With the new year comes the barrage of self-help gurus and ideas.  One that caught my eye was manifesting.   Apparently, google searches for this were up 700% over the last year, with many well viewed Youtube videos and several books. What is manifesting?  Does it hold value?

Manifesting is based on the law of attraction, a philosophy proposing that positive thoughts bring positive results into one’s life, while negative thoughts bring negative results. Thoughts are a type of energy with positive energy attracting success across health, finances, and relationships. If you set out to achieve something for yourself, it will manifest itself via the law of attraction.  However, manifesting is not about wishing, wanting or hoping for something and waiting for it to happen by some miracle. According to Mel Robbins, an American self-help guru and manifesting advocate, it is about aligning your mind, body and spirit to a clear, meaningful goal with intentional and persistent, focused action to deliver what you want. It can take work and time to reach the goal, but the argument for manifesting is you can and will get it.   Hmm – maybe.

Is manifesting a new idea? – not really.  It is based around the ideas and techniques of:

• • clear, meaningful, purposeful goal setting
  • taking intention, persistent action aligned with this goal – often over prolonged periods
  • repeated detailed visualisation practice of the process to get to the end goal
  • using supportive self-talk or affirmations to encourage action

I use the ideas listed above and a process to examine and reduce barriers – namely negative beliefs – to support clients gain ‘experience’ of dealing with, managing challenges in a more flexible, realistic and helpful, encouraging way before tackling real life experience.  Clients who vigorously work on the barrier reduction and practice visualisation daily over 2-3 weeks can successfully confront real-life.  The great brain trick with visualisation is that your mind doesn’t really know the difference between actual and imagined experience.  Detailed, regular visualisation helps to train your nervous system to feel it.

What do the manifesting gurus miss?  I see 4 pitfalls to the typical manifesting approach:

• • Not working first on the negative, irrational beliefs (typically I should.., I must…, I need to.., I can’t stand it… and I am not good enough… ) which block forward movement. Uncovering and working on these prepare and reset the mind for change and goal attainment.  Nearly all manifesting approaches ignore this (it is hard work!).
  • Using affirmations or positive talk feels false/inauthentic when introduced too soon. Just saying I am a really confident person doesn’t make it so.  The barrier?  The negative, irrational beliefs.
  • Down-playing the focused and repetitive work required to maintain forward movement and deal with the inevitable pitfalls. The barrier?  The negative, irrational beliefs.
  • Believing that through manifesting you can have or be anything you want is simply not realistic. One could achieve a great deal through the process if done correctly, but not everything.

People love simple, easy to apply, catchy ideas with deep promises, but the reality is behaviour change often takes time and a lot of work.  Reality is messy and hard.  Manifesting offers a re-packaged approach to change with some helpful ideas but some big gaps.  Proceed with caution.

If you are interested in learning more about making behaviour change, contact paul.noel@illuminate.co.uk