Trauma can be encoded, even in the context of “perfect” parenting. The Still Face Experiment highlights how even a short moment of absent expression on the face of a parental figure can leave a child distressed.
You could be the greatest parent of all time. If a timely opportunity is not provided for the child to return to positive, comfortable interaction with the parent, the formation of a traumatic experience can follow.
With only a partially developed brain, a child can easily blame themselves for this, potentially holding this belief for a lifetime.
This can colour our relationships with ourselves and others, if not addressed in therapy, or meditation, for example.
Such interpretations function just like affirmations. However, they often contain a polar opposite message to the abundance, or confidence, or love you might choose.
So, whether or not you have obtained traumatic experiences, you may have a build-up of existing negative manifestations.
You may, or may not be completely aware of them, or any resistance they present to the manifestation process.
It may be that this can be overcome through committed habituation of affirmations and foresense alone. On the other hand it may be that, significant emotional, or behavioural resistance arises and blocks you from effective manifesting.
In which case, you may choose to seek professional help in working through that resistance. The key here is not to try to push these feelings and interpretations about yourself and others away. As Carl Jung said “What you resist not only persists but will grow in size“.
The key is to learn to remain with them with calmness, to be curious and responsive, not reactive.
When you get help to overcome negative manifestation, you can reduce the fear enough to release its power and control over you, leaving you free to manifest as you would choose.
Do You Want to Start Manifesting?
Check out my free content, a great way to get started with manifesting:
Do You Want Help to Work Through Something That May be Blocking Your Positive Manifesting?
Do you believe you may have acquired negative manifestations that get in the way of the life you would choose? You can learn more about my approach to Hypnotherapy and how it could help you here.
Do You Want to Take the Conversation Further – Ask Questions and Contribute Answers?
The secret delight in manifesting is not what you get, but what you give
Going all in – manifesting is investing!
This investment involves investing in yourself! Unlike most investments, if your investment is not performing, you can do something about it. What you ultimately get from manifesting can multiply your initial investment. The universe is generous, but you need to make the first moves with integrity and dedication.
Overriding the “sameness” mode of your brain and system
Thoughts are words and words conjure images and emotions. Thinking is like breathing – it happens automatically, but when you think about breathing you can shape your breathing. You can choose to breathe quickly, slowly, shallowly, deeply, through your mouth, or nose. You can even choose to hold your breath for a time. While you may not be able to stop your unhelpful thoughts directly, you can change the way they sound and even think new thoughts in new ways.
One of the things your brain does is to create familiarity. This neural circuit doesn’t really care whether you feel satisfied and fulfilled, or miserable and anxious. It is unconscious. If what you think, feel, do and how you engage with your environment is familiar, your system can function more economically. However, by investing a little more energy you can shift gears. You can change your brain and manifest a new, self-determined way of showing up in the world. When you show up differently in the world, the world shows up differently to you. Once you are firmly on the path of your self-determined reality, once this is familiar, your brain’s passion for familiarity will help you to keep it consistent.
Some word and feeling combinations contain a greater emotional charge than others. When you want to make a change in your life you may need to invest your presence emotions with a lower charge. Emotions that are not so strong right now, but are ultimately better for you. This involves being willing to go beyond a stronger and more detrimental, but temptingly familiar feeling. Giving your attention instead to a more subtle, yet nourishing feeling. You don’t need to get this right every time, but you do need to be prepared to make this sacrifice.
With practice, soon enough, and quicker than you may think, the emotion that serves you well will become more and more familiar and amplify in intensity.
Mental manifestation with or without deliberate action?
Manifesting your deepest desires requires mental and behavioural work. Many manifestation processes focus only on the mental. This can seem, on the surface, to be enough for your desires to simply fall into your lap! There is something deliciously appealing about rubbing a lamp, making a wish, sitting back and waiting for it to come true. Well. However, if you approach manifestation by repeating your affirmations and visualising your future, without walking the talk and changing what you do, things may not work out the way you had anticipated. Personally, even if I were able to manifest in this way, I wouldn’t want to. Ordering take-away occasionally is nice, but something changes if you do it all the time, because the personal investment is low. Alternatively you could buy quality ingredients, invest your time and apply your love and creativity in preparing a meal. Doing this can open up a world of satisfaction and health benefits that you can’t get from ordering-in. True fulfilment is multiplied by your personal contribution.
The importance of sacrifice and contribution
To contribute something must necessarily involve sacrificing something else. In this case energy, time and instant gratification were sacrificed for a greater, more complex system of rewards and possibilities. Preparing a meal requires applying your existing skills and acquiring new ones, being creative, solving problems and fulfilling a need for yourself and/or others. It is a multi-sensory, multi-faceted experience.
Sacrifice, in this sense, is not a symptom of scarcity, but a demonstration of your belief in an abundant world. When what you give away, or let go of is seen as part of your manifestation process, what you ultimately receive is sweeter, deeper, more worthwhile and longer-lasting.
The magic of synchronicities
This magic is exciting, beautiful and awe-inspiring! How wonderful to notice when something that happens is just too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence. When you are left speechless at how something amazing reveals itself to you, indicating that what you are putting in is making waves! Inspired by ancient Eastern wisdom, Carl Jung recognised the importance of the mystical. He identified “synchronicities” as those moments where your dreams converge with waking life. He framed these events as markers that life is flowing in the direction that was consciously intended.
While engaging in the manifesting process you might notice something unexpected during your day that reminds you of something you had manifested. You then have a choice as to how you interpret it: as your brain making connections and perceiving patterns in the environment; and/or a convergence of forces more universal than your brain alone. Either way the effect can be powerful. Identifying synchronicities can validate your process of manifestation and spur you on, so embrace them and enjoy them!
Reflection question
Which of the following values would you choose to make one of your strongest, to apply to your manifesting process?
Dedicated graft/work
Personal sacrifice
Delayed gratification
Integrity
The Role of Community and Journaling in Manifesting
Feeding your learning forward – Using your own experience to inspire and support others through their own manifestation journey
When you feed your learning forward, you use your own experience to inspire and support others through their own manifestation journey. Not only do you get the delight of helping another soul to learn and grow, you solidify your own learning and growth. You get to master the craft for yourself. If your learning ends with you, you might settle for a somewhat vague understanding, compared to the level of integration you cement when you pass that understanding on to others.
This feeding forward can be done with anyone whom you feel would be responsive and welcoming of your support and encouragement. Loved ones, family members, friends, or colleagues, for example.
In my (premium) Insight Timer course, “Manifestation From The Inside Out”, there is a course classroom, which is an ideal space to feed this kind of learning forward. Additionally, my (free) Insight Timer and Facebook groups of the same name, “Believe – Relieve – Conceive”, are great spots to give and receive assistance.
So start the whole process knowing that you will be inspiring and supporting others to do the same and notice the difference this makes from day 1!
Journaling your manifesting journey
Journaling your experiences, desires, setbacks, successes, fears, courage, struggles and breakthroughs once a day, every day is golden! It can help in so many ways to balance, maintain and develop your mental wellbeing. Furthermore, it works wonders for your manifestation journey, especially if you don’t currently have so many people around you who you feel comfortable opening up to!
Journaling needn’t take up much of your time. Even if you write 3 simple words just before you go to sleep, or when you wake up, there exists a conversation you know you have every day, acknowledging what it is like to be you and tracing a path of your existence and wellbeing.
If you choose to keep a journal of your journey of manifestation, this can serve to:
Consolidate the affirmations, visualisations and feelings
Work through difficult moments, so they become learning moments
Identify areas to work through that you can bring to the classroom for this course
Track the development of your skill and habit
Identify what works and what doesn’t serve you
Remember your synchronicities and tune yourself in to notice more
Help to remain consistent in your approach to manifestation
Become a record of a meaningful and important journey that you can look back on with fondness
All you need is a pen and notepad, or a notes app on your phone. Just date each entry and write!
Reach out to me here if you are looking for personalised guidance in manifestation.
Reflection question
Much of the manifestation process is internal, at least in the beginning, but the results involve radical differences in the external world. In a sense it is an art of making the internal external. Which method of externalising do you feel resonates most deeply with you?
Sharing and guidance in online classroom, or group settings, as mentioned above?
In manifestation we use imagination and emotion to become as familiar with a speculated version of reality as possible. We imagine from the assumption that it has already happened, or well on the way to fruition. This imaginative process is repeated daily until it manifests as a new habitual experience, or a new event occurring.
This repetition and layering of a speculated version of reality, often referred to as “visualisation”, is considered fundamental to manifestation. If it is overlooked it is easy to see how one might mistakenly conclude that manifestation does not work.
Science can’t explain why manifestation comes about, whether the law of attraction, quantum theory, an unstoppable mindset, or something else. While science manifests an answer to that question, there is nothing to stop us exploring and taking full advantage of this phenomenon.
Manifestation Requires Visualisation and Deliberate Action
It should be highlighted, of course, that there are no athletes who only use mental manifestation, without physical training. Similarly, you can’t expect your a million pounds, or irresistible charm to fall into your lap with visualisation alone. Manifestation synergises visualisation with deliberate action steps.
“Visualisation” is “Foresense”
Rather than “visualisation”, however, I prefer to use the term “foresense”, since effective visualisation is not only visual. It involves a richly multi-sensory blend, including that which we can see, hear, feel, taste and smell, that brings a speculated reality to life.
Affirmations Describe What you Manifest
Affirmations work hand in hand with foresense. They are emotionally supportive and encouraging declarations that bring new possibilities into being. Affirmations can be declared and repeated as thoughts, or out loud. They are an important part of manifesting because they can conjure foresense, or vice versa, because they become internalised as thoughts, then beliefs and because they can override limiting thoughts and beliefs.
Manifestation is not Magic, but it Can and Should Feel Magical
This is an oversimplification, but let’s say you want a Tesla car. In all likelihood you’re not going to wake up tomorrow morning with the keys to your Tesla in your hand. Would you really want that, even if it were possible? If you have manifested a Tesla, beneath that would be your commitment to believing in the process and yourself. It will be because you have put in the action steps and made waves in the world. You will have flexed your internal locus of control. You will have demonstrated to yourself that you are capable, significant and resourceful. These qualities are worth a thousand Teslas!
If this is what you get, manifestation is working for you. If you miss these cues and your Tesla leaves you feeling empty and unfulfilled, you may be chasing your tail. You may be unaware of your innate and abundant value.
There is nothing wrong with believing the universe is on your side, with a little serendipity, and that when you take yourself and the world on, the universe steps in to lend a helping hand. Think of this as a reward for your input.
Whatever you believe, manifestation works within your understanding of the universe.
If however you know you are prone to delusional thinking. If your understanding of the universe diverges wildly from the reasoned consensus of human thought, I recommend you only engage in manifestation practices with the approval of a medical professional. Manifestation should be a practice that harmonises the relationship between the imagined, or interpreted world and shared physical reality.
What do you Really Want?
Will it give you what you think it will give you? Have you given it much thought? Many people don’t. If you were to perform a survey of all the people who own Teslas, I doubt you would find a significant correlation with fulfilment and life satisfaction.
If you obtain a Tesla (or if you become a millionaire, for example), does part of you feel like it could empower you, give you resourcefulness, significance, attention, approval, love, or contentment? Could it make you feel more worthwhile?
These qualities exist within, or between people. When you become familiar with these qualities within you (spoiler alert: you already have them!), you may simultaneously realise that you are capable of obtaining way more than just a Tesla and your priorities may change completely.
The Importance of Emotion in Driving Manifestation
You will know when affirmations and foresense are working because you will feel it. The more you focus, the richer the sound of the affirmation, the greater the colour and motion of the foresense, the more likely you are to feel something.
This emotion is another important marker. This is the feeling that, when habituated, drives us forward in our deliberate action and helps us to identify opportunities in our environment that are conducive to our manifested outcomes.
The same parts of the brain are active during imagined inner experience and real external events. When these interacting affirmations, foresense and emotions are at play, our bodies are more likely to naturally output behaviours and modes of operating that bring about our manifested outcomes. This reduces the need to push ourselves to think, or feel the right way, or do the right thing, for example.
Understanding Resistance to Manifestation Techniques?
Any internal experience of trauma that may have been picked up during the course of life can replay and loop itself during a variety of different external encounters where it is not needed and not helpful.
The Still Face Experiment highlights how even a short moment of absent expression on the face of a parental figure can leave a child distressed. You could be the greatest parent of all time. If a timely opportunity is not provided for them to return to positive, comfortable interaction with the parent, the formation of a traumatic experience can follow. An event such as this may be generalised by the child as not feeling they are good enough, or not lovable, as caregivers, or people in general being unavailable. This kind of interpretation may be all an infant is capable of, that seems to them like the best way to safeguard their survival for the proceeding moments, or days. These manifested rules can persist throughout a lifetime and colour our relationships with ourselves and others, if not addressed in therapy, or meditation, for example.
Trauma Can Function Like Negative Manifestation
Such interpretations function just like affirmations. However, they often contain a polar opposite message to the abundance, or confidence, or love you might choose. So, whether or not you have obtained traumatic experiences, you may have a build-up of existing negative manifestations. You may, or may not be completely aware of them, or any resistance they present to the manifestation process.
It may be that this can be overcome through committed habituation of affirmations and foresense alone. On the other hand it may be that, significant emotional, or behavioural resistance arises, blocks you from effective manifesting. In which case, you may choose to seek professional help in working through that resistance. The key here is not to try to push these feelings and interpretations about yourself and others away. As Carl Jung said “What you resist not only persists but will grow in size”. The key is to learn to remain with them with calmness, to be curious and responsive, not reactive.
This kind of assistance can reduce the fear enough to release its power and control over you, leaving you free to manifest as you would choose.
I Want to Start Manifesting!
Check out my free content, a great way to get started with manifesting:
I Want Help to Work Through Something That May be Blocking my Positive Manifesting
Do you believe you may have acquired negative manifestations that get in the way of the life you would choose? You can learn more about my approach to Hypnotherapy and how it could help you here.
In this article I aim to illuminate the connection between life-purpose, reduced anxiety and depression, with the wonderful tool that is hypnotherapy, as a means to facilitate this journey through life.
What does it mean to live a purposeful life?
The basis of living with purpose involves having a good understanding of yourself; your passions, your values and aspirations. You can then apply this understanding in consciously choosing to take action, in congruence with these elements and to the benefit of others (service). This action then results in the fulfilment and satisfaction of others and yourself. Purpose is an inter/intrapersonal process of self-understanding, conscious choice, service of others and fulfilment.
Living a purposeful life may, or may not elevate your social status and material success. Either way, status and materialism are not defining characteristics of life-purpose.
How does life-purpose contribute to life meaning?
Kim et al., 2021, Bronk et al., 2009, Park et al., 2010 have linked an underlying sense of purpose to improved physical health and overall life statisfaction. Purpose provides a path to follow and a way to navigate life. When things inevitably don’t go according to plan, you make mistakes and experience setbacks. Your purpose can help you to reorient yourself and get back on track. Your purposeful life can only truly come into fruition when your affirmative action demonstrates it. Purpose becomes effective only when tested through real life experiences that confirm its claims (Park et al., 2010).
How can living your life-purpose help you overcome anxiety?
Anxiety often stems from feelings of being overwhelmed by future possibilities. You cannot control the future completely. Indeed the majority of life is uncontrollable, but a sense of purpose can build in expectations that shine a spotlight on your capabilities, without denying the existence of uncertainties. This is more than enough to empower you and satisfy your need to feel in control. Having a sense of control can indicate that you are moving beyond your anxiety. Research has shown that those who lead purposeful lives are less likely to suffer symptoms of anxiety. The application of life purpose boosts wellbeing and enriches life for people with social anxiety disorder (Kashdan and McKnight 2013). A sense of life purpose helps reduce the development of anxiety and calms responses to emotional stress (Ishida and Okado, 2006).
How can living a purposeful life help you overcome depression?
Feeling purposeful can help us feel more involved and connected with the world and less helpless and depressed. Living your purpose provides a structure to call into action your skills and capabilities for the benefit of others. Involvement and connection with others and the world is an integral part of this process. According to Schaefer et al. (2013), people with a strong sense of purpose in life may be more highly protected against depression.
How can hypnotherapy help you create a purposeful life?
Hypnotherapy increases metacognition, including; gaining a greater awareness of strengths and greater flexibility of cognition. This aids inner vision and stimulating change (Drigas et al., 2022), fundamental aspects in creating a purposeful life. In hypnotherapy, you and your therapist work together to diminish your critical self-talk and unite your conscious and unconscious minds more closely. This can open up a channel for communication, often difficult to achieve in normal waking states. Unfettered by limiting beliefs, it becomes easier to illuminate your personal values and passions, as well as the capabilities you have that add value to the lives of others.
Conclusion
To live your life purposefully is to bring self-understanding, conscious choice, service of others and fulfilment together. Purpose provides stability that guides you in gathering evidence that your intentions are playing out in real life. This evidence then strengthens your purpose, which makes life more satisfying. It empowers you with a sense of control about your future, which can settle anxieties that you may have had. Purpose by its very nature connects you meaningfully with others and the world, which can make it harder to be depressed. Hypnotherapy is well situated to help clear your cognitive and emotional clutter, freeing you to clearly identify your values, passions and capabilities and set them in motion.
