Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
I bet you’re sick of being told that: “you can manifest anything your heart desires…if you just buy this twelve-step program!” There are many people out there who prey upon our common misconceptions about manifesting and the law of attraction.
It’s big business!
Life Coaching has been the second-largest growth industry in the US for twelve consecutive years and is estimated to be worth around $2 billion!
It is no wonder that people will do anything to “bottle” this information and sell it to a market. How do you know what you’re being sold is the truth, though? It’s very easy to palm off any shortfall as a result of something you did wrong.
Here, then, are three common misconceptions about manifesting and the law of attraction. By bringing these to your awareness, you’ll have a better idea of whether or not a particular practice, program or modality is right for you.
Related: How Meditation Can Transform Your Business
1. Manifesting is a purely passive process
Whenever I see someone tell a tale of how they wrote themselves a check and stuck it on the fridge, only for them to receive a million dollars sometime later (Jim Carrey, I’m looking at you), it gets my back up.
Not that this isn’t possible, but it paints a picture of this being the only necessary action. Worse yet, some claim that meditation or prayer is all that is required. “Focus on what you want. Hold it in your mind’s eye, and it will appear for you!!”
No! These are all beneficial practices — please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying, but only so far as they better inform your actions.
Without taking any action — nothing is going to show up for you. Per definition: when something manifests itself, it simply makes itself known to the physical world. This could be climate change, an electoral outcome or a million dollars landing in your account.
The point is that these things already existed, and the moment they became a physical reality is what we call “manifesting.” Action is still very much required.
Related: Stop Planning and Take Action
2. The cookie-cutter approach
This is a huge reason why so many of these programs “fail” to work for the vast majority of people who buy them. It’s not that they don’t work, but they only work for the creator of the program and anyone else who just so happens to be already aligned with it.
Very few actually take the time to recognize that we are all individuals and tailor themselves accordingly.
If you come across any such program that doesn’t start by trying to get you to analyze who you are and what you’re about: don’t bother. You’ll most likely hit a brick wall and give up under the misconception that it must be your fault for “not getting it.”
Related: 11 Mindset Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs
3. Manifesting and the law of attraction are purely esoteric and mystical practices
This is nonsense. There is a lot of scientific data, research and theory to back up our ability to manifest or attract consciously chosen outcomes in our life.
Even anecdotally, if you cast your mind back to something you set your mind to, however mundane it may seem, you already know how it works. It could be as simple as thinking you want a cup of coffee. All the actions required to manifest that coffee in your hands are simple, but you still have to go through them.
The same is true of becoming a millionaire. The steps might be more complicated (or not), but the process is the same.
In the case of manifesting a million bucks: the problem most folks have is that they’ve never done it. You’ve made coffee before; that’s why when you get up from your desk and embark upon the ‘journey’ to barista town, none of it overwhelms you.
You’ve made coffee before — more times than you can count. So manifesting yet another flat white causes no anxiety whatsoever.
However, things get tricky when it comes to generating sums of money that are outside of the usual purview. You’ve never done it before, and you know that most haven’t either. You’re in uncharted territory, and your subconscious ‘lizard brain’ does not like it!
It’s a subject for another day, but suffice it to say: your subconscious has one job to do, keeping you safe. Though prehistoric, it doesn’t understand logic or language and operates on the assumption that change equals danger. It is this that the unscrupulous prey upon.
They know full well that you’ve never made a million dollars or found the love of your life. If you had, you wouldn’t need their course after all. They can exploit this to get themselves and their programs off the hook by essentially insinuating that you “just didn’t get it.”
Don’t be fooled.
Instead, recognize just how mundane the law of attraction is and how much of an everyday occurrence manifesting is. You can create a dream life as assuredly as making that cup of coffee.
