Manifestation is a powerful thing that we can use to achieve our deepest-held dreams and desires. However, going about doing this is a bit more complicated than you might think. While the most basic form of manifestation involves turning your thoughts into reality, if you want to use manifestation in your day-to-day life, there are extra tips and tricks you will want to know.
Manifestation
Everyone holds a dream or goal close to their heart that they want to accomplish someday. Whether this is something small and short-term or something that might take your entire life to accomplish, it’s achievable with manifestation. Luckily, the strategies you can use to achieve your goals and your desires are similar, regardless of what they are or how long they might take.
Active manifestation requires a slightly different mindset than unconscious manifestation does. The Law of Attraction, one of the founding principles of manifestation, states that anything we think about will eventually become a reality, so we manifest things regardless of whether we’re doing it intentionally or not. However, when we go through our lives without knowing how to manifest consciously, we waste a lot of our innate potential.
On top of that, we tend to manifest unpleasant situations for ourselves, too. When we think about something uncomfortable or stressful, we tend to make it worse than it is. When we think about something, we bring it into existence, after all. As such, when we learn to control our manifestations by schooling our thoughts and actions, we end up taking greater control.
In the remainder of this guide, we’ll go over some strategies and tips you can use to help achieve both your long-term dreams and your short-term desires through manifestation. If you take these tips and tricks to heart and put them in action, you might find yourself manifesting your dreams and desires sooner than you’d think.
Begin with the End
When working with dreams, beginning with the end in mind is always essential. To start with the end, take your vision and break it down into its smallest parts. Ask yourself questions like:
- What does my goal involve?
- What do I need to do to accomplish my dream?
- How many different steps will I need to take to make my dream come true?
- Is anything holding me back from manifesting my visions?
- How soon can I make my dream a reality?
Don’t stop with the above questions – ask yourself as many questions as you can to break down your dream, evaluate it, and understand it from top to bottom. By doing this, not only will you get yourself thinking about your goal, which is useful for manifestation in general, but you’ll also know how to approach achieving your goal as you go forward. If you can, write down your findings in a list or a journal, too.
Often, our dreams end up being long-term endeavors that might require several steps or even several smaller dreams to accomplish. Breaking down our long-term dreams and goals into smaller and more achievable parts make them easier to tackle and less overwhelming to think about, among other things.
Dream Big
One of the most beautiful parts about being able to manifest your dreams is that you can dream as big as you want. Your goals need to be realistic, but within that restriction, you can dream up anything and everything!
There’s nothing wrong with dreaming up a little more than you need, though it needs to be for a just purpose. Dreaming up excessive wealth and money for its own sake, for example, is unlikely to be acknowledged by the universe as a worthy and fair cause. Instead, if you’re dreaming of having extra wealth, make sure there’s a reason for it. It can be as simple as:
- Putting a little extra money toward your retirement fund
- Buying new furnishings for your house
- Purchasing your dream home
- Buying a nice car
Your reasons for dreaming bigger don’t always have to be selfless! It’s totally acceptable to want some extra finances because you’ve had your eye on a new purse or blouse at the boutique down the street. Your reason needs to be sensible and well-founded. Wanting money for more financial security is a good reason; wanting cash because you want to have more than your neighbor is not.
Attitude of Gratitude
On the note of wanting and dreaming for more, having an attitude of gratitude quickly becomes very important. Regardless of the reasons why you want to manifest something, whether it’s part of your long-term dreams or just a short-term desire, you should be grateful for the opportunity and the manifestation. You should still feel gratitude, even if your manifestation never comes to be!
In order to be good at manifesting, we need to appreciate every moment, feel gratefulness for all that we have, and recognize each new opportunity that the universe sends our way. Doing this doesn’t just change our attitude for the better; it also tells the universe at large that we’re thankful and deserving of the blessings it offers.
Every opportunity that the universe sends our way, whether it’s the one that we wanted or not, is a gift to be celebrated. By celebrating these opportunities with joy, gratefulness, and love, we spread that mindset to others around us, increasing the love and gratefulness in the world little by little. If anything, this is the real benefit of an attitude of gratitude, even beyond assisting in our own manifestations.
Prepare
Once we have thoroughly dissected our dreams and pared them down into smaller goals, it’s time to prepare for their coming into our lives. Part of adopting a manifestor’s mentality is accepting that what we desire to manifest will happen in our lives someday, and preparing for these manifestations provides a long list of benefits to us.
Think about how we feel when something exciting is about to happen in our lives. We want to clean the house if a relative or friend is visiting; we want to look our best if we’re going out on a date. As such, we should prepare just as actively for what we’re manifesting as we would for something we know will happen. This is a cornerstone of how manifestation works.
However, the trouble with preparation is that sometimes our manifestations don’t come to us in the way that we intended. This means that sometimes we end up preparing for something, and then when it happens, our initial preparations become wholly unnecessary or irrelevant. Unfortunately, this is an unavoidable aspect of manifestation and working alongside the universe.
The universe conspires to confuse and keep us on our toes regularly for reasons that we do not understand. Perhaps it’s merely to keep us humble, or maybe it’s to keep us from becoming complacent. Whatever the answer might be, we need to be aware that our preparations might not be correct even as we carry them out.
The following examples help illustrate this phenomenon at work a little better:
- A woman who desperately wants to have a baby prepares a nursery for him, but she ends up adopting an older child who does not need a nursery
- A couple wishing to vacation in the summer makes travel plans ahead of time, but they end up winning an all-expenses-paid trip instead
- A student who wants to be a photographer pursues an art degree in college, but they discover their true passion before they graduate
Follow Your Intuition
Don’t underestimate the power of your intuition when you’re manifesting. More often than not, your intuition can help you find where the universe is urging you to go. As such, following your intuition whenever you can may lead to unexpected and beautiful places.
Intuition can strike at strange and seemingly unprovoked times, just like the universe. Following your intuition, then, is an excellent way to practice following the hand of the universe. More often than not, your intuition will help align you with the universe’s intentions, but it’s not always this easy. Our own ideas, perceptions, and thoughts can keep us from seeing or accepting our intuition so easily.
When our intuition tells us something, we naturally pay attention to it. Our intuition and instincts are senses that were cultivated over millions of years as humanity came into being. However, our daily lives can interfere with our intuition. Stress, sadness, anger, and loneliness can all cloud our intuition and our judgment, keeping us from realizing what it is the universe is trying to tell us.
Keeping our minds and hearts bright, light, and happy helps to keep our intuition clear, and it helps to attract more positive emotions to us, too.
Let Go
Many of those who practice manifestation, both beginner and experienced alike, find trouble with truly “letting go” and letting the universe do its thing. When the universe proposes a solution to us that does not line up with our ideas, we tend to dig our heels in and resist by default. This is even truer if the universe’s solution to our problem is undesirable to us in some way.
If we want to be competent manifestors, we must let the universe exact its influence on our lives. We don’t specifically need to accept the solutions that the universe offers us – we always have the option of finding another way or working towards our own preferred outcome – but if you’re looking to be a prolific motivator, this is not the right mindset to have.
It is essential to trust that your dreams will come true in some way, regardless of how it happens. When we get too preoccupied with the how, we can miss different solutions and opportunities out of sheer stubbornness. These opportunities can be good for us in ways that we might not realize at first, so even if we decide to refuse them in the end, it’s important to see them and think about them first.
Feel Good
It can be tempting to say to ourselves, “I’ll only be truly happy once I achieve my dreams.” While it is always possible that greater happiness is waiting for us around the corner, putting our own joy and happiness on hold for the sake of a dream is short-sighted, not to mention anathema to the manifestation process.
Life is a journey. Instead of always worrying about reaching a particular destination, it benefits us to enjoy that journey instead. There are hundreds of different little things in our lives that can bring us happiness each day, and these little things add up to create one wonderful life! If you don’t believe us, try making a list of all the things that make you happy in your life right now. You might be surprised by what’s on it!
Examples of things to put on your happiness list include:
- Activities, like yoga, fishing, or watching reality TV
- Things, like your favorite food, a comfy article of clothing, or money
- Companions, like family, friends, or pets
Once you’ve made a list of all the things you can think of that make you happy, think about how many times you get to do those things in a given week. If it doesn’t feel like enough, schedule more of them in! Adding more activities that make you happy in your daily life is an excellent way to improve your own happiness both in the short-term and long-term.
What’s more, if you feel happy in this chapter of your life, your long-term dreams and goals will reach you that much quicker. Time flies when you’re having fun, after all!
Live Today
Similarly to what we talked about above, if we worry about the past or future and don’t live enough in the present, we’ll lose focus and falter with our manifestations. When we worry about things that have happened in our past, we have trouble pinning down solid dreams and goals to pursue in the future. However, when we live too much in the future, we don’t focus enough on living in the present moment.
Just as it’s essential to feel good today, it’s vital to live for today, too. Every day is an opportunity to do something new, discover something more about yourself, or get one step closer to your dreams and desires. When we tackle the small goals and steps that we created earlier in this article, we live in the present; when we only think about our long-term goals, however, we live in the future.
When we only think about the future, we tend to stress and wear ourselves out quickly. It’s excellent for you to look forward to the future, of course – the future is an exceptional source of motivation for us manifestors – but living in the future is counterproductive. When we only focus on what we could be doing today or tomorrow, we miss much of the potential for today. There is an important line we must walk between living in the future and looking forward to it.
In the same way, when we live in the past, we limit ourselves on what we can achieve in the future. We all make mistakes, mess up, and change ourselves as time goes on, and sometimes these mistakes can haunt us for a long time. However, if we let these mistakes hold us back, we could miss out on essential opportunities and adventures that the universe guides us to.
Keep a Journal
If you don’t mind a bit of writing and have the discipline to do so, think about keeping a journal of your manifestations. Journals are an excellent way to keep track of thoughts, realizations, dreams, and even just the events of your day. We all lead busy lives, and even though it might not feel like we have time to keep something like a journal, the clarity it can provide to us later can be invaluable.
If you have time throughout the day, write down important thoughts that go through your head, especially if they concern your dreams and manifestations. You can even type them up quickly on your smartphone or tablet if it’s handy. You can use these observations for many different things down the line, whether that’s just looking back to how you were months or years ago or remembering something you did the day before.
A manifestation journal is also an excellent way to keep track of your journey. We will all have perceived victories and failures when it comes to manifestation, regardless of how experienced or talented we are. By keeping track of these wins and losses in a journal, we can look back on how we’ve improved over time, how we’ve changed, and how manifestation has affected our lives.
Revise Your Beliefs
When you first get into manifestation, you will need to overcome a few hurdles that will act as a barrier to entry for newcomers. Firstly, you must make it so your personal beliefs align with your greater dreams and goals for yourself. If your personal beliefs don’t allow yourself to achieve your goals, you’ll never be able to cross that final hurdle blocking the way.
Essentially, this step involves removing any of your self-barriers that could prevent you from manifesting properly. Your manifestation is only as strong as your own thoughts and will, after all. If your dreams and visions involve going to college, for example, but you believe that college is a waste of money, you won’t be able to find success there.
A few more examples of this self-limitation at work include:
- I want to be wealthy, but I think rich people are bad people
- I want to travel the world, but I don’t think it’s worth the cost
- I want to find a loyal partner, but I don’t want to be monogamous
Honestly, we could make up millions of plausible scenarios illustrating the above, but you get the picture. If any part of you or your belief system conflicts with your dreams, you’ll have much more trouble reaching them, if you ever do at all.
Commit
While a life of manifestation might feel easy to the point of being fantastical, it does require a fair bit of commitment. Manifestation doesn’t happen without a great deal of time and effort, and we need to be willing to put in that time for our manifestations to pay off.
Committing to trusting the mysterious and unfathomable power of the universe can feel like one of the scariest things we’ve ever done. Many prospective manifestors are unable to succeed for this reason alone. However, once we fully commit to manifestation and the help it can provide, it can make a difference in our lives immediately.
Committing to your dreams, similarly, requires an equal amount of time and effort. When we dream and fantasize about what we might be able to achieve with manifestation, we can quickly begin to feel guilty or unworthy of the situations we dream up. If you’re looking to manifest your dreams and desires in your life, you can’t let yourself be held back by guilt, undeserving feelings, or other similar factors.
Moreover, committing to the practice of manifestation means a full-on lifestyle, thought, and belief change. While you can stop and return to your old ways without consequence, of course, committing to a manifestation lifestyle is not something that can be done in five minutes of your spare time. Manifestation requires a commitment of your self, your time, and your spirit for you to find success.
Dig Deep
When we’re working on changing our beliefs and thoughts to align with our dreams and the universe as a whole, we sometimes fail to go deep enough. Our beliefs are often deeply ingrained in us from how we were raised, the moments that have shaped us, and the friends we have made throughout our lives.
As such, some of our thoughts and beliefs don’t change easily. Many of us will inevitably run across a part of us that is so deeply ingrained that we cannot change or remove it. This isn’t an inherently bad thing, but it can stand in the way of manifestation. If this happens, sometimes we must resort to changing our dreams instead of changing our beliefs.
If you’ve taken the time to learn yourself and dissect your thoughts and beliefs but still can’t find success with manifestation, it could be that you haven’t dug quite deep enough. The nature of our differences as human beings means that each of us thinks, functions, and grows as a person differently. While this is something that should be celebrated, it also means that no one person can tell you precisely what it is you must change before manifestation can happen to you.
Get Excited
If you’ve thoroughly gone over yourself, your beliefs, and your dreams, the last thing for you to do is to get excited for what the universe has in store for you! An essential part of manifestation is believing that what you desire will come to you one day, so in addition to preparing for that, you should be excited!
Your excitement doesn’t need to last forever – we can’t always know when the universe will answer us, after all – but there’s no reason not to be excited about the endless things you can achieve with your own source of power and will. Manifestation is a powerful yet versatile thing, and that should excite you!
An excellent way to get excited about your coming dreams and desires is to imagine and envision what it would feel like to have them today. While this should be done in moderation – you don’t want to end up living in the future, after all – it’s an excellent way to rekindle our inspiration and our motivation to manifest what we want!
Receive
Once you’ve done all the other steps, your last big hurdle to overcome is to open yourself to everything the universe has to give you. While this might seem easy in theory, many of us feel held back by feelings of humility, feeling like we don’t deserve what we asked for, or feeling like we shouldn’t be receiving help over other people.
However, the above feelings only hold you back! While humility is an excellent thing to practice, every other person on this Earth is just as capable of manifestation as you are. They have the power to manifest in their lives, too, just like you do. As such, there’s no need to feel sad for them or privileged over them.
Sometimes, receipt of our manifestations can even make us feel guilty. However, with all due respect, in the eyes of the universe, you are no different than any other human being! Each of us has the innate power in them to manifest, and unless that changes anytime soon, you are not out of line to want better things for yourself.
As such, don’t be afraid to manifest away and enjoy your life to the fullest! The only thing stopping you, ironically enough, is yourself!