Nichole Eaton practicing manifestation
By Nichole Eaton
What if I told you, you had a secret talent? A talent you’ve been consciously and unconsciously using since birth? In this very moment, you have a chance and choice to begin changing everything in your life, whether it’s having more love, more money, more success, or even just more happiness. What if I reminded you of who you truly are and exchanged the belief of unworthiness or the unhelpful thought that incredible lives only come from struggle, for something easier?
The secret talent I’m referencing, the one you ALREADY HAVE WITHIN YOU that can change your life as you know it, is called Law of Attraction or Manifestation.
Most people have heard of manifestation. Any library you stumble into likely has books on it. The idea of manifestation, however, from an outside perspective sounds more like wishful, woo-woo thinking than an easy (and fun) mental health practice. Luckily, I’m here to help make understanding manifestation easy for you and explain how I went from barely keeping the lights on to living an extremely abundant life.
What is Manifestation Anyway?
Manifestation is a tangible result from the combination of good thoughts, energy, and emotions. The Law of Attraction states that what you put out energetically, comes back to you. I repeat, this is a Universal Law, like gravity. Once you see how easy this can be for you, how what you believe about your life to be true, is exactly what you see. You’ll be able to shape your thoughts and beliefs to bring better experiences into your life. Manifestation is half belief and half energy, understanding why we need both is the true game changer.
The Basics
The first step of understanding your secret talent of manifesting is recognizing manifestation is simply a thought. Our thoughts hold energy which fuels our emotions. Think of a time you heard a scary noise in the house late at night. Perhaps you worked yourself up thinking your place was getting robbed. Your thoughts perpetuated the feelings of fear despite no real evidence there was anything to be concerned about. This fear may have caused your heart to beat quicker, your palms to sweat, and for your breathing to get faster. At some point, you realized you weren’t actually in danger and the sound was your cat, Max, delightfully swatting a plastic bag. With this recognition, all of your fear-based emotions and physiological responses settled. We can trick our brain into seeing evidence of something not there.
My favorite way to think about my thoughts is comparing them to a Google search bar. If you put in your thought on Google, Google’s job is to find evidence and information. If you tell your brain you can’t find love, your brain will search for evidence of you being alone forever. It will search through past memories and in our present-day reality for examples. Why? Because our brain LOVES to be right! It’s also similar to an automated, programmed machine which just goes by what we’ve always thought, done, or experienced. In order for us to have new experiences and see new things in our lives we have to re-program the computer by making new suggestions.
You might be thinking “whoa, this sounds like a lot” but I promised you I’d keep it easy. Take a moment and ask yourself what you truly want? What would feel good or better right now? I like to write down the phrase “Wouldn’t it be nice…” and create a fun list underneath. Give yourself permission to release the feeling of needing to figure how this desire would happen or judging yourself for having the desire in the first place. Right now, we need to only decide. I want you to also notice the beliefs you already have around what you want. What do your current beliefs ask your brain to look for evidence of? Is it helping you or hurting you?
I suggest creating affirmations by deciding what you want in a statement. Create this affirmation by using present tense or gratitude as though it is already happened. For example, “I am so grateful to be happy and confident within myself” or “I am happy.” “I am so grateful to have an extra $500 show up at my door” or “Money simply finds me. I’m constantly receiving checks in the mail.” Thinking the thought alone isn’t enough though, you must BELIEVE what you are thinking. As Channeler of the Collective Conscience Abraham, Esther Hicks always says, “A belief is only a thought that you keep thinking.” If a belief is only a thought we think over and over, we can change our beliefs by changing the thought and simply choosing a better one. The Belief piece is so important, envision getting there to a simple math equation: Think it + Think it + Think it + Think it = Believe it. It’s that simple!
The Second Step is to release the “how”. You don’t get to decide how this new belief will happen. You don’t get to decide how to best receive $500 because you would’ve already done it if you had that knowledge. This is where I’m asking you to trust. If you are a faith-based person you can trust God or the Universe. I deeply believe in a higher power and know that I only have a limited amount of information up until this point. The Universe, has the entire blue print. On this blueprint are experiences I need to have, people I haven’t met yet, and skill sets I’ll build. It’s unfair of me to believe I have all of the answers to how this piece of my life improves. Things have occurred in my life that are better than I could have dreamed up because I didn’t know about it yet. If you have it in you to trust a higher power, the moment you begin to try to figure it out, remind yourself that God or whatever you believe in, has it. If you are NOT a faith-based person, understand your brain needs the correct input to search for that outcome in your internal and external world. Your only job is to provide the correct new thought to help it.
The Third Step is repetition. You’ve formed these beliefs after years and years of thinking them. They are automatic. Your job is to create a small practice of repeating them whether that is listening to affirmations or listing them out. I love writing a morning thank you letter for the Universe. I thank the Universe for how my day goes, how I felt, the experiences I had, before I even have them. I decide in advance what I want my day to look like and FEEL like. The more you suggest new thoughts, the more they feel true, the more they become habitual and reoccur automatically. The important piece of repetition is to feel the thought as though it were true or happening. How good does it feel to say “I am healthy. I am wealthy.” Feel into the feeling or envision what it might be like to experience it. Feeling the thought as though it were already true will amplify the manifestation.
The Fourth step is finding a better feeling. We’ve all heard of high vibration. People who say “Good vibes only.” Vibration is found in energy and emotions are energy. Good vibrations are feelings that feel good. Bad vibrations are feelings that feel crappy. Scaling from feeling really bad to really good can be hard. If you start to spiral down a rabbit hole, take a deep breath and come back to what you desire, not where your thoughts are automatically going. If you can’t get there, find a distraction. Stopping the momentum and finding a neutral feeling is just as helpful as re-choosing your thoughts mid-spiral. This good vibration or neutral vibration will act as a better place to receive what we desire. Think of receiving what you desire as an elevator in a 10-story building. The penthouse is at the top floor. The penthouse is where the good views and bougie aesthetics are. The bottom floor is usually the place they keep garbage. Being intentional about your mood or vibration, will help you find and attract the experiences and people that match the better thoughts and desires you’re creating.
The last step is to listen to your intuition. As we truly begin to access what we want. We start listening to our soul and higher self. When we start to do this it’s like a green light for the Universe to ramp up your intuition. Your intuition is the little voice of guidance letting you know the next step. The more we manifest and listen to our true desires, the easier it becomes to hear it. While we are manifesting or envisioning or writing our affirmations, we might feel called to act. This might feel like a nudge or a knowing. It may be something simple like feeling like you need to reach out to your cousin only to find out they just opened a new business and need a partner. You might feel called to go to a networking event where you connect with someone who offers you an incredible opportunity. You might feel strongly guided to quit your job and start something more in alignment. Your job is not to judge the pull or knowing, but to listen to it.
I like to think of manifestation like a GPS. You put in your final destination and just follow the intuitive turn by turn directions. You may not know the next step but if you keep setting your intention and continue to listen to the nudges of your soul. You’ll be there before you know it. Even if you take a detour or wrong turn, you can always come back to the final destination (your intention) and the GPS will automatically reroute you to get there.
At first, this may seem like a lot of items on your to-do list but, I promise this practice will change your life if you follow it. The world will seem intentional and magical. Struggles will shift, happiness will flow, and life will feel easier.
The No-No’s: Things to Keep in Mind While Manifesting
A few things to consider when deciding what you want. We want to keep the affirmation, statement, or thought positive. If you would like to be healthy, be careful to not use an affirmation that says, “I don’t want to be sick anymore.” Focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want. Knowing what you don’t want is great! This means we can use it to help us gain insight on what we do want. Instead use the affirmations, “I am healthy. I am strong. My body knows how to heal itself.” Focusing only on the positive will not only tell the universe what you actually want, but the energy of positivity will put you in a better head space from more efficient manifestations.
Don’t go too big. People often nix manifestation because they were manifesting to win the lottery or another “too big” manifestation and it didn’t happen. Remember the BELIEF piece we talked about earlier? The most important piece of manifesting is finding a thought or affirmation you truly believe can happen for you. Although there are no limitations to what you can manifest, you must choose things you can believe. Often times when first starting, it’s feels easier to manifest small things like seeing a certain color car or finding pennies. The less resistance we have to receiving something, the quicker the Universe can show up with it. Resistance is energy opposing what you want, like when you’re anxious about the new job and worry what will happen if you don’t get it. So, begin by manifesting something small and allow the Universe to show you how easily it can bring it to you. It will help aide your belief for bigger more complex manifestations.
Manifestation works best when we can hold the energy (good feeling) of what we want. So when we say an affirmation like, “I am so wealthy. I have more money than I know what to do with,” and then we complain to our friends how broke we are, we send conflicting signals to our brain and lower our energy (create negative emotions) around what we are manifesting.
How Manifestation Changed My Life
Finding out I was pregnant with my first daughter shortly after I turned 20 was the biggest surprise of my life. Although my husband and I married a month prior, we were in no way, planning to get pregnant. Freshly transferred to a Bachelor’s in Psychology program, I went to school full time barely affording the apartment we had. Some weeks we would spend any extra just catching up on bills. Some weeks we would max out credit cards trying to figure out how to get gas. We weren’t financially prepared to bring a baby along with the cost of diapers and daycare into the mix. To say we struggled would be an understatement.
When my daughter turned 2, we were at an all-time low. I started a Master’s program so intensive that I had to sign a paper stating I would fully commit to the program by not holding outside jobs. The demands of the program required more daycare time for my little one. We were so broke, I cried every time the bills came. The mailbox became a source of anxiety. Depression always tried to talk me into staying in bed. I felt like a failure of a person and mother. Our lights were shut off numerous times. The house we could afford had a rodent infestation. We could hear them scurrying through the walls nightly. We even spoke with a lawyer about potentially filing a bankruptcy.
Luckily, right before going through with a bankruptcy. A friend gave me a book on the Law of Attraction. I began by manifesting small checks. It’s what I could believe at the time. At one point, I had six different checks in one month. These checks weren’t ones I was expecting. They were very random, like a $300 check from a company audit for a retail store I had worked at 8 years prior. The checks made no sense. I couldn’t believe they were still coming. Internal shifts were happening, too. I slowly began to believe in my personal power to change my financial reality. Shifts happened in my depression and relationships dramatically improved around me. I had decided, in my manifesting I was feeling better a little more every day and my body and mind suddenly jumped on board. I discovered yoga. I found free therapy through my University, which strengthened my positive thinking. The more I decided what my life was going to look like and how I was going to feel, the more evidence I saw in my reality.
In the middle of my manifestation awakening, I had a particularly hard month. My 1998 Daewoo sedan started smoking in the middle of the highway. I needed a new car and we needed to pay our mortgage payment. I could’ve easily fell into the “this isn’t working” trap. I chose to believe the money for a new car and the house payment would be covered. That month I opened my bank account to an extra $2500 deposit from a cruise ship line I had sailed on five years prior. I called the cruise line. They had no receipt of any transaction like that taking place which meant they could not retract any money from my account. After several calls back and forth between the cruise line and bank, they declared it a computer error they couldn’t do anything about and told me to keep it. The Universe gifted me an extra $2500 which covered my mortgage and allowed me to put a down payment on a new vehicle.
Since then, the Universe is constantly surprising me. Probably because I believe it will. I have gone from someone medicated because of depression to someone who can’t imagine feeling that way, feeling upbeat and grateful every single day. I have gone from crying at the mailbox to hitting my biggest financial year yet, during the middle of a global pandemic. I used to work crazy hours for little pay, to owning several businesses, designing my own hours, and making however much I decide to.
I don’t preach about manifestation simply because it’s fun or sounds good. I do because it works. I’m not the exception to the rule. I am the example of it. My clients are examples of it. I have watched people leave bad relationships to find the love of their life. I have watched people quit jobs and fall into their dream career in the same month. I have watched clients with major medical issues, dramatically improve or even cure them.
Think about your life as a work of art, and you are the painter. What are you ready to put on your canvas? What can you create? Or my favorite, how would you rather feel every day? You were made for an amazing life. You were made to have it all. Now it’s time to choose that for yourself. Start with the thought and watch your masterpiece take shape one belief at a time.
Nichole Eaton is a Soul Therapist, Host of the Rock Your Soul Podcast, and Author of the book, Rock Your Soul: The Down-to-Earth Guide to Mastering Your Mind. Nichole has spent the last decade connecting people to their best self through a combination of both traditional mental health practices and understanding of intuition, energy, and manifestation. Her unique approach has changed thousands of lives, helping people design their best life and find their authenticity, across the world. When Nichole’s not creating content, you can find her baking cupcakes with her two little girls.
Website: www.nicholeeaton.com
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