Author: Anna

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Some of the people who have been following my Law of Assumption series of articles have written to me to tell me that their dearest wish in life is to create a profitable and successful spiritual business. And so in this article I’m going to give the steps for building a spiritual business using the Law of Assumption (which is a manifesting method that is an alternative to the Law of Attraction.)

I’m also going to tell you about the way that I built my spiritual business in 2007 and why I would do exactly the same if I was starting over now. 

So this article combines the strategic and practical steps with the spiritual/energetic steps. 

In case you’re wondering who I am to teach you about business, I’ve been running my spiritual business successfully for over 15 years. 

It is my sole source of income and provides me with a comfortable life. My business allows me to take time off and work a lot less than I would if I had a job. Last year I was able to work an average of 3.5 hours per week, and still made a good full time income. I also got New Zealand residency through my business several years ago.

I achieved all of this before I even knew how to use and apply the Law of Assumption. 

It is clear to me now that taking action is one half of the equation of building a spiritual business. The other half of the equation of building a successful business is by applying the Law of Assumption. This will make your path considerably easier, and I highly recommend you combine the two if you are looking to start a new business.

If you are a spiritual business owner who knows how to apply the Law, I think the sky is really the limit. You could reach success much more quickly than I did. 

Now let’s have a look at the energetic steps you should take to become a successful business owner. 

These are all about applying the Law of Assumption to the endeavour of building your spiritual business. I have numbered them in the order you should complete them. 

1. Learn about the Law of Assumption and how it works

2. Choose an intention for your spiritual business, and set it

Just a note that your intention should be realistic and something that doesn’t feel like too much of a big deal to you.

For example, if you are a newbie to spiritual business, don’t set yourself the intention of for example, making an absolute fortune in your first year. Yes, it’s possible, but it’s also extremely unlikely. You need an intention you can believe in — something that feels doable and comfortable. Once you’ve reached it, you can always set a new goal.

So, for example, if it feels comfortable for you, you could set the intention of making $1000/month in your business for the next few months (note that this goal could be much lower if you are just starting out — it’s totally up to you). 

Once you’ve achieved that goal for a few months running and you’re ready to set a new goal, you could increase it to $1500 per month or $2000/month. Once you’ve reached that goal, you can set a new intention again.

So, in conclusion, I’m a fan of setting your goal low, and reaching it, and then setting another one. Otherwise if you set your goal too high, you are likely to not reach it, get discouraged and perhaps not bother setting another goal for your business in the future.

3. Next, choose a Law of Assumption technique for manifesting that appeals to you, that can help you enter the state of “the wish fulfilled”.

I list 11 techniques for manifesting here.

Neville Goddard (the New Thought author and teacher who popularised the Law of Assumption) stated that in order for something to manifest in your 3D reality, you must embody the feeling of the wish fulfilled in your life.

So, you need to decide on what the state of the “wish fulfilled” of a successful business feels like to you, and enter that state as much as possible throughout the day. Don’t worry at first if you struggle to do this — using Law of Assumption techniques for manifesting will definitely help.

Here are some ideas for the wish fulfilled and what it feels like:

It could feel like freedom — being able to work when you want and where you want. Not having to clock into a job. 

It could feel like financial security — I was ill in 2022 and on average I worked 3.5 hours per week that year. I still made a very good full time income that is well above the New Zealand median annual salary. Financial security and some degree of passive income through a spiritual business is definitely possible.  

It could feel like inspiration & fun — it is a lot of fun for me helping people to bust through the veil of illusion and uncover who they are on the soul level. I also love helping people to develop their spiritual abilities.

Maybe it would feel like awe and wonder — I still remember the day I realised, back in 2007, that being in the spiritual field was my vocation. I was doing readings for people at the time while I was working in my job as an English teacher in Spain, and it occurred to me that spiritual work was what I was meant to be doing, and that I could leave my job and do this instead.

It was a ‘Woah’ and ‘What…who, me?” moment. I couldn’t believe I was going to be doing this work…I felt very blessed.  

Note that if you have trouble accessing these emotional states right off the bat, it might help to find times in your life when you felt a sense of freedom (even if it was not financial), or a sense of spiritual awe and wonder. Replay those memories, then create scenes in your mind in which you are having those experiences anew, of financial security or having a lot of fun & feeling inspired at work. Draw on past memories to help get you there. 

4. Practise a Law of Assumption technique daily

Here is an article which can help you to structure your daily practice, for manifesting a successful spiritual business. Don’t leave out this step, or you are shortchanging yourself — you can achieve so much more in business by having a daily practice for manifesting.

5. Keep your thoughts in alignment with your intention

Go on a mental diet and observe your thoughts.

If you notice you’re thinking a lot of negative thoughts about business, money or whether or not it’s possible for you to do any of this, turn those thoughts around and contradict them. You can change any limiting beliefs over time by practising this process of observing negative thoughts and contradicting them. It is an ongoing process. 

6. Release importance

More on this important Law of Assumption concept in this article. 

Make sure you have a back up plan for your spiritual business. Decide what you will do if your business doesn’t work out. This releases importance and makes it easier for your intention to come to you. 

7. Make sure your self-concept matches that of a successful business owner

If it does not, work on changing it over time.

You have to believe in yourself. 

8. Ignore your 3D 

When you start your business and you’re not really seeing any success (which you won’t for a while), ignore the evidence of your senses and turn back to the reality behind your eyes.

9. Watch for guidance (from your intuition)

The right action flows from the right state of mind.

If you practise the steps above for using the Law of Assumption to build your business, you will change your state of mind over time. Your intuition will naturally give you actions to take based on this new state of mind, which will get you to your desired intention, such as a certain level of income or success, (however it is that you define success!)

So that’s the energetic side of building a business covered.

In case you are also interested in learning more about the practical steps for creating a spiritual business, I recommend my Build an Online Spiritual Business class.

Below I include more information on the business model I teach in this class for building a spiritual business. 

If this class is supposed to be part of your path to building a business, your intuition will let you know.

How I recommend creating a spiritual business in 2023

If you’d like to work in the spiritual field, but you’re unsure what it is you would like to do, personally I recommend learning some kind of spiritual skill or modality that you can do online, and then create a really simple website to sell your services.

This modality could be something like Reiki, Tarot, Akashic Record readings, cord cutting/energy healings, psychic readings, astrology or numerology (to give several examples.) 

It should be something where you can work with clients all over the world because you don’t want to be restricted to one particular area.

Then start working with clients.

At this stage, I’d recommend keeping it really simple. You do not need a fancy website. Just make it your first name and last name, dot com. Do not worry about branding – it’s just not necessary for a new spiritual business.

I also recommend ignoring anyone who tells you that you need to create some sort of niche, as a new spiritual business owner.  

If you would like to niche down, you can do that later. But as a new spiritual business owner, you don’t usually have the experience yet to know what your niche should be.

After you’ve created your website and you’re selling your services, I recommend you create some kind of content to market yourself. 

This content could be blog (written) content, YouTube content or a podcast for iTunes. 

(It should not primarily be Facebook or Instagram content — you definitely should not base your business around them and I explain why here.)

Next, work with clients for a few years

Learn from your clients.

Listen to them.

They will provide you with much inspiration for content creation, which you should create to serve them better.

Every time a client has a question that you think other people might want to know the answer to, blog or create a video about it.

And if it’s in your path to have a niche that you serve, those people will naturally show up in your world with a problem that they want your help to solve. 

If you’d like to have some passive income at some point, working with clients is often how you’ll get there (note that ideally, to have a profitable business you should create some kind of info product at some point, whether it’s a course, a book or something else.) 

Working with people is how I came up with the content for my most popular online course – Intuitive Awakening – and my book for empaths. I couldn’t have created those resources as a new spiritual business owner back in 2007 because I hadn’t yet done the client work which inspired me to create them. 

So that’s one way to get started in the spiritual field, that is as effective now as it was back in 2007.

The biggest mistake I’ve seen people make when trying to create a spiritual business, is to create a general website about spirituality, or an Instagram account that delivers empowering and inspirational content. That’s hard to monetise. The internet is quite crowded these days, compared to when I started, and it can take years to make money from a blog. If you want your business to be profitable and sustainable from the start, I recommend training in something and working with clients instead. 

I hope this article helps to inspire some of you who are working on building a spiritual business or about to start one. 

Above all, make sure to use the Law of Assumption and the right action will flow from there. Ideas will come to you, guidance will come to you and you will just know what your next step is. 

Further Reading:

I offer a free online resource for manifesting your desired reality using the Law of Assumption — it’s a collection of online articles which are presented in the right order so that you can use them as a ‘how to’ guide. It’s quite a comprehensive resource and can help take you from A to B with almost any intention. You can find that here.

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In this article I’m going to discuss a question I’ve had on multiple occasions around Law of Assumption techniques (i.e. SATS or affirmations), namely, do you need to use techniques daily to see results in your manifesting efforts, and if so, how much time do you have to invest in using the Law of Assumption?

Before I answer this question, just to clarify that the Law of Assumption is a method of manifesting based on the teachings of Neville Goddard (1905-1972), an influential New Thought author and teacher who coined this term (the Law of Assumption).

The Law of Assumption states that your life unfolds according to your inner assumptions and beliefs, and that if you want to create change in your external world, you need to change your internal world, namely your thoughts, beliefs, assumptions, attitudes and feelings. Often to create these changes, you have to do some inner work using various techniques, and that is what this article is all about: how much work do you need to do? 

OK, that said, let’s look at how much time you need to spend on Law of Assumption techniques to see a change in your life. In this article I’m going to share my honest experiences. 

As a baseline, I believe that anyone who is consciously manifesting something should invest some time in a manifesting technique, on a daily basis.

If you’re not investing that time daily, you’re not practising the Law. You’re just dabbling.

Neville Goddard warned his students that they should be doers of “the Word”, not just hearers. (What he meant by this was that his students should be practising the Law, not just learning about it.) 

“Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourself. For he who is a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like one who looks into the mirror and sees his natural face; and then he goes away and at once forgets what he looks like.”

A very common reason why students of the Law of Assumption or the Law of Attraction don’t create change in their lives is because they’re not investing that time in practising daily. Instead, they’re doing it sporadically.

If you’re investing time sporadically, you can expect sporadic results. 

Now let’s look at how much time you need to spend on using manifesting techniques for one particular desire. 

This may be as much as 60 minutes per day or it could be as little as 5 minutes per day (or more likely, something in between.)

The exact amount of time you need to spend on manifesting something per day depends on a few factors, which I cover below:

• How far away your desire is from your current reality

As an example, if you have a significant amount of debt that you feel depressed about, but instead you’d like to be wealthy and feel carefree about your financial situation, your desire is at the moment some way away from your current reality. This indicates that your current subconscious beliefs around money are not what you want them to be. (Remember, we create according to what is in our subconscious mind – if you lack money, this means that your subconscious mind has some unwanted programming around lack and not having enough.) 

You’re probably going to have to invest quite a bit of time into manifesting something different and overwriting the subconscious programming of lack, which is the result of years of thinking and feeling the same way about money. Therefore I would start with 15-20 minutes of affirmations or SATS, at a minimum. 

Let’s have a look at another factor that affects how much time you should spend on techniques: 

• How much experience you have in consciously manifesting

If you’ve consciously used Law of Attraction or Law of Assumption practices in the past, with some success, this indicates some skill already in this area and you may not need to invest as much time as someone who is new to manifesting. 

Another question you will want to honestly ask yourself is:

• How has your life gone so far?

If your life has not been how you wanted it in many ways, this indicates that you have a lot of limiting beliefs in your subconscious mind that need over-riding with a healthy daily investment of time into practices. 

If you know you have a lot of childhood programming that hasn’t served you in the past, and still holds you back, this is also a sign of limiting beliefs that require quite a bit of subconscious reprogramming. 

Which techniques should you choose?

The techniques you choose should be the ones that feel right and fun to you. Everyone manifests differently. You may want to switch it up every day, or stick with the same methods every time. 

I recently wrote an article with a list of techniques here.

My Practice 

Personally, I currently spend one hour on SATS daily, and I also spend 30-60 minutes doing a Joe Dispenza guided meditation. I also sometimes listen to various affirmations on Youtube when doing the dishes. In addition, I say affirmations maybe every other day for 10-15 mins.

I make a point of using ‘dead time’ for this, such as when I am going for a walk, doing dishes or cleaning, otherwise it gets that I don’t have enough time for all this inner work. 

Why do I spend so much time on all this?

Firstly, I do not have a track record of consciously creating much of what I want. I have had a lot of success professionally, but not as much success in my personal life (although this has changed recently and is getting better all the time.)

I also had a lot of negative programming from childhood. I’m aware I have had many limiting beliefs in the past and I’m committed to reprogramming my subconscious for the long term. 

On the other hand, if you’re someone who already has the life they want, but there’s one more thing you’d like to create, you can probably get away with 10-15 mins per day or less focusing on your desire. 

Persisting is the key

I hope it comes across in this article that manifesting using the Law of Assumption takes work and commitment. You need to commit to a daily practice if you want to see consistent results, even if it’s just 10-15 mins per day.

PS. just a little note that some individuals never need to use techniques in order to manifest.

The only purpose of techniques & practices is to put you into the state of the wish fulfilled. As an example, this means that if you are currently struggling with a chronic illness, you need to spend some of your time feeling how you would feel if the illness didn’t exist. You tell yourself you are healthy, and you ignore the 3D reality which tells you something other than this. You feel relaxed and secure in the idea that you are healthy and nothing can stop this from manifesting in the 3D world, because you decree it so, and you are the operant power in your world. 

Some people can manage to anchor this reality into their awareness without any help from techniques or practices, by just slipping into the state of the wish fulfilled as often as possible during the day. (As an aside, on top of using practices, this is a great thing to do, and I recommend you also pop into the state of the wish fulfilled as often as possible throughout the day if you can.) 

But many people cannot manifest this way alone. I cannot. I need daily practices to keep me on track with my mental diet and to be able to enter into the state of the wish fulfilled throughout the day. If I stop with my practices, things start to go downhill within several days and I get off track. I feel like the daily practice anchors me in the wish fulfilled for the day, and then I can more easily access it as needed throughout the day.

So be aware that the vast majority of people will need a daily practice. The people who do not ever need any practices or techniques tend to be people who have already done a considerable amount of inner work and already have experience with consciously manifesting.

Further Reading:

I offer a free online resource for manifesting your desired reality using the Law of Assumption — it’s a collection of online articles which are presented in the right order so that you can use them as a ‘how to’ guide. It’s quite a comprehensive resource and can help take you from A to B with almost any intention. You can find that here.

Over the last year or so, I’ve been learning a lot about conscious reality creation using the Law of Assumption.

The Law of Assumption is a spiritual principle popularised by the New Thought author Neville Goddard’s books and lectures. This law states that what you assume and expect, is what you will see in your life. 

(If you’d like to read my series of ‘how to’ articles on the Law of Assumption right from the beginning so that you can learn to create the life you desire, go here to read the first article and then follow the links at the end of each one.) 

In this article, I’m going to cover a step – or perhaps more accurately described, a way of seeing the world – that really helps with your manifesting process.

This is something I have found personally to be extremely helpful, and it is:

Ignoring the 3D

In his books and lectures, Neville talks a lot about ignoring your 3D reality when you are manifesting.

Neville recommends essentially turning your back on the world of your senses (i.e. what is in front of you) when setting your intentions, and when using manifesting techniques such as affirmations or SATS. 

This means that external circumstances do not matter when it comes to your manifestations.

You may be in debt to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. It does not matter. You can be prosperous again.

You may have been told you have an incurable disease. It does not matter. You can be healthy again.

You may be estranged from someone or have a really bad relationship. It does not matter. You can recreate that relationship and have it be harmonious.

Here’s why:

According to the Law of Assumption, everything is you pushed out. All that you see around you is a reflection of your consciousness and the contents of your energy field, which includes your subconscious mind.

Your life is a result of your imaginings and the states of being that you have embodied in the past. Your past attitudes, thoughts, emotions, imaginings, words, and beliefs have all contributed to create the life you have now.

(One important caveat: if you have a severe karmic complex – a past life wound sitting in your energy field, along with downstream consequences of the karmic complex – it can prevent you from manifesting in specific areas until it’s cleared, because a karmic complex can create negative attitudes, beliefs and thoughts. I’ll address this at the end of the article.)

Remember that your world is made up of 2 layers — the “real” 3D layer, and the metaphysical layer which is made up of energy. The 3D layer is your reflection in the mirror, and the metaphysical layer is what is behind the mirror.

The states of being that you embody the majority of the time within yourself (so, are you smiling or frowning into the mirror?) will be reflected back to you in your 3D reality, albeit with a time lapse.

The law doesn’t care if you hate or love what it reflects back to you. The law doesn’t judge, or bless you in any way. It is a simple reflection, that’s all.

All of this means that your 3D reality is just information. It does not hold any deeper meaning that you may have given it. It is in fact a transient shadow based on your consciousness, which is the source of the shadow. 

This is why Neville recommends not assigning too much importance or meaning to your current 3D reality, and turning your back on the senses while you manifest.

This is often termed in manifesting teachings ‘ignoring the 3D’. However, it is obviously impossible to ignore the 3D 100%. What Neville was really getting at with this teaching was, stop reacting to your 3D reality, like it has independent power over you.

An example:

Let’s say that you have had adult acne for a while, and it’s bad. You would like to manifest clear skin.

Anyone who has had severe acne knows how devastating it can be. You wake up in the morning and go take a look in the mirror to see what new pimples have shown up today. You examine your lifestyle and diet and wonder if or which part of it might have caused this new pimple. You feel hopeless and sad that your face looks like this. You reflect on what the doctor has told you about it (there’s nothing that can be done, except perhaps using some very strong medications with serious side effects.)

Adult acne does a real number on your self-esteem and mood for the day, and many people who have a severe case feel depressed about it. 

If you have acne and you are manifesting clear skin, you need to stop assigning meaning to any of the above, including what you see in the mirror, and your thoughts and feelings about that.

A good place to start would be to stop looking in the mirror unnecessarily. If you do look in the mirror, you become indifferent to anything you don’t want to see. You could tell yourself ‘you’re beautiful’. You stop seeing your pimples as a reality that cannot be changed – instead, you start telling yourself: ‘this can change’. You stop feeling hopeless or like a victim of your reality. Instead, throughout the day you see yourself examining your flawless face in the mirror, and you feel satisfied that it is looking great.

No longer reacting to what is happening is perhaps the hardest thing of all to do, when manifesting your way out of a bad situation.

It’s a total and complete shift in perception, which is already hard to do when you’re not feeling good about your reality. 

You need to learn to make the shift from seeing your 3D reality as “real”, to beginning to see the world behind your eyes as real. What happens in your mind is what is real, because that is what projects outwards onto your 3D world. 

I love this calming and perception-shifting free meditation on YouTube by Neville Goddard student ‘EdwardArtSupplyHands’.

This meditation can help anchor within you the truth that your consciousness is what creates reality. If you are new to the concept presented in this article, it will enable you to begin to see your imagination as the true reality and your 3D world as a transient shadow.

As much as possible, let go of your anxiety, fear or intimidation as a response to your current circumstances. Unhook yourself from the idea that your 3D reality has any power over you. In fact, the reverse is true. The relationship goes the other way. You are the one who has the authority over your 3D reality. So take that authority back, and stop reacting.

Yes, this takes a certain degree of self-delusion and brazenness. It sounds totally deluded and I admit that. Neville Goddard was a Broadway actor. The methods that we use for impressing the subconscious mind and manifesting a new reality (such as SATS) are actually very similar to method acting.

All of this means you are transforming the self. You are leaving an element of the old self behind, and embracing a new self within, and your 3D reality will reflect that at some point. 

Ignoring your reality and embodying the state of the wish fulfilled are skills that can be developed, the more you practise them. Don’t expect perfection at first, just persist in imperfectly ignoring your 3D reality.

While you’re doing all of this, remember to keep your focus on what you do want, in your imagination. Use techniques such as affirmations and SATS to help you in this.

Meditation can also come in very handy, if your nervous system is reacting to your current situation and you’re feeling anxiety or stress around it. Mindfulness meditation is amazing for calming your nervous system so that you can manifest what you want, and so are guided meditations, of which there are many on YouTube.

Something else to bear in mind

Another aspect of ignoring the 3D means that you don’t constantly check the 3D to see if your manifestation has arrived yet, and you stop talking about it.

Your goal is to enjoy your new reality in your imagination above all. You don’t complain or talk about why hasn’t it manifested yet. You don’t ask how long it is going to take. 

You are already living it. You are in that timeline — so feel it. 

You are in Barbados!

Let me tell a story from Neville’s life that exemplifies this. (This is a story that Neville told in one of his lectures.)

Neville was originally from Barbados. He was born there in 1905, into a large farming family (he had 10 siblings) and he left the island for the US in 1922.  

Neville was living in New York during the early 1930s, around the time of the Great Depression. He was an out of work dancer and actor because at the time of the Depression very few people had money to go see a show. 

At this time he was also studying with an Ethiopian Jewish rabbi called Abdullah, who was teaching him about the Law of Assumption. At this point Neville had limited experience in applying the Law to his own life.

For Christmas 1933, he decided that he wanted to escape the hardship and the cold New York winter and return home to Barbados. The only problem was that he had no money for the trip and he barely had money for the essentials of life, because he had no job. 

Around October of that year, he mentioned to Abdullah that he had been away from Barbados for 12 years and he had a burning desire to go back and be among his family for Christmas, yet he had no money and felt it was impossible.

Abdullah’s reply was: 

“You are in Barbados.”

He instructs Neville to sleep that night as if he is in Barbados, listening to the tropical sounds of the island. He tells him to see the little houses of Barbados as he is walking down the streets of New York City and to smell the tropical scents of Barbados. 

Neville thinks this response is stupid because walking down a NYC street, with its 60 floor multi-storey buildings, is nothing like walking down a Barbados street, with its 1 or 2 storey buildings and no sidewalks.

But he imagines that night that he’s sleeping in Barbados, anyway.

November rolls around and it seems like there’s no movement in Neville’s manifestation. 

He approaches Abdullah about it, going round to his house to discuss the matter. When he asks about it, Abdullah slams the door in his face. He refuses to discuss it because Neville is already in Barbados. If Neville is faithful to his assumption, it’s impossible to discuss the ‘how’. Neville continues to fall asleep as if he is in Barbados. 

By early December, Neville starts to get a bit twitchy because the last boat that will sail from NYC to Barbados leaves on 6th December and it seems his manifestation is still no closer to becoming a reality. 

His teacher Abdullah still refuses to talk about the fact that nothing has happened yet.

Then on 4th December there’s a letter under the door from Neville’s brother Victor, saying that he wants to bring the family together for Christmas, for the very first time. Neville had such a big family, with siblings of varying ages, that they’d never actually been together for Christmas since one of the older ones had already left before one of the younger ones was born.

So, Neville’s brother Victor has decided that it’s time for the family to be together for Christmas. He knows Neville has no money or job, so he sends him $50 for clothes and a first class ticket to Barbados. Neville excitedly goes to the Furness Line to collect the ticket. He is told that unfortunately although his brother purchased a first class ticket, there are only third class rooms left, so he would need to sleep in third class and use the facilities of the first. Neville is still delighted by what has happened and he agrees.

When he tells Abdullah what has happened, Abdullah says, “Who told you that you went to Barbados third class? You are in Barbados and you went first class!” 

On the morning of 6th December, Neville goes to check in for the trip and he is told that a passenger has cancelled and there is now a place in first class.

Neville spends 3 “heavenly” months in Barbados. 

Through this experience, he learns that he has to stop discussing what he is manifesting, and why it hasn’t arrived yet, or how to make it arrive. Such discussions need to be cut off, and instead one’s focus brought back to the wish fulfilled — this is what is meant by the teaching “You are in Barbados”.

So, this is an important part of ignoring the 3D, too. You stop talking about (or thinking about) how you haven’t got your manifestation yet and instead you just live it in your imagination. You travel along the Bridge of Incidents without stressing about it all or talking about where you might be on the bridge.

You trust. 

Again, here’s that guided meditation that I love for making the shift towards ignoring the 3D. 

Quotes from Neville on ignoring the 3D:

“Denying the evidence of the senses and appropriating the feeling of the wish fulfilled is the way to the realisation of your desire.”

“Never accept anything as true and final unless it conforms to the ideal you desire to embody within your world.”

“Seek only to guide your thoughts and feelings in the direction of your desires and not on the evidence of your senses.”

“When man finally identifies himself with his imagination rather than his senses, he has at long last discovered the core of reality.”

“I did it, I am doing it and I will continue to do it until that which I’ve done is perfectly externalized within my world”

A Note on Karmic Complexes

I wrote this article early in my manifestation journey, before I fully understood the impact of karmic complexes – unconscious past life wounds that sit in the energy field, which can block manifestation in specific areas of life.

Since writing this, I’ve learned that while the principles in this article are true for many manifesting situations, there’s an important exception: if you have a severe karmic complex affecting a particular area (relationships, money, health), simply ignoring your 3D reality and using techniques may not be enough. The complex will keep broadcasting patterns that override your conscious intentions until it’s cleared.

If you’ve been using manifesting techniques consistently for months or years in a specific area of life without seeing results – or if unwanted situations keep repeating despite your best manifesting efforts – a karmic complex may be at play.

You can read more about karmic complexes here.

And you can find out if you might have one here.

Further Reading:

I offer a free online resource for manifesting your desired reality using the Law of Assumption — it’s a collection of online articles which are presented in the right order so that you can use them as a ‘how to’ guide. It’s quite a comprehensive resource and can help take you from A to B with almost any intention. You can find that here.

Every year, at the start of the year I pull a Tarot card to find out what I can expect in the year ahead. 

I wrote more about this, in this article: How to Use Tarot to Predict the Year Ahead

I just love the Tarot and I find it to be so accurate. 

How my relationship with the Tarot has changed over time

I’ve been reading the Tarot for 23 years. For many of those years, I didn’t realise this at the time, but I went into my readings with a fear-based mentality. I was slightly afraid (on an unconscious level) to turn the cards over in a reading. I felt that life was happening TO me and the Tarot was going to give me a hint of what was going to happen to me next (whether good or bad.) 

I now believe the Tarot simply reflects back to us what we are currently manifesting. It reflects back to us what we assume and believe to be true about ourselves and about life. 

It shows us where we have invested our energies, in terms of the thoughts, emotions and images we are ‘out-picturing’ in our minds. Those thoughts, emotions and images (whatever we imagine and assume) are sent out into the Universe, which places us on a lifeline that corresponds perfectly to whatever it is we are imagining. 

So, the Tarot has the ability to show you (with great accuracy) what kind of place you will be in soon, based on your current energies and manifestations.

Note that all of this is entirely within your control to change.

If you pull a Tarot card for the upcoming year, and it doesn’t look too good, you can 100% change it. 

So, my favourite way to use the Tarot is to ask it:

“What am I currently manifesting in the area of X?”

(…it could be in the realm of health, work, relationships, etc.)

The card that comes up shows me what I’ve been creating. I may be able to fool myself and think I’m manifesting something in particular, but the Tarot isn’t fooled and will show me if my subconscious mind is actually in alignment with my desire. 

Remember that according to the Law of Assumption, when we’re manifesting, we need to impress upon our subconscious minds that we already are who we desire to be, or we already have what it is that we’re desiring. (We can do this most efficiently through affirmations and visualisations.)

If I ask this question about what I’m manifesting and I get a card that projects something positive that is in alignment with what I’ve been manifesting, I know I’m on track for it to appear in my life. I’ve done the work to impress my subconscious and it is on board with my manifestation. 

If the Tarot card I pick projects something more challenging, it means my subconscious mind is not yet on board with my desire. It doesn’t currently believe in my manifestation (possibly due to a self-concept, excessive importance or a mental diet that aren’t in alignment with my desire). That means I can course correct with my manifesting process and examine how I’ve been contributing to this.

I’m going to take a look at a couple of examples.

Let’s say that someone is trying to get pregnant and asks the Tarot what they are manifesting in this area. 

The card that comes up is the ace of pentacles, which is traditionally associated with pregnancy.

From this, they are going to know that their manifestation is on track.

Let’s say in another situation, you ask about your relationship that has been having some difficulties lately, and your partner is distancing themselves from you. You have a weird feeling that the relationship may be ending soon.

When you ask ‘what am I currently manifesting in this relationship?’…

…You pull the 5 of cups, which is a card that is associated with loss and grief. This implies that you are manifesting the end of this relationship, or at the very least you are manifesting further distance in it, which will cause sadness for you.

At this point, you have to really tune into your desires for this relationship. And when I refer to desires, I’m talking about real, soul-level desires, not fear-based, egoic desires. (We often cannot manifest things that the ego wants but the soul doesn’t want.)

Is it really right that this person stays in your life? 

Are you good for one another?

Do you bring out the best in one another?

On occasion, our souls will create an ending in our life, because it is a necessary part of the Bridge of Incidents for a bigger manifestation that is important to us. 

But if you know in your heart that this person is someone who has a place in your life, and you value the relationship, then this card is showing you what to do next (or rather, what to ‘be’ or embody next!)

Here’s how you course correct:

1. You set a clear intention for what you’d like to experience next in this relationship

2. You could come up with some visualisations that show your relationship with this person thriving

3. You could create and use some affirmations, such as:

“X is such a great partner to me”

or “I bring out the best in X”

3. Next, you go on a mental diet, purging from your mind any worries or thoughts of the relationship ending. 

4. Then you assess the level of importance you have attached to the idea of this person not leaving your life. If you really need this relationship to remain in your life, you will sabotage your intention. 

5. Next, you look at your self-concept. 

Your self-concept is what you habitually think about yourself, and how you feel about yourself. Do you feel worthy of this relationship?

You need to work on your self-concept if any of the below apply to you. 

• You are self-critical
• You don’t celebrate your achievements or give yourself credit for them
• You take responsibility for things that aren’t your fault
• You have trouble accepting compliments e.g. if someone says “I love your dress” instead of saying “thank you” you say things like: “Oh this old thing, I’ve had it for ages, I should throw it out.”
• You sometimes say self-deprecating things about yourself to other people
• You have an anxious, avoidant or disorganised attachment style in relationships.
• Other peoples’ criticisms really hurt you
• You compare yourself to others and come up short in your mind
• You’re a people pleaser
• You put other peoples’ desires ahead of your own
• You often don’t stand up for yourself or speak up for what you need
• You don’t take risks on your dreams for fear of failure
• You’re often explaining or justifying your decisions to people unnecessarily.

If any of the above apply to you, then you create affirmations which affirm the opposite.

For example, if you always put other peoples’ desires above your own, affirm the following: 

“I always put myself first. I am the number one priority in my own life.” 

You may also want to affirm:

“I am worthy of wonderful, supportive relationships in my life”

And say them as if you are celebrating these truths about yourself. In your mind as you’re saying them, BE that person. 

6. Next, you surrender yourself to the Bridge of Incidents. You let go of how your manifestation comes to fruition. That is for the Universe to decide, not you. If your partner continues to distance themselves, you try not to freak out about it and instead focus on yourself and your own life. 

As you can see, the Tarot can be a useful tool for showing us whether we are on course for manifesting our desires, and for allowing us to course correct. 

If you have any questions about what I covered in this article, please let me know in the comments section below.

(In this article I’ve touched on a controversial question, which is: can we manifest for others? If you are asking yourself this, you might like to read this article for my take on it.)

PS. I recommend only doing this process of asking whether you’re on track with your manifestation periodically. If you’re going to do it very frequently, be prepared for the eventuality that the Tarot will reflect back to you what you’ve been focusing on today or yesterday only.

Further Reading:

I offer a free online resource for manifesting your desired reality using the Law of Assumption — it’s a collection of online articles which are presented in the right order so that you can use them as a ‘how to’ guide. It’s quite a comprehensive resource and can help take you from A to B with almost any intention. You can find that here.

In this article, I’m going to cover another principle of the Law of Assumption that manifestors need to be aware of: self-concept. 

Your self-concept includes the thoughts you habitually have about yourself, and how you feel about yourself. It also includes what you think the people around you think of you. 

Do you feel worthy of whatever it is you are manifesting? Does your ‘self-concept’ match your desire? 

For example, if you’re seeking to manifest a fulfilling and healthy romantic relationship, but you put yourself down a lot in your own mind, feeling that you’re not good enough, that means your self-concept simply isn’t in alignment with your manifestation, and you won’t create it. Or if you do, it will be with someone who treats you poorly, or it will be a relationship you won’t be able to sustain. 

I believe that in order to manifest something, you must feel like the person who already has your desire. It doesn’t mean that you need to feel euphoric all the time, but you are going to need to feel good about yourself overall.

After all, if you were in a healthy and happy relationship, to attract and sustain this relationship you would need to feel worthy and positive about yourself, like you have something to offer. Because if you don’t believe that about yourself, no-one else will. 

In this article, I’m going to talk about how you can make tweaks to your self concept so that you have the best chance of manifesting what you want, whatever it may be.

First of all, let’s look at Neville Goddard’s teachings on self-concept.

He wrote:

“Change your conception of yourself and you will automatically change the world in which you live. Do not try to change people; they are only messengers telling you who you are. Revalue yourself and they will confirm the change.”

How to know if you need to work on your self-concept as part of your manifesting process

If you agree with any of the statements below, you need to do some work on your self-concept:

• You are self-critical
• You don’t celebrate your achievements or give yourself credit for them
• You take responsibility for things that aren’t your fault
• You have trouble accepting compliments e.g. if someone says “I love your dress” instead of saying “thank you” you say things like: “Oh this old thing, I’ve had it for ages, I should throw it out.”
• You sometimes say self-deprecating things about yourself to other people
• You have an anxious, avoidant or disorganised attachment style in relationships.
• Other peoples’ criticisms really hurt you
• You compare yourself to others and come up short in your mind
• You’re a people pleaser
• You put other peoples’ desires ahead of your own
• You often don’t stand up for yourself or speak up for what you need
• You don’t take risks on your dreams for fear of failure
• You’re often explaining or justifying your decisions to people unnecessarily. 

If you don’t agree with any of the statements above, you can skip the self-concept work. But if you identify with any of the above, you should also work on your self-concept while you also work on manifesting whatever it is you desire.

Here’s how to do that:

Affirmations

In addition to affirmations that you may be using to impress your subconscious mind to manifest (more on that here), you should also come up with statements that affirm your self concept.

Ask yourself: who would I be if I had this manifestation, if my desire was already part of my reality?

Would you be feeling: relaxed, powerful, secure, grounded, enough, safe, free? (to give some examples…)

Here are some examples of powerful self-concept affirmations you can use:

I am enough

I am more than enough

I trust myself and my perceptions

I am worthy of wonderful things in life

I am safe and I trust the process of life

I am capable. I can do anything. I can learn to do anything

I am beautiful

Everything always works in my favour

I am lucky

I speak up for myself freely and easily

I claim my own power 

I am open to receiving

I am thriving in my life

I already have everything I need and want

I am inherently wealthy

I am full of joy

I deserve the absolute best life has to offer

I am blessed to be me

I am securely attached

My world takes such wonderful care of me

I exude self-worth.

Note that if you agreed with any of the statements mentioned above as signs you need to improve your self-concept, you can also create affirmations which affirm the opposite, So, if you agreed with the statement “I am self-critical”, you could affirm “I love and accept myself exactly as I am.”

You can also come up with self-concept affirmations for a particular goal you have. For example, if you would like to manifest marriage, you could affirm:

I am husband/wife material

I was always meant to be married

I am worthy of wonderful things in love.

Your current self-concept was formed simply through repetition — of thoughts, beliefs and feelings about yourself. You can change your self-concept by repeating new ideas about yourself. It can take some time to do, but it is definitely worthwhile work. So, repetition, practice and persistence are important here. Most people cannot usually make significant changes to their self-concept suddenly. 

So, that’s one way to change your self-concept to something more favourable. 

[Update October 2024: I have created a longer list of self-concept affirmations, which can be found here]

What if you are affirming and have been for a while and there’s no change in your self-concept?

It could be that you need some kind of healing to change your self-concept.

Healing for improving your self-concept

Sometimes people struggle to change their self-concept because there was a painful and traumatic event in their past that causes them to believe they’re not good enough, and in some cases, these feelings may be very deep-rooted and resistant to change. When this is the case, it can be tricky to try to shift your self-concept through affirmations, when you feel overwhelmed by past traumas and negative beliefs. I do believe it’s possible over time, but you usually encounter a lot of resistance this way, and it can be more effective to quickly change your self-concept through combining the Law of Assumption with a healing modality. 

Here are a couple of my favourite healing modalities that are particularly suitable for changing your self-concept:

• EMDR
• Inner child healing

I did many sessions of EMDR (a trauma healing therapy) just before I started using the law.

When I did EMDR, I discovered a very significant memory during childhood, where I had concluded that I must not be good enough, because of how someone treated me. This belief stayed with me for decades, affecting everything about my personal relationships. I didn’t even know this was a pivotal moment in my childhood until it came up in the sessions. I had totally forgotten about it. It’s amazing how much one event can impact us so profoundly. 

It definitely improved my self-concept to heal this memory and I believe releasing this supercharged my manifestations later on.

Inner child work is also very powerful for improving self-concept, especially if you had an inconsistent or unreliable caretaker during childhood. I highly recommend this for improving your self-concept. 

Something else that helped my self-concept massively is the coherence healings I had done with the students of manifestation teacher Dr Joe Dispenza. If you read my blogs regularly you’ll know that I am a fan of Dr Joe Dispenza’s work. I’ve read all his books and do his guided meditations daily.

I had multiple free coherence healings with his students, who are advanced students who have attended his week long retreats and learned a method for healing others of their physical illnesses by targeting any incoherent energy in the energy field that underlies the illness. 

This “coherence healing” method has been studied by the University of California in San Diego and what they discovered amazed them. When they put cancer cells in an incubator, and asked a group of coherence healers to send the cells healing energy, they found that the temperature in the incubator inexplicably dropped and the cancer cells stopped proliferating. (You can learn more about this in the video on this page.)

I’ve also had some intense mystical experiences that were very healing, through doing the meditations of Dr Joe, but I’d been doing the meditations every day for several months before I had those healing experiences. So, this may not be a fast route to changing your self-concept, but it can certainly help.

Improving self-concept in other ways

• Treat yourself with kindness, like you would a beloved child
• Try one of the many self love meditations on YouTube 
• Do a Buddhist loving kindness meditation
• Focus on eliminating behaviours that undermine you. If you often speak poorly of yourself to others or put yourself down, stop! If you don’t give yourself credit for things, try to start giving yourself a pat on the back for jobs well done. If you have trouble accepting compliments, practise saying “thank you” to compliments
• Tell yourself “I love you” sometimes and feel a sense of care and love that you have for yourself. If you don’t feel it, never mind. Just keep telling yourself “I love you”. You can also say “you are my beloved” to yourself. Or “I value you”; “I respect you” and “I trust you”. I find it’s best to say these after meditating when your subconscious mind is in a more receptive state.  

Further Reading:

I offer a free online resource for manifesting your desired reality using the Law of Assumption — it’s a collection of online articles which are presented in the right order so that you can use them as a ‘how to’ guide. It’s quite a comprehensive resource and can help take you from A to B with almost any intention. You can find that here.

Before I get started with this article, please be aware that when I talk about manifesting on this blog, I am referring to manifesting through the Law of Assumption, which is a spiritual principle from the New Thought author Neville Goddard’s teachings.

I have had big success through using the Law of Assumption over the last year or so, turning my life around from something I was not enjoying, to something I very much am enjoying. Due to my experiences, I can’t help but share about the Law of Assumption on this blog!

In this article, I’m going to cover a step that you need to be aware of, if you have set an intention to manifest something, and that’s the concept of importance (i.e. putting your desire on a pedestal and making it important.)

In order to successfully manifest your desire, you must be at peace with the idea of not having your desire.

The more you want something, and obsess over having it: worrying, pushing, striving, hoping; the more it will slip through your fingers.

You need to have a light touch when manifesting — not a death grip!

This is probably the number one obstacle on the path to manifesting. If you have waited a very long time for your manifestation, and you’re no closer to seeing it in your reality, the most likely scenario is that you have attached a great deal of importance to it. You cannot change your reality when you’re very attached to it being a certain way. You have to take your goals and desires off a pedestal. 

Quantum physicist and author of the amazing book ‘Reality Transurfing’, Vadim Zeland, goes into this in a lot of depth in his book.

Vadim Zeland talks about the difference between walking on a plank on the ground in your garden and walking a plank that exists between 2 high rise buildings, with no safety net. 

If you are very attached to your manifestation and feel you can’t be happy in your life without it, you’re essentially walking the plank between 2 high rise buildings. You’re going to get nervous and you’re more likely to fall off as a result.

If you’re trying to manifest something and you feel like you’re walking that plank between two high rises, what can you do?

You need to get a safety net.

Here’s how:

You come up with an alternative scenario where you haven’t achieved your desire, and you make peace with it. 

Let ’s look at an example. Let’s say that you want to conceive a child, and you’ve been trying for some time but it hasn’t happened. You have always felt that you are here to be a parent, and the idea of this not happening is devastating to you.

To increase the likelihood of seeing your desired reality, you have to concoct a plan B — a scenario where you are happy without having had your own biological children. 

You plan how your life will be if you never have children. How would you deal with the grief? What would be on the other side of that? What hobbies, projects or plans would you have in the absence of that? Or would you adopt a child? Spend a lot of time with your nieces and nephews? You plan something where you would survive and you would eventually thrive in the absence of your desire.

You must come up with a scenario that feels bearable to you. If it feels unbearable, work out how to make it more bearable.

Don’t focus on it too much – just enough so that it feels like it could be a viable alternative, if push came to shove. 

If you do this process right and really make peace with your plan B, you won’t ever need the plan B.

It’s all about accepting your current situation and no longer resisting it.

The other way to reduce importance is to practise the techniques I wrote about in these articles: affirmations & visualisation.

The purpose of using these techniques is not actually to manifest something in your life. Their purpose is to create the feeling of the ‘wish fulfilled’ inside you – for you to carry a sense within you of your desire already having been fulfilled. If you persist in living in this state, the side effect of this is that your external reality shifts according to what is going on in your internal world, and your desire shows up in 3D reality. 

As you practise these techniques, you will fulfil your desires in imagination, and this will naturally enable you to let go of any burning desire to have them. You’ll already feel like you have them. (Sometimes it can take weeks or months of doing techniques before you begin to feel this way, and other times you don’t even need to do techniques to capture the feeling of the ‘wish fulfilled’ – every manifestation is different.) 

Let’s look at another scenario as to how importance can show itself in our lives, and the best and worst ways to deal with it.

Let’s say that you have a 7 year old son who wants a bike for his birthday. You have chosen the bike together from an online store. His birthday is in 2 days and you realise to your horror you forgot to actually order the bike online. 

You go online and order the bike. You choose express shipping so that it will arrive on his birthday, but at the same time you know there are delays with the postal service right now in your area.

The worst thing you can do in this situation is envision it as really important to your son’s happiness that the bike arrives on his birthday, and worry that the present won’t arrive on time. Or ruminate about what a bad parent you are to forget your child’s birthday present. Or freak out and email the online shop, telling them how important it is that the bike arrives on the day you have chosen.

These are all behaviours that attach importance and as a result, something will happen to thwart your intention. The likelihood is that the bike won’t arrive on time.

The alternative scenario would be to trust that the bike will be delivered on the day you chose, and to also let your son know there’s a small chance it won’t arrive on his birthday, because mum/dad messed up. That’s your plan B that takes the pressure off. Releasing the importance clears any energetic obstacles and this makes it more likely a wave of probability will be collapsed, that means the bike will arrive on time. 

Let’s have a look at another scenario:

If you have a chronic illness that you want to release, you must come up with a plan B as to how you will live with this illness forever, if it never left you.

In addition, if you see symptoms in your body, you do not pay attention to them or assign importance to them. You treat them with indifference. This doesn’t mean you don’t obtain relief through some means if it is available to you (or see the doctor if that is what is required) but you stop making it be really important that you be symptom free or illness free.

If you are always researching and trying new things to heal your illness, or maybe you’re on a special diet, you stop assigning importance to those things. You tell yourself that you’re doing these things because you choose to, not because you have to. You tell yourself that there is One Primary Cause — which is, you and what you focus on. If a special diet is on your Bridge of Incidents towards your goal of being healed, so be it, but you don’t assign importance to it like it’s your only path of getting there. Hold it lightly. Don’t keep searching for the next big magic bullet that you think will solve your problem. 

Reducing Importance through humour

Humour, laughter and cheerfulness are another way to reduce importance. I have a friend who I used to call occasionally if something went wrong and I was having a meltdown. I don’t have meltdowns anymore (I’m on a mental diet!) but he used to get calls from me catastrophizing and freaking out when something went wrong. I remember he would often crack jokes and although I never expressed it, it sometimes annoyed me because the situations didn’t seem humorous to me at all.

Now I know that humour is a natural way to reduce importance and he was helping me out in more ways than one.

So, if you have a problem, bringing cheerfulness to the situation and laughing about it will also reduce importance.

If you’re interested in learning more about importance and why when we attach importance to something, it is less likely to manifest, you may enjoy quantum physicist Vadim Zeland’s book ‘Reality Transurfing’ (Chapter 4 of the book explains in a lot of depth why having a death grip on your desire leads to bad outcomes). This is truly one of the best spiritual books I’ve ever read. It’s a very long book and will probably appeal the most to spiritual yet highly analytical people. 

In summary, here are the steps to use the ideas in this article and apply them to your manifesting process:

• First ask yourself, have I attached excessive importance to my desire manifesting? How would I feel if my desire never manifested?
• If you don’t mind if your desire never manifests, excellent — you’re in the best place you could be
• If you have quite a negative emotional reaction to the idea that you might not get what you want, concoct a plan B in detail. Face your fears. How would you live your life if your desire never manifested? — write out a plan
• Use techniques (affirmations and visualisation) to affirm and visualise your desires, until you stop caring about whether your desire manifests in 3D. Enjoy the fulfilment of living out your desires in imagination
• Release your grip on the idea that an unwanted situation in your life needs to be different – don’t resist it.

Here are some choice quotes from Vadim Zeland on the topic of importance:

“The only obstacle on the path to fulfilling your desires is the projection of artificial importance.”

“When trying to solve a problem, follow one golden rule: before you even start considering where the solution might lie, first reduce the level of importance you associate with the problem. That way, balanced forces will not get in the way and the problem can be solved quickly and easily.”

“The root of illness is importance. Reduce importance, then you reduce mental tension, which reduces physical tension.”

“To eliminate stress from your life, wake up and reduce importance.”

“Don’t fight to negate importance — just release your grip.”

“As soon as you start projecting importance onto certain things; onto anything, you better be ready because that’s when problems start coming your way.”

“All unbalanced feelings and reactions, such as dissatisfaction, anxiety, worry, fear, remorse, admiration, worship, disappointment, pride or resentment are all manifestations of importance in one form or another.“

Further Reading:

I offer a free online resource for manifesting your desired reality using the Law of Assumption — it’s a collection of online articles which are presented in the right order so that you can use them as a ‘how to’ guide. It’s quite a comprehensive resource and can help take you from A to B with almost any intention. You can find that here.

In this article, I want to cover another important aspect of manifesting: your inner conversations, or what Neville Goddard called a “mental diet”.

Let’s say that you set an intention for something to manifest in your world, and you are using techniques such as affirmations & visualisation to impress your subconscious mind. One of the ways you can scupper your manifesting efforts is through negative inner conversations.

Inner conversations are the conversations you have inside your own mind — the things you say to yourself, and the “imaginary conversations” you have with others.

Neville Goddard said that for something to manifest in your world, your inner conversations have to match your fulfilled desire.

So, let’s say that you desire to attract a loving relationship into your life. If inside your mind you are thinking cynical thoughts about love or relationships, your inner conversations are not a match for your desire, and could undo your efforts to manifest or delay your manifestation.

In this article, I’m going to give you some instructions on how to go on a “mental diet” so that you can make sure your inner conversations match your desire.

It can feel a bit daunting to know that your inner conversations need to match your desire, but know that every thought you have does not manifest.

Manifesting teacher Dr Joe Dispenza says that for something to manifest in your world, you need to combine a clear intention (so, a thought) with an emotion. It is the combination of thought and emotion that manifests — not the thought or the emotion alone. Unwanted manifestations happen most often when we have a repeated negative thought, and then we react repeatedly to the negative thought we’re having, producing a combination of a negative thought and a negative emotion. The trick therefore is to simply observe negative thoughts, without reacting to them. 

Getting some distance

This leads me on to the first component of a mental diet: meditation.

Neville Goddard says that if you are to be successful in shaping your world using your imagination, you should be meditating.

The reason meditation is so useful for manifestation is because over time it really helps you to notice what is going on in your own mind, and to spot negative thoughts and interrupt them. 

Meditation can be a simple mindfulness meditation for 5-10 minutes per day, where you sit quietly and focus on your breath. It could also be a guided meditation (I do Dr Joe Dispenza’s guided meditations daily, but you can find plenty of free guided meditations on YouTube.)

Once you have a meditation practice up and running, your next task is to spot your negative thoughts and emotions. When you notice yourself thinking something that is out of alignment with your desire (something negative), say to yourself “change, change, change”.

Once you have identified the negative thought, find the opposite of this thought, and tell yourself that instead.

Be careful with negative emotions. You can interrupt and re-route them (snapping yourself out of a negative emotional state) but sometimes it is more helpful to just be with the emotion and witness it for yourself. Naming it is also really useful. For example: “this is frustration” or “this is fear.” 

Labelling our negative feelings in the moment switches off the amygdala’s (the fearful part of your brain’s) response to the feeling. Doing this activates the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and that’s what switches off the amygdala. The more often you do this in your life, the less you see amygdala activation, according to researchers. So, the more we name our feelings, the less stressed we feel by them. And the less likely we are to create and manifest from that place of stress.

Mental diet isn’t just about inner conversations…

…it’s also about the words that we speak out loud to others.

So, if you have a conflict with someone that you wish to be over, not only should you stop arguing with that person in your head, but you also need to stop talking about the conflict with others.

If you have a chronic illness that you wish to release, not only do you stop identifying as ill and thinking of yourself as an ill person, but you also stop discussing your health with other people (except if totally necessary e.g. a doctor’s appointment), and you should stop discussing any restrictions the health condition may impose on you. Dr Joseph Murphy (who studied with the same Kabbalah teacher as Neville Goddard) states that those who are sick should never mention the name of their illness out loud, since this imbues the condition with power. In this situation, I also recommend not frequenting Facebook groups about illnesses, or writing/blogging about it. In fact, creating a blog around a reality you no longer want to see in your life is pretty much the worst possible action you could take. 

So, to summarise, a mental diet involves the following:

• A meditation practice, so that you can get into the habit of observing your own inner chatter. If you’re new to meditation, start with 5 mins per day
• Noticing and interrupting negative thoughts by saying “stop” or “change” out loud when they come up, and redirecting them to something positive instead. For example, if you think “My health will never get better”, instead tell yourself “My health will definitely get better — it’s inevitable.”
• To the best of your ability, stop talking about your problems or things you do not wish to see in your life 
• Name your negative emotions so that they can move through you more quickly and stress you out less. Welcome in negative emotions as a normal part of the human experience. Suppressing negative emotions does not help with your manifestation. 
• Don’t be afraid of negative thoughts or negative emotions by themselves. Negative feelings by themselves do not have the power to manifest. Negative thoughts can manifest but they need to be repeated until the subconscious mind is sufficiently impressed and they also need not to be counteracted with positive thoughts, in order to manifest into 3D. The reason why our manifestations take time to appear in 3D is because we all have negative and positive thoughts all the time. Can you imagine how chaotic our lives would be if manifestation were instant and every thought manifested straight away? This time buffer works to our advantage when we’re thinking negatively. If we also have some positive or hopeful thoughts in the mix, which counteract the negativity, that means the negative stuff never manifests.

Here are some wise words from Neville Goddard on the importance of your mental diet:

“Our present mental conversations do not recede into the past as man believes. They advance into the future to confront us as wasted or invested words.”

“What is your aim? Does your inner talking match it? It must, if you would realise your aim.”

“If we do not like what is happening to us, it is a sure sign that we are in need of a change of mental diet.”

These quotes are taken from Neville Goddard’s 1955 lecture “Mental Diets”. 

A final note: be aware that a mental diet can take huge effort if your thoughts are often negative. It’s really an ongoing effort. But if you entertain more positive thoughts, not only will it help with your manifestation, but it will also improve your life in other ways. Going on a mental diet has allowed me to hugely improve both my psychological and physical health. 

Further Reading:

I offer a free online resource for manifesting your desired reality using the Law of Assumption — it’s a collection of online articles which are presented in the right order so that you can use them as a ‘how to’ guide. It’s quite a comprehensive resource and can help take you from A to B with almost any intention. You can find that here.