What About Manifesting?

"Your job is not to figure out how it's going to happen for you, but to open the door in your head. And when the door opens in real life, just walk through it. And don't worry if you miss your cue because there's always doors opening. They keep opening."
​― Jim Carrey

It’s New Year’s Eve 2024 and I’m getting my monthly post published under the wire, “just in time.” With the US Thanksgiving holiday so late this year, I’ve been practicing a lot of “just in time” – just in time house cleaning, holiday baking, gift shopping and giving, meal planning. The just in time thing works for awhile for me and then I start to feel the effects. Which for me looks like waking up in the night with to-do lists and worries running through my mind, fitting one more thing in as I’m late to whatever is coming next in my schedule. And then there’s the combination of procrastinating and just in time action. I wait until I really, really can’t wait any more and then I do something more quickly, possibly less carefully than I would like just to get it done! It relieves the pressure until the next thing that I'm avoiding shows up.

​The week before the holiday break as I was busy procrastinating and "just in time" doing, I woke up in the night, thinking about and literally hearing the words “expectations, requirements, and judgments” in my head. It was a mantra like Dorothy’s Wizard of Oz mantra of “lions and tigers and bears, oh my” – instead it’s “expectations, requirements and judgments, oh my!” Like the lions, tigers, and bears for Dorothy, expectations, requirements, and judgments are my fears and worries about how I’m measuring up or more likely how I'm not really measuring up.

And they impact me just like the lions, tigers, and bears. I’m fearful, I’m running, avoiding, sometimes resisting or trying to appease by working harder, speeding up, making more lists. If I just get more organized, try harder, I can out run them or meet them. Really there's not much difference.

And there goes my energy! I first wrote that these fears steal my energy and I know that’s not true. I’m giving my energy to them. That’s the thing, I get to choose where I spend my energy and how to connect with it. Such a good lesson and so often I forget, until I don’t. Then I realize that “expectations, requirements, and judgments, oh my” are not real unless I make them real. There are choices to be made.
 
And this brings me to the title of this post, What about Manifesting? What does it mean to manifest, is that real? How does it work when I’m subsumed into my fears, the “expectations, requirements, and judgments, oh my”? This month during my daily dog walks I’ve been listening to the TransformAble book of the month Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything by James R. Doty. I love the word "manifest" - it was my word of the year in 2023. It is a word with direction, agency, and power which is exactly what I needed as Stephanie Shivar and I launched our first cohort of National Women's Impact Leadership Institute (NWILI).  It's also a word with some baggage. It's kind of woo-woo, possibly a shell game touted as a way to make money quickly and easily. That's not the manifesting that I'm wondering about and it's not the manifesting that Doty is writing about. Manifesting can now be described in terms of brain function with the understanding that cognitive neuroscience offers us about the brain's structures. Doty writes "This has allowed us to demonstrate that manifesting is neither a get-rich-quick scheme nor a misguided wish-fulfillment system but is part of the brain's extraordinary ability to change, heal and remake itself, known as neuroplasticity." It's about growing and developing with the full power of our mind, body, and heart. It's about being intentional in the life we are creating. That's what I'm talking about! 😀

What I'm learning about manifesting is that it's directly aligned with my leading from the inside out framework. It's all about presence, awareness, and self-compassion. It's about harnessing the power we already have and directing our intention and agency to what really matters. What resonates with me, what gives me joy, what is the service I'm uniquely designed to provide, that's what I can use as a guide. And the key to manifesting is getting in the driver's seat and taking the wheel. This is top of mind for me as my youngest daughter is logging her driving hours with her permit. She is learning to drive and all of her attention is placed on it when she's at the wheel. It has to be for her and her parents or brothers 😉 who are teaching her to stay safe! The thing is once we have been driving for awhile it's easy to get lulled into the context we are in and forget that we are doing it. I no longer need to put all my attention on the driving itself because it's automatic. This is wonderful in many ways, it allows my brain to do other things while driving. It's also not so wonderful because that's where the "expectations, requirements, and judgments, oh my" can find a lot of airtime. They take up space and energy. So the trick is to bring the attention back to driving (i.e., living), being in the driver's seat and truly creating our lives through choices. Once we take the wheel we can embed what we want into our whole selves, not only our conscious self but also our subconscious self. The parts of our brain, heart, and body that are working under the radar. This is where the power of intention and attention manifests and that is what creates our lives. When we get clear on what we want by being present and aware and we give ourselves grace and allow for our perfectly imperfectness we can open to what really matters and let that percolate holistically. The percolation is not necessarily conscious, it's the pre-work that's conscious and then the work happens within us. behind the scenes.

I've been doing a puzzle with my family over the holidays - in fact we had a fun 30 minutes of working faster and faster until we finished the latest 1,000-piecer and miracles of miracles not a single piece was missing. I'm a good puzzler, it's not something I can explain or teach, it feels like it just happens. I'm not one to look at the picture on the box and find where a piece goes in the puzzle. I just find a piece and try it in a spot and feel delighted when it fits. I think my puzzling process is much like manifesting. I embed all the aspects of the piece, the colors, the shape, all of it. And when the time is right, either right then or later, lo and behold I place the piece I embedded and it fits. When we manifest, we embed our deepest, most meaningful desires in our heart, mind, and body and then we get to work without even knowing it. Our subconscious starts looking for ways to create what we want. It feels like it just happens because it's happening under the surface, like the duck paddling under the water. All is smooth sailing above water and underneath so much is happening. What's amazing about manifesting is it's magical and it's real too. We are in the driver's seat and when we place our attention on what really matters we can create it. I'm NOT saying that we can do anything we want, that we get exactly what we wish for, or that things turn out the way we want them to all of the time. In fact, an important part of manifesting is letting go of the "how" of the manifestation and instead trusting and staying with the unfolding. What I am saying is that we are always being and doing something and manifesting is about recognizing the impact of our being and doing in the world with gratitude. It's about letting go of "expectations, requirements, and judgments, oh my" and being open to what's possible. It's about getting clear on what it is that we want to do with "this one wild and precious life" and then allowing and accepting what we create to be perfectly imperfect. Feeling caught in the "expectations, requirements, and judgments, oh my"? Let's connect.