Manifesting: helpful tool or privileged BS?

Allow me a chance to explain

This is a heavily updated version of a column I wrote a while ago for LIFE magazine. It’s about manifestation and my inability not to eye-roll at the concept (see above). Bear in mind these are just my opinions - and I seem to be of the minority who feel this way - so if you are big into it like some of my best friends are, that’s fine. We can have different ideas on things and our differences should be encouraged. I also really don’t ‘get’ the religious or spiritual enlightenment people seem to experience with Beyonce. One of my dearest pals is a devout follower, making pilgrimages the world over to see her perform and kneel at her feet, while I just think ‘Yeah she’s alright, I suppose?’ This difference of opinion enriches our friendship, I think. And we have to be careful not to live in a vacuum, of course, otherwise we lose touch with reality. Anyway, I digress. This post feels perhaps more relevant now, given the atrocities we’re seeing unfold in the world from which those affected cannot simply ‘vision board’ their way out. I’m talking about Palestine. Set against this new and horrifying backdrop, it makes the concept of manifesting seem at worst just plain dumb and at best something we should at least question.

When I first voiced this opinion on social media, it was not well received. ‘What’s wrong with a bit of positive thinking?’ and ‘If it works for someone, it’s hardly any harm, right?’ I was told in many different ways. I was also unfollowed by a rake of people who credit manifestation for their good fortune. Expected. Safe in my DMs, however, it seemed there were more than a few of us (cynics, grumps, realists) calling BS on the bestselling buzzword. And not just because it is a load of waffle, but because it has a bang of white privilege off it, as well as the fact that it might actually be harmful too.

One scroll of my newsfeed and manifesting (or manifestation?) cannot be missed; if it’s not someone drawing on their vision board, it’s another person who has successfully manifested a new job, a new car or a new baby (give me strength). Has it not worked out for you? Oh, well you must be doing it wrong. You’re not putting the right energy out into the world. In that case, you should probably recruit one of the countless manifesting coaches out there who, for a handsome hourly fee, can help you strike the right frequency.

The idea of manifesting gets easily conflated with positive thinking or the act of writing down your goals (top manifesting tip - don’t just write them down on your phone; they’ll more than likely come to fruition if you use an old school pen and paper, and if you really want to go all out, get your hands on some parchment and a quill). Positive thinking IS powerful. Being goal-focused IS effective. But that’s not what manifesting is. On closer inspection, manifesting is the quite frankly bananas idea of willing what you want into existence. It’s a practice centred on the ‘law of attraction’, not to be confused (though it more than likely is) with a scientific law. The latter describes a phenomenon that the scientific community has found to be provably true, such as Newton’s law of universal gravitation. The “law” of attraction is more of a spiritual belief which suggests that like attracts like. Manifesting experts (lol) are firm in the belief that if you think positively, if you already visualise those positive things as yours, then those positive things will happen to you. That’s nice. It’s not true, but sure, that part is, I suppose, harmless. Conversely, manifesting also suggests that if you have a negative outlook, more unfavourable events will befall you. This is where things become problematic and why I can’t quite stomach it.

Despite its flawed logic, manifesting as a trend is on the up. Female millennials and Gen Z-ers can’t seem to get enough. However, it’s nothing new. The central idea is said to have been around since the 19th century but it wasn’t until 2006, after the publication of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, which sold over 30 million copies, that this quackery made its way into the mainstream. Honestly, I cannot understand how someone could flick through the pages of that book and be like ‘Yeah, seems legit’, but they do, in their millions. Back then, social media was still in its infancy so unless you read the book - in which she states, among other questionable theories, that our “thoughts are the primary cause of everything, and the rest is effects from those thoughts”, not to mention that victims of war are responsible for their own misfortune (MAJOR RED FLAG), you’d be none the wiser.

Today, it’s another mega-seller’s turn: Roxie Nafousi’s Manifest: 7 Steps To Living Your Best Life. Granted, I’m probably just jealous that nothing I wrote has taken hold like that. It’s certainly a lot more palatable than The Secret, and a lot less outrageous, but it is based on the same principles. Why has it returned to the fore? My thinking is that after a few pretty miserable years (thanks to Covid, in case you forgot), where we had next to no individual agency over what was happening, manifesting served as a convenient, nicely dressed life raft for those willing to jump on board. It gave us something on which to focus our energy, convincing us of the power of positive thinking and the idea that no matter how lofty our dreams may be, we can think them into reality. The unspoken caveat though is that it will work a lot better if you’re also in a position of great privilege.

But here’s the thing: when we link our successes to manifesting, we completely negate the combination of effort, luck, talent and privilege that’s usually at play. It’s very convenient that it most often works out for those of us who have a very comfortable existence. What’s more, if you take for example something you’ve achieved such as a promotion at work or the purchase of a new home, and you give all the credit to manifesting, you end up undermining your own efforts and talents. In handing your power over to the universe, you do yourself a disservice. I don’t want an accomplished entrepreneur telling me how she manifested her dream job and perfect home into existence. I want her to tell me how bloody hard she worked to get there. I want her to acknowledge and own her unfair advantages, which we all have to some degree. Will younger generations expect to bypass hard work, opting for a 3-day manifesting course instead? Give me strength.

If you’re to really follow the concept through to its end, it places blame on those for whom things aren’t working out, and this is where harm can occur. I had a friend recently going through a difficult fertility journey who was told by countless people that it would never happen for her if she didn’t start thinking positively. Hearing from others who had simply ‘manifested’ their pregnancies was a slap in the face. The idea that her own thinking was where she was going wrong compounded the stress that she was already facing. Eventually, it did happen for her but it wasn’t a result of happy thoughts, it was IVF.

The flipside of manifesting is that it makes us fearful of our own emotions, as though merely 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’re really feeling about something - denying our worries or our fears which are often legitimate - we create more anxiety. The truth is twofold: for one, our thoughts are fleeting, we don’t have to latch onto them. Sure they’ll change again tomorrow anyway. For another, the universe doesn’t give a hoot what we’re thinking. It’s not conspiring for or against you. It’s not a thinking, feeling thing. While this might fly in the face of popular discourse, it’s an incredibly liberating and humbling realisation and one that, if you haven’t already started sticking pins in my voodoo doll, I encourage you to consider.