3 Key Components to Reaching Goals and Manifesting Intentions
I thought about what does and what does not work for me when I try to reach my goals and manifest my intentions. I came up with the following three key components.
1. NO Visualizations!
Do you use visualizations to manifest what your want and reach your goals? If it works for you, if it helps you create actual, tangible results in your life – awesome! Keep going, more power to you.
(Just ask yourself if it has ever created any third-dimensional changes in your physical life circumstances, aside from making you feel better on your couch in your same old life.)
Visualizing doesn’t work for me
For me, visualizing my desired outcomes has never worked. On the contrary! Those goals that I spent time visualizing are those I never reached. Those goals that I did actually reach are those I did not spend a minute visualizing.
This is true even when I take action additionally to the visualizations. The act of visualizing itself just seems to kill the spark off and to ruin any chances for me to get where I want to go.
Reaching goals transforms our energy in unpredictable ways
I cannot imagine what it will feel like to have already reached my goals. Reaching a goal, especially a big one, is so transformational. It causes our energy to shift so much that we kinda become someone else. A different person.
Old Me cannot possibly imagine how New Me will feel, as New Me’s energy is very different from that of Old Me. What Old Me visualizes can only be aligned with the energy of Old Me. When I keep visualizing, which means bathing in Old Me energy every day, I remain stuck in Old Me and never move on to becoming New Me.
Embracing uncertainty
When I look back at goals I have successfully reached in the past, what’s noticeable is that after I reached them, I felt completely differently from the way I assumed I would feel before starting. My life circumstances also changed in surprising, unexpected ways that I could not have imagined before.
What’s also noticeable is that in those cases when I successfully manifested my desired outcome, I did not have any pre-conceived idea or image of how things would be “after”. On the contrary, I jumped right into the Unknown, with nothing but my idea as my compass in the fog, and remained in complete uncertainty until I suddenly realized I was there.
I need to embrace uncertainty and leave the door open for the Unexpected!
So if visualizing doesn’t work for me, what does? I can see two factors that need to be present.
2. Genuine, Burning Desire for my Goal
I need to really, really want it.
I mean, REALLY. I often wish I would want something, or I think I should want something, or I think I need to want something, but the truth is, I don’t really want it.
I just don’t, and there is nothing to do about that. I want or I want not, there is no way I can make myself want something I don’t really want.
When this is the case, I can just drop that goal immediately, because I won’t reach it, no matter how hard I work towards it.
I suggest you go through your goals and ask yourself if you really, really want them. Be honest. The question is not “Should I want this?” or “Do I want to want this?”. It’s “DO I really want this?”.
If you don’t feel true passion and desire for your goal in the depth of your gut, drop it, no matter how useful or reasonable it seems to be.
3. True Respect for the Why of my Goal
To manifest my intentions I need to feel like I have a “good reason” for wanting what I want. This is not about the goal itself! It’s about the reason I want to reach this goal.
Have a close look at your reason
Is the reason I want to reach this goal aligned with who I really am? Does it express my divinity? Is it a reflection of the unconditional, infinite love, power, abundance, compassion, connection, acceptance, creativity, etc. that I really am?
Or does it come from a place of fear, disconnection, ego (in the worst sense of the word), scarcity, pain, judgment, or other energies that don’t feel too good? Sometimes our goal might be perfectly sensible and honorable, yet the reason we want it is not in alignment with our divine, beautiful nature.
For example, I might want to lose weight. Nothing wrong with that. But what if I want to lose weight because I think I’m ugly the way I am and out of fear that men might reject me and cheat on me if I’m not attractive enough? Now that reason doesn’t feel too good. How does that express infinite love, connection, power, oneness, beauty, etc.? Judgment, disconnection, fear, mistrust… Is that who I really am?
It’s about grounding certain energies into the physical
The reason I want to reach a certain goal expresses a certain energy. When I take action on that goal and manifest my intention in the physical, I ground this energy into my life. I bring more of it into the world.
So I need to ask myself if bringing more of this energy into my life is a good idea. Is it aligned with what I really want, for myself and for everybody else? Is it a smart move, a good investment of my time and energy?
For example, if I want to lose weight out of judgment and fear, taking action on that goal and reaching it will physically express these energies of judgment and fear in my life and attract even more judgment and fear. Is this what I really want? Do I really stand behind this choice?
It doesn’t work without respect
I need to feel that the reason I want what I want is worthy of my own support. Can I maintain my integrity and still fully support myself in wanting to reach this goal for this reason? It all boils down to respect. I need to feel that I can really respect both that goal of mine AND my reason for wanting to reach it.
Sometimes I do really really want something, but at the same time I can feel how this desire comes from some part of me that is not who I really am. Its energy isn’t aligned with what I really want. When I think of it, I feel small.
I never reach those goals, no matter how hard I try.
This explains why sometimes I manifest improbably high amounts of money spectacularly quickly, and other times I struggle financially at the level of sheer survival. When I invest my money in things that I do not deeply respect (like unhealthy food or cheap, low quality stuff), and most of all when I spend money for reasons I don’t deeply respect (like out of fear or because of my sugar addiction!), this always leads to immediate financial struggle.
Which energies are you trying to bring into your life?
I suggest you have a look at your goals and ask yourself if you really, really respect both the goals themselves and your reasons for wanting them. Why do you want this? Does it come from a place of fear and disconnection or does it express the infinite potential and beauty in you?
Can you maintain your integrity and fully say “Yes!” both to this goal and to why you want it? Do you feel great or small when you think about why you want what you want?
What is the energy of your reason for wanting what you want? Which energies would you be expressing and embodying by acting on your wish? Can you bring more of this energy into the world and approve of this choice?
Physical actions are very powerful energetic statements. They are also heavy in consequences. Every time you act on a particular energy, that’s what you get more of in your life. Every time you bring a desire of yours into physical form, you give huge weight in your life to the energy that birthed it.
If the energy your idea stems from isn’t a very positive one, this might explain why you cannot reach your goal. It might conflict too strongly with other, more positive energies already present in your life. Or you might at some level of your Being know this isn’t for your highest good, so you’ll resist and “sabotage” (aka protect) yourself.
How about you?
In my experience so far, when I have both passionate desire for my goal and true respect for the reasons I want it, then I reach it. Provided I abstain from visualizing it!
I just jump into the Unknown, alone with my idea that I really want it and have a good reason for wanting it. That’s all I need to know.
But when one of these two factors is missing, gaaaah, forget about it, I won’t make it.
Sometimes I still waste my time pursuing goals I don’t really want for reasons I don’t really respect. Maybe I’ll talk more about why this happens and how to stop doing it in a future post.
How about you? I’m curious to hear if you can relate to what I wrote and what you think about it. Leave a comment and tell us!
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This really spoke to me. It is so interesting, isn’t it, how “standard wisdom” is not so standard after all. I have this picture in my mind of my “new job” that just sort of came to me one day…oh, over a year ago. Has it shown up? Nope! Something else did though – far more interesting but not lucrative like the jobs I’ve done always. So, as my current life and financial obligations are tied up in the old income, life falls apart. Now, that wouldn’t seem on the surface to be a good reward for being more aligned with who you are! However if I imagine the “image” I had in my mind, it doesn’t ring nearly as genuinely true anymore. One option, I suppose, is to accept the “falling apart” and do a “re-do” but that’s not too appealing!
Dear Rosine – I love how you are able to express the things that people secretly feel (or hide from themselves) and just put it out there. Shining a light on it makes it seem so much more “unimportant” than when it was just a secret or hidden.
The Universe has weaned me from my desires/goals/wants. I just don’t care any more what does or doesn’t show up in my life. Thousands of visualizations that never came to pass only left me feeling a) there’s something seriously WRONG with me because others are getting their visualizations and I’m not, and b) frustrated at obviously being so STUPID that I can’t seem to find the missing key to MAKE this or that happen. I’ve visualized, made “Dream Boards” or whatever they’re called these days, thought my way into positive thoughts, felt my way into positive feelings, and prayed and prayed (whilst accepting that my prayers were always answered and the answer was a BIG FAT NO.) The whole visualization movement left me frustrated, pissed and wallowing in feelings of lack and hatred at the powers that be for not giving me even enough rope to hang myself with. It’s a really pathetic way to live.
One day, I decided that I would simply accept me, myself, right where I was, just as I was, with whatever was. There is no code that says I am not fulfilling my purpose being as I am. There is no agency that will come and check on how I’m doing, why I don’t have any goals, and what I am doing to get me some. My life is what it is, with the people in it that are in it, the circumstances that are, and the direction it will take. I found that it is only in comparing or thinking that I must achieve something that I was miserable. Now, every day is a joy. Just as it is. If I feel moved to do something, I do it. If I don’t, I no longer struggle with feelings that I “should”.
The other thing I’m working on giving up is this elusive concept of “finding my purpose.” My purpose is fulfilled every day by my just being here. That’s it. And when my purpose ends, my life will as well. I don’t have the book of “The Grand Scheme of Things” so I don’t know WHAT my purpose is, and probably never will, but I do know that I am here and that’s good enough now.
I guess that’s what it’s all come down to – everything is good enough now, I don’t have to struggle. If things change, then they will be good enough then as well. This gives me a chance to respond authentically instead of responding according to the limits of some plan I’ve set up for myself.
I’m really new to this visualizing and manifesting (less than a year), so I am really experimenting myself. I cannot say that visualization hasn’t worked for me, but what it has yielded has been a little odd and sort of inconsequential.
So far, I can give my visualizing 100% credit for the bathroom and kitchen in my current apartment. When I was visualizing a new apartment last fall, feeling quite unimaginative and pretty apathetic, all I could conjure up in my mind for a bathroom was exactly the bathroom I had in my previous apartment (which is in an entirely different country), and that’s EXACTLY what I got here, right down to the unlikely ugly navy blue floor. And kitchen – I visualized a long and narrow one like I had seen in so many apartments, and that’s exactly what I have.
The thing is, I didn’t really care what kind of bathroom or kitchen I got – I only wanted a bathtub, with better and newer fixtures than I had in my old apartment (and I got that too) and a bigger kitchen than in my previous apartment. Everything I really cared about – having 2 bedrooms and specifically how I furnished them – didn’t happen. I love my apartment, and I’m not sure if I manifested what I truly wanted when I got this place, or what, but the second I saw my apartment, I loved it and wanted it, excluding any chance of finding a 2-bedroom one anyhow – so I still got what I wanted. It turns out I found something I didn’t know existed and that I apparently was at least as happy to have as what I had been visualizing. In fact, the mere location of this apartment is far better than anything I could have visualized or imagined.
One huge thing I got after just a week of visualizing is that my boyfriend “un”broke up with me. I am, however, NOT 100% certain he took me back because of my visualizations per se, or because he and I have such a strong bond that he felt me as I was doing the visualizations and acted on his feelings.
However, as became apparent in my last session with Rosine, I am considering that there may be a certain element lacking from my visualizations. I think I am discovering what it is now. I recently read how a known Pavlina forumer (aka ALG) and LoA expert, really, manifests and now I am trying to do what he described.
According to him, he describes relaxing the body so much that there are no twitches or tensions anywhere, and once that relaxed, begin to think of and develop your wish in that deep meditative state.
Today is the 2nd day I have tried it and I feel it really has a strong and solid rooted feeling in the earth that I feel the visualizations may have been lacking. The visualizations left me feeling “up” and blissful, but these meditations leave me feeling deeply peaceful and rooted with my intended desire.
Here’s hoping it will work :smile:
Sylvia, great insight. I quit trying to articulate my purpose. Now it’s something I just know I *do*.
One lesson from both your stories: trust yourself as an authority. A lot of ideas floating around the PD world just don’t click with me. It’s often simply because I know better. But the PD field is highly authority-centric, despite rhetoric to the contrary. You’re flakked or shut out for listening to yourself, especially by people not listening to their own authority.
About money/business intentions:
I think PD people will continue to fail in that, simply because they don’t question their higher level beliefs. I mean their socio-economic-political views. They only look at lower level stuff i.e. simply changing business models or beliefs to make more money.
Stack lightworker cash seems to be the prevailing belief. But maybe, deep down at the soul-level, they really want to completely change the system we live under. And they really need to work on that vision and how to transition to it.
So true, Jack. The minute you let someone else determine your direction, you’ve betrayed yourself and you’ll start floundering.
Money is such a tricky thing. It’s a collective we’ve all agreed on, like time, and because we’ve agreed to use it, we can’t see our way out of it. I think people would be perfectly fine exchanging talents, time, labour without money….it is the businesses that DEMAND an exchange in currency only. And again, it’s not really the currency they want so much as profits, power and control. It’s a model that’s long outlived itself.
Do you have any ideas on how it can change? How do you envision it?
Rosine, I hope you feel better and recover quickly! We’re here for you and I hope you take as much time as you need. The insights, resources, and info on this site will more than sustain us until you return healthy and feeling good again. :)
Hi Rosine,
Excellent post. From what I have studied and experienced, Visualization/manifestation is not a simple technique. Thanks to documentaries like “The Secret” one begins to think that persistently thinking or visualizing something will bring it about. What one does not take into account is the subconscious processes during and after visualization.
I remember reading in one of those Abraham books that it is what you feel towards your mental visualization that matters and not the images themselves.
I have realized that there are some cardinal rules for success with visualization/manifestation.
1. Healing your inner child- unless we lose the fears, beliefs, assumptions, insecurities etc from childhood manifesting the life we want will be difficult.
2. Living in the present- Sometimes visualizations can make us live in the future that we are visualizing. That can be a trap to not working in the present. I think visualization must be used as a way to feel good and motivate action in the present.
It is possible that visualization of the goal (while not completely clear emotionally) actually brings up feelings of inadequacy, overwhelm, etc and thus defeats the purpose. Like you mentioned, it is good to clearly state the intention before you do it.
So I think that to live a life of successful manifestation one needs to do quite a bit of psychological work.
Thats my 2 cents. :)
This thread derails but I’ll brief my views:
All social systems are valid. Consciously choose what you want. Start creating that dream now.
I’m for a globally relocalized world. Where people live under whatever system in a local community. Panarchy. That’s where I’m coming from.
Specifically I’m not against money. But while valuable, it’s not “neutral” or just a means of exchange. I dislike how the current system. But I’m for people creating their own community currency/money/exchange means: gift economies, local money, commons, coops, p2p production, LETs, peer credit etc.
How? Creating a counter-economy. Eliminate our reliance on the main one. People are already doing this, BTW! This article and site expand on this a bit:
http://shareable.net/blog/how-to-barter-give-and-get-stuff