If you asked me a few years ago if I believed in manifesting, I would’ve either given you an enthusiastic yes or an enthusiastic no, depending entirely on how I was feeling – whether I believed that all my dreams were magically coming true, or if nothing was going my way.
Manifesting became a popular belief and phenomenon during the last few years, and it grew among teenagers and young adults during the emergence of the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. Manifesting, in short, is the belief that whatever you believe will come true, will become true. Whether it’s negative or positive, your thoughts will become your reality. It’s rooted in the belief that happy thoughts will turn into a happy life, and thus, it encourages a positive and optimistic mindset. Naturally, the new age belief, along with the growing interest in other spirituality mechanisms such as astrology and crystal healing, became well liked. It’s easy to see why – essentially, anything you wanted to come true, would come true.
The pandemic and lockdowns had a large impact on the popularity of manifesting because so many people were left with a large amount of alone time that they hadn’t had before. What better time to see if your thoughts could come true?
I have to admit, I was a large follower of manifesting – I would follow tips on YouTube and TikTok, have a manifestation journal, read and replay affirmations to myself, and attempted to only think positively. Essentially, I went off the deep end.
Too much time spent on manifesting put me in an estranged relationship with myself. When things seemingly did happen the way I wanted them too, I was set in believing that I made it come to fruition. Likewise, if something didn’t happen the way I wanted it to, I denounced it all. Or, I believed that I just didn’t ‘manifest the right way’ that time.
In any sense, the attempt to only think positively was a wash – this toxic positivity leads you to become scared of real emotions with the belief that any other emotion other than gratefulness and happiness would make something bad happen in your life. Running from ‘negative’ emotions doesn’t lead to good things manifesting in your life, but leads you to being scared of bad things coming in.
That leads to what I believe in today – do I believe in manifesting? Really, I don’t know. Does manifesting even work? Again, I can’t be the judge of that.
Then, what’s the point?
Well, a lesson that I learned from my former obsession was that making your thoughts come to fruition wasn’t really the point. While that is what manifesting is at its root, the more important outcome was having faith that what you wanted to come true, would come true. This isn’t to say out of the box thinking would manifest – I cannot become a millionaire overnight, nor score a date with Robert Pattinson. Still, believing that what you wanted to come true, will come true, gives you hope. It’s the hope of the matter rather than the dependence of it being real that is the healthy and fun part of manifesting.
I can say that I’ve manifested getting into the honors college because I believed I would, but is it because I believed I would, or because I had the grades for it? Did I manifest the skateboard I now own because it was on my wishlist, or because my friend was caring and knew that I wanted one? You can’t say that it’s either one 100% – people will pick either side, or even both, potentially. The fact of the matter is, it’s what you make of it.
Desperately vying for something to happen is not the way you should live your life. Likewise, I wouldn’t spend my days believing that everything is up to chance either. Having hope in your life and believing in a particular outcome is a healthy mindset in my eyes. Whether you believe in manifestation or not, it’s fun to even play the part of a psychic and believe that you created your own outcome – and really, who said you didn’t? Was it a total chance that you got accepted into the school you wanted to? Was it ‘divine timing’? Who knows! Believe what you want! That’s the part that makes it true to you.
Whether manifestation works or not is not the argument that should be made. Denouncing it or accepting it wholeheartedly shouldn’t be based simply on if it’s real or not because that can’t be proven. What it comes down to is whether it’s a good thing for you to believe in. Like any new belief or trend (if you will), learning more about it and practicing it all gives you the info on whether or not it’s real to you. If it is, then go ahead and shoot for it. If not, then it doesn’t matter.
At the end of the day, if you believe in it – and more importantly, if it’s healthy for your thoughts – then it’s real enough.