“What you think you become. What you feel you attract. What you imagine you create.” — Buddha
Imagine waking up to your dream life. Everything you’ve ever wanted is now yours: a loving partner, a fulfilling career, and financial abundance. You’re happy, healthy, and content.
Introduction
This is the power of manifestation. Manifestation is using your thoughts and energy to create the reality you want. It’s based on the belief that we are all connected to a universal energy field and can use our thoughts and emotions to influence it. When you manifest, you’re telling the universe what you want. You’re sending out a clear message, and the universe will respond.
To understand the complete manifestation process, today we will learn about the book Manifest by Roxie Nafousi. This book will teach us the seven steps to achieve everything you want.
Whether you want to attract your soulmate, get a better job, buy the home you wish to, or find more inner peace and self-confidence, Manifest will teach you how to get there.
So, let’s start.
Step 1: Clear your vision
The first step of any manifesting journey is to be clear in your vision. Simply put, you can only get where you want to go if you know where you’re going. So, before anything else, you need clarity on what you want the universe to provide you. Knowing what you want and then visualizing it is essential to manifesting.
When we create an experience in our mind, our brain responds as if it is happening. Neuroscientist Dr Tara Swart explains in The Source that ‘visualization works because there is little difference in our brain between directly experiencing an event in the outside world and the ‘image imagined in a visualization’ of that same event.
For example, if we see ourselves as stressed, our brains will react as if it is happening. Our nervous system will prepare to fight and release cortisol and adrenaline stress hormones. This will make our heart beat faster, our breaths will become shorter, and our blood pressure will increase. By visualizing the stressed condition in our mind, we create verbal and physical stress in our bodies.
On the other hand, if we imagine ourselves in a calm environment, our mind will calm down the nervous system and motivate the body to relax. The images we create in our minds make physical changes in our bodies and, therefore, have the power to influence the reality we experience.
Thus, as soon as we imagine that we have the things we most desire, we will create a physical shift that will change our energetic vibrational frequency and, according to the law of attraction, determine what we attract into our lives.
Visualization helps us to manifest in another way as well. When we begin to practice visualizing the things we want regularly, our brains respond by changing our behaviour patterns and our definitions of our surroundings according to the imagined goal.
It becomes more understandable, opens up new opportunities associated with our visualization, and filters out unwanted and unnecessary information. This means we can train our minds to lead us to our desired future.
Visualization is also the most discussed technique in the media. Countless celebrities, athletes, and CEOs credit their success to visualizing their goals over and over again. Swimmer Michael Phelps, who won the gold medal at the Olympics by breaking the world record twenty-three times, says he uses visualization to prepare for all his swimming running.
He not only imagines winning but also imagines things going wrong and seeing himself outdoing anyone. This way, by imagining easy and challenging situations, practising accordingly, and consistently achieving the best results, he was fully prepared to win in every swimming run.
However, the secret to effective visualization lies in understanding that it is not enough to visualize what you want in your mind. To effectively imagine achieving them in reality, you must immerse yourself in the feeling of achieving them.
Remember, we attract what we feel. Only when we can see what we want and create the emotional experience of having it can we change our vibrational frequency. For example, when you visualize your dream home, you should also imagine what it would be like to live there. The faster we can create the feeling of getting what we want, the easier it will come to us.
Similarly, if you want to meet your soulmate, imagine your ideal partner and see how that relationship would make you feel. Can you create feelings of unconditional love, security, warmth and ‘living happily in a home together’ with them?
Whenever we use visualization to develop emotions like satisfaction, happiness, self-confidence or love, we raise our vibrational frequency or vibes, allowing us to attract high-vibe galore back to us.
The next step is to create your vision board.
If you search online, you will find many ways to create a vision board. There’s no right or wrong way to do this. You can create a vision board any way you want; create something that best helps you visualize the life you want.
You can create a vision board design like this:
1. Set the scene
Light candles, play relaxing music, create peace, and settle down. Set aside time to engage in and enjoy your vision-boarding practice.
2. Choose your medium
Take a card or a large sheet of paper and choose how you would like to write your goals with different coloured pens. In bullet points or Flow details. If you want to use images, make them by yourself, cut out photos or words from magazines or newspapers that show what you want to achieve in your life. Choose whichever works best for you – remember, enjoy it.
3. Choose Your Timeline
At the top of the board, write the exact date you want to achieve it. You can choose a time frame of three months, six months, or one year. Sometimes, it is difficult for people to know and imagine how they want to see their life in one year or five years. If you’re feeling a little stuck, remember: You can always choose a different timeline that makes you feel good and is within your reach.
4. Get in the zone
Before you start adding things to your board, decide that you are in that moment and already actualizing that feeling of your future. Stop for a moment, take a few deep breaths, and imagine yourself living that moment six months, a year, or five years from now. Create a clear and vivid image in your mind when you ask yourself this question:
- How do you feel inside
- What kind of relationships are around you? What kind of house do you live in?
- What is your profession? What are you most proud of?
- What do you want to change in your life? Or do you want to stay the same?
As you answer these questions, allow yourself to be completely free in your dreams, desires and wants. Don’t let fear rule your imagination; Instead, take your mind’s eye exactly where you want to go. Visualize the image of your future becoming real as you sink into the moment.
5. Divide your vision board into six categories:
- Personal development means your development at the individual level of how you want to feel inside yourself
- Love, romance
- Career
- Friends and family
- Home
- Working on passion & holiday
6. Design Your Life
For each category, write down everything you want, then visualize it. If you’re using cut-out images, such as the image of your dream home, stick them on your vision board. Try to have at least three items for each category. At most, you can add as many images as you want.
7. Put It Away
After making your vision board, keep it somewhere safe and keep looking at it occasionally. Set a reminder to check back on the date written at the top.
Step 2: Remove fear and doubt
When we give ourselves complete permission to dream, our fears and doubts have nowhere to hide. So try this method today. If your previous vision board was limited by fear and doubt, go back and edit it now, or create a new vision board that honestly reflects all the things you truly want. Dream big, and don’t hold back.
For this, first, identify your fear and doubt. When you look at all the things you want to attract into your life, you must be open-minded and honest with yourself to identify what fears and doubts you have right now.
Begin to identify this by asking yourself a few questions:
- Do you believe you deserve it?
- Can you handle this? Is this goal possible for you?
- What insecurities do you have right now regarding this?
- What beliefs are holding you back?
Take a moment to think of just one thing you want to manifest. Visualize it clearly in your mind’s eye, and then spend a few minutes trying to identify what fears and doubts pop up when you think about achieving it. Try to identify as many fears and doubts as possible and write them down.
Note: No matter how quiet your inner voice is, if it keeps you from fully believing in yourself, shine a light on it. Even if your thoughts seem illogical, write them down. Only by knowing every detail of your fear and doubt will you be able to overcome it.
Look at the fears and doubts you have just identified and understand them. These limiting beliefs and insecurities keep you from living your best life. The more aware you are of them, the less powerless they become because awareness is always the starting point for every self-development journey.
Just complete this practice. So that by identifying your limiting beliefs, you can begin the process of correcting them.
You repeat this practice for everything that you want to achieve in real life. Or use it at any point when you feel stuck because of stopping thoughts or beliefs. Be a conscious observer of your daily thoughts. The more quickly you can identify them, the sooner you can weaken them and strengthen the ideas you want that will lead you to success.
These two methods are potent in removing fear and doubt:
1. Control your thoughts
Our thoughts shape our reality. Remember, thoughts generate feelings, and different surfaces have different vibrational frequencies. This means that if you can control your thoughts, you can change your emotional state, and if you can change your emotional state, you can change your vibrations. If you change your beats, you change your reality.
Therefore, when you consciously choose to think positive and strong thoughts that trigger high-vibe feelings (such as confidence, enthusiasm, and hopefulness), you will attract more abundance into your life through the law of attraction.
But allow fear and doubt to continually express themselves as an opposing voice or an inner critic. They will reduce your self-worth and lead to low-vibe feelings (such as fear, shame, hopelessness, or anxiety). It will trigger and become an obstacle in manifesting your desired things.
2. Watch your language
Talk about what you want, not what you don’t want. If you’re going to speak about something you don’t want to get, then first imagine how it would feel if it happened. So, even when we talk about something we don’t like, our subconscious mind feels it mentally and emotionally.
As we know, it will transform our vibrations into the imagined, desired experience, and we will then attract that. Therefore, the more we talk about what we do not want, the more it will be revealed. So speak more about what you want.
Step 3: Align your behaviour
Imagine that you want to create a successful new business. For this, there are two types of behaviours. The first, i.e. Version A, prevents you from reaching it, and the second, Version B, motivates you to get there.
Version A
The fear of rejection stops you from reaching out to new things. Your fear of making decisions prevents you from doing your online marketing, your doubts prevent you from investing as much as is necessary for your business, and the fear of failure prevents you from seeing good opportunities and taking risks.
By behaving this way, you are stuck in your comfort zone without the possibility of growth and expansion.
Version B
You reach as many new customers as possible; you market yourself as much as possible. Where needed, you ask for advice from capable people; you keep looking for talented people to build a team to increase your work; you look at possible opportunities and understand them; you create new opportunities in the market according to market demand.
Find ways to bring the product and invest time, energy and money. You do the best you can to make the business a success. This behaviour will take your business to a new level. The person with Version B will reach his goals and be happier and more optimistic than the person with Version A.
So first, decide what you want to become and adopt the necessary behaviours and habits.
Exercise to behave like you want to be in future.
First of all, take some time to imagine your future. Immerse yourself completely in this visualization practice, and imagine yourself at the top. The one who has everything you think. Make it feel as accurate as possible. It will motivate you to give your best in the present work.
Now ask yourself this question:
- How should you behave for him now?
- What must you do to live in that self-loving, empowered and magnetic way?
Make a list of five things that your future self will do.
It would help if you started doing these things in your life now. So that you can get closer to your future self; whenever you think of the person you want to be, think of how he is.
So that from this very moment, you can align your behaviour with that version of yourself. Execute the universe this way and show that you are ready to make it real; after that, the universe will automatically create it for you.
Step 4: Overcome the Test of the Universe
Remember, to manifest what you want, you must believe you deserve it. Your behaviour must follow that belief if you’re going to attract your life partner and show that you can have a good, solid and happy relationship. So, the universe will bring your life partner to you.
Sometimes, the universe knows you are worth more than you desire. It doesn’t give you the things you want because it wants to provide you with something better. Trust that the universe always looks for the best in you. If you are sad because someone has left your life, do not worry and accept that he was not meant for you. Someone better has been made for you.
Manifesting sometimes means detaching yourself from the bad, waiting for the good and learning from that experience. Be aware of trials or opportunities if you are on your manifest journey. When they present themselves to you, don’t let them lower your vibrations and stray from your path.
Use them to strengthen your manifestation power by showing the universe that you value yourself and believe you can have what you want. Please stand up for yourself when you need to, say no to distracting things until they meet your desired needs, be strong in the face of rejection, and trust that everything will be as it is.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. Everything can teach us something valuable. Instead of seeing things as ‘going wrong’ or ‘going right’, see everything as an opportunity to learn, grow and develop. You release unnecessary stress when you try to understand and only see challenges you can overcome. This comfortable and flexible feeling increases your motivation and enables you to achieve more powerfully.
Step 5: Express Gratitude
Gratitude is a feeling of happiness with a very high vibrational frequency. Gratitude is one of the most potent emotional tools we have. When we understand how to practice it, we can instantly lift ourselves out of any low-vibe experience, change our emotional state, and raise our vibration.
To change and completely free the abundance of the universe. When you feel down, frustrated, angry, jealous, or scared, you can turn to Gratitude to help you. With this, you can stop for a moment and find and then replace the low-vibe feeling with a high-vibe sense.
Gratitude has three categories.
- Gratitude towards yourself: These are the feelings in which you appreciate yourself, like I am grateful for my strength, I am thankful for my health, I am grateful for my mind.
- Gratitude for your life: In this, you praise your life. Like I’m grateful for my job, I’m thankful for my family and friends, and I’m grateful for where I live.
- Gratitude towards the world: In this, you feel Gratitude for things that are universal to all of us; for example, I am grateful for the sunshine, I am thankful for good relationships with people, I am pleased for travelling and experiencing new cultures.
You can use these three categories to guide practising and developing Gratitude.
In a few days, you will find that you will start feeling grateful for yourself or the things in your life out of fear, sadness or anger. These are the three categories of Gratitude, from which you can always find something for which you can feel grateful. If you’re struggling to feel thankful for the life you have today, focus on being grateful for something universal.
Just remember: If you take the time to focus on the things you’re thankful for, there’s always something to be grateful for.
Journaling is also one of the best self-development tools. Using Gratitude Journaling consistently retrains your brain at a neurological level to focus on the good things in your life. This makes it a powerful expression exercise.
There are two ways to practice Gratitude Journaling.
Technique 1: Gratitude lists
Write down fifteen things you are grateful for every night or every morning. You choose five items from the three Gratitude categories mentioned above for this.
For example, if you are thankful for your good nature, then five things related to your life, like you are grateful for the time you spent happily with your children. And, finally, five things you are thankful for in the world, for example, clean water and pleasant weather.
Technique 2: Positivity Magazine
At the end of each day, write down every good thing that happened to you, from when you woke up to when you went to bed. According to you, this includes every small and big good thing. Like the sun was shining, a stranger smiled at you, a friend sent you a nice massage, or you saw a meme on social media that made you laugh. Write them all one by one.
Often, the day passes by, and we forget how many beautiful moments we have experienced. Can’t pay full attention to them and can’t appreciate them. So often, the bad moments of just one small part of the day make the whole day terrible despite so many good moments. When we sit down to remember all the good things we experienced, we soon see that every day is filled with many good moments to be grateful for.
After being punctual in completing your positivity journaling every day, your mind will automatically start looking for all the beautiful moments and opportunities that come every day. After a few weeks, you might suddenly find yourself walking down the street saying to yourself, ‘Wow, what a wonderful building,’ finally taking notice of the fantastic architecture you’ve been passing by every day without even thinking about it. I understood that that was crossing.
Or you may start to have good feelings for that cup of tea your partner brings you in bed every morning, or you may begin to notice the joy in seeing the receptionist smile at the office. You’ll start to notice the good around you more than ever before, and in turn, you’ll increase your motivation every day.
The author once went to London to take her first spin class at a studio called Cycle. The session had reached its peak: she was sweating out of breath, her legs were getting tired and heavy, and she wanted to get the cycling practice over as soon as possible.
She was thinking this when the coach shouted in the class through his microphone; you don’t have to stop here; keep moving forward; you have to complete the race. Hearing this, the writer’s motivation started decreasing. Although somehow she finished the race, after that, it did not feel good to remember that moment.
How many times have you said, ‘I have to work out today,’ I have to go to work, I have to visit my parents, I have to study, or I have to cook dinner for the kids again? Using this language means you do not have a choice and are being forced into something. It takes away from us the chance to feel grateful, which means we do not have the power to choose.
When you change it to simple language and instead say, ‘I am going to exercise today, I am going to go to work today, I am going to meet my parents, I am going to study, I am going cook dinner for the kids. You automatically come to a moment of happiness.
Step 6: Turn Your Envy Into Inspiration
Imagine you meet an old friend, and you decide to have coffee. She tells you that after leaving school, she started her own very successful tech business and sold it; with that profit, she traveled the world and increased her net worth in the last twelve months. Notice how you feel physically, emotionally, and mentally responding to that information.
Do you think that feelings of nervousness, sadness, dissatisfaction, and frustration started rising inside you? If so, first clear your experience by saying to yourself softly, ‘I feel jealous hearing this. Then stop thinking about it and focus on self-love, kindness and helping yourself feel better. When you do this, make a solid intention to turn your jealousy into inspiration.
For this, you can choose an inspired thought, such as ‘I am thrilled to see someone who has made a career for himself that has given him the freedom to pursue his passion. I’ll also figure out how I can do this for myself. That way, you can use their success to inspire your vision of what you want to achieve.
Remember, we live in a society where the media constantly belittles people with provocative headlines. Which increases trolling and jealousy, due to which we are influenced to do jealousy-oriented behaviour. It makes it normal for us to judge and blame others.
It allows people to express their jealousy acceptably, but it’s a dangerous cycle for all of us. You should start taking it out immediately whenever jealousy starts happening because if you do not do this soon, it increases when you meet a group with envy or see WhatsApp chat. It usually doesn’t take much time for such a group of friends to unite against the other person and talk negatively about him.
But this kind of behaviour is a shallow feeling, and not only does it hurt you emotionally and is a complete waste of time, but it also ruins our expression power. So when you see this happening, tell yourself clearly about it, replace it with inspired thought, and simultaneously move away from such toxic conversation. Because demeaning other people is low feeling, motivating people to rise is high vibes.
Supporting other people, keeping them in their progress, celebrating their victories, helping them, and motivating them increases our self-love and high positive vibes. It shows the universe that you are not threatened by the success of others but inspired by them.
That inspiration will lead you towards the life of your dreams. If you keep pouring that loving and magical energy into the universe by being happy for the progress of others, then you will also get a lot more.
Take these four steps to turn jealousy into inspiration:
- Be aware of it: To accept your jealousy, you must be mindful of your jealous thoughts to catch them when they come.
- Remove the shame and criticism associated with jealousy. Have a sense of love, kindness and helpfulness for yourself and others.
- Learn from it: If you judge another person, ask yourself, ‘What is the reason behind this decision? What fear or doubt is driving it? What do they have that I want? And try to eliminate that reason.
- Change jealousy into inspiration: On every occasion, replace jealousy with a thought that inspires you and gives you a chance to move forward.
Step 7: Trust in the Universe
Once you know the life you want to have. You have developed self-love, overcome fear and doubt, passed the test of the universe, aligned your behaviour, embraced Gratitude and turned your jealousy into inspiration. So now all that is left for you is to believe.
Trust that the universe will give you everything you need. Consider this trust as ‘feelings of knowing’. You have to know that, even if you don’t see how it will happen, you know it will—believing without a doubt that the things you most want are coming to you. The belief and unwavering faith will ultimately enable you to do whatever you want to achieve.
Manifesting is not about controlling. Manifestation is about dedication. It’s about knowing and imagining what you want, actively taking action to reach it, and dedicating yourself to the journey that will eventually get you there. Imagine what you want is like putting your destination location in Google Maps. Trusting the map and keep walking, you will reach there.
In this, you permit that computer program to give directions as to which turns to take, which roads to avoid, which highway to walk on, and if you take a wrong turn, it helps you to get back on track. You don’t try to control the process; you do your job and let it do its job. Therefore, to surrender to the magic of manifestation, you must rely on it similarly.
Impatience is the enemy of manifestation. This is because impatience interferes with divine time. Divine time is the time of the universe, of an energy and power greater than ourselves. Relying on Divine timing is a great way to say with heartfelt conviction that I believe everything happens for a reason.
Trusting in divine timing allows us to be aware of the present and know that everything is unfolding as it should. It will enable us to stay strong when things don’t turn out exactly how we thought they would.
It will allow us to find happiness, beauty and satisfaction in the destination and the journey. Divine timing is the essence of the manifestation, and you have to trust it to allow the magic to do its best work.
Conclusion
Friends, let us repeat all the seven steps of the book so that you can remember them easily.
- Step 1: Be clear in your vision of what you want.
- Step 2: Remove fear and doubt
- Step 3: Align your behaviour to the person you want to be.
- Step 4: Overcome the Test of the Universe: To manifest what you want, you must believe that you deserve it, and your behaviour must follow that belief.
- Step 5: Express Gratitude.
- Step 6: Convert your jealousy into inspiration.
- Step 7: Have faith in the universe.
Manifest Book Review
A meeting of science and wisdom, Manifest is a philosophy and a self-development practice to help you reach for your goals, cultivate self-love and live your best life.
Whether you want to attract your soulmate, find the perfect job or your dream home, or simply discover more inner-peace and confidence, Manifest will teach you exactly how to get there in just 7 steps.
Overall, this book “Manifest” is the essential guide for anyone and everyone wanting to feel more empowered in their lives.
Thank You.
Contents
Hi Amit,
I want to express my gratitude for the exceptional book summaries you provide. They are incredibly insightful and have greatly enhanced my reading experience.
To further improve usability, I suggest categorizing the books at a more granular level, such as: Law of Attraction, Negotiation, Vision Board, Startup, Business & Finance, and Brain Power/Unlimited Memory. This would help users find relevant content more easily and tailor their reading to specific interests.
Additionally, introducing a category for Product Management books could greatly benefit business and startup readers. I’ll provide specific book recommendations for this category soon.
Thank you for your consideration.
Regards
Abuzar Ansari