Manifest Your Best Life: The Formula for Creating a Life You Love

Whether you are new to manifestation, or you’ve been learning how to manifest for a while and have had mixed success (or no success), this is a guide on how to manifest your dreams and get the results you want.

With 6 years of experience in the manifestation world, I’ve tried just about everything, and I’ve learned what’s just a fad, what’s bad advice (that so many coaches are pushing), and what actually works to manifest your best life.

In this guide I’m going to break down what is the Law of Attraction, how manifestation really works and how to overcome the biggest obstacle that gets in the way (spoiler, it’s your subconscious mind but I’ll teach you how to get it in line).

The first thing you need to know is that manifestation takes persistence. It’s presented as an overnight guarantee, but often it takes time to retrain our subconscious minds.

You can use this process to manifest anything you want in life. You just have to set the intention, develop an empowered mindset, and take action when the Universe gives you opportunities.

The interesting thing about manifestation is that though it sounds ‘woo’ or mystical, your mind is actually the biggest factor.

What is Manifestation?

Many people in the manifestation world teach that you just have to send your request to the universe, raise your vibration, and the universe will deliver it. If you don’t get what you asked for you must not have been high vibe enough and you probably need to heal your ancestral line or some nonsense.

This leads so many people to feel frustrated when it doesn’t work, and then they start to think that since manifestation works for everyone else, there must be something wrong with them.

The problem is not you, it’s that these frightful coaches are just repeating what someone else told them and they don’t really know what they’re talking about.

Here’s How Manifestation Really Works

Manifestation is the act of projecting your thoughts, beliefs, and identity out into the physical world, or the 3D as some people call it.

You’ve been manifesting most of your life, almost everything* you’ve experienced in the past and are experiencing now is the result of your beliefs about yourself, the world, and what is and isn’t possible for you.

*I think it’s important to mention that sometimes other people’s actions do impact us and I don’t believe we manifest other people harming us.

Our belief system is what creates our reality and our identity determines how we interact with it. Our beliefs create a filter we see the world through, like rose colored glasses that shows us what we expect to see.

When you identify as someone who is good at sports, then you experience being good at sports. Likewise, when you think of yourself as being awful at sports, then that is what you experience.

Mindset comes first, then the physical manifestation.

Think of it this way, every single thing that has been created by humans existed in the mind first. First we get the idea of something that would be useful or cool to have in the physical world, and then—if we are willing to believe that it’s possible—we take action to create it.

Whether you call it the Law of Attraction or the Law of Assumption, the majority of the time we only attract, create, and experience things that line up with our beliefs. We do live on a planet with 8 billion other people so sometimes their actions impact our lives, but how we interpret and respond to those actions is on us.

We’re always unconsciously looking for evidence and ways to validate our beliefs—we all love to be right, don’t we? So when someone believes they are doomed to never find love, their brain looks for ways to experience that. It looks for—and creates—ways to prove that you will never find love.

The hard part of manifestation comes when your conscious mind wants something, but the subconscious mind has a deeply rooted belief that says, “I’m not allowed to have this,” or “that is unfamiliar and therefor dangerous.” These parts of you are in conflict and the subconscious mind usually wins.

So when you want to manifest something you have to create beliefs that say, “this is possible for me and I’m going to get it.” Thanks to neuroplasticity, our brains can be reprogrammed.

I’ll tell you how to do that.

The Reticular Activating System and Manifestation

If this is all a little too “woo” for you, manifestation can actually be explained with biology.

The Reticular Activating System (RAS) is a network of nerve pathways at the brainstem that acts as a filter so that only “important” information—that validates your beliefs—gets through to you.

Your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs are flagged as important by the Reticular Activating System and everything else is filtered out.

Read more about it how the reticular activating system organizes information.

If you always look for reasons to be angry your Reticular Activating System is going to come through for you and find reasons to be angry. Likewise if you focus on being happy your RAS is going to find you more of what you give your attention too.

So a huge part of manifestation is training your brain to find (receive) or create what you want. If you’ve been telling yourself there aren’t any opportunities your brain isn’t going to let you notice them because you’ve trained it not to. If you tell yourself you’ll never find love, well then you never will because your Reticular Activating System is doing what you told it to.

You might enjoy: 13 Must Have Items for Witches & Manifestors

How to Manifest Your Best Life

Briefly, here is the 3 step formula for manifesting your desires:

1. Decide what you want and set the intention to get it.
2. Create a new identity (a new version of you) who has what you want and get your subconscious mind in alignment with your desire by replacing any conflicting thoughts with supportive ones.
3. Persist in the new thoughts/story until your desire manifests and take action when you can.

Manifestation is the art of having a desire, knowing that it’s yours, and then creating what you want with the universe as your co-creator, your manifesting buddy.

Of course you can choose to believe the universe or god is part of it or not. You can be an atheist who believes in manifestation.

Manifestation isn’t just thinking positive thoughts and then what you want falls out of the sky. It’s knowing what you want and acting to create it, while also trusting that you will find the opportunities you need.

Lets go into more detail about this process.

1. Know What You Want to Manifest

In order to manifest your dreams you have to know what you really want.

There is a lot of noise in the world telling us what we should want, and often we think we want something because society tells us we need it to fit in or be happy, but deep down part of us knows that thing isn’t really important.

So you have to take some time to figure out what’s really important to you and why.

On the surface you might want something that symbolizes status or worthiness (a certain car, house, wardrobe, etc), but when you look deeper you realize that’s not actually important to you.

Define your values, and that will help you cut away what isn’t really important.

Here are some exercises you can do to gain clarity on what you want to manifest.

Journal

You can do a brain dump and free flow any thoughts that come up, or write in your journal.

Ask yourself the following questions for clarity:

• If no one else’s opinion mattered, what would be important to you?
• What kind of person do you want to be?
• What brings you joy?
• If you weren’t afraid, what would you have?
• If you weren’t afraid, who would you be?
• If you weren’t afraid, what would you do?
• What impact do you want to have on the world?

You can also use scripting, which is writing what you want as if it’s already happened. You can write a journal entry of a day in your perfect life as if its happening in the present tense. Describe what your day was like and how amazing it felt in detail.

Create a Vision Board

Vision boards are powerful manifestation tool. You can make a physical vision board with images you cut out of magazines or print, but I like to make mine on Canva which is a free graphic design tool.

Find images on Pinterest that you like and save them to your computer, then upload them into Canva. You can make a screensaver for your phone and/or laptop.

Seeing your vision board everyday sends a signal to your subconscious mind to work on ways to create what you want.

Read my guide on how to make a vision board that actually works.

Want to manifest more money? Fill out a manifestation check and put it on your vision board. You’ll find ways to make it happen or attract it from unexpected sources.

Visualization

Visualization is such a fun tool you can use to manifest anything you want.

Visualize yourself manifesting exactly what you want and living your dream life. Go through your perfect day, from when you wake up in the morning to when you go to bed.

Sit or lay somewhere quiet and take the time to really picture it in your head. What does your home look like? How do you dress? Where do you go? Who do you spend time with?

See it all in your mind and send your intention out to the universe. Always tell the universe, “I want this or something better.” Sometimes there is something out there even more amazing than we could ever imagine, so it’s important not to be so set on one outcome that we unconsciously reject a better one.

The point of visualizing what you want is to know what you want and get excited about it so you are inspired to create it.

Try my Cosmic Supermarket visualization meditation to have fun shopping in your mind for all your desires.

Meditation

Meditation differs a bit from visualization because you’re letting your mind be quiet so that the voice of your intuition can surface, instead of actively using your imagination.

Sometimes we just don’t know what we want on a conscious level, you can meditate until you have a clear idea of what it is.

Sit or lay somewhere quiet where you won’t be disturbed. If your home is a little noisy play some soothing background noise like rain or ocean sounds. The Calm app has some good meditation music or you can find options on Youtube.

Close your eyes, bring your focus to your breath. After a few slow deep breaths think something like, “I am using this time to quiet my mind so I can discover my true desires.”

Then just breathe. When your mind wanders come back to your breath. Don’t put pressure on yourself to figure it out right away. It may take several sessions to gain clarity on what you want to manifest. Write down anything that comes up.

2. Create a New Identity and Upgrade Your Belief System

Your identity is how you think of yourself, it’s like a personal dictionary or novel that says who you are. Now that you’ve decided what you want, it’s time to craft a new story about who you are and what’s possible for you.

Think about the story you currently believe about yourself, maybe it looks something like this:

Everything is really hard for me. Things never really go my way and it’s just one struggle after the next. Anytime I try to achieve or manifest something I fall short or fail entirely. Nothing ever works, I wonder if I should just stop trying. I’m stuck and I’ll never have the life I want.

That’s a painful story to have, I know because that used to be my story. I was always telling myself that I was stuck and that’s what I manifested, being stuck. It wasn’t until I realized that it was just a story—not The Truth—and started working on my identity that my outer world started to change.

If you already had what you want and manifesting it was easy, what would you think about yourself? How would you feel about yourself?

Another piece of bad advice that manifestation teachers push is that you have to believe it before you can receive it, but unless you’re still at the age where you believe in Santa Clause, it’s pretty hard to believe in things we haven’t seen or experienced.

It creates too much pressure, so instead focus on your thoughts and inner dialog.

Once you have a clear picture of how your dream life looks, you need to start thinking like you already have it, even when you don’t believe your thoughts.

We can’t snap our fingers and instantly have a new belief, especially if we already have a belief that says the opposite of what we want is true. However, we can gradually replace old beliefs with better ones by repeating that new story as often as we can.

The repetition of thoughts create the new belief.

The easiest way I’ve found to do this is with affirmations. They may seem too easy or simple, but they are actually powerful tools for reprogramming the subconscious mind. Come up with a few simple sentences that state you have what you want in the present tense. Here are a few examples:

• My body is perfectly healthy.
• Money comes to me so easily.
• I’m so happy I found a partner that is wildly in love with me.
• My business is thriving.
• I feel so confident expressing myself.

Learn how to make affirmations work faster and maybe try some lucky girl affirmations.

Think as if the thing you want to manifest is already yours. Think as if you manifested that specific person. Think that you can manifest money effortlessly. Think as if you have already manifested the home of your dreams. Think and live as if it is already done.

You have to take on the identity of the person who has what you want in order to attract it and that requires faith (or stubborn determination) that it will happen.

If you struggle with believing that you can manifest anything you may find my program Transcendence helpful. It helps you do the identity work needed to unlock your ability to manifest the life you want.

3. Persist Until It Comes and Take Inspired Action!

Sometimes people think manifesting is just about creating a vision board or visualizing, but if you stop there you won’t see results. Manifesting your dreams isn’t a waiting game. It’s really all about taking daily action, even if it’s just to rewire your subconscious mind.

Manifestation is about working with your subconscious mind and the universe. The subconscious mind is what tells the universe what to give you. The universe is a co-creator, not a genie. You have to work with it to create what you want.

But, and this is where people get frustrated, it takes time to change those old beliefs and that’s why it takes time for your desires to manifest.

So if you have deep beliefs that say money is hard and you affirm “I am rich,” ten times, and then feel crushed when a thousand dollars doesn’t fall into your lap—you can’t quit or start thinking manifestation doesn’t work. You have to ignore the 3D and persist in your new story in your mind until the subconscious mind accepts it and pushes it out into the world.

Here are some tips on how to stop wavering on your manifestation.

Your external reality is a reflection of your inner reality. When you change what’s happening inside you that starts to manifest in your outer reality.

Of course it doesn’t stop at inner work. When an opportunity presents itself or you have an idea, you have to act on it! What good is having a brilliant idea if you don’t act on it?

You can’t wait for your circumstances to change, because they won’t until you change.

You can’t wait until you stop feeling afraid or confused.

Remember, like attracts like so when you just wait, you attract more waiting.

And you don’t need outside validation or permission. No one else is going to anoint you as worthy and you don’t need them to.

You have to take inspired action, then success comes as a result of your actions.

If you are seriously about creating a new identity and making manifestation so much easier, I invite you to take a 21 day journey to unleash your power in Transcendence.

Final Thoughts on How to Manifest Anything You Want

These are the key steps to manifest your dreams. You can use them to manifest a relationship, a raise at work, a successful business, or any other goal and dream.

If you’re not sure where to start, here are 20 easy things to manifest so that you can practice with things that don’t feel so intimidating.

Be patient, connect with the feeling of having what you want, and take action to co-create with the universe.

• Check out my answers to some frequently asked questions about manifestation.
• Learn 11 tips for how to manifest what you want even faster.
• Read how to manifest financial abundance for money manifestation tips.
• Learn how to manifest your dream job.
• Use these magical morning routine ideas to shift into that high vibration state.
• Try integrating positive affirmations into your daily routine.

If you feel like you’re stuck in the fog please know that it will clear in time! I’ve been there and I promise that doing these steps will open doors for you that you didn’t even know were there.

Still having trouble manifesting?

Sometimes you do all the right things to manifest your dreams but something still holds us back. When that happens we have resistance to work through. Read the post below and see if anything resonates with you. I’ve have amazing results with number six!

→ 7 Reasons Manifesting isn’t Working for You

I hope this method helps you to manifest your dreams. Subscribe to have more self-improvement content delivered to your inbox about once a week.