According to the dictionary, the definition of “manifestation” is the embodiment of a thought or idea, or alternatively, the act of manifesting. However, for our purposes in this guide, manifestation means something very different. The new-age definition of manifestation is to bring something into being in your life through thought, belief, and feeling.
In this article, we’ll teach you all about what manifestation is, what it means, how to do it, and the impact that it can have on your life.
Manifestation
Subscribers to manifestation believe that we can bring things into existence in our lives through our own force of will. However, there are correct and incorrect ways to do this. Manifestation isn’t simply sitting back and wishing that a winning lottery ticket would fall on your lap, for example. Real manifestation requires a little more work than that.
Manifestation is a form of creation, and it utilizes a concept called the Law of Attraction. In its simplest form, the Law of Attraction means that all thoughts eventually become reality. Followers of manifestation frequently reference the Law of Attraction, as this is what the theory of manifestation is built from.
Law of Attraction
The Law of Attraction is a mysterious phenomenon that has an unexpected amount of power over our daily lives. Every decision we make and every thought we think attracts and repels different things from us. Even people who follow the Law of Attraction aren’t always fully aware of just how much influence it has over their daily lives.
Very few of us ever unlock the full potential of manifestation and the law of attraction. However, even a cursory knowledge of its effects and how to utilize it can lead to great changes in our lives, both for good and for bad.
How Manifestation Works
The theory behind manifestation is that the universe will always work to provide you with what you focus on most. This can apply in both positive and negative ways. Under this line of thought, someone who focuses on how negative their life will only experience more negativity. In the same way, someone who’s always looking on the bright side will experience more positive things.
Manifestation is all about the empowerment of the individual. The idea is that you have the power to make anything happen in your life that you want (within reason, of course). It’s not always that straightforward – manifestation is a mysterious thing, after all – but that’s the basic principle.
Some examples of manifestation at work include:
- Waking up late and ending up late for things your whole day
- Wanting something very badly, but not getting it because you don’t believe you deserve it
- Not wanting something so badly that we focus on it constantly to the point where the universe makes it happen
Most of us go through our entire lives without manifesting actively or learning what manifestation means. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, we end up with wasted potential this way. While it’s true that some people might manifest well unconsciously, we can do so much more with our lives by mastering it!
How to Manifest in Your Life
Manifestation in our daily lives can be used for virtually anything. We can use manifestation to bring money, luck, opportunity, and countless other things into our lives. However, manifestation is a delicate, controlled process, and very few of us that do it unconsciously do it well. As such, cultivating your ability to manifest can only bring about good things.
There are many different strategies you can use to help learn how to manifest in your life. We’ll go over several of these below.
Have a Vision
Having a vision is the very first step on the road to actively manifesting in your life. A vision works to streamline your efforts, encourage you to work hard, and inspire you when the going gets tough. Having a vision is very similar to having a goal, but it works slightly differently. However, it’s important to note that having a vision is absolutely essential to being able to manifest correctly.
A vision works to align your actions toward a specific goal or outcome. Think of manifestation as a target, and you’re playing darts. Without a vision, your darts could hit just about anywhere on the board. A vision, on the other hand, works like a laser focus: it helps you aim at your target or goal.
Moreover, manifestation takes a massive amount of focus. To manifest something properly, you must change your actions, beliefs, and even thoughts in some cases. Having a vision helps to provide the focus and drive that you need to manifest properly.
Just as a vision of wealth and comfort can inspire people to work hard and rise through the ranks, A vision of the future can help us manifest that future right before our eyes. A vision does not only work to inspire us; it also works to streamline our efforts towards the vision itself. When you have a vision in mind, your everyday actions will be geared towards reaching that vision.
Intention
Just as we need a vision, we need intent. In some respects, the intent actually comes before the vision, because the vision is what develops from the intent in the first place. Intention can develop from almost any desire. To find or develop your intent, ask yourself questions like the following:
- What do I want to accomplish in life?
- What do I want to do in the next few weeks? Months? Years?
- What could make my life better in the near future?
Don’t limit yourself to the above questions, though! As human beings, we often have many different desires and intentions at once, so knowing yourself and asking yourself plentiful questions can be instrumental in figuring out what you are capable of manifesting. After all, unless your want has a strong desire behind it, it won’t manifest easily.
Intention doesn’t just refer to the places you might take your life. Intention is also important because it determines why you’re manifesting in the first place. The universe looks kindly upon those with clear, strong, worthy intentions. However, if your intention is vague or weak, such as wanting money for the sake of money, the universe is less likely to look favorably upon you.
Trust and Belief
We mentioned this in passing earlier in the article, but it’s extremely important that you believe in yourself and your worthiness if you expect to be able to manifest. No matter how badly you want to manifest something in your life, if you don’t believe you’re worthy of it or if you don’t whole-heartedly trust yourself, your manifestation will come much more slowly, or it might not come at all.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with not believing you are worthy of something you desire. This is very common, and in a lot of ways, it is good for your character. However, as long as we retain our humility through our manifestations, there is nothing wrong with obtaining what we desire. However, when our minds become clouded by greed, there is a problem.
Keep in mind, though, that the universe is less likely to bless someone motivated by greed as opposed to someone motivated by pure intentions. Fortunately, this works out well for us by helping to retain our humility. If at any point our ability to manifest clouds our judgment, the universe will swiftly put us back in line.
Following this line of thinking, it’s also important that we trust ourselves with the things we manifest and with manifestation in general. Even if we can’t fully trust ourselves, we do need to trust that everything will work out for the best in the end. After all, the universe will keep us in line if we ever overstep our bonds.
Clear Desire
Having a clear desire for something is similar to having a clear intention in a lot of ways, but it vibrates with more of a personal note. While our intentions can be inspired by others, our desires tend to come from somewhere deep inside. Desires are more enduring and more intimate than intentions, but they are both equally important to the manifestation process.
Think back to the visions that we talked about earlier. You can come up with as many visions as you want, but if you don’t have a strong desire backing that vision, it will fade with time. A vision with weak desire is not a good motivator at all, and as such, it won’t help you manifest, either.
Think of desire as the “fuel” that keeps your visions fresh and strong. If you have a vision, try to pick up the desire behind it that works to motivate you and keep you inspired. Take the following examples:
- A young adult whose vision is to travel the world and their motivating desire is to discover themselves along the way
- An executive whose vision is to run the company one day and their motivating desire is to reform the company and make it better
- A young mother whose vision is to be a part of a loving family whose desire springs from her lack of a stable family when she was young
Align Your Actions
If you’re looking to manifest a certain object or outcome, you can’t just sit back and expect it to do so on its own. That’s not how manifestation works (most of the time). Instead, it’s important to align your actions with your visions and goals so that you can work on making them a reality. The universe respects and assists those who work towards their own goals.
Think about what your vision is all about. If your vision is to travel the world, like one of our examples above, then you will want to have plenty of money saved to do so. Alternatively, you could look into jobs that require frequent travel and furnish your trips that way. If your vision is about running a business one day, you should either work hard at rising through the ranks or work on building your own business.
Alignment is an easy thing to do, and many of us do it naturally when we have a goal or dream in mind. However, it can be tough to maintain, especially when it feels like the universe is against us. Much of our alignment is done passively, but there is also some active alignment we can do. Some examples include:
- If our goal is to start a family, it’s important to date and keeps looking for a good mate, even if it feels like you have no luck with prospective partners
- If your goal is to improve the lives of pets everywhere, you should make sure your residence is safe and friendly to any pets you might adopt
- If you’re looking to find your dream job, aligned actions might be to get a relevant degree or search for where your passions lie
One Thing at a Time
While some people are able to manage manifesting several things at once, we don’t recommend trying this, especially as a beginner. It’s far better to work on manifesting just one thing at a time. This way, the total of your effort goes toward making one goal a reality instead of splitting your efforts (and, as such, your time) between multiples.
However, the one at a time rule only applies if your goals do not already align well with one another. For example, if your goal is to travel the world, like our example from before, but you have another goal to become a photographer, you could pursue a career in nature or travel photography. Manifesting such a solution would allow you to fulfill both goals and desires at the same time, and your efforts, in this case, would always go toward both.
Support Systems
Just as a healthy support system is vital in other parts of our lives, support is important for manifestation. However, the support that manifestation requires is self-support. If you neglect yourself, your dreams, or your visions, the universe will reflect that and do the same. However, if you nurture, support, and tend to your dreams, the universe will follow suit.
While self-support is the most important part of supporting your manifestations, actual support systems don’t hurt, either. There are many people out there who are experienced with manifestation, and having their support while you learn the ropes can be invaluable. After all, when you’ve never done it before, it can be very easy to give up or become discouraged when it feels like your manifestations aren’t happening right away.
Moreover, when we’re working hard towards reaching our dreams and visions, we can easily become fatigued, worn-out, or just plain tired of it. Having a support system complete with encouraging and level-headed people will help keep you on-track when the going gets tough. As important as self-support is, nothing can replace the support of other people close to you.
Detaching Yourself
Strangely enough, one of the most challenging hurdles on the road to mastering manifestation is learning how to relinquish control. While at first glance manifestation might feel like the ability to control your future, it’s actually quite the opposite. Manifestation is more similar to giving up control, but still maintaining faith that what you want to happen will happen in the end.
While we still need to do our best to move towards the outcomes that we desire, the universe can sometimes have other plans for us. These start with the universe’s tendency to throw things at us that we would not otherwise know are good for us. How many people do you know that stumbled into an excellent job (or even their dream job) in a nonstandard or unique way? This is just one example of the universe at work.
We must make a crucial distinction here, though: we’re not saying to detach yourself from the futures you desire. That would be counterintuitive to everything we’ve mentioned about manifesting thus far. However, it’s necessary for us to relinquish control over the way we do these things. Sometimes, the universe likes to deliver our wants to us in quirky or unexpected ways just to keep us on our toes.
Acceptance
Acceptance goes hand-in-hand with relinquishing control, which we talked about above. Acceptance, however, is the next chronological step. Once we’ve relinquished control of the how, we must sometimes also relinquish control of the what. For example, our young adult from before who wants to travel the world to discover themselves may end up finding themselves in an entirely different way.
If the universe sends an alternate solution to a problem our way, it’s our duty to recognize that and take the reins. The universe works in mysterious ways, and it’s not always possible for us to see all the ways that the universe might be trying to help us. However, good manifestors are always on the lookout for these things, and they know how to spot a solution courtesy of the universe.
It can be hard to give up our dreams of the way we wanted to accomplish something, especially if we had our hearts set on it for a long time. Truly, we’re not obligated to accept the universe’s solutions, either; we’re perfectly capable of making our own way or enacting our own solutions to problems. However, if we want the universe’s help, sometimes we need to learn to accept an alternative solution to our problems.
Some examples of the universe working in mysterious ways include:
- A woman who is determined to have a baby and start a family finding an orphaned child to adopt that needs a home
- A man wanting to reform a company by becoming the CEO who instead is hired into a position more suitable to his talents, but no less important to the reformation of the company itself
- A politician who wants to change the world that ends up making great contributions to science instead
The Universe
We’ve been talking about the universe a lot in this article. What do we mean by this, exactly? Well, the universe, for our purposes, can mean a lot of different things. It can refer to a higher power, karma, the grand order – you name it, and the universe can refer to it. Essentially, our definition of the universe is the way that the outside world influences and affects our lives.
As such, we sometimes need to ask the universe for help when we have a problem. When we’ve exhausted all other options, the universe can sometimes provide us with a solution where nothing else has been able to. When we get to this point, however, it often means that we’ve been ignoring the solutions that the universe has been offering thus far.
Sometimes, it takes hitting the end of our own strength and resolve to be able to accept the solutions that the universe provides. Sometimes we get so caught up in our own ways to solve a problem that we become blinded to the solutions right in front of us. To reuse a popular adage: we “can’t see the forest for the trees.”
This is why relinquishing control and practicing acceptance are so important. Unless we allow the universe the measure of control that it’s due, our manifestation will seem far less effective than it is in reality.
Remove Resistance
Resistance has a lot to do with the acceptance and control that we mentioned above. It’s important that we learn not only to embrace the solutions that the universe offers and also that we remove any blocks within ourselves. This can be self-doubt like we mentioned earlier, but it can also be hundreds of other things, too.
When we’re unsure of our path, we run the gamut of negative emotions, and these will always, without fail, keep us from achieving our manifestations. Some of these include:
- Frustration
- Resistance
- Stress
- Doubt
- Anger
- Anxiety
- Regret
- Procrastination
- Pain
Like we mentioned earlier on, sometimes we need to experience some unpleasant side effects before we fully give in to the influence of the universe. However, if we make ourselves aware of these emotions and catch ourselves in the act when they’re happening, we can become far better at allowing the universe to have control.
When we’re feeling negative emotions like those listed above, all we need to do is stop, take some deep breaths, remind ourselves to yield, and school our thoughts back to where they should be for our manifestations. As long as we do this, the universe is free to extend its influence and offer us what blessings it can.
Acknowledgment and Gratitude
While it may sometimes be difficult to feel thankful when the universe offers us a solution that we don’t like, it’s equally important to feel gratitude for the work of the universe as it is to be open to that work in the first place.
If we harbor resentments toward the universe, it will be much more difficult for us to let the universe do its work the next time we need help. Moreover, the universe will be less likely to help us in the first place if we harbor resentments. As such, feeling grateful for (or, at the very least, acknowledging the actions of) the universe is very important to the manifestation process as a whole.
The universe can sometimes work in subtle enough ways that we miss the signs. Alternatively, sometimes the work of the universe is so obvious that it slaps us upside our proverbial heads. Learning to recognize when the universe has provided assistance not only helps us bring more of the universe’s assistance to us in the future, but helps us notice more of it, too.
Vibration
Vibration is a term that’s somewhat unique to manifestors in that it, too, has a special meaning. For manifestation, vibration means aligning yourself with what you want to get back from the universe, hearkening back to the Law of Attraction. If you’re looking to get joy out of your life, for example, you can “vibrate” with the universe by feeling joy yourself.
However, vibration doesn’t always have to do with feeling. More commonly, people who want something tend to vibrate by acting like they already have it or imagining it as such. Manifestors looking for money, for example, commonly smell money or carry more of it with them in an attempt to attune themselves to it.
Vibration is done in hundreds of thousands of ways, and theoretically, as long as what you’re doing makes you think and feel closer to the object or scenario you’re trying to manifest, your vibration is on track. As such, if you feel ugly, angry, or downtrodden, the universe will reflect those feelings back at you, too.
If you can, try to spend a few minutes a day dedicated to vibrating yourself and attuning to your desired outcomes. You might find that this can bring you closer to them faster than you’d think.