Manifesting Anxiety: The Process Isn’t What You Think

Hi Kelli, I’ve been following this teaching for a decade and following you almost as long. I feel like I could teach this subject, yet I still struggle in one area of my life. This past year, I’ve come across the teaching of Abraham Hicks and they talk about the “wobble” which is what I think a lot of us who know the LOA are living. 

We know this stuff, but don’t know how to truly apply it because of our thoughts, so we get results that are not what we really want or are good for us…. or we keep manifesting the same thing over, just with different faces/places. One thing that stood out to me recently is they said that there is a subtle, but big difference between trying not to think a certain thought vs thinking a new thought. 

The former being resistance, and that made sense to me. For example… stop trying NOT to think of past failed relationships, but think of anything… literally anything else (not relationship related) that could bring positive emotions. 

 I was wondering what your thoughts are on this and if you could maybe expand on it. Would love to hear your take on “the wobble

So, my response to this question isn’t really addressing what was asked so much as what it made me think of when I read it. And what it made me think of is how we don’t need to worry about stuff like this, and the reasons why we worry about such things is the actual problem, energy-wise, and what requires the most attention. 

This journey will become a lot easier for you when you focus on the inner transformation that naturally aligns you with all the stuff the ego mind part of you will likely care about to some degree, than keeping externally focused, and always just trying to attract what you don’t have, and change your outside world in various ways. The inner change is what you actually want, and the only ‘manifestation’ worth a damn

Your Thoughts Aren’t the Problem

Like the awesome question asker noted, she feels stressed about the nature of her thoughts. She is worried she isn’t thinking ‘correctly,’ and in doing so, she won’t get what she wants. But this isn’t really something with which we need to concern ourselves. Our thoughts in and of themselves are pretty harmless–the real ‘damage’ comes from the emotional charge that accompanies them, courtesy of our belief in this chatter. We are thinking things that feel badly and it is that FEELING that comprises our vibe. 

Of course as we shift our belief system, we naturally won’t think certain things as much. But given the nature of our ego mind, deep conditioning, and the tens of thousands of thoughts we think a day, we will probably continue to have some ‘problematic’ ones. We are so used to thinking certain things, so used to existing on auto-pilot, that certain lines of thought may continue to run through our mind, even if we have largely stopped believing them to be true. 

So if we are not believing them as much, they won’t have as much of a charge. We won’t be as invested in them emotionally. When something happens that tempts us to embrace a certain negative perception of the situation, we still may indulge, but because a larger part of us has sincerely started rejecting these thoughts, they don’t feel as intense, intrusive and heavy. 

If you make the crux of your ‘manifesting work’ monitoring your thoughts constantly, you are in for a whole lot of unnecessary suffering, and expenditure of mental and emotional energy. If you think the key to changing your life is the anxiety-inducing idea of trying to think positively all the time about what you want, it’s not. So relax. 

 

Why You Worry About Stuff Like This

The reason we fret so much over things such as ‘the wobble’ remaining in the ‘vortex,’ and the like, is because we have a very specific, narrow agenda for doing this work, an agenda that puts us in an impossible situation by the way. 

We want something we don’t have, that we believe will make us happier should we get it, and we are told if we do certain things, like ‘raise our vibration’ it’s as good as ours.  

And because the ego believes our happiness is inextricably linked to these manifestations,  it is very attached to them coming to fruition. How could we not be if we believe this is the only way to make bad feelings we have now go away? How could we not be if we believe getting this thing is the only way to experience the good feelings we so desperately crave?

The ego operates strictly from ‘pain-minimizing’ mode, and again, it thinks our internal pain and external circumstances, are firmly linked. The former can’t go away unless we manage to achieve certain changes in the latter. It is not interested in you actually being happy, it just wants to not feel as badly.

Wanting to be happy and wanting to minimize painful feelings are NOT similar intentions. They are two very different journeys that will feel very differently and produce very different results. 

Of course the ego mind doesn’t realize they are not actually linked, so everything it is having you do is futile as far as achieving what you actually, truly want, which is to simply feel better, as well as what it wants to boot–the pain-minimization!

It can never come from the outside and the outside is the only thing with which it is concerned. It is having you search for happiness in the one place it cannot be found. Hence the impossible situation I referenced earlier. 

 When you realize the outside is not where you need to be focusing, when you realize it is not the problem, all of this anxiety that comes with thinking it is, and you must make sure you are doing everything ‘right’ to make sure you fix it, will fade away. 

 

The Real Root of Energetic Transformation

The real root of energetic transformation is not really the cultivation of positive energy. We think it is, hence this worry about monitoring our thoughts, ‘raising’ our vibration, worrying if we are doing it ‘right.’ 

This explains our obsession with tools and techniques; this is what makes us think this ‘work’ is an action-oriented process where we must always be ‘doing’ something to get ourselves into a ‘good’ energy that is conducive to getting our ‘stuff.’ 

Don’t get me wrong. There is definitely power in setting intentions to bring certain things into your life. Using a tool or technique that genuinely helps you cultivate positive emotion, or focus in a way that serves you, is certainly ‘good’ for your energy. 

But that really isn’t ‘manifesting.’ What we manifest isn’t a result of what we ‘do’. It’s a result of what we ‘are.’ And what we ‘are’ prior to discovering teachings like these is comprised of a host of fears, limitations in thinking, traumatic experiences, repressed and suppressed emotions and a bunch of other ‘ick.’ 

If we don’t address that, all our ‘efforts’ will be for naught. The only reason it seems so hard to ‘get happy’ or keep a consistently higher ‘vibrational state’ is because we are usually starting from a place that is very far away from this energy.

And if we don’t look at what we are bringing to the table, we can’t make any real, lasting, consistent energetic transformations that would naturally translate to real, lasting changes in our life.

You may be able to make some more surface level changes in your vibe that may yield results here and there. But as far as really changing your life in any meaningful way, changing how you feel in any meaningful way…not so much.

And some people may be fine with that and it’s all good. But if you truly want to be happy, remaining externally focused, and trying to raise your vibe simply to attract what you don’t have, won’t be the path that gets you there. 

Remember what I said about the mind operating from ‘pain-minimizing’ mode. If we are doing all this work from this place of resistance to where we are now and how that makes us feel, we are in for a bumpy ride. 

If we make this work all about simply trying to get what we want, and try to cultivate positive emotion not for its own sake, but simply as a means to achieving some ego end of getting more money, a relationship, a better body or a better job, we will always feel like we are moving between extreme shifts of feeling really good, and then feeling really badly. 

This is what happens when we do inner work for the express purpose of changing the outside, when we continue to buy into the core delusional ego thought system ‘thought’ from which all the others stem–that our circumstances are responsible for our feelings. From this space, the mind will constantly be judging everything and will decide when you get to feel good and when you have to feel badly. 

If everything we want is coming from pain-mimimizing mode, it stands to reason the core ‘work’ we will be called upon to do is exploring that pain at the root of the desire. This is where the attachment comes from, this is where the anxiety comes from about whether we are doing this ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ 

If we don’t explore the roots of the ‘wanting,’ this pain will fuel the journey and getting rid of it will be the primary objective. And remember what I said earlier–if changing the outside isn’t truly the answer, but this is where we continue to focus, we will never actually achieve the ego goal of ‘getting rid’ of this pain; nor will we achieve our true goal of emotional healing and simply feeling better. 

Every major breakthrough I have had in changing my outside circumstances in lasting, meaningful, consistent ways, without exception, always came on the heels of major emotional release and healing, of dealing with the ‘shit.’ 

Once you do that, feeling better is a natural byproduct–it is not something you have to put so much conscious effort in trying to accomplish. All the wonderful energy you are trying to force into your being is already there

It is merely being obscured by all the ‘stuff’ formed over years of abiding by a thought system that created a lot of fear, anger, anxiety, self-loathing, dissatisfaction, sadness, depression, a thought system that made a very convincing case the outside world both created these feelings, and also contains within it, the solution to them, a a thought system that created tons of false narratives about your life experiences, and made you believe very painful things that simply aren’t true. 

Focusing within does not mean abandoning trying to change the external world by the way. That would be impossible because by dealing with what is happening inside, you are working on the level of ‘cause.’ So long as you are alive and breathing, you will be ‘manifesting.’ 

Your outside circumstances have no choice but to change. And they will change much more easily; they will change in much more dramatic and awesome ways when you aren’t mucking it all up with your attachments, need to control and all that other lovely stuff. The less you focus on the outside, the more seamlessly it improves. 

And I’ll tell you something: The deeper you go into your mind, and the more you ‘clear’ out, the less you have to do to ‘manifest’ because there is less resistance getting in the way. The more resistance there is, the more out of alignment we are; and the more out of alignment we are, the more action we have to take to compensate.

The deeper your inner ‘work’ the more effortless your ‘manifesting’. The more you realize you don’t need something, the less you value it, the more easily it shows up…true story. Your ‘needing’ does you no favors…trust me. 

When it really sunk in that all I had to do was go within my mind, be honest with what was there and let myself feel it, I was all in. I was hugely relieved I didn’t have to worry about ‘trying’ to be happy or doing a bunch of shit I didn’t want to do, that didn’t even feel that good anyway, because I thought that was necessary to change my life and ‘raise my vibration.’

I finally started focusing on what actually mattered, and what I actually wanted–emotional healing. And like I said earlier, the ‘worldy wants,’ with which I was still concerned about to some degree, were all part of the package.

 

How to Focus Properly

The only way you will sincerely make an effort to focus within and create what you truly want–to simply feel better–is to explore what is at the root of your ‘wants’ so you can see that what you don’t have isn’t the problem. This is not something you can just accept intellectually and then just expect to stop caring about all these things. You have to see this for yourself ,in your own life, by going within.

Even if you may not be fully on board with this sentiment, all you need to start is a need a sincere willingness to consider this possibility, no matter how resistant your mind feels to it. 

So you must explore the stories around your circumstances now. Why do you feel upset without this thing? What bothers you about your life now? What do your circumstances say about you as a person? If you never got this thing, what would that mean?

When you start seeing what is really going on inside, it becomes obvious pretty quickly that your circumstances really aren’t why you feel the way you feel. It is your interpretation of them, an interpretation created by a very dysfunctional thought system. 

So if the lack of X, Y or Z isn’t the problem, then it follows manifesting it can’t be the solution. 

By exploring the emotional content of the ‘attachment,’ and seeing the feelings and circumstances aren’t linked,  that all-important emotional state of ‘detachment’ will naturally follow. 

This is not something you must try and actively achieve–it is a natural byproduct of this exploration. If you don’t explore the pain you are trying to minimize by getting the ‘thing’ you will never experience detachment on a true emotional level.

 It will never be more than an idea you understand, and accept intellectually; ideas we just accept intellectually remain useless to us, as our reality is not created based on our intellect, it is created based on our feelings. 

Intellectual understanding, and acceptance, of spiritual teachings must eventually translate to emotional understanding and acceptance. And the only way this really happens is by dealing with our shitty feelings created by our old belief system and perceptions. 

This is because these feelings are like a clog in a drain, the rain on a windshield that distorts our vision, the static on the radio that makes it hard to hear the song clearly. The new perceptions can’t take root and if they can’t take root, the good feelings they create can’t become dominant. 

When you are sincerely focused within, there is no need for worry about all this nonsense of whether you are focusing properly, thinking the right thoughts for the right amount of time, whether you are using the proper tools and techniques, whether you are being specific enough about what you want to attract.

You just need to be honest about what is happening inside and not suppress your feelings–you can’t do that ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ You don’t need to buy yet another program or book. It requires zero financial investment. You can go within at any place at any time, no matter how busy your life or what you have going on at the moment. 

And if there is any sort of positive-focusing- type- stuff that floats your boat, go for it. But know that none of that is truly necessary. So unless it feels really good, you don’t have to do it. If you are doing it , and it doesn’t feel that good, it’s not serving its purpose so you can stop. 

 

Bottom Line

You can’t do manifesting right or wrong. It’s not an action-based process you must master in any way. What you actually want is to just feel better, not the boyfriend, the money or the body that is 20lbs lighter. When you withdraw your attention more from the external and put it where it needs to be–internal–concerns of this nature fall by the wayside.

Work on feeling better for the sake of feeling better, not as yet another ‘tool’ you employ to manifest the stuff you want. Feeling better is the only thing you want anyway, and that can’t be achieved when it’s not the actual goal.

If you are struggling to make certain changes in your life, over a long period of time especially, it’s not because you are doing something wrong, it’s because you aren’t dealing with the negative feelings that are driving what you want (and a part of you actually doesn’t want it, but that’s a story for another day). The energy isn’t changing, so the circumstances can’t change. The good news is, you can start dealing with that stuff at any moment, and even the choice to start dealing with it, creates an immediate shift in your emotional state.

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Manifesting Anxiety: The Process Isn’t What You Think

8 thoughts on “Manifesting Anxiety: The Process Isn’t What You Think

  1. A couple of years ago, I moved on from LOA because I started to feel completely bogged down and stressed out by the constant need to monitor every thought and emotion, to follow this process “correctly” and appease an outer force to ensure that what I wanted happened. LOA was definitely a bridge to understanding who I am as a being and a person, but it wasn’t the end all to be all like I thought it would be. I think that LOA has become such an action-oriented process due to the way society teaches us how to accomplish our goals. A lot of established ideas in society have bled into LOA, and that is definitely one of them. I think it’s very hard for most people to truly wrap their minds around the idea that achieving a goal doesn’t have to be a completely action-oriented endeavor because that is simply not how we are taught to view the process of accomplishing something. I completely understand how difficult it is to change your mind about something like that.

    If anyone here finds themselves frustrated with certain aspects of LOA, don’t be afraid to venture out and discover your own ways of viewing the world or that particular philosophy. For me, LOA opened my eyes to my actual truth, but it turned out not to be an accurate description or explanation of my personal truth, and that is okay. You are free to develop your own understanding of the world, and I know it’s scary to move on from philosophies or ideas you’ve followed for so long, but it will free you if that is what you truly need to do.

    Kelli, regardless of what I believe for myself now, I truly appreciate the way that you’ve described LOA here, and how you reassuring you are about how there’s no need to constantly be on top of your thoughts and fixate on what you want to “make it happen”. It’s a message a lot of people would benefit from hearing. All of the obsessing is definitely emotionally exhausting and I feel better having moved on to find my own voice and my own language, my own soul. 🙂

    1. Hi April
      Thanks so much for sharing such an insightful comment. I agree with so much of what you said here. The deeper I got into my energy and observing the world around me, the more I came to see that the teaching isn’t about trying to control or make anything happen. It is about internal transformation that naturally impacts your life in what the human mind would consider positive ways. It is truly about working on your ‘being’ and being open to how that energy will get mirrored back. Trying to use the teaching in service of the ego agenda is so limiting and usually very frustrating!

  2. when i first began studying loa, i came across so many “gurus” who taught people to say “cancel cancel” every time they had an unwanted thought. it is a terrible approach perpetuated by people who are only trying to sell you something or indulge their own egos; they are not following the essence of remaining detached from the outcome. to me, they are an example of what not to “do” by demanding we approach healing through external action. the worst thing you can do is to continue to repress thoughts and feelings you don’t want in the name of getting what you want. i’m so glad you’ve explained this. i find myself operating from a pain-minimizing mode all of the time, and now i understand how my ego has misled me. excellent post!!!

    1. Hi Bean
      Thanks so much for your comment and sharing your experience. I am so glad you found the post helpful. Focusing on the inner transformation that naturally will impact our circumstances is a much better approach to all of this than trying to simply attract what we don’t have by trying to ‘control’ our thoughts and the like. That may yield some results to some degree as it may effect some change but that journey really sells ourselves short and we will never really get what we actually want, which is an improved emotional state, because that path never brings our focus there in any real way.

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