How to Manifest: Make Your Dreams a Reality in 40 Days

The First Thing to Do

Before you begin, I recommend purchasing a new journal. Think of it as a blank slate. It will be a physical reminder that no matter where you are on your manifestation journey, you are starting right where you are. After you read the content for the day, we will be doing some exercises together. Some of them are journal prompts that might require you to write down your thoughts and feelings. Some of them are more interactive exercises that you can practice and then write about if you choose. These meditations and other activities will help you to integrate each day’s lesson. I really encourage you to do each of the exercises because they will help you to embody the concepts you’re learning about beyond the intellectual level. Finally, at the end of each day, there is a section called Go Deeper, which adds some exercises for you to go to the next level of understanding, if you feel called to do that.

In this first week, you will lay the foundations for successfully manifesting your desires. Who are you? What is your reality? What do you want? What is your vision? And what universal energy will you call upon for assistance? We will cultivate a daily spiritual practice and learn to spot signs from the Universe that will give you guidance as you move forward.

Day 1

What Are You Manifesting?

Every moment is the manifestation of the whole. Life itself is, therefore, nothing but the continuous moment of the whole.

—Yamada Koun, The Gateless Gate

Hello, beautiful soul! Today is Day 1 of our journey to manifesting what you desire. You may be feeling excited and curious about what we are embarking on together. Today, we are laying down the groundwork so that we’re both on the same page. I’m going to talk about manifestation, both as a noun and as a verb—a concept and a practice.

To manifest is to bring an idea and/or desire from thought to the physical reality. As defined by Morgan Garza, Manifesting is using the power of the mind and the energetic frequency of thoughts to invite things, people, jobs, money, love—just about anything you want—into your life.

You are manifesting right now. You are constantly creating your reality with your thoughts, beliefs, and emotions. This concept might be incredibly empowering, but maybe you’re reading this like, WTF, why would I manifest this reality I’m living in now? Don’t fret, my friend: I felt the same way. I felt so discouraged and angry when I learned about this in some of the manifestation courses I’ve taken and read it in books. But I’ve finally come to a place where I understand. The goal of this book is not just to manifest, but to consciously manifest—or, as I like to say, co-create the life you want to live. Having awareness that you can consciously create your dream life is the first step to experiencing it.

We are used to believing that if we work hard, we will get the things we desire. What if I told you that the Universe doesn’t care about what you want, but rather that the Universe gives you who you believe you are and what you believe you deserve.

I heard spiritual teacher and author Iyanla Vanzant say that most people believe you must have the resources to do the thing you want to do and then you will be. She offers instead that it’s be, do, and have. Meaning, you have to become the thing you want in order to attract the thing you are seeking. If you want abundance, you have to vibrate abundance from your cells, your energy, your thoughts and feelings.

The more I deepen my spiritual and self-growth journey and learn more about manifestation, the more I realize it’s the art of surrendering, allowing, and having trust. If you are reading this book, you are on the quest to manifest something different for yourself. Something more elevated, better, something you want. You probably want steps and tricks. And I will help you with that! But I’m going to be up front right away: while everyone has the ability to tap into universal consciousness and co-create their desires, it’s going to take doing different things to get different results—like a shift in perspective, healing your subconscious mind, or addressing outdated stories you replay in your mind. As the saying goes, Nothing changes if nothing changes.

I believe manifesting is all about our beliefs and, by extension, how we were conditioned and brought up to believe certain things. If you were lucky enough to have parents, teachers, and mentors around you who told you that anything is possible and they themselves modeled this behavior, then you are more likely to believe anything is possible. But if you didn’t have an influence like that in your life, first you’ll need to acknowledge your current mindset, heal the wounds that brought you there, and learn how to cultivate a perspective that will put you in the right space to desire the things that will be the best for your overall well-being. Manifestation requires us to heal and shift our perception of our lives.

Each and every one will be manifesting something different, and individually you will manifest different things throughout different seasons of your life. All those things are valid. Our desires are our soul’s clues to what we want and what we are meant for. And while our mind can be a trickster, our heart never lies. Therefore, I believe embodiment work will also be helpful for you in this journey. Embodiment work is exactly what it sounds like: getting into your body to help you to drop out of your head and into your heart space.

I remember very distinctly the year 2002, when I was a college student doing a summer internship at Time Warner. The senior staff brought all the interns to the newly built Time Warner building at Columbus Circle in Midtown Manhattan. We stood there as the group was assembled on the northeast side of the circle, just looking at the building. It was the fanciest thing I had ever seen. I was a sophomore with big dreams. In high school, I did not care about academia, mostly wanting to socialize and have fun, hence my subpar non–Ivy League college grades. I stood there looking at my future dream, and at that moment, I decided to create the life I wanted to live on my terms. I realized that I had to take my studies seriously if I wanted to get closer to that dream. This is when I turned my academic career around and, eventually, I graduated magna cum laude and was inducted into the honor society. I didn’t call it manifestation at the time because this was before The Secret. I relied heavily on my ability to visualize, believe, and take the steps necessary to get closer. As I stared at that pristine building, I told myself that one day, I was going to live nearby and shop at the Whole Foods (another fancy place), go for runs in Central Park, and make lots of money. I knew it was possible. Now, the thing is, I didn’t really think about it every day or even have a vision board. I just knew. I believed. Eight years later, I lived three blocks away, and it all happened. Not exactly how I imagined it would, but I lived in that place, I went for runs in that park, and I shopped for groceries every week in that Whole Foods.

This book isn’t just about getting things or acquiring things. It’s really about believing in yourself and what’s possible for your life, and a lot of that belief will result in interactions with the material world and experiences in it. There’s nothing wrong with that. In many spiritual traditions, we are taught to detach from material things and wants, but I believe there is a balance. We have to be able to enjoy our human experience, and at the same time not grip everything so tightly. We have to learn to appreciate the things around us while simultaneously not becoming attached to them.

When we are too attached to our material possessions, we lose the ability to release and let go, which is crucial to knowing the truth of who we are and what we are capable of. There are times in our lives that are so challenging that we can’t think of anything but accepting the loss. But, as Jim Carrey famously said, I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer. We may understand this statement logically, but most of us want to get there anyway and see for ourselves. Telling you your wildest dreams aren’t actually the answer is not to discourage you, but I did want to offer another perspective on manifestation. Before we dive in, I want you to know that manifestation is more than manifesting money, a big house, cars, and material things. It’s having the freedom and ability to change your current circumstances. One of the biggest lies in modern life is that more will bring you happiness.

I believe the key to happiness is to feel grateful for your present circumstances but also have a deep knowing that you can change your circumstances at any time with your thoughts, feelings, and your will. As I mentioned in the introduction, manifesting at the macro level is being in alignment with who you really are. At the micro level, people manifest to feel good. When you manifest a goal, a job, money, a car, or a person, it feels good because the thing or person elicits positive emotions within you. These are material manifestations that are attached to a perceived emotion. The object of your desire gives you a momentary serotonin boost, and then you are in a hamster wheel of manifesting. While I’m not saying you shouldn’t manifest these things, it will be to your benefit to be in the flow with your life. To understand yourself at the micro and macro level. To be the point of attraction to those things that are meant for you. There is a difference between attracting versus chasing. Magnetizing versus getting. Being in the flow versus forcing. Trusting versus controlling.

When I ask my friends and family, even strangers, What are you currently manifesting? most people will say freedom. The freedom to do what they want, when they want, have financial security, and not worry. I believe every human being on Earth has a right to financial resources, education, health, and freedom to do whatever he/she/they want. As the US Constitution puts it, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To understand how to manifest is to know how to harness the creative potential within us to create a life of freedom, where we have the unbridled ability to pursue our own personal happiness—to be able to do what we want, when we want, and dictate the terms of our own lives.

What Have You Manifested?

Write in your journal about some things that you’ve successfully manifested, whether you realized it or not at the time. Take note of what you thought of while you did it. Did you have a vision board? How quickly did your manifestations come to you? Did they come in the form that you had intended?

Whenever I review the manifestations that I have called into being, the exercise reminds me that I’ve been able to manifest before. And if I have done it before, I can do it again!

GO DEEPER

What does manifestation mean to you?

Day 2

It Starts with a Vision

Visualizing is a mental process governed by the reasoning or conscious mind; visioning is a spiritual process, governed by intuition, or the superconscious mind.

——Florence Scovel Shinn, The Complete Works of Florence Scovel Shinn

Today, we will talk about the power of your vision and how the manifestation process starts. In the coming weeks, we will walk through the steps to bring your vision to life, but today is all about the process of focusing on your visions. This is not the time to limit yourself. Today, I invite you to really go there.

As creative beings, we have the power to envision our lives. If you want or desire something in your life and you don’t have it, you can close your eyes and imagine yourself in a different reality. We have the power to dream something better for ourselves with our creative and imaginative minds.

I was a child who grew up in the 1980s and 90s, before social media, and I’m so grateful for that. I came of age during a time when I had to use my imagination to visualize the characters in books. I didn’t have the luxury to Google images online and have the images of the characters be presented to me. So when I read the Harry Potter books for the first time (before the movies came out), I could see in my mind’s eye what Harry, Hermione, and Ron looked like. I could see what Hogwarts would be like, just in my mind. I created worlds with just my imagination. When I think about that now, it actually amazes me that this was how we processed content.

I remember playing outside all day, building forts and playing pirates and mermaids, which is the reason I believe I have such powerful visualization abilities. Children’s imaginations are amazing, and my hope is that a reliance on technological devices and social media isn’t taking away from that. But, even though I’m skeptical, I hope the kind of imagery young people find online will help them visualize even more.

Some of us can conjure up a vision through a visualization meditation, a vision board, affirmations, scripting, or even just walking through your dream neighborhood. I say try it all and see what method helps you feel it in your body.

My friend and college roommate works for Mercedes-Benz, and she always drives the top-of-the-line cars. One time, I asked to drive her car so that I could experience the feeling of grabbing the steering wheel. I wanted to feel and smell the luxurious leather seat underneath my legs, see the lights and the advanced technology only in luxury cars. I wanted to really feel with all of my senses what it was like to drive a fancy car—to have a visual and a visceral feeling. And while I still don’t have a fancy car, for more eco-friendly reasons, it was a feeling I will never forget. After driving her car, I could immediately revisualize myself in that situation.

Sometimes when I really need a boost, I’ll go to open houses in my dream neighborhoods or go on a real estate site like Zillow.com, and I’ll pretend that I’m looking for my dream home just so I can have that experience and feel the sensations of it in my body. This is an important step. You use visualization to feel what you are imagining. It’s a great way to trick your subconscious mind into thinking that what you desire is really happening. More on your subconscious mind later.

In 2007, when I moved home from San Diego after getting my master’s in psychology, I had to start paying back my student loans. It was the beginning of a hard time, but I wanted to have dreams to work toward, so I decided to make a vision board. This was the first time I ever created a vision board, and I let my imagination go wild. I went there! I put a photo of a West Village apartment on the board, because since I was a little girl, my dream had been to live in a cute and quaint apartment among artists and poets (which was how I imagined the Village vibe would be). I added a keychain of the Eiffel Tower that a friend had given me from her most recent trip, because it was my dream to go to Paris, too. I wrote myself a check for $100K on that board because I had heard a story about Jim Carrey writing himself a $10 million check at the beginning of his career. If you don’t know this story, stop reading this right now and Google videos of Jim Carrey talking to Oprah about how he manifested $10 million by writing himself a check. He would stare at it every day until he got paid out for his role in The Mask.

Anyway, back to my story—I added a ton of stuff to the board, including travel photos because I wanted to see more of the world. I’m not saying all of my dreams came true at once, because they didn’t, but it all happened eventually. It didn’t all happen in the way that I thought it would either, but it did. When my life began moving in the direction of the vision board I had created, I began to truly believe that when you envision something and focus your attention on it, it will all unfold on divine timing. One thing to note, though: I didn’t obsess over it. I didn’t spend my days asking myself, Where is it? and evaluating how much closer each day brought me to the life I wanted. I just knew it would all happen in time—and it did.

So many people I know don’t allow themselves to dream big because they don’t believe it will happen. They don’t believe it’s possible for them, which is why I ask, Well, why not? You believed as a kid. I know you believed, because children always live in the present moment, and they are able to imagine. As a kid, you probably made castles out of cardboard boxes. Why is it so wrong to aspire to great things right now, even though you don’t necessarily know each step you’ll take toward making them happen?

This kind of self-limiting is why I believe we have to be wary of social media consumption. Learn to live in your own mind. When we engage excessively with social media, we are constantly fed marketing that reinforces what we think we want and need and drowns out the vision coming from within us. Right now, maybe you have visions and dreams but you don’t believe that they’ll come to pass. Just remember that having those visions and dreams is the first step—that’s how it all starts. Visions come alive when you believe in them and you have the courage to act on them, so tap into what your mind and body are really reaching toward and turn away from what is imposed on you by external messaging.

I want to share this manifestation story with you from Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz, who was a guest on my podcast. She is a kitchen curandera, healer, and author. Her story is a perfect example of the power of a vision coming to life on a vision board. I was pretty floored by how similarly we manifest, because she is also a visual manifester—in other words, the power of a physical representation helps her bring her dreams to life.

Felicia wanted to manifest being on a TV show, because she felt called to be more in the public eye so that she could share her ancestral wisdom. Her intention was and continues to be to help people heal with earth medicines. During one of her meditations, she even received a name: Padma. She went on her computer and googled the name Padma. She recognized Padma Lakshmi, who is an Indian American author, activist, model, and TV host of Top Chef. Felicia put a picture of Padma on her desktop, and every day when she opened her