Manifestation is probably real, I’m just bad at it
Like any other spiritual e-girl obsessed with astrology, I’m trying to get into manifestation. Whether this has to do with my recent welcoming into Witch TikTok is neither here nor there, I just find the idea of manifestation really intriguing and want to learn to harness those abilities within myself. If I’ve got hidden superpowers, I wanna access them.
The reason I believe in manifestation at all is that I feel like right now I’m only able to manifest bad things. For example, I woke up a couple of days ago with a list of logistical tasks I had to complete in the morning pertaining to my move to my new apartment. These tasks were the only thing standing in the way of a day filled with YouTube and HBOMax (I’ve recently reignited my obsession with The Newsroom), so I wanted to get them out of the way as fast as possible. I had been thinking about the tasks for a week prior, ruminating on any possible issues that could arise. Immediately upon waking on The Big Day, I said out loud, “I don’t want to do today, it’s gonna be so annoying.”
Long story short, the day ended up being more annoying than I could’ve ever anticipated. The annoyance and frustration went well beyond the simple tasks I had to get done in my morning, and the whole day ended up being a stressful mess of problems. Essentially, anything that I could’ve possibly thought of to go wrong in my prior week of rumination went wrong.
I was sitting on my stoop at dusk, reflecting on the torturous day I had just endured. I came to the conclusion that in waking up and declaring the annoyance that was about to be the day, I jinxed myself. I convinced myself that if I had not said those words out loud, the day would have been a breeze.
Then I backtracked. I thought about the plans and schedules that were spinning through my head the whole week leading up to my Very Important Tasks. My mind had been running in circles, anxiously anticipating any possible issue that could arise, and then all of those issues seemed to magically come true the day of.
The question arose: Did I manifest those issues, or were they going to happen anyway?
After a couple of days of thinking, the answer I’ve landed on is that they were going to happen anyway, but if I had been thinking more positively about the entire situation, I would have been able to handle them better.
Is that just what manifestation is? Thinking about things in a positive way so that your mind is better able to handle issues when they arise?
I have another story to show why that is not quite the case.
Before I knew I’d be staying in LA after graduation, my boyfriend and I were talking about a move up north to San Francisco. Anxiously needing to be prepared, I casually began an apartment search to get a lay of the land and see what the options were. It didn’t take me long to figure out that many of the older apartments that hadn’t yet been transformed into big buildings included beautiful, massive bay windows in the living rooms. Naturally, I fell in love with them. I was brought back to the many years of my childhood spent being jealous of friends who had them in their homes, wishing I had one of my own to look out of. It became my mission to have one in my new place.
As the real estate market in San Francisco is a true mess, I figured our odds of getting a bay window apartment were slim. With zero knowledge of manifestation, I began jokingly saying “I’m manifesting a bay window” at least once a day. This went on for about a month. It was never intentional, I never thought I was actually manifesting, but I’d somehow always slip it into conversation. I just couldn't get enough of the bay windows!
Once our plans to go up north changed, my dreams of a bay window quickly ended. In our newly-focused LA apartment search, I was taking anything I could get, just hoping for a decent amount of natural light and a landlord that wouldn’t turn us away because I was both a Cancer Sun and Moon.
Taking any tours that were being offered to us, we set out on one tour with little to no expectations on what the place looked like. The Zillow listing confused us, and we just couldn’t get an idea of the layout. We were ready to add this to our seemingly ongoing list of disappointments but ended up absolutely falling in love. A purple living room with a sophisticated mantle and intricate lights, a separate dining room with built-in glass cabinets and shelving, a bathroom that felt like it came right out of the Beverly Hilton, and more storage than we’d know what to do with. We signed the lease less than two days after, and as I write this have completed our week-long move-a-thon and are finally happily settled in.
And to make it all worthwhile, there are not one but TWO beautiful bay windows, one in the living room and one in the bedroom.
So, did I manifest it? Do I have secret witch powers? Is this a manifestation story that would go viral on WitchTok? I haven’t convinced myself of anything yet. All I’ve learned is that it helps to have a positive outlook on things, even if it doesn’t change the events of the situation, and that sometimes it pays to wish for what you want.
