Avoiding the “Manifestation” Trap
Those who use or advocate the concept of “manifestation” are either obscuring or outright denying an important fact about success and happiness.
It’s a sad reflection on the state of our society that books such as Roxie Nafousi’s Manifest: 7 Steps To Living Your Best Life and Gabrielle Bernstein's Super Attractor: Methods for Manifesting a Life Beyond Your Wildest Dreams—books that purportedly teach how to align one’s thoughts with universal “energies” in order to “manifest” success and happiness—sell in the millions.1
Many proponents of this idea aren’t coy about identifying what they’re advocating. “The basic premise of manifesting is that your thoughts create your physical reality,” writes “transformational coach” Kelsey Aida in an article titled “How to Manifest Anything Your Heart Desires.”2 (What if your heart desires the impossible?)
But some advocates of this idea, perhaps conscious that there’s still too much of a rational remnant in Western culture for most people to accept such an idea wholly uncritically, attempt to disguise manifestation under a transparently thin coating of science. As “transformational life coach” Jasmine Rice explains,
[Manifestation is] the belief that you can shape your reality by focusing your thoughts and intentions on what you desire. In simpler terms, manifestation is the act of bringing into your life exactly what you want: ‘If you believe it, it will come!’ That sounds a little like magic to me, so let’s dive in deeper. Quantum theory, the fancy foundation of manifestation practices, tells us that the universe is essentially one giant ball of energy. Practitioners of manifestation believe that by aligning their own energy with the universe and visualizing their desires, they can coax those desires into their everyday lives.3
Partially recognizing the absurdity of this idea, Rice—in a piece advocating the idea of manifestation—acknowledges something many proponents of manifestation seek to entirely evade: “Positive thinking and belief in the universe’s energy are fabulous, but they’re not a magical elixir to get something you want without putting in the effort yourself. There’s no cosmic shortcut to making your dreams come true.”4 Accordingly, she rejects the aforementioned definition and redefines manifestation as a combination of positive, universal-energy-aligned thinking and real-world action informed by that thinking.
Unfortunately, by striving for a somewhat less mystical definition of manifestation, Rice and others like her are only helping to obscure the true meaning of the concept. Essentially, the various advocates of manifestation define it in one of three ways:
The ability to achieve or create things by the power of thought alone (usually through mentally synchronizing with some kind of universal energy or tapping into a mystical “law of attraction”).
The ability to achieve or create things by the above means, but those means only work when used in combination with physical action (e.g. Rice).
The act of achieving things through physical action alone, with thought serving only as your means of deciding what action to take. (Physical action includes speaking and writing.) An example of this approach is R.D. Krause’s book Manifestation Without the Magic.
Definitions 1 and 3 are based on two fundamentally opposed ideas—that humans can or cannot affect the outside world through the power of thought. Definition 2 is a hybrid of these incompatible ideas. The upshot of this is that, whenever anyone uses the concept “manifestation,” the referent in people’s mind is a wholly unusable package deal of contradictory ideas.
It does not take a qualification in philosophy, neuroscience, particle physics, or any other field to confirm that it is impossible to affect the outside world through thought alone. To test this, read any book on manifestation, learn its principles, then stand by the side of a busy highway and attempt to manifest a safe path through the traffic. (For legal purposes I must ask you not to attempt to walk through that path should you believe yourself successful.) Do this in a sufficient number of cases wherein there is not a significant probability of coincidental success and you will soon have a solid evidentiary basis to know that definition 1, and by extension definition 2, refer to things that do not exist and are not useful concepts.
That leaves definition 3. There is already a wealth of concepts that refer to taking physical action in order to achieve a goal. They include the concept “action” itself, along with “work,” “effort,” “industry,” “labor,” and “productivity.” Using “manifestation” to refer to this multiplies concepts beyond necessity and conflates real action with the mystical idea of achieving results without physical effort.
In short, any and all uses of the concept “manifestation” serve at best to cloud and confuse people’s thinking about achieving goals and at worst to mislead people into the belief that it’s possible to achieve success without physical effort. In reality, there are only three ways that success in any endeavor (rational or otherwise) can occur:
Through your own physical effort guided by reason
Through others’ physical effort (which you can either earn through your own effort or obtain through charity or force)
By sheer luck/coincidence (which may occasionally deliver big wins but will not consistently deliver success)
It is a fact of reality that events must be caused by an entity taking physical action. Every single moment of our lives is proof of that. It is also a fact of human nature that in order to build the strong self-esteem necessary to achieve happiness we must earn our own success and do so according to rational moral principles. Therefore, the only proper advice to anyone seeking happiness is:
Use reason to choose the right goals, then use reason to determine what action is needed to achieve them, then take that action.
Those who use or advocate the concept of “manifestation” are either obscuring or outright denying this reality. Some may genuinely believe what they’re claiming, but I suspect some don’t. Consider that it’s much easier to sell the promise of a quick, effortless way to get “anything your heart desires” than to sell the reality that some desires require decades of work to achieve and others cannot be achieved at all. That’s a situation that will only change when Western education and culture improve to such an extent that the bulk of self-help customers are clear enough on the nature of reality to not be readily taken in by impossible promises.
Advocates of the idea that thoughts can influence reality do not deserve the title of “self-help” coach or author—they are teaching an idea that is ultimately self-destructive because it discourages people from using reason and taking action to achieve rational goals. If you encounter someone talking about manifestation, demand of them absolute clarity on its meaning, and in the likely event that some element of mysticism is present in their thinking, reject it and do not be misled by any rational or scientific window-dressing that may adorn this virulently harmful idea.
If you’re interested in these ideas, order Reason for Living: A Rational Approach to Living Your Best Life on Amazon today! Find the book on Amazon in your country here.
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Angela Lei, “Roxie Nafousi On 1 Million ‘Manifest’ Books Sold, Self-Belief, Challenges And More,” Forbes, September 5, 2024, https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelalei/2024/09/05/roxie-nafousi-on-1-million-manifest-books-sold-self-belief-challenges-and-more;
Gabby Bernstein, “Super Attractor: Methods for Manifesting a Life Beyond your Wildest Dreams,” https://gabbybernstein.com/book/super-attractor.
Kelsey Aida, “Manifestation 101: How to Manifest Anything Your Heart Desires,” February 27, 2016, https://www.kelseyaida.com/theinspirationalblog/manifestation-101-how-to-manifest.
Jasmine Rice, “The Power of Manifestation: Balancing Belief with Action,” https://goodthingsaregonnacome.com/the-power-of-manifestation-balancing-belief-with-action.
Rice, “The Power of Manifestation.”