The Trouble With “Creating Your Reality”

Manifesting is an attractive idea.

Think about what you want. See it clearly. Feel as though you already have it. Align yourself with it. Believe it is coming.

And somehow, the universe responds.

I understand the appeal.

There is something wonderfully hopeful about believing we are not simply passengers in life. That we have some say in what happens next. That our thoughts matter.

And I believe they do.

I just don’t think they work quite the way we sometimes claim they do.

There is something true hiding inside the idea of manifestation.

But there is also something about it that troubles me.

Especially when the idea moves from:

Our thinking influences how we live.

to:

Our thinking creates what happens to us.

Those are not the same thing.

And the difference matters.

Thought Is Incredibly Powerful

Almost everything humans have created existed first as an idea.

Someone imagined an airplane before there was an airplane.

Someone imagined a bridge before there was a bridge.

Someone imagined a business, a song, a book, a different career, a journey or a different way of living before any of those things became physical realities.

Thought matters.

What we see as possible influences what we notice. It affects the conversations we have, the opportunities we pursue, the risks we’re willing to take and the actions that make sense to us.

If I cannot imagine myself writing a book, I’m unlikely to write one.

If suddenly I see that possibility, something changes.

I start writing.

I learn.

I ask questions.

I make mistakes.

I keep going.

Eventually I’m holding a book in my hands.

Did I manifest the book?

In one sense, perhaps.

It began as thought and eventually became something tangible.

But there were also hundreds of actions, other people, circumstances, opportunities, disappointments, coincidences and events that I could never have predicted or controlled.

That’s considerably different from believing the universe delivered the book because I thought about it correctly.

The Missing Middle

This is where I think some conversations about manifesting make an enormous leap.

They move from:

Thought → perception → action → consequences

to:

Thought → universe → outcome

The first one is observable every day.

The second requires us to make a much larger assumption.

Perhaps you’ve experienced this yourself.

You decide you want something and suddenly you begin seeing opportunities everywhere.

It can feel as though the opportunities have suddenly appeared.

Maybe some did.

But perhaps some were there all along.

What changed was you.

Your attention changed.

Your behaviour changed.

What seemed relevant changed.

What you were willing to do changed.

And naturally, different actions can produce different results.

That’s not insignificant.

It’s extraordinary.

I’m just not sure we need to invoke the universe’s shipping department to explain it.

But Here’s Where It Gets More Serious

There is another side of manifesting that I don’t think we talk about enough.

I have cancer.

Did I manifest that?

Did I think incorrectly?

Was my vibration too low?

Did I harbour some unresolved belief that attracted disease into my life?

I find that idea deeply troubling.

Because if we take the claim that we create everything that happens to us seriously, we don’t get to apply it only to the pleasant things.

If I manifested the new house, did someone else manifest losing theirs in a wildfire?

If I manifested financial abundance, did someone living in poverty manifest scarcity?

Did a child manifest their illness?

Did someone manifest being assaulted?

Did families manifest the war they found themselves living through?

At some point, an idea intended to empower people can become a rather sophisticated form of blame.

And adding the word spiritual doesn’t make the blame any kinder.

Creating Reality or Creating Experience?

There is another possibility.

Perhaps we don’t create everything that happens in reality.

Perhaps thought creates our experience of the reality that is happening.

That distinction changes everything.

Cancer exists whether I am thinking about it or not.

But my experience of having cancer can change dramatically from moment to moment.

One moment there may be fear.

Another moment curiosity.

Another frustration.

Another laughter.

Another complete absence of thinking about cancer because I’m absorbed in something else.

The medical circumstances may not have changed at all.

My experience has.

That doesn’t mean cancer is imaginary.

It doesn’t mean treatment doesn’t matter.

And it certainly doesn’t mean I caused it with my thinking.

It means that alongside whatever is happening in life, there is another extraordinary creative process occurring.

Thought is continually bringing our experience of what is happening to life.

That is powerful enough for me.

I don’t need thought to control the universe for it to be miraculous.

Maybe We Manifest Thinkiverses

Perhaps this is where the idea gets especially interesting.

We may not be manifesting the external universe.

But we are continually experiencing a personal Thinkiverse brought to life through thought.

Consider something as simple as an expensive car.

One person sees success.

Another sees irresponsible excess.

Someone sees beauty.

Someone else feels inadequate.

Another person couldn’t care less.

Same car.

Different worlds.

The object isn’t producing those realities.

Thought is.

And because we act according to the world we see, those thought-created realities influence what happens next.

That is where the creative power of thought becomes enormously consequential without requiring us to believe that thought magically controls external events.

Manifesting Can Become Another Way of Waiting

There is another irony here.

The desire to manifest a better life can quietly become another reason not to live this one.

When I have the money, I’ll relax.

When I find the relationship, I’ll feel loved.

When my business succeeds, I’ll feel secure.

When my health improves, I’ll start living again.

When I finally manifest what I want, then I’ll be okay.

We’ve simply created another version of:

Do → Have → Be.

Do the right things.

Have the desired outcome.

Then be happy, peaceful, abundant or whole.

But what if we’ve got that backwards?

What if peace isn’t waiting at the end of a successful manifestation?

What if life isn’t withholding itself until our circumstances meet our specifications?

Dream Anyway

None of this is an argument against dreaming.

Dream big.

Imagine things that don’t exist yet.

Write the book.

Start the business.

Take the trip.

Ask the person out.

Change careers.

Build something.

Try something ridiculous.

See what might be possible.

Thought can open doors we didn’t previously know existed.

But then participate.

Take the next step.

See what happens.

Respond accordingly.

You don’t need certainty.

And you don’t need a guarantee from the universe.

You certainly don’t need to blame yourself when life doesn’t follow the script.

Perhaps the deepest freedom isn’t discovering how to make the universe give us what we want.

Perhaps it’s discovering that we can participate wholeheartedly in life without requiring life to turn out a particular way.

And strangely enough, when we stop demanding a particular outcome before we’ll allow ourselves to be okay, we may become far freer to create.

Not because the universe finally got our order.

Because we got on with living.

A Question Worth Living

What might you pursue differently if you knew you were free to want it, work toward it and enjoy creating it without needing it to happen in order for you to be okay?