I can’t get on board with manifesting. When I first expressed this on social media, I felt like I was alone. “What’s wrong with a little positive thinking?” Someone asked me. In the privacy of my direct messages, however, there were more than a few people (cynical, grumpy, realists, and a few scientists) calling BS on the concept. And not just because it’s a waffle, but because it could be harmful.
In my Instagram feed, the protest cannot be missed; if it’s not someone drawing on their vision board, it’s someone else who has “manifested” a new job, a car, or a baby. Didn’t work for you? You have to do it wrong. You’re not putting the right energy into the world, so you should probably hire a manifesting coach who, for an hourly fee, can help you hit the right frequency.
The concept of manifestation is easily confused with positive thinking or the act of writing down your goals. On closer inspection, however, manifesting is the banana idea of wanting what you want to exist. It is a practice centered on the “law of attraction”. Not to be confused with a provable scientific law, rather it is a spiritual belief that suggests like attracts like. The manifest “experts” insist that if you think positively, positive things will happen to you. It’s zonte. It’s not true, but of course it’s harmless. Conversely, the manifestation suggests that if you have a negative outlook, more unfavorable events will befall you. This is where things get problematic.
Of course, this is nothing new. The central idea is said to have been around since the 19th century, but it wasn’t until 2006, and the publication of Rhonda Byrne’s The secret, which has sold over 30 million copies, that this quackery has made its way into the mainstream. She states, among other questionable theories, that our “thoughts are the first cause of everything, and the rest is the effect of these thoughts”.
Today, it’s the turn of another mega-seller: that of Roxie Nafousi Manifest: 7 Steps to Living Your Best Life. Of course, it’s much nicer than The secret, but it is based on the same principles. Why did he return to the front of the stage? My thought is that after two pretty miserable years, where we had virtually no individual agency about what was going on, the protest serves as a practical, well-dressed life raft. It gives us something to focus our energy on, convincing us of the power of positive thinking and the idea that no matter how high our dreams are, we can achieve them.
But here’s the thing: when we tie our successes to manifestation, we completely negate the combination of effort, luck, skill, and privilege that’s usually at stake. between us who have a very comfortable existence. Also, if you take something you’ve accomplished, like a promotion at work or buying a new house, and give all the credit to the manifestation, you end up undermining your own efforts. By giving your power away to the universe, you are doing yourself a disservice.
I don’t want a successful entrepreneur telling me how she achieved her dream job and her perfect home. I want her to tell me how hard she worked to get here. Will younger generations expect to bypass hard work, opting instead for a three-day manifestation course?
I had a friend who was recently going through a difficult fertility journey who countless people told would never happen to her if she didn’t start thinking positively. Hearing from others who had simply “manifested” their pregnancy was a slap in the face. The idea that her own thinking was where she was wrong compounded the stress she was already facing. Eventually it happened to her, but it wasn’t the result of happy thoughts, it was IVF.
The flip side of manifesting is that it makes us fear our own emotions, as if having bad thoughts will cause us ill health or some other misfortune (it won’t). It promotes toxic positivity, where there is no room for the negative. And when we resist how we really feel about something — denying often legitimate worries or fears — we create more anxiety.
The truth is twofold. First: our thoughts are fleeting, we don’t have to cling to them. Of course, they will change again tomorrow anyway. And second: “the universe” doesn’t really care what we think. While this may run counter to popular discourse, it’s an incredibly liberating achievement – one I encourage you to consider.
