How do you know you’re actually making forward progress in clearing out limiting beliefs and getting closer to your goal?
Creating from energy is a very different animal than the action-oriented paradigm to which most of us are accustomed. We often see ‘manifesting’ as something that happens on the level of action, with the law of attraction serving as a ‘tool’ we can use to make things happen.
And when viewed in this light, we naturally think there is a ‘wrong’ and ‘right’ way to do it, and as such, spend an inordinate amount of time worrying whether our efforts are falling into the former category rather than the latter.
We get caught up in trying to manifest specific things, and tend to overlook the most important part of the equation–whether our energy, focus and beliefs are actually changing in any meaningful, genuine way.
When evaluating actions, there are ‘markers’ we can often look at to help us see if we are improving or moving forward, like tracking the correlation between a new marketing campaign and traffic to your website.
Charting vibrational ‘progress’ doesn’t quite work the same way, and there are really no specific types of results that can objectively indicate whether your vibration is ‘improving.’ There aren’t specific types of manifestations that indicate you have shifted energy.
If we are honest, we kind of don’t care about whether we are truly shifting energy, becoming emotionally healthier, healing our energetic ‘wounds’,etc…we just want our stuff.
That just is what it is, and no use denying it. It’s totally cool to want what we want, and no reason not to have it. But when manifesting specific things takes precedence over making the energetic shifts–which is what will give us what we are truly after,and will lead to the ‘stuff’ anyway–we’re setting ourselves up for a more painful road, and making things infinitely harder than they have to be.
I just had to throw this out there.
This is an excellent question and like many of the questions that spring up around this teaching, one that can’t be answered in the way our mind wants it answered.
We naturally always want to know if we are moving closer to what we want,and if we are ‘positioning’ ourselves properly to get our stuff. Totally understandable, and that is what is really being asked here.
And we would only ask this question if we still aren’t where we want to be, if we don’t seem to be seeing much change. So my answer is going to address why this may be the case, as well as the original question, because they are very linked.
How Are You Feeling?
Whatever feelings are dominant in our life will determine what shows up in our reality. If we feel a lot of fear, we will manifest things that make us feel fearful. If we are always feeling lack and scarcity, we will likely manifest that in the form of money problems in particular.
If we are mistrustful and suspicious of people, we will manifest instances of people cheating us, betraying us, taking advantage of us and lying to us. If we believe life is supposed to be hard, we will manifest struggle in various forms.
If you want to know if you are making progress on the front of your energy and your limiting beliefs, the easiest way to determine this is to assess how you are feeling overall. It really is that simple.
How are you responding to the situations in your life that are challenging in some way? Are you trying to maintain a positive perspective? Are you seeing how this situation may be serving you? Are you viewing it as vibrational feedback to see what needs to be cleaned up, or are you using it as justification to hold onto beliefs that feel badly and aren’t serving you, to keep feeling badly?
Have you developed a true willingness to look beyond your current reality, knowing as you shift energy, all that will change or do you continue to live outside in, refusing to feel better until you are given a reason to?
When you think about the things you want, how do you feel? Are the limiting beliefs that make you think it isn’t possible still dominant or do you feel like these things are possible?
Even if you may not have seen the changes you want in your reality yet, have you been genuinely feeling better–just better, not necessarily happy, ecstatic, blissful or joyful–or huffing and puffing you still don’t have what you want?
Are your attempts at feeling better the goal in and of itself, or is positive emotion merely a means to an end, something you are trying to cultivate because you are told that is what you need to do to get what you want?
Like I said earlier, no use pretending getting specific things isn’t our main motivation. It is and it’s fine. But even so, it is totally possible to make positive emotion the goal, its own reward, even if deep down, the driver is to get a specific thing, like money or a relationship. We may never purify our intent 100 percent, but you would be surprised at how much you can detach from specific things even if you still actively want them.
If you are feeling better, you are making progress energetically. If you find yourself responding differently to the situations in your life, if you find yourself looking for the lessons and blessings, you are making progress energetically.
If you are seeing your past and current circumstances in a different light, and dropping the disempowering stories your mind has assigned to them, you are making progress energetically.
If you are starting to develop more trust and faith–even if you don’t feel it all the time–you are making progress energetically.
If you are letting yourself process and feel your negative emotion, rather than sweep it aside, trying to pretend it’s not there, you are making progress energetically.
Remember the energetic shifts have to come before the physical manifestations, and don’t think that just because certain things haven’t happened that your mind wants to happen, or thinks are the only ‘markers’ of ‘progress,’ that your energy hasn’t changed.
This is what really fucks with us the most–constantly being on the lookout for ‘proof’ what we are doing is working, and then getting discouraged when things aren’t changing as fast as we want them to or in the specific ways in which our mind wants or thinks they need to. And we get sucked right back into our current circumstances, fighting against them, and the ‘wanting’ just gets even stronger.
Stepping Stones
Most of the things we are looking to manifest might not fall into our lap right away. You probably aren’t going to build a million dollar business overnight. You might not book yourself solid with clients your first week in business.
You might not meet your soulmate after ‘working’ on your energy for one whole weekend. You might not land your perfect job three days after losing your last one.
Sometimes this might happen, but things usually unfold over time. Remember the law of attraction is not ‘magic.’ Instant manifestation sounds great in theory, but if we are more aligned with what we don’t want than with what we do, it doesn’t sound so great anymore.
What usually happens is once we set intentions in a particular area of life, and start examining our energy more closely, consciously building momentum behind the energies that serve us, focusing more on what is wanted rather than unwanted, and all that jazz, we start manifesting things that show us our energy is changing, that show us what we want is in fact possible.
If you have been experiencing these sorts of manifestations, your energy is changing without a doubt. But our good old mind prevents us from capitalizing on the energetic benefits of these manifestations.
These manifestations may not always be super-exciting, big, sexy things. But they are something to be celebrated. The problem is though, we don’t celebrate them because they aren’t such a big deal and they don’t make us happy enough to stop feeling badly about our current circumstances. They aren’t ‘the’ thing, and anything less than that, well, who cares?
And instead of seeing them for what they are, celebrating them, and continuing to build the momentum of the energies that will lend themselves to more of the wanted making its way in, we just go right back to letting the current appearance of our reality dictate how we feel, stubbornly insisting that the crappy things we believe are obviously true because look at our life, refusing to feel better until something comes along that gives us a reason to.
We basically shit all over them, and in the process, shit all over our vibration.
Believe me, I get it. If you don’t know how you are going to pay your bills next month, finding five dollars on the street or having a friend pay for your lunch, isn’t going to send you over the moon.
If you are desperately lonely and want a boyfriend more than anything, noticing more men in your orbit that pique your interest, without anything happening with any of them, isn’t going to have you jumping up and down.
If you are looking for a job, and you get a bunch of companies contacting you, but none of the jobs seem like the right fit, you probably aren’t going to break out into a happy dance.
You don’t need to evoke some crazy disproportionate level of enthusiasm for these sorts of manifestations, but don’t gloss over them, don’t discount their significance. It is vital you recognize them for what they are.
You can certainly choose to dismiss them, get all mired down in your current circumstances, lamenting the absence of what you want, and all that noise, but realize in choosing to do this, you will have a really hard time aligning with your desired reality.
You won’t be able to consistently get into the vibration that matches what you want because you will be too focused on what you don’t, you will be too focused on what is missing and what’s wrong. And if that is where your energy is at, your reality has no choice but to mirror that back to you. Remember you don’t attract what you ‘want’ you attract what you ‘are.’
These sorts of manifestations show your ‘being’ is changing, and that is where the magic happens. As your ‘being’ changes, your reality will reflect that. When, how and what it will all look like, is not something we can determine with any certainty at the outset, as much as we would like to.
You’re Manifesting Triggers
This is a part of the energetic transformation process we often don’t see coming when we first learn about the law of attraction. We are told to figure out what we want, start creating it in the invisible by asking for it, say some affirmations to strengthen the focus and energy, and chill.
And this would totally be how it plays out if we didn’t have resistance, but we do. How something works in theory ,and how it actually works in practice, is usually very different because theory doesn’t take into account all these ‘real world’ conditions.
If energy is the true root of creation–not just wanting something, not the tools, not asking the Universe for it,etc…–then the energy that lends itself to X,Y or Z showing up must become dominant. If you were lacking these things, then that energy clearly wasn’t dominant, or even there at all, and there is some ‘work’ to do.
Most of the time, we aren’t aware of the full extent of these energetic ‘roadblocks’ so we manifest situations that will show them to us; can’t change what we don’t know is there.
But our mind doesn’t realize this is what is happening, and we throw a temper tantrum because we seem to be getting the exact opposite of what we want. We lament our life has gotten ‘worse’ since we learned about the law of attraction. We think the law of attraction doesn’t ‘work.’
You have to be careful not to let this ‘work’ turn you into a giant, whining baby, crying the Universe isn’t giving you what you want much like a toddler throws a fit when his mom won’t buy him a piece of candy.
If you have started manifesting things that seem to be triggering your ‘stuff,’ that are helping you see what is really going on inside, you’re making progress energetically. You are moving forward, and if you want to keep moving forward, you must recognize these manifestations for what they are, that they are actually going to help move you closer rather than farther away.
Again, you can’t change something you don’t know exists, and if you are never made aware of what is happening inside, you will continue to manifest unconsciously (remember you have always been creating) and you’re not going to like much of what shows up.
Be Open to How It Unfolds
Our mind has all sorts of expectations about how reaching our goals, and getting the things we want will look; it has formulated some sort of picture; it has determined certain ‘markers’ that suggest we are on track.
And if things deviate from this path in any way, if anything happens that your mind judges as ‘bad,’ it freaks out. It worries you aren’t going to get what you want. It has decided things are going ‘wrong.’
Your mind is very limited in being able to ‘figure out’ how the path from where you are now to where you want to be will look. It can formulate an extremely limited number of scenarios; it can only calculate a very limited number of combinations of factors that will work in your favor. And there are infinite scenarios; there are infinite combinations of factors.
Your mind is utterly, literally incapable of knowing how something will come together, and the sooner we truly embrace this idea, the better off we will be.
Your mind may think certain things may need to happen first before something particular manifests, but maybe it doesn’t, so it doesn’t matter if it hasn’t happened yet or never does.
Your mind may think that if certain things happen, it means you can’t get what you want, but that’s not true so it doesn’t matter if this thing happens or has already happened.
This is why I always recommend focusing more on the energy than a specific manifestation too hard–it brings us down a path that causes a lot of frustration and anxiety. We are constantly doing battle with our mind, and there are much better ways to expend our mental and emotional energy.
As your energy changes, your life will change, it has no choice. So you’ll still get these things even if you haven’t been focusing on them with a laser-like intensity. You’ll start enjoying your life, and feeling better a lot sooner, which is all you want anyway.
Just do your best to be open to what it’s going to look like, how it is going to unfold, remembering that everything that happens is there to help you in some way, whether to give you clarity, show you a fear or limiting belief or help you see how you have been focusing.
I know this perspective can be really annoying, especially if you are not feeling great, but it doesn’t make it any less true or helpful.
This work is going to put us in a position where we are constantly being faced with the choice to keep believing things that feel badly because of what our life looks like now, and what has happened to this point, or adopting perspectives that will help us get all the things we claim to want so much.
And every time we make that choice, we embody the energy of these beliefs and perspectives more and more, and that energy just gets stronger and more stable.
Your Turn
What did you think of the post? Anything resonate in particular? What made you start realizing your energy was changing?
Have a question you think would make a good blog post? Submit it here.
I love this so much, I don’t even have words to tell you. I’ve been hard pressed to really understand what “my energy” is, what “my energy” even means, let alone how to change it. But based on what you wrote, I think I finally got it, and my energy IS definitely changing, and I couldn’t be happier. Thank you Kelli!
Hi Randy
Thanks so much for your comment and I am so glad you found it so helpful. The terminology can be confusing sometimes but it really comes down to how you are feeling and what you believe. This mental stuff just has an energetic component.
Triggers…..the triggers are the things you need to note, not as being bad or signs of regression, but as being signals for progress. You are literally letting go what needs to go in order to create from a more fun, loving and nice space. It keeps coming back to clearing out the tension and stress, and fear, to be more chill and peace and love. Almost like…..energetic house cleaning.
Gotta love the triggers…you are always helping me in that regard. And it doesn’t go there…
I vote for Ryan writing a guest post!! (please)
I am sure I can get him to do that. Any particular topic?
Hello Kelli,
I started journaling few months ago and I do it right before I go to bed and found it to be helpful specially that I focus on talking about my feelings and struggles in my life and any situations that happen in my day that upset me and I really try to milk the feelings behind them and really dig deep to find what about these situations that upset me. After doing this I found that I can let go of the those thoughts,feelings, and energy more easily. My life hasn’t changed much but I have defiantly seen those little good manifestations. Journaling also helps me calm down my mind as I am an over thinker due to being an empath.
Hi Tina. That is good you found a way to get in touch with your feelings and find a release from them. From past comments I think your biggest barrier is not taking any action. Remember the difference between making life easier by working on our energy and not doing anything hoping things just magically change. It’s good you realize your empathic introverted nature but I think you are only focusing on the negative aspects of these qualities and seeing them as a barrier to getting what you want and they aren’t by any means.
Hi Kelli!
“As your energy changes, your life will change, it has no choice.” What a true statement. It’s so important because once our energies do change – little by little – we become different people. If we’re angry, we “act” angry – in whatever way that shows up. But as we soften that anger, let go and just be (even if it’s a neutral energy), we tend to “be” or “act” in a different way. And although, as you said, the manifestations from our energies might not be immediate, we at least do feel somewhat better. Which is the point! And if we keep up that momentum, our outside world will reflect it 😉
Awesome post as always!! Thank you!!!!
Hi Letty. I like what you said about acting differently even if you still have the negative feelings. Once I made that the goal rather than total elimination it got a lot easier. And actually made me experience them less.
A couple of months ago when I came to the clear unequivocal realization that I was constantly manifesting my reality, my life went to shit and every single thing I engaged in had the opposite outcome of waht I desired. Inwas so puzzled, really needed tonfigure out what the hell was going on. I found you through a web search and you explained it beautifully to me: the univers e was showing me the energies I had to work through. I totally got it, I was literally on a fast track to unprescedented hapiness, beyond my wildest dreams!!! Every person turned into a messanger, pointing out the issues, every situation became a lesson. And here I am less than three months later, and I cannot get over how wise your words were, how literally easy it is to take a different stance and take advantage of evry obstacle, of every challenge that come your way and turn it around to your favor!!
Kelly, am so greatful for your posts, I appreciate every word you say, your generosity, your love!
Hi Andrea. Thanks for your comment and sharing your experience. Isn’t it great when we can look at the things we don’t like in a way that doesn’t make us feel so badly? I’m all for that and I’m glad when I am shown something not serving me even if I still don’t always like it. Sounds like you are doing great
Hello Kelli,
Great information over here 🙂
Its often become hard sometimes, to really figure out, what actually is our energy.
What actually are we meant to do, with level of fun, dedication, love and everything, so that at the end, we do not complain that
we were refused to adapt the life style we never wanted to.
Thanks a lot for sharing this awesome insights among us.
Shantanu.
Thanks Shantanu. We just have to pay attention to how we feel and where we are focusing. I think that can simplify things a bit.
Hi Kelli,
This is a power blog right there.
Very much straight forward information, lots of positive energy and joyfull feelings.
I just love the way you explain the LOA and the energy that you give into your passion.
I have a question about consistincy, I really love to be more stable and consistent.
What are your tips and tricks for staying more consistent?
Thanks for the vibes and wisdom you bring.
Greetings,
Marcel
Hi Marcel. Thanks for your comment and I’m so glad you enjoy the blog. I think your question is excellent and would be great for next week’s blog post to expand on the topic. Stay tuned
Hi Kelli,
I can’t wait to read it!
Thank you.
Greetings,
Marcel
Hi Kelly! Very well explained bravo!
Not to get mered down in “what is”…
started manifesting things that seem to be triggering our stuff…
not to let this ‘work’ turn us into whining baby, crying the Universe isn’t giving what we want…
You’e brilliant!
UR slicing in Quepos with l.h.. RU lefty?
Hi Mohammad. Thanks for your comment and glad you enjoyed the post. And yes I am a lefty!
Thank you for this post. I have been working on my energy for about a year and it does seem like more “things” are coming to the surface. I don’t see them as bad but at times I do find myself wondering how much more “stuff” do I have to clear. I know “it’s” been there and perhaps I could have acknowledged it sooner but I was not ready. I instead chose distractions. As I am learning, your stuff will wait patiently for you to deal with it.
Hello Kelly,
This article is so spot on! There are several things that simply just made me do the happy dance as this article totally resonated with me. But the portion ” being open to how it unfolds” is priceless. So often I have tried to manifest, but I decided there was only ONE way for the manifestation to take place. This is and continues to crazy, for so many reasons, but it totally limits and derails the process. Plus I have the feeling of being drained, and totally physically tired. I have learned my openness creates space in my life, and I am less emotionally drained.
Hi Lynn
Thanks so much for your comment and I am glad you enjoyed the post. That openness can change everything, and you are right…trying to control everything and being attached is exhausting. Even a willingness to detach, even if we aren’t fully on board, can make a huge difference, and like you experienced, create space and energize us.