Wondering why you’re not manifesting anything?

Lately, I’ve been really focused on all of the things that I want for my life: where I want to live, what I want my career to look like, what I want to achieve, who I want to be surrounded by, and so on.

Let me start by saying, I’m a dreamer, a goal setter, a planner: all great and important practices. The ability to look at your life and see where you may be out of alignment is a prerequisite to the rest of this article.

I’m talking to those of you who do this kind of thing; maybe you draw out a map of the different areas of life and give yourself a grade in each area; maybe you journal on it; maybe you fill in your fancy goal-setting planner. No matter what your practice looks like, this message is for those of you who like to look at your life and see how you want to improve—affectionately, my fellow growth junkies.

I’m not going to lie, I’ve been in a weird place for a few months now, a simultaneous rock bottom and the biggest growth period of my life. On the outside, I have had a lot stripped away, from relationships to finances, and enough debt and heartbreak to cause anybody to spiral. But on the inside, I’ve experienced a series of mini-awakenings, and then just last week, I experienced the awakening, the fall-to-knees-I-finally-get-it awakening (a story for another time).

Until that big awakening, I was using everything in my arsenal to rise like the phoenix from this rock bottom. I was using my spiritual practices, the Law of Attraction, manifestation, yoga; I had Tony Robbins yelling in my ear on how to have the “Ultimate Edge” and an unbreakable mindset; I was taking cold showers—all things I swear by. And yet, it’s been months. I received no mysterious check in the mail, no shifts in my business, no bumping into my soul mate on the street.

I was doing everything right, I kept repeating to myself. I’m putting in the work—the actual work that you have to do as an entrepreneur: investing in the right trainings and taking action, and the spiritual work: acting from alignment of my soul’s purpose. I have all bases covered here. What is going on? Why am I not seeing my manifestations? Why am I not reaping the benefits?

I had forgotten something that I teach. And if I’m being honest, I never understood it in the way that I do now.

I had all of my attention on what I want, and none of those things were what I have. Even though I wasn’t speaking with the victim mindset words like “I have nothing” and “why me?” all of my focus was on what I didn’t have. Everything that I was doing, I was doing so that I would get _______.

Therein lies the problem. I may have been “doing everything right,” but not for the right reasons. Even though I was practicing presence and being happy in the moment, it was all for a cause. It was all for the cause of all of the things that I want that I don’t have.

I had to remember something I already knew and I had to choose to believe it in a radical new way: I already have it.

I wanted adventure. Adventure lives within me.
I wanted love. I am filled with love.
I wanted success. I am wildly successful.

This is the point where you may be thinking, “How can you believe that when you’re heartbroken and in debt?”

We live in a world where we qualify our feelings and qualities by representations on the physical plane. That’s a big sentence. What do I mean?

If we have money, then we’re successful. If we’re in a relationship, then we have love. If we travel, then we have adventure.

Here’s why that’s not only false, but doesn’t make sense. The above (and anything else that you are really after) is a feeling: you may think you want a thing, but you really want the feeling that you believe that thing will provide you with. Feelings exist inside human beings. You can activate a feeling whenever you want, can’t you?

You can think a thought and be happy and think a thought and be sad and think a thought and be mad, and so on. It’s all happening within your mind, within your body, within your soul.

We’ve adopted collective rules and beliefs from society. They’re ingrained in us—until we release them.

Saying, “I am only successful if I have money” is as arbitrary as saying, “I will only be happy if there is a monkey nearby me and it is 70 degrees and sunny at all times.” What is outside of you does not determine how you feel inside, unless you let it.

So you look at your life, you decide you have things you want to change, you lay out your goals. As long as they are authentic to you, those goals will be ones that you meet with ease…once you accept this principle:

You already have it.

If you are seeking more financial abundance, you have to first look around and realize all of the financial abundance that you already have. You have to plant the seed. You have to go out of your way to notice all of the ways you already have and can already feel what it is you’re after.

If you are only interested in getting what you don’t currently have, all of the energy in you and in the Universe is flowing around and toward the fact that you don’t have it. When that’s not true. You have the ability to feel whatever you want. You have the ability to wake up and remember that you have all of the power you need inside of you.

The representation of the thing will come when you realize you already are the thing. You know how people say, “You glow different when you’re happy?” You’re happy, and then that is represented by a glow. There is a precious order. It’s why the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the happy get happier…

I’ll leave you with the best analogy I have found so far: you have to have the seed in order to see the bloom. The seed already has flowers in it, even though you can’t see them yet. The seed knows it’s a rose bush before it becomes one to the naked eye.

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