Hello friends, and welcome to episode 15 of the Conscious Women Entrepreneurs Podcast! Today I’ll talk about how to manifest anything and how it relates to both what the mystics have said for centuries – as well as what neuroscience tells us about it.  

Manifestation is a term that’s thrown around a lot these days. By definition manifesting means “a sign of something existing or happening”. The word manifestation comes from Latin, “manifestare”, which means “to make public”. In the recent years, however, manifestation is basically associated with attracting whatever you want into your reality – and it’s very much used in the alternative community; almost so much so that it has become an empty word or a cliché. However, throughout this podcast, I’ll use the words “manifesting” and” creating” interchangeably.

The topic of this episode may sound like a rather bold statement, or even a click-bait. But, after you’ve heard me out, you will probably have a transformed way of looking at your life and circumstances. At least that was the case for me when I first heard about this concept. 

Firstly, let’s take a moment to talk about what a circumstance actually is: A circumstance or a situation is always neutral until we give it meaning. Based on past conditioning, social norms, our current mood, preferences or past traumas we have THOUGHTS about our circumstances – and make them mean things.

I’ll give you a quick example to illustrate what I mean; Going to the beach on a sunny day instead of working on your business, is a circumstance. You might think that this is really nice, you’re feeling relaxed and enjoy the time away from work. On the contrary, with the same scenario of going to the beach on a sunny day instead of working on your business, think about all the things you “should” be doing instead of just laying around on the beach and start feeling guilty about it. You might beat yourself up and start to feel super stressed – making you more drained laying on the beach than actually doing the work.

As you can see, the two circumstances were the same, but the thoughts we had about it gave us two very different experiences. The thoughts also created different feelings in our body. In the first example, we felt relaxed and we felt enjoyment, whereas in the second example, we felt stressed, guilty and drained.

This is a simple illustration, but it shows that what we think and feel about any given situation will make us take different actions and in turn create very different results. Again, going back to our example; in the first scenario where we were relaxed, we might have read a book or listened to a podcast,  and because we felt recharged from the rest and inspired from what we learned from the book or podcast, we might have gone home and created some amazing, inspiring content. Because our own cup is filled, it spills into our business in an effortless way. In fact I experience this all the time. 

On the other hand, in the scenario where we were guilt tripping and stressing, we might go home from the beach early, try to get some work done, but because our nervous system is under stress and our brain is not in an optimal state, we’re neither creative nor productive. A quick note on that; it has been demonstrated that stress has a negative impact on processes related to creativity, including task switching and cognitive flexibility. So, we might end up getting frustrated for spending such a nice day indoors and spinning our wheels or procrastinating instead of actually getting anything done. So, in the first example, the result was that we had an enjoyable trip to the beach, learned something new, felt recharged and did some work on our business to move it forward. In the latter example, we ended up being stressed, frustrated and spending the majority of the day indoors and getting close to nothing done on our business.

So, as you can see from these two examples, the thing that kicked off this whole chain- reaction was what our thoughts were about the circumstance. The good news is that we can choose what thoughts we want to have about any given circumstance. And that right there is the key to manifesting whatever you want. When you choose to think intentional thoughts about a circumstance, instead of thinking default thoughts that are built up by previous conditioning; which may no longer serve you – you can in effect create the results that you want. 

Most people think that the circumstances are what will determine whether we’ll be successful or not. I’ll give you an example of the traditional way of viewing success demonstrate what I mean. People think that the house they live in, the car they’re diving, the size of the business they’re running etc. is what will determine how happy, successful or financially secure they perceive themselves to be. We think that when we get to a certain income level, we’ll be happy. When we have fully booked out our practice with clients we will be successful. When we have a certain amount of savings, we will feel financially secure. We make our external circumstances responsible for how we think and feel about our level of success, happiness or safety. But that’s not how it works. This is actually making our goals of achieving these things work against us. Everything is relative, and you get to choose thoughts that make you feel happy, that make you feel successful or make you feel financially secure. A person living in a mansion could feel unhappy, a business owner with thousands of high ticket clients may not feel successful, a billionaire could feel financially insecure because they have a fear that it’ll all disappear…

What determines the level of happiness, success, financial security and freedom you perceive yourself to have are your THOUGHTS about it! If you think that your house is not big enough, the car fancy enough or business profitable enough, then that will be the experience you have of it. Whereas if you love your cozy house, are grateful for the car you have and proud of your biz and how far you’ve come, then that will be your experience of it. You could have zero dollars to your name and feel financially secure because you can borrow money, you can trust yourself to make it back and learn how to make good money going forward. From that mindset you’d take actions in alignment with making money and as a result you will create an improved financial situation for yourself. I’m not advicing you to take up a loan, but I want to really put this on the edge and get you to realize the power of your thoughts. 

Our thoughts quite literally create the reality we live in. Furthermore, to spice this conversation up with some woo woo; what we appreciate appreciates. If we can feel empowered and sufficient in our businesses right now, then we will in turn take empowered and higher value actions that will create higher value results. Also, the grass is greener where we water it. So, the more energy we give to what’s good about our life and business, the more we’ll get of those things. 

So again, most people try to change their circumstances to create a different result. But it is never our circumstances. We hear about people succeeding against all odds. And the so-called “odds” refer to their circumstances. Those people chose to think that they could succeed, they felt determined, empowered and confident enough to take the necessary actions to then manifest what they desired into their lives.

I’ll give you another example from one of my clients. This amazing lady runs an online shop that sells eco-friendly and sustainable products as well as selling her products through retailers. She told me that when she met with a retailer where the manager was negative towards her products, she thought that she has lost the opportunity to sell her products through their stores and she felt defeated. The actions she took was to try to get the conversation to get over with as soon as possible and then get back in touch at a later stage. The result has been that she didn’t get a contract with that client. However, after I started coaching her, the thoughts she walked into any meeting with, regardless of the circumstances or types of managers who were there, was “l’m in control of the conversation and it’s important that I teach them about the value of my products and help turn their perception. Thinking those thoughts made her feel confident, in control, empowered and not scared. Based on that she wouldn’t take no for an answer, put in sales reports for the products, brought samples for them and spoke about the products in a way that resonated with the managers. The results she created from this was that she was in control of the conversation and her excitement for the products rubbed off on the managers. She reported back to me that the managers loved her products and that she was going home to celebrate getting into this retail chain with some champaign. To sum up; by choosing to think those intentional thoughts, she manifested more abundance into her business through the contract with that retail chain.

You might ask: how do I change my mindset and my thoughts though? How do I even know what thoughts I need to change? The answer: Awareness. We first have to develop self awareness. One of the things I love doing with my clients is to dream up big dreams and visions for their most ideal life. I encourage you to do the same! When you’ve written down everything you want, pull out a new sheet of paper and start noting down all of the excuses that come up for you. What are the reasons you tell yourself that you can’t manifest these results? What are you afraid might happen along the way, or what would you be afraid of if you were to create this in your life? The more honest, specific and detailed you are here, the better. The more you write down, the more raw, authentic and vulnerable you are, the better. Write it all down – even if the thoughts that come up may sound ridiculous. These notes are for your and your coaches eyes only, so really let it rip. 

I’ll give you one of my personal examples: I discovered this completely irrational thought that I had regarding posting on social media. I already had lots of pictures to draw from a photoshoot I did, and I had pages and pages of notes on my phone with content to accompany those pictures. So, I could’ve literally just chosen a picture, a text and published it on Instagram within 3 minutes. Instead, I procrastinated. A part of me was afraid that I’d run out of pictures and notes to post. Io, I didn’t post for weeks. My limiting belief of not having enough pictures and content to post made me not post – even when I had all of this content just sitting there waiting for me to share. 

This is just one example, but I find that thought errors like these are so common. Luckily they are easy to correct though. When we bring our subconscious thoughts to a conscious level, we get awareness about these small thought errors, which if not altered, can actually create quite huge ripple effects and vicious cycles. We get to accept that they were there and to choose new, more empowered thoughts that are in alignment with the things we want to manifest.

So, coming back to that list of limiting beliefs and thought errors that I was just talking about; these are the things that you most need to work on right now. Mind you, the list of thoughts can evolve as we peel back the layers. Sometimes it’s as though our ego becomes more sophisticated and offers thoughts that seem good, but really aren’t. And, by the way,  when I say “work on” I don’t mean “try to fix or reject yourself as you are now” Doing that will only make things worse. What we resist, persists. So we have to understand where it comes from, lovingly accept and validate it. Then, choose new thoughts. 

So, after acknowledging and accepting that the thoughts are there, take one line of thought at a time and intentionally choose thoughts that you want to think instead. Gather evidence for why these new, more supportive and empowering thoughts can be, and already are, true for you. Keep in mind that a personal truth is never absolute, but always valid. 

I also want to add a perspective from the realm of the mystics, because I’m all about that woo. People in the alternative community often speak about frequency or vibration, relative to how positive, evolved or how much you’re living in alignment with your “highest path” or your purpose in this lifetime. For some, this might appear far fetched and sound like fluffy concepts with little to no substance. However, I personally like to draw parallels from science into the mystic realm. So, the way I see it, and from the research papers I’ve read, is that when we learn to think new thoughts and build new neural pathways, it will take more effort to think these thoughts. As neuroscience teaches, our default thinking follows neural pathways that have been used so often that it almost becomes a highway for our thoughts. When we experience a circumstance, our thoughts are produced automatically with minimal effort with the help of our subconscious programming. It will take time to make these new neural pathways become highways and establish these intentional thoughts as default ones. Therefore changing our mindset is a process that may seem hard in the beginning, but one that becomes easier and easier as we practice and realign our thinking consistently. 

Our brain also helps us to filter out noise. In today’s world particularly, we are exposed to an incredible amount of information and stimuli. As I mentioned in one of my previous podcast episodes, our subconscious brain can process about 11 million pieces of information per second, whereas our conscious brain can only process about 40 pieces of information per second. This is super helpful to us, as we would get very overwhelmed and have a completely sensory overload if we were to consciously take in 11 million pieces of information per second, or about 713 Billion pieces of information every waking hours. But what constitutes what comes through our filter and gets processed consciously? 

Although I have a keen interest in neuroscience, I’m no expert. I would assume that some things go through the filter because of our biology; our survival and reproductive instincts etc.. But with a simple test, we can also see that what we consciously choose to focus on or think about is what will come through that filter to our conscious awarenes. I mentioned this exercise in one of my previous episodes, so I’ll only briefly explain it. Tony Robbins is known for asking his audience to look around seeking out all things that are in a certain colour – say for example blue. Then he asks them to close their eyes and say where all the green objects were. Everyone is  having a hard time telling him where the green objects are because that was not their point of focus. The people doing the exercise instructed their brain to look for one thing, and in so doing, filtered all other colours than blue away from their conscious awareness. This brings me back to the mystic’s way of describing this phenomena. It is said that you can only access the people and circumstances that match your frequency and that for example people with an abundance mindset will access or attract more lucrative opportunities. An alternative way to describe this – in more grounded, scientific terms are that the opportunities were there all along, but you didn’t see them because the programming in your mind was set to “others can have that kind of success, but not me”. Our brain is a scientist that goes out on a hunt to find evidence for your beliefs so that those beliefs become more solidified and real. It’s like a girl who has dated douche bags and concluded that all men are ass holes. Her brain will notice actions from men or stories about men that confirms her belief. However, she fails to take note of all the sweet, loving guys that would never do anything hurtful. I’m speaking from experience here, can anyone else resonate? Luckily I cleaned that thought pattern up!

Tying this concept back to mysticism again, we are increasing our frequencies when we think thoughts that are serving our expansion rather than limiting us. We live in alignment with our highest path or timeline when we focus on, and tune into, the opportunities that were already there but we couldn’t see when we were stuck in limited thinking. Again, it always comes back to our thoughts, which again creates feelings in our bodies. Dr. Candance Pert says that “the molecules of emotion, a kind of neuropeptide, change the chemistry and electricity of every cell in the body and mind. Feelings literally alter the electrical frequencies generated by our bodies producing a nonverbal communication”. This introduces a whole new field of science; Quantum Physics. 

I did quite a lot of research for this podcast episode and came across a super interesting article called “Why We Need Quantum Physics for Cognitive Neuroscience”. It talks about the journal NeuroQuantology, which was first published in 2003 and intends to bringe all the ideas about neuroscience and quantum physics under one roof. I want to quickly mention a short phrase from this paper: “On the one side are traditional neuroscientists who believe that the way to understanding the brain is through looking at the nerve cells. On the other side are various physicists who suggest that the laws of quantum mechanics may have an influence on the dynamics of consciousness and the mind. At the same time however, consciousness and the mind cannot be separated from matter.” So we’re moving into a very complex area of science that we don’t yet know enough about to draw conclusions from. However, I love how the lines between mysticism and science become more and more blurred as we discover more about how things work in this universe. The link to this research can be found in the show notes over at my website, martinethomassen.com. 

So, regardless of the terms or language you resonate with – mysticism or science; frequency, manifestation & attraction OR a filtering process in the brain between conscious and subconscious, and laws of quantum mechanics – we can use it to create the results that we want in our lives.

When we go about changing a mindset, it can be regarded a bit the same way as changing an emotional state. So, looking at the emotional spectrum, we can’t jump from helplessness to absolute confidence and joy in one sitting. It’s like a ladder. where the step further up is out of reach until you’ve climbed the steps closer to you. The same is true for our thoughts. We won ‘t just wake up one day and have a million dollar mindset – or whatever success looks like to you. We can choose to think high value thoughts in line with the results that we want to create, but in order to believe for sure that we can make a million dollar this year, we first need to believe that we can for sure make $50 000, or a $100 000 for sure this year. We must believe in the smaller sums like making $10 000 this month before we can believe in the huge milestones. People seem to have a bias towards how much they can make in for example 3 years as opposed to what they can make this month, this week or even today. .

Summing up this whole episode, creating the life you want or manifesting anything really comes down to choosing to think the highest value thoughts, creating the highest value feelings that will have you take the most high value actions that will create the most high value results. So, be very clear on what you value and what you want. Reverse engineer back from your most desirable life: what would you have to think to build a successful business, what would you have to feel about yourself and your circumstances, what actions would you take as the most successful version of yourself relative to the situation in order to manifest this life?

The saying goes, “Be careful what you ask for”, but I’d say: “Be careful what you think; you will create it!”.

I hope you got a ton of value from this episode and that you’ve got a better understanding about manifestation. I’d love for you to take a screenshot of this episode and tag me in an instagram story letting me know your biggest take-away!