Step Four: Never Fear, Help Is Here
You’re now well on your way to manifesting. As you progress, mentors will help you develop, and friends will help you to overcome tests and challenges.
Take the ‘Pygmalion effect’ – or the idea that if someone we respect has high expectations of us, we’ll perform better than if they have low expectations. Positive expectations are contagious, which is why a mentor can play a significant role in your manifesting success.
Meanwhile, as you go through your manifesting journey, little by little you’re changing and becoming a more positive person. But not everyone you know will appreciate this. Let’s be clear: the people who surround you will either support you in manifesting effectively or block your path.
You may have decided to give up your career and take whatever steps you can in search of another – with your big wish as the final goal. The right people will share your new values and applaud your successes along the way.
Many, however, are afraid of a friend who’s changing. Some will be jealous, while others will try to keep you in a familiar pattern of living or thinking because that makes them feel safer.
There’s only one, rather brutal, answer to this. If there are people who don’t approve of the path you’re taking, it’s time to leave them behind and find a new tribe.
I remember once meeting a group of people who were all divorced and had ‘problem’ children. They all shared common views about marriage, which were negative. I realised straight away I had nothing in common with them and, sure enough, they fell out of my orbit.
If you look at the people around you, you’ll intuitively sense that some are lighter than others. On an energetic level, this lightness can be called ‘good vibrations’.
In your new world, mentors will help you develop and true friends will help overcome tests and challenges. And as you begin to attract new experiences and manifest different circumstances in your life, different people will come into your orbit. This begins to happen as you become more aligned with your authentic self.
You’ll magnetise people towards you who have the same positive mindset. Trust me, this is a sign from the universe that you’re on the right track…
Step Five: Bin Those Negative Thoughts
Encountering obstacles is inevitable. Some are minor, others may seem insurmountable at first. Fortunately, no obstacle is meant to bring a full stop to your plans.
The only thing that can get in the way of successful manifesting is you. An obstacle is just a chance to dig deeper – to discover inner resilience, character and courage.
If fulfilling your wish seems impossible at this stage, you need to find a way of maintaining your faith – and that will transform you into an unstoppable force.
Let’s take a closer look at the obstacles you may face. One example could be getting into unexpected debt as you work towards manifesting a large financial reward. Or say that you fall in love. You think this person is ‘the one’, and then the dynamics of the relationship change. You realise this new relationship is like all the others you’ve had – which is not what you wanted to manifest at all.
Or perhaps you wanted to manifest a beautiful home in the countryside where you could have peace and quiet. As you pick up the keys, the estate agent tells you about the new 100-home estate that’s about to be built next door.
So what’s going on?
When these negative factors get in the way of your positive wishes, you’re being tested by the universe – whose energy is your co-creator in any manifestation. Why? To check if you’re certain about what you want.
Your conscious mind may want the loving relationship or the beautiful countryside home, but your subconscious may not be so sure it’s the best thing for you.
For manifesting to succeed, your subconscious must fully buy into your wish.
If you tend to home in on negative experiences and have anxiety about potential problems, it’s likely you hold deep-seated beliefs that reinforce this perspective. These create a fixed mindset that can stop you from manifesting. Sometimes you may feel overwhelmed with negative emotions. There’s a name for this: ’emotional hijacking’. It means that certain situations trigger negative emotions, which in turn can lead to emotional flooding. When you experience this, it’s because the amygdala – the part of your brain that processes emotions – has taken control.
Try this!
This exercise will also help shift your mindset to manifest a more positive outcome.
- Begin by breathing deeply. This will calm the mind.
- Label the emotions you’re experiencing. Say out loud the name of the specific emotions. This interrupts your emotional state and has a calming effect.
- Get your thinking brain back into play by asking: ‘What would I like to do now?’ or ‘How can I see this situation differently?’
These emotions are a clue to your true perspective on life. They signal that your mindset isn’t yet flexible enough to cope with your changing reality.
Imagine this situation. Maisie wishes for a new life with a job promotion, so she creates a vivid picture in her head of herself in charge of her team.
But the emotion attached to the end picture isn’t strong enough. She’s always had a nagging belief that she isn’t good enough to manage this level of responsibility.
Then she gets some critical feedback from her boss. Her subconscious registers the feedback as true because it tallies with Maisie’s existing beliefs about herself.
Unfortunately, her subconscious blocks her from manifesting her wishes. Maisie doesn’t see this, however; she simply sees evidence that her promotion will never take place.
There are ways to resolve this kind of block. Once you have identified your unconscious negative beliefs, you should ask yourself: what would I rather believe instead? Then visualise what your life could look like if you were empowered by new beliefs. Make yourself feel your wish coming true. If you can do this, the emotion attached to your manifestation can squash old negative beliefs.
Long-term, practising mindfulness or any kind of meditation will help you to control your emotional state better. It will also help you to have greater communication between your conscious, subconscious and higher selves.
Let’s name all the negative ‘low-vibration’ emotions that can block you from manifesting.
FEAR is a primal human emotion that evolved in order to protect us from danger, but it’s also a powerful block to change. Don’t let it become a reason to prevent you from fully experiencing life.
HATE can come in two forms: hate for others and self-hate.
However, even when the emotion is projected towards a person or situation, the emotion remains in your body. Ultimately, the person who really suffers is you.
What’s more, hate keeps you in a victim state, because it’s triggered by the idea that someone or something else is responsible for bad things happening to you. This is a big block for manifesting.
ANGER comes from the desire to punish others or yourself. When you’re angry, your energy gets directed away from focusing on the light at the end of the path and towards side issues. This is a huge waste of your emotional energy.
The message of anger to the universe is, ‘I am a victim’, while the right manifesting message is, ‘I can overcome any obstacle and carry on along the path’.
JEALOUSY often masks other beliefs that cause deep blocks. Often there’s the belief that you don’t deserve what others have, or that you will always have to work harder than they do to achieve it. You need to conquer jealousy by telling yourself, ‘I can have anything,’ and ‘I’m pleased when others get what they want.’
Try this!
The following exercise – which borrows from cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) – will help you identify and challenge unhelpful thought patterns.
- Identify the thought linked to your negative emotion. Ask yourself: ‘What is the belief behind this feeling?’ Example: ‘Speaking in public is scary.’ (Emotion: fear.)
- Ask yourself: ‘What thought would I like to hold instead? What perspective may be more helpful?’
- Write down a new, more constructive thought. Example: ‘Speaking in public has scared me in the past but, with practice, I’ll improve and maybe even enjoy it.’
- Try to prove your new belief by taking action. Prepare thoroughly for your next public speaking opportunity, or practise with a small group. Small wins will help reinforce your new belief.
If the new thought doesn’t quite feel right, adjust it until you find one that you believe and that helps you feel more capable. It should be both realistic and encouraging.
The more you practise choosing and reinforcing helpful thoughts, the more likely you are to create positive outcomes in your life.
You’ll know you have complete emotional mastery of yourself when you can shift any negative emotions to positive ‘high-vibration’ emotions – like gratitude, joy and love.
These will attract better circumstances, people and synchronicities into your life.
The most powerful positive emotion of all, of course, is love. It creates what I call an abundance mentality, where anything is possible. It can overcome any obstacle.
Energy follows intention. So if you intend to fill yourself with love, love will fill you up. If you want to feel more loved, just intend to notice the love around you and magnetise it towards yourself.
Banish old disempowering thoughts by deliberately seeing in your mind’s eye your body full of love channelled from the universe.
Try this visualisation: imagine love flowing into the top of your head as a white light, filling up every cell of your body.
Then see this light flowing out of your heart and filling up your room, reaching everyone you know, every situation in your life, and finally the whole world. You’ll feel amazing after just a few minutes of doing this.
