Notes from a Master Manifestor

Is it action or intention that matters most?

I read The Capt. Kyle Creek’s edition of Monday Mutiny yesterday, “Attraction vs. Action,” and it reminded me of a train of thought I was sharing with my wife Alison over the weekend. She is agnostic with a degree in Biology, and I suspect she nods and smiles, tongue firmly in cheek, over my refusal to make a decision without consulting the astrological weather and a Tarot deck. She has gotten used to my effusive amazement over validating “signs from the Universe” I request with great specificity, and celebrating examples of what author Gabby Bernstein calls “driftwood,” which is evidence that a dream CAN come true, because I saw it come true for other people. For example, you find driftwood on your shore when you want to have a baby and all you see are pregnant ladies, or you want true love and everyone you know is getting engaged, or you’re thinking of buying a green Subaru, so that’s all you see on the road.

Despite Alison’s scientific background and logical brain, she has her own woo tendencies. I mean, come on, she’s a Pisces. More often than not, our beliefs about woo-ey things align. When they don’t, we realize that the universe is a pretty big container for knowledge and truth, so we smile and nod. Sparked by a couple of Netflix shows we watched over the course of the last week, we were discussing the power of intention and manifestation, which is heavy on my mind lately, since I’m writing a book that has a chapter tentatively titled “Embrace the Woo.” The first show we watched was American Masters: Inventing David Geffen. The second was Beckham. Both are worthy of your time, and you don’t have to be big fans of either of them to be captivated enough to stay up past your bedtime. I am a night owl by nature and will click “keep watching” well into the night, so in my case, that’s not saying much, but Alison is sensible and knows her limits. She stayed up until 1:30 am Saturday night to finish Beckham with me.

What I took away from both of these shows was the role that each of the men’s unshakable belief and confidence had in creating their success. It wasn’t just inherent talent, audacity, or training. They each seemed to pull their dreams into reality through a foundational attitude that what they wanted was already theirs. They knew they had outrageous dreams, but despite statistical unlikelihood and deep competition, they boldly manifested those dreams into reality. Spoiler alert: Beckham’s vision for his future wasn’t just success in football or which team he played for – he saw the Spice Girls on television and said, “I’m going to marry that one someday – that posh one.” We all know how that intention turned out.

Gabby Bernstein, author of Super Attractor: Methods for Manifesting a Life Beyond Your Wildest Dreams and The Universe Has Your Back: Transform Fear to Faith, tells a story about writing her first book and desperately wanting to be featured by Oprah. She went so far as to take a photo of Oprah interviewing someone, photoshopping herself into the chair beside her, and looking at this image every day as she meditated on her dream coming true. I think she said she completed this visualization every day for a year. One day, someone called her and identified themselves as a producer for Oprah’s Super-Soul Sunday, saying, “We’d like to talk to you about being on the show.” “I’ve been waiting for your call,” she responded. She knew it was going to happen. It was already hers. She just had to be patient.

I have called myself a master-manifestor for years. From parking spaces to jobs and many life-points in between, I ask the universe to give me what I want, I picture it happening, and then it does. When I was working in the insurance industry, I used pass-phrases for my computer passwords, using the first letter of each word in the phrase combined with numbers and symbols, to create a statement I would have to say to myself dozens of times a day as I typed it into the system: I am the next specialist. I am the next team manager. I am the next unit manager. Another spoiler alert: each time I created a phrase like this, I was. I’ve utilized similar methods to summon other miracles, changes, and improvements in my personal life as well.

The Capt. asserts in his Monday Mutiny article that it’s not a zero-sum game between attraction and action. All actions start with a thought, which help establish a vision, which determines the actions one takes. My ex-husband always used to say, “There’s no doubt God will help you move mountains. But you’d better be at the base of it with a shovel.” The Capt. agrees. “Luck,” “is not a viable long-term plan.”

It doesn’t hurt though, either. Ultimately, our thoughts, deep desires, and intentional actions signal to the Universe what we want and are ready for. There have been times when the conscious thought alone had an attracting effect on my life. Years ago, I read a book by Talane Miedaner called Coach Yourself to Success. Her first bit of advice was to write a list of all the petty annoyances, big and small, that you are putting up with and tolerating. She recommended trying to get between sixty and one hundred things, and to physically write them on paper. She said to group the items you listed by identifying easy, quick-hit solutions, problems that had a longer tail, and things that seemed impossible. She said not to worry about those big issues – having them on paper meant you didn’t need to let your energy get drained by worrying about them all the time; just tackle what you could quickly and easily address, then put the list away and look at it later.

Getting to one hundred items was harder than I thought it would be, considering how perpetually annoyed I am. But I did. What happened next is par for the course with me. I wrote the list in a notebook, shoved it in a drawer, and didn’t look at the list again. I took precisely zero actions that day beyond writing the list. Accountability and follow up might not be my strong suit.

Years later, I was unpacking a box from my most recent house-move when I came across the notebook, and reviewed the list I had entirely forgotten about writing. Eighty-six of one hundred annoyances had been effectively 86ed just through initiating the thought and letting some sort of cosmic problem-solving mental software run in the background while I went through my day-to-day life.  Just the sheer act of writing out an intention to solve a problem had a magical effect.

When we set an intention, create a vision, and manifest an outcome, we’re stepping onto a path, even if we are walking it very slowly. Even if we are chronically distracted by butterflies and rainbows. Life has shown me over and over again that when the Universe sees me on a path, even if I am bent over and captivated by an ant hill or pointed in the wrong direction, it understands the assignment. The Universe is happy to oblige my journey by making sure the trail is strewn with chance encounters, serendipity, coincidences, and opportunities that feel miraculous. Was there action involved? Of course. But did the Universe also grease the wheels? I think so.