What is Manifesting, the new-age spirituality defined by millennials and Gen Z?
If you scroll through social media posts, you will find several posts and captions from your friends “manifesting” something, perhaps a vacation or a kind of life they want. There are reels on Instagram with the text, “POV: You are on a yacht in Greece” or something similar.
The word 'manifesting” is everywhere on the Internet nowadays. Some are manifesting their favourite celebs win an award show; others are teaching about manifesting.
But what is manifesting? Manifesting is a practice of thinking aspirational or positive thoughts in hopes that those thoughts and wishes will become real. In a way, manifesting requires you to connect with the spiritual world or work with the universe.
Manifesting has really mushroomed in the TikTok and Instagram space. There are modern-day gurus who tell you how to manifest. Some posts on Instagram even ask you to “affirm” to something positive by commenting or using a viral TikTok or Instagram audio on a video.
How did the manifestation trend begin? The roots of manifestation is nothing new, and in fact, date back to the New Thought movement of the 19th century. The spiritual movement then defined that illnesses were just a construct of the mind and of wrong beliefs. It focused on maintaining positive thoughts for better outcomes in life.
Similarly, the positive thought movement made a comeback in the early 2000s when the self-help book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne was published. The uber-popular book is closely related to the manifestation movement of today. The book talked about the “Law of Attraction”, which is the belief that you attract what you believe in. If you have negative thoughts and a cynical outlook on life, that is what you will attract; but if you have a positive outlook then you will attract positive things.
In India, our mothers would often scold us when we said something negative out loud. We would be asked to say “gone, gone, gone (hothu in Kannada)” right after saying something negative. Or if someone said something really positive, one would respond with “aapke muh mein ghee shakkar” or “eat some sweet butter” in a way of saying that it comes true.
So, manifesting has kind of always existed in our societies.
The current trend largely became popular during the pandemic. People were either struck in lockdowns, going through job losses, separation and other crises. Manifestation became a way to keep a positive outlook on life, a necessary thing for the mental health of the masses during tough times.
However, the movement has become more than just a pandemic game or a teens' game. Now, everyone, from the old to the young are jumping on the manifestation wagon. People are even making money from hosting manifestation events.
How to manifest 'good' in life? According to experts in various reports, there is no one way to manifest things in your life. But the most common methods are to:
- Know what you want: Be clear about what you want and have a detailed description of what you desire. If you say, you want to have a better job, describe exactly what kind of job you want, the characteristics, the people, etc.
- Journal it: Once you have a clear picture in mind, you can write it down in a journal, visualise the dream consciously in great detail, speak out loud the wishes, or meditate on it. TikTok has a standard for this called the 369 method. You write down what you want 3 times in the morning, 6 times in the afternoon and 9 times at night for 33 or 45 days.
- Work on it: It isn’t simply about thinking about what you want and the wishes fulfilled magically. You need to work towards it too. Make an action plan, a set of goals you need to achieve in order to fulfill your wishes. If you want to look for a soul mate, start going out on dates, open up, etc. Manifesting in a way is also known as co-creating with the universe.
- Show gratitude: The next step is to show gratitude towards the things you already have. Consider writing down how grateful you are for the things you currently have in your life and thanking the universe for it.
- Let go: The last step is to let go of desperation or negative thoughts. Once you have manifested something, you cannot limit to achieving those goals in a certain time frame or be too desperate about it. For example, you cannot say that if you are not a millionaire by next week then the manifestation did not work.
Does it work? Manifesting something will not magically make it come true overnight. Those who believe in it also say that it might not work and the reason often given is that it wasn’t meant to happen; that the universe can say ‘no’.
It is not to say that manifestation makes miracles happen or not, but it is just another form of therapy for people and keeping hope alive.