A Guide to Manifesting
Good things come to those... who know how to manifest. Welcome to my most ethereal post to date. Because we're here for the magic sprinkles.
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Because I’m one of those people who believes in the workings of the Universe (or call it a higher power, God, gods, other heavenly beings…), I believe moments happen quite divinely and sometimes you see what you need to see when you need to see it.
I also believe in manifesting. Now, yes, I literally just eye-rolled myself as I wrote that, though I can tell you with earnestness that bores deep into my cells that I believe in it.
Quick New Age Glossary moment: Manifesting is making things happen. Often correlated but different than Abundance, which is having more than enough. It doesn’t have to mean money or currency…but we like it when it does. And of course, manifesting can lead to abundance.
So follow join me in a winding tale about how some things surprisingly work out when you least expect them to, and never how you see it coming. And if you’re skimming,I’ve added arrows next to → “how to manifest” tips.
A Story About This Month
As many of you know, I was laid off last year.
It’s been a doozy! To be 46 and at the prime of your career and truly at the nexus of life experience and career skills and not have the outlet or value for your abilities is crushing.
Oh, and to be a new mom at the same time made the 1950s-era supercomputer of my nervous system and mental state overheat in the delightfully comic style of an episode of I Dream of Jeannie. And if my life were that iconic midcentury sitcom, the vibe would be: Oh no, Roger spilled coffee on NASA’s mainframe minutes before the Larry Hagman main character is due to blast off into space!! What will we do?!
But make it my life and livelihood.
But in this case, there was no genie to fix it before disaster.1 Just me, my husband, our toddler and two fluffy Pomeranians. To adjust, we set new priorities, moved cities to save money2, and I got very comfortable selling myself and skills. Thankfully I was able to work as a freelancer (I send unyielding gratitude to colleagues who threw me work).
The beginning of this was rough. As you’ve heard here, my husband also lost his job a few months ago. As we made other hard decisions, we looked hard at numbers, and while we didn’t quite see how it would all work out, at least knew what we needed to get by and began minimizing every ounce of our household expenses to do so.
And then some really interesting things started to happen.
Three days before (cough) quite a large sum of credit card debt was due to go from 0% interest to over 18% APY, I found money that I’d stashed from myself a few years ago.
Now, yes, technically I was aware that this savings account existed but I’d put it far from my mind as a failsafe, so it could be a true rainy day fund. Because I know myself. There would be temptation to use it, thinking that everything will magically “all work out” and more money would come in just at the right time.*
→Well, it does and it doesn’t. Meaning, you can’t tell the Universe how it’s all going to go down. In the world of manifesting, from my experience, you have to take all the actions as if things won’t work out, and then that’s when they do. (*Classic pitfall of an experienced manifestor: you start to think that you can manifest at will. No, silly.)
So, long way of saying, many years ago, as my husband and I were just joining our finances, I kept some of my savings on the side. Just in case.
And then, that Sunday a few weeks ago when I was gathering the last of my tax documents, I looked in that account and realized it could pay off our massive-to-me debt.
And dayum, you better believe I DID! I transferred that money so fast and lit-er-ally got it in just before the 0% introductory period was set to expire (which would have racked up hundreds more dollars each month in interest).
After two years of so much financial uncertainty (starting even before I lost my job), this shook our brains out of the intense desperation we’d been feeling.
What I’ve learned about manifesting is that you don’t always have “the answer,” but it comes to you after you figure out where you are and where you want to go.
We didn’t go crazy. We kept sticking to our dutiful financial plan—which is as simple as a hand written list of all our expenses followed by our estimated income each month that I had up on the refrigerator.
→ Keep the goal in focus. This is similar to vision boards. Map out what you want, and then look at that vision every day. Your subconscious and conscious parts of your mind come together to inch you in that direction.
→ A big lesson I’ve learned about manifesting is: you don’t have to have “the answer” at first, it comes to you after you figure out where you are and where you want to go.
I should also mention here that thankfully my husband did get a new, and better, job recently and I got a new, bigger client. Phew. …Though since he’s in sales and I’m a freelancer we don’t have set monthly income. JUST KEEPING IT INTERESTING, FOLKS!
So, I kept looking at the numbers—the expenses and the projected income and the feeble calculations about how we’d make it all work, just slightly, each month.
I will pause and also let you know that in between all of this, I’ve been reached out to by a few recruiters for significant roles that would have alleviated all our current and even some future money concerns (anyone looking for a VP of Creative & Content/Integrated Marketing/Brand Marketing ;) but while the initial conversations went well, they didn’t progress. Which was disappointing—not just because at this point in my career I’d like to fully exercise my full capabilities, but also it would be nice to get those 401K and savings accounts flowing at max capacity again.
→ I mention this because in a conversation about manifesting, it’s important to realize that good manifesting energy doesn’t mean that everything comes to fruition. It just means that what’s aligned comes through easily.
So, back to my winding story about little bits of goodness at just the right time….
Two weeks ago I got an interesting email. Someone I don’t know wrote to say they’d seen my portfolio and could I send them more information because they might need another writer for their health and wellness company. And suddenly I have a new client. Which means I scribbled another number to our list of income. Not huge, but meaningful.
When I saw that email, I laughed and said to my husband, This is abundance. This is manifesting. I called this out because I’d just been to a New Moon Sound Bath (always here for a gong crescendo) and at the close of the ceremony our hosts had us pull some tarot-inspired cards. The first one I pulled was Manifesting. The woman next to me pulled Abundance. I joked that I’m pretty adept at manifesting but wouldn’t mind channelling more abundance. And I guess the Universe heard that.
→ Yes, the Universe listens in. That’s why your words matter.
→ And here’s the thing: part of being in a divine flow with the Universe/your higher self/God, is acknowledgement and gratitude. So, this new, seemingly random client just came into my world and I was not letting it go unmemorialized. …This is manifesting. This is abundance.
Back to the Story of This Month
…And a few more tidbits that make this meandering story sorta awesome and the important factors that made them happen.
So, to recap—yes, we both managed to land employment after teetering earlier this year. We were also able to pay off big debt before accruing interest on it, just in the nick of time. I then also got an additional client as a safety net for the uncertainty inherent with freelance work (but let’s also be honest, all employment is uncertain now). But there’s more…
While we my magical-just-rediscovered-savings swooped in right when we needed it we’d already started planning how to pay off that big debt on our own because of course we didn’t anticipate discovering a stash of cash.
→ That’s the thing, you don’t get to decide when opportunities manifest. You just have to keep your head down and do the work.
As we’d begun to move our minds from perceiving fear to opportunity, we looked around to see how we’d cover costs and account for all the uncertainty that might come amid a limping economy. I focused on a bigger job and new clients, and my husband zeroed in on selling one of his prized possessions; his fancy bike.
Well, he sold that bike yesterday.
Even if we didn’t have to use it to pay down wild debt, we’re now sorta obsessed with minimizing. And the next goal is to pay off the car with a high interest rate (higher than our savings account interest. If you don’t know why I’m mentioning this, message me—explaining personal finance is why I started writing).
Let me say this: in all my manifestation experience, the lesson I’ve learned is that if you stay in he groove of keeping your head down and doing the hard work, the rewards get bigger. So, just hours after he packed up his precious jewel, he received notice that something he’d been working toward for years had finally been finalized. And it came with a meaningful-to-us financial benefit.
We were shocked. Ok, I’ll say it just like the kids do: we were shook.
Breaking for a moment to call out that it feels weird to write all this. Feels braggy.
But I know that you know that it’s not.3
CUZ Y’ALL.
You were here with me for all the low points just a few weeks ago!
I did not hide it. I might not have shared shared everything (like the worst 10 days of our life together that included mourning, sickness, job loss) because I didn’t want to incite a pity party, but just know that the floor kept falling out from under us, over and over again.
→ Instead of overwhelm (or more accurately, after the bout of overwhelm), we found focus and determination, and just kept moving forward the best way we could (New Age Thesaurus: “taking aligned actions”).
The Cherry On Top in Two Minuscule Moments
This morning I got my daughter up with some of her daycare faves, Baby Shark and Wagon Wheel (a wide musical palette already), and in the whirlwind of toddler chaos; me, trying to get a diaper on her while she evaded me and went around the room calling out the names of her toys, she called for Minnie (which is actually Abby from Sesame Street…I think it’s the ears/hair, but whatever), and I was reminded about a Minnie Mouse book we’ve misplaced and looked all over for, for months. And right then, I looked at the bookcase, and there it was. It felt like magic.
And with my hand on the sacred text of your choice, I kid you not—thanks to Spotify’s shuffling, this song that I’ve never heard the lyrics to was playing right then, about the little things that add up when things feel like they’re falling into place.
And it's crazy how lately now
It just seems to come in waves
What I thought was gonna be the death of me
Was my saving grace
I might have played it eight (or twelve) more times after that. For the vibes.
Happy weekend, y’all.
And until next time,
xM
Let me just fully underscore to you how much I wanted Barbara Eden’s outfit.
And many other valid and valuable reasons. But I’m sure we wouldn’t have moved as soon had I not been let go.
Or hope you know.
Way to go!!
I like how it’s both magic and entirely you!