Manifest: Speak Your Goals into Existence
YOUR THOUGHTS HOLD WEIGHT IN THE UNIVERSE.
Manifesting isn’t simply thinking that something is going to happen; it is encompassing that reality with your entire being. It is standing on a hearth and believing you’re on the stage of an arena. It is sitting in your bedroom filling notebooks with songs and feeling in your soul that what you write will reach the masses. It is building your dream brick by brick until you have the great wall of YOU.
Put yourself into the life that you want. Close your eyes and surround yourself with whatever you are manifesting. Immerse yourself in that moment. More important than what it looks like, embrace what it feels like. Make yourself feel the pride and joy of walking into your new home. Imagine the thrill of answering the phone and being offered your dream opportunity. Can you feel your spirit heat up? Your cheeks aching from smiling? That warm electricity shooting up the back of your neck? Can you feel the irrepressible joy? Transmute those feelings into your work every day as you move toward what you want.
Feel the success so deeply that you genuinely believe it’s going to happen tomorrow. If it doesn’t happen tomorrow, believe it is going to happen the next day.
You can do this for anything—ambitious career dreams or the beach house you want to buy your mom. Imagine pulling up to that beach house. Feel the car turning down the street, feel the wind off the water, hear the palm trees, smell the ocean. Internalize the warm feeling that will spread through you. Feel the joy emanating from your mom. These visualizations are acts of absolute faith; they leave no room for doubt.
Of course, you have to be proactive and put in the work, but when you tap into your own potential winning is just natural.
The Formula: You Vs. You
EVERYONE NEEDS SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN.
That thing should be you and what you COULD be if you just believe in yourself. We are all magicians—turning nothing into something is sheer magic. Despite popular opinion that you have to “see it to believe it,” it’s actually the opposite . . .
You have to believe it to see it.
The same things that make up stars make up us. We are all connected to the energy of a higher power so, in essence, having faith in the universe, or god, or whatever you want to call it is having faith in yourself and vice versa.
Self-belief is what makes you think you can run the race in the first place. However, to cross the finish line, you have to perform alchemy. You have to transmute that conjured belief into action.
What we fill our heads with holds real power. Positive thoughts, affirmations, and a vivid, visceral feeling about what you want will put you on the wavelength to perform the magic trick: turning nothing into something.
The danger of having your dreams deferred lies in self-doubt. Dreams drowning in self-doubt will remain trapped on the ocean floor until your self-belief decides to rescue them. If what’s in your head is negativity, you are tying cement blocks to your own feet. Doubt blooms like algae, and insecurity will lock you in your own cage.
You have the key.
Boomerang: What You Throw Out Will Come Back
Time is an obstacle you put in your own way. All you have to do is believe that it is going to happen. You can’t put a deadline on success; you can’t put a deadline on manifestation.
YOU MUST DETACH FROM THE WHEN.
You send things into the universe and they come back to you, but they don’t always come when you expect or want them to. You have to know WHAT you want. If you are too attached to the WHEN, you will be fighting the natural flow of the universe. You may think you need a new job within the next three months, or that you need to launch your nonprofit by the end of the year, or that your greatest desire must be fulfilled now, but the universe already has the best plan. It knows the exact right moment everything needs to happen. That is not something you can control. Maybe you aren’t as prepared as you think. Maybe the universe—which is a more informed version of yourself—wants you to develop your foundation before it gives you what you want. Maybe being delayed will mean that the market is more open or the economics will have shifted in your favor.
Don’t get caught up in the WHEN.
Just know the WHAT.
This ability to be flexible and maintain your belief is especially essential when your plans go awry. You have to bounce from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm. This trust allows you to be at peace and to freely throw your intentions into the world. Have faith that they will come back.
The Game: Fuck the Points
The game is your passion. Your passion is that thing that connects you to the truest version of yourself. Points are just the signifiers—the money, the accolades—and while they may be pleasurable, they don’t sustain you. If you play for points, you will quit. The game is what keeps you going. You play it, simply for the sake of playing, because without it you are simply not living.
Stop trying to find love of life via money. That’s backwards. It’s just not going to work. You may find money, but you will still be miserable. You’re going to find money through love of life. When you’re chasing your dream, when you are so fulfilled by what you do that you’re lost in the game, the money will find you.
First, find your passion. Start by answering one question: What fills you up with the most enthusiasm when you think about it?
Almost everyone hesitates when asked that question. Did you?
If you don’t know what your passion is, start where you find joy. Start following your curiosities. What do you do that uplifts your spirit? Whatever you are drawn to doing, you do for a reason. Explore that. But for most people, when they give an uncensored answer, their passion is evident. It’s dance or drawing or starting a business. It doesn’t matter what it is; it only matters that your enthusiasm is limitless and unbridled.
If you let your passion motivate you, the pursuit will become its own reward.
Don’t worry about the money. Don’t worry about the points. I know that there are bills to pay and mouths to feed and roofs to keep over heads, but if you’re not down to struggle for an extended period of time, then you don’t want it that bad. No job is beneath you. If working at McDonald’s is what you need to do to keep your dream afloat, then that’s what you’ve got to do. If you don’t really want it that bad, then stop lying to everybody else and certainly stop lying to yourself. The truth is hard to swallow when you’re choking on your pride.
Get lost in playing the game and stop worrying about the points. Points are just small tokens put there to distract and limit you.
If you play for the points, you will get rich and stop trying.
Play for the love of the game.
The Otherside: On the Otherside of Your Fear Is Your Truth
Have you ever seen a confident person get offended by someone else’s confidence? No? Me neither. That’s not a winning mentality. When you are consumed by your own passion, you are not focused on anyone else. That passion requires an insane level of self-confidence and a thick skin, because in order to succeed you have to believe in yourself more than the average person. And the average person is offended by that supreme confidence. You will piss people off. Accept that.
Pursuing your passion is the surest way to separate your true friends from the energy leeches—anyone who sucks the life out of you because they are too scared and self-loathing to go after their own dreams. But passion is also magnetic; it draws people together. The transfer of confidence that happens when you are around someone passionate is enlightenment.
We are often told that our dreams are unrealistic or that we need to make practical choices, but when you accomplish unrealistic goals, hell, even if you just fervently work at an unrealistic goal, it enlightens the people around you. It invites them to taste possibility. Your energy will inspire one another. Your successes will prove to one another what is possible.
Fear is the wall. Belief is what catapults you over the wall.
Welcome to the otherside.