ZHIVOTOVSKI: Can manifestation actually help you achieve your goals?
Column: Are You Thinking What I Am Thinking?
What is manifestation? With Google searches for the term increasing by 600 percent since 2020 and TikToks tagged with "#manifestation" amassing more than 29 billion views, it is safe to say many are wondering what this buzzword is all about.
Considered in its more spiritual form, manifestation is defined as "the conscious creation of the circumstances and outcomes that make for a fulfilling life." This rather vague definition leaves us with many questions. What practices are truly helpful in manifesting our goals? What techniques are simply ineffective?
In 2006, Rhonda Byrne's self-help book "The Secret" popularized the idea of manifestation and reinvigorated the age-old fascination with unconventional science. In the book, Byrne describes the law of attraction, which states that positive energy attracts positive things into your life and governs your thinking and actions. The law also claims that through positive thinking, one can achieve anything they imagine.
Manifestation seems relatively straightforward based on the three principles of asking, believing and receiving. If you only think positive thoughts, positive actions in life will follow. Like attracts like.
It is easy to believe in manifestation when one hears the success stories of those who manifested their hopes and dreams and later saw them actualized. Perhaps my favorite example of manifestation success is Jim Carrey's story on how he attracted his now iconic role in "Dumb and Dumber."
As a struggling actor in Hollywood, Carrey often relied on the principle of visualization to help him persevere through the hardships of acting.
In a conversation with Oprah, he said, "I would visualize having directors interested in me and people that I respected saying, 'I like your work,' and I would visualize things coming to me that I wanted."
One day, hoping to attract bigger and better-acting prospects, Carrey decided to write out a check for $10 million and date it 10 years from that moment, hoping that this manifestation for career success would help him actualize his dreams.
In 1995, as the date on the check was approaching, Carrey received the call that he had landed his career-altering job in "Dumb and Dumber," for which he would be paid $10 million.
While this story is a moving and inspiring example of how manifestation and positive thinking may have helped make a goal come true, the idea of manifestation and its mainstream definition fails to include a key caveat.
You must act on your manifestations if you genuinely want to actualize them.
Writing a check for $10 million is all well and good, but if Jim Carrey had simply pocketed the check that he wrote and continued to sit at home, someone else surely would have gotten the role.
Carrey not only put out what he hoped for into the world but also had to take meaningful action to ensure that, in the future, he would have the resources and skills to see his wishes come true. Going on countless auditions and developing his acting craft is what really would allow him to become the future version of himself that he knew was possible.
Manifestation is a powerful tool because it sets up a to-do list of sorts for our future selves. It requires us to become in tune with our potential, our skills and our goals in order to figure out what we are capable of through self-belief and perseverance.
If I manifest today that I will win the Olympics for skiing in five years, that wish means nothing. I do not know how to ski, and I know that I will likely never learn, so such a goal does not make sense.
But if I know that at my best, I am capable of achieving my dream career, for example, then I can manifest or set that goal on my to-do list as something I must accomplish. I will succeed because I will do the work to make it happen.
Taking "inspired action," as one manifesting coach puts it, is essential to manifestation. While the actual act of manifestation is important in providing the inspiration for what I want to do, I now must take reasonable steps and work toward making that dream my reality.
With this line of thinking, manifestation is just a belief system centered around ourselves. In essence, we must root for ourselves and our success if we want to see it happen. Having a support system has been noted for years to be an essential factor in living a happy and successful life, but the greatest support system we can set up is actually within ourselves.
The law of attraction, while an extreme version of this sentiment, encapsulates the idea that we must believe in the best version of ourselves or at least believe that they exist and are deserving of positive things if we want to attract positive things.
I will be the first to say that I was skeptical of such a practice. But after implementing what I like to call my internal support system, I feel more assured in myself and that the things I truly want are the things I am capable of receiving.
One does not have to believe in manifestation or the law of attraction in order to actualize their goals, but having the confidence that your own skills are enough to help you arrive at your intended destination is a mindset that will surely benefit you in the long run.
Emily Zhivotovski is a junior in the School of Arts and Sciences majoring in cell biology and neuroscience and minoring in health and society. Her column, "Are You Thinking what I am Thinking," runs on alternate Fridays.
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