I know that everyone has a different perspective on new year’s resolutions. Some people love them while others argue that if you want to change something about your life, why should you have to wait for a specific date? While I can see both sides, I personally really enjoy making new year’s resolutions. I feel that the new year is an opportunity for me to start fresh and leave all of the negatives behind in the past.
This year, I have taken a different approach to my new year’s resolutions. In the past, I would write a list of everything that I want to change or improve upon in my life. This would include things such as: workout more regularly, save money, say yes to more new things – the list goes on. While that has worked decently well before, this method lacked the steps that I could follow to achieve these goals. And so, this year I decided to experiment with a technique of manifestation called ‘scripting’.
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with manifestation, it can be defined as, ‘to create something or turn something from an idea into reality.’ I have been using various manifestation techniques for about three years now. While not all of my manifestations have come true word for word, it is quite shocking how some things that I wrote down on paper a year ago have now happened for me.
Scripting is a type of manifestation in which you write a journal entry or story for yourself, imagining as if what you desire has already happened. Notice that I said happened and not happening. This is intentional, because a critical aspect of this type of manifestation is to write as if you have already achieved your goals. This is helpful because if you write about your goals as if they’ve already happened, it will help them seem more attainable to you and will offer a sense of direction as to how you will achieve them.
To use scripting for manifesting your 2023 goals, I would urge you to write a memoir to yourself detailing how your year unfolded. A memoir is a story or recollection of your life and memories. In this memoir, make sure to include every aspect of your life that you can. Everything from your finances, health, relationships, school, career, and anything else that you can think of. You can do this online or by hand in a journal, whatever you prefer. Just make sure to be very specific because the more detail that you provide, the better. Obviously, these events have not actually happened yet, so that is when you have to use your imagination. There is no specific length that this must be, just make sure that it includes all of the crucial parts of your life. Once you are done writing your memoir for 2023, print it or put it all together and place it in a safe place. Throughout the year, try not to look back at it too much, yet do not lose sight of these goals.
The next step in this process is to journal about your day as often as possible. Instead of journaling about the current day that you are having, journal as if you are living a day in the life of the memoir that you wrote for yourself. Write about what you would be doing, how that would make you feel, where you’d be and the kind of people that you surround yourself with. The idea is that eventually the day that you are currently having and the day that you wrote about in your memoir will line up.
I will explain this a bit more using an example. Let’s say that one of your major goals for 2023 is to get into medical school. That is a great goal to have but you’re going to have to develop a plan of action. By writing as if you have already been accepted into a medical school of your choice, you will also write about all of the steps that you did to get there – such as writing the MCAT, preparing for interviews etc. The more specific that you can be, the better. Then, in your daily journal, write about how being accepted into medical school made you feel. Provide some context about how long it took, talk about the highs and lows of the process; anything and everything that you can think of.
I know that this may sound a bit different at first, but there are a few things to remember. First off, if you want to create goals that are sustainable, they have to be realistic and you have to believe that they are within your reach. If you write in your memoir that you’re going to be a famous actress by the end of the year but are not even in acting classes and are doing nothing to get there, then you’re probably not going to achieve that goal. Make sure that you realize that your goals are achievable, while still challenging yourself. The other thing to keep in mind with manifestation, is to not get upset if things don’t unfold in the way you had hoped that they would. If at the end of the year, you read the memoir that you wrote for yourself and things didn’t pan out as you expected they would, that is okay! Maybe things didn’t work out the way you thought that they would because something even better is on the horizon. Rejection is sometimes just redirection. Lastly, don’t obsess over your goals. If all you are thinking about is the lack of what you have – the lack of a relationship, money, whatever it may be, you will continue to attract this energy. Yet, if you live your life knowing that what you desire will come in its own time when it’s meant for you, you will be a lot more relaxed.
Whether you buy into new year’s resolutions and manifestation or not, you are the author of your own life. If there is something that you want to change about your life, you have the power to enact change. Try this technique out and at the end of the year, you will have an outline to which you can refer. There is no downside to writing about your goals because even if not all of them come true, it enforces positive thinking patterns. The future is in the palm of your hands and there’s no better time to change your life than right now.