beliefs we will pretty much just keep on the current path we are on getting very predictable results.
This journaling exercise is creating and engaging with my future self. Imagine who you would be 3, 5 or 10 years from now. What that would feel like. What have you achieved? Where are you living? What is your daily life like? What is your physical health like? What advice would your future you give you now? This isn’t just some exercise in fantasy thinking, this image can become a lighthouse sending a signal to you so you can navigate the dangerous waters of life and make it to the destination you desire. The Genius of your future self, is that they (you)have already figured out and blazed the trail. If you really explore this thought exercise it will reveal steps you need to take to become who you know you are capable of being. Now to throw a qualifier in there, this isn’t dreaming of becoming a superhero with superpowers or top Olympic athlete when you haven’t exactly gotten off the couch for a few years. This is about who you think you are and who you know you are capable of being. So it’s important to find the sweet spot here. I’m not telling you to think small but I’m also telling you not to be delusional.
Back to my future self journaling story. I was recently split from my wife and had 2 young kids that were depending on me. I had just started a temp job at IBM paying 9 bucks an hour. I had moved back in with my Mom and wasn’t exactly feeling like an alpha male to say the least! All I knew was I had to figure out a way to raise the bar in my life because I was miserable. I wanted love in my life and I wanted a home where my children could safely play in the backyard. Of course the reality was I had a crap temp job making crap wages and I was living with my mother in my old bedroom. So in other words I was a broke ass non-sexy bastard!
I started writing every day about how I could improve my situation just a tiny bit. Just 5 to 10 minutes of writing. Pretty much just a 1% improvement. Some days there wasn’t much to say but a brief rant and maybe a question. How can I? Some days it felt more inspired. I asked the question what would a guy have done who now owns a house and didn’t have a lot of money do? This question is related to examining every possible way I could get my hands on some cash. I started looking at houses that were on the market. I admit this was frustrating. About three months later I was walking my mother’s dog ( yeah still living in my old bedroom) when I came upon a woman nailing a for sale sign into the ground in front of a sweet looking older home. Out of curiosity I asked her how much. She said “honey, make whatever offer you want, the owner is deceased and the relatives just want to dump it” I slept on this, and called the realtor the next day and made a ridiculously low offer. I’ll pay 60,000 if you cover all the closing costs. To my amazement, they got back to me a couple of days later and said okay.
This was the moment of complete freak out. How the hell am I going to buy this house? At this point I was spending quite a bit of time with my new girlfriend and working ridiculous overtime. She actually wrote the check for the down payment, 500 bucks to help me get the ball rolling. Yes, I paid her right back! Now I was faced with the challenge of getting a bank to loan me the money. Lets see, I’m in the middle of a divorce I have no money, I’m in debt, and my temp job ends in three months. A totally worthwhile loan applicant, right? So after getting flat out rejected by several banks, I just kept writing the question: how can I get the loan?
One day when I was driving to work following the same route I had driven countless times before, I noticed a small sign in front of a house, Mortgage Broker. I figured why not have some more rejection I’m starting to get very used to it so I pulled into the driveway and knocked on the door. This friendly middle-aged guy answered and we started chatting. I told him my predicament and the sad story of my divorce. Amazingly he was going through a very similar situation. We connected so well that he told me that he would make it his life mission to get me the money to buy that house. Honestly at the time I thought he was just blowing smoke up my ass but it felt good to have somebody saying they were in my corner. Long story short, he found some sketchy lender to put up the cash for me. Sure, the interest rate was near loansharking level but I was able to close on the house. Three days short of my six-month goal. Holy crap, this works!
Looking back at my journal, you can clearly see the path. It started with the end result desired. It started with the feelings and emotions of what this accomplishment would be like. How it would impact my life. How I would view myself. And then it was a matter of reverse engineering it. You see, in many cases we already know on a deep level exactly what we need to do. The challenges are the bullshit voices in our head and the stories we tell ourselves. Sometimes that inner voice can be helpful and many times it’s going to sabotage you. By getting it out of your head and onto paper, you now have a touchstone to bring you back to what you really want. This in turn can help quiet the negative voice and bring about the analytical side of your brain. How can I?
By making Future self journaling a daily habit, your odds will go way up that you will be consistently moving in this direction. It’s as simple as just deciding on the next step. Forget the staircase. Focus on the next move. The truth is some of those moves are going to make you stumble. But that’s okay. Knowing what doesn’t work is also super valuable.
Need help optimizing your life, getting out of your own way and manifesting the life you know you are capable of having? Reach out to me and see how we can work together.
