Recently I watched a really great interview with lottery winner Cynthia Stafford.

In 2004, Cynthia Stafford decided that she wanted to win the lottery and began using manifesting techniques to achieve this. In 2007, she won $112 million on the lottery which she attributes to her persistence in manifesting.

I love manifesting stories from people who achieved big success, mainly so I can learn from their experience.

You can get the lessons by watching the whole interview above, but if like me you’re not really a fan of watching videos, in this article I’ve summed up the main points that I took from this interview and her win, that can in fact be applied to any manifestation.

Lesson #1: Manifesting Techniques

In the interview, Stafford tells how she began her manifesting journey by reading Joseph Murphy’s book The Power of the Subconscious Mind. (Joseph Murphy was also trained in the Law of Assumption by Neville Goddard’s teacher & I highly recommend his book The Power of the Subconscious Mind.)

She says she used the following techniques to manifest her win:

• She wrote her intention down (essentially, she set a written intention)
• She made a vision board and looked at it daily
• She used affirmations
• She often visualised herself holding the lottery cheque, and she felt how it felt to win. She even visualised the exact amount she was going to win (which she did in fact win), which makes it even clearer that this was not a lucky fluke!
• She “got into the vibration of being a winner” as she put it — essentially, she created a new self who had won the lottery, and became that (I have an article on that technique here.)

In my opinion, the manifesting techniques that you use are not that important, the main thing is that the technique you choose is one that appeals to you and that you enjoy using.

You can find a list of manifesting techniques for manifesting any intention here.

Lesson #2: Persistence

Since it took Stafford 3 years to manifest that lottery win, there was clearly a lot of persistence involved in her manifesting process.

She said she trained like an Olympic athlete long term to remain in the state of the wish fulfilled of having won the lottery, on a daily basis.

I find this the most valuable lesson of all from her interview.

What I took from this is that if you have a big intention, you can expect to do a lot of inner work that may even take you years.

What kinds of intentions count as big intentions?

• Releasing “dis-eases” that you’ve had for a long time or which are deeply entwined with your story about yourself and your life
• Manifesting large sums of money
• Manifesting huge success in your career, especially if you’re just starting out

You can expect these kinds of intentions to take a while…sometimes, but not always.

Can you imagine if Stafford gave up with her manifesting a few days before she won, because it’d been a few years with no results?

Most people would have given up long before. This is also why most people don’t achieve these kinds of outcomes.

Lesson #3: You’ve got to want it…a lot

In order to be motivated enough to manifest an outcome like this over a period of 3 years, you have to really want it.

One of Cynthia Stafford’s reasons for wanting to win the lottery was because she had been given custody of several children of a family member, and then she had lost custody of them because of an assessment made by a social worker that the children would be better off in foster care, which Stafford disagreed with. In order to get the children back, she would have had to spend large amounts of money on a lawyer, which she didn’t have.

It sounded to me like a large part of her reason for wanting to win was to get the children back and have the means to look after them.

Personally I feel that this would have had a lot to do with her success.

I don’t believe I would be able to manifest a $112m win on the lottery simply because the money doesn’t excite me enough and I wouldn’t be motivated to continue with the intention. But if I wanted custody of children that I cared about, and that came about through money, then maybe I’d be motivated to win some money.

When manifesting money, it can be helpful to focus on what you want to do with the money and visualise that. From working with my coaching clients, I find the majority of people don’t find money inherently exciting. It’s what you can do with the money that is exciting. So, it can help to visualise that, in addition to doing a visualisation that shows money coming your way.

Lesson #4: Faith

Cynthia Stafford came from a Christian background and was a woman of faith.

She really believed she was going to win the lottery. Her belief was so strong that she even interviewed financial advisors to help her manage the money, before she won!

In the interview, she quoted a Bible passage that had inspired her:

“For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.“ (Matthew 17:20-21).

(The manifesting teacher Neville Goddard also quoted the Bible a lot in his work. As mentioned above, he had been trained by Abdullah, a rabbi who believed that the Bible was actually teaching the art of manifesting.)

Every time Cynthia Stafford didn’t win the lottery, she would tell herself “maybe not this time, but it will happen”. She didn’t get discouraged and she didn’t deviate from that sense of faith she had that she was going to win the lottery.

I don’t believe that total faith in your power as a creator is 100% necessary to manifest an intention (after all, the Law of Assumption is at work all of the time, whether we know it or not.) But having said that, I do think that faith can really super-charge our intentions and allow us to persist in our desires.

(If you’d like to build your faith in the Law of Assumption, try out Neville Goddard’s ladder exercise.)

Lesson #5: Feeding the mind with positive things

Stafford mentioned that she made it her job to feed her mind with positive information, and she read inspiring books about manifestation regularly to help her keep the faith.

If you are currently using the Law of Assumption to manifest an outcome in your life, and you don’t yet own a copy of either Joseph Murphy’s The Power of Your Subconscious Mind or Neville Goddard’s Complete Reader, you need to get onto that.

I read a few pages of Neville Goddard’s work every night before I go to sleep. There is huge power in his words and the stories he shares in his work and any Law of Assumption student and conscious manifestor needs to be reading one of those books. Just reading my blog or watching someone’s Law of Assumption YouTube channel isn’t enough. It should be an add on to those great works written by Goddard or Murphy.

Another great book to read is Frederick Dobson’s book Parallel Universes of Self.

Lesson #6: She reached the Sabbath

It’s interesting to note that Stafford mentioned that after having used techniques to manifest her lottery win for a while, she stopped using them, and didn’t think as much about her desire to win the lottery. It sounds to me like she entered the Sabbath, a state that many conscious creators get to once they know their manifestation is on the way. You can read more about the Sabbath (and how to know you’ve reached it) here.