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Writer's pictureRahim Nanos

5 Differences Between Manifestation and Wishful Thinking



Are you struggling to manifest the life of your dreams? Are you wondering why your manifestations seem ineffective? Does your life continue to spiral even more out of your control?


There is more to powerful manifestation than meets the eye. And it can be hard to see the line between your true vision and fantasy thinking.


It’s easy to fall into the trap of using wishful thinking to try to manifest what we want. And we may not even realize why our manifestations aren’t working!


Here are 5 tips to help you understand the difference between manifestation and wishful thinking.


If you discover that you’ve been using wishful thinking instead of manifestation, you’re in luck! You can upgrade your manifestation method to a more powerful one at any time. Simply use the information below to guide you to a more potent manifestation practice!


Taking Action


One main difference between wishful thinking and a powerful manifestation practice is how many actions you are willing to take to make the manifestation real. Manifestation works when your dream is being nurtured on both the mental and physical level.


For example, let’s say that you are trying to manifest your ideal body. Maybe this ideal body includes more upper body strength. You want to be able to look in the mirror and see a physically strong person looking back at you.


If you are using wishful thinking, it stops there. You want a more powerful body, but you’re not making any choices in your physical life to make that happen. You might be using affirmations or visualizing the perfect body. But if you’re not doing push ups, nothing in that mirror is changing. From there, you might start to compare yourself to others around you. You might get jealous or insecure around people that have the body that you want. This is wishful thinking.


A major step in manifestation is taking new actions - plain and simple. In this instance, if you want to manifest the perfect body, you must take the first step. And the first step doesn’t have to be huge either. Just doing 15 push ups a day moves the needle forward towards your manifestation. From there, actions take on their own momentum, and it gets easier and easier to show up and take action. Before you know it, you’re doing way more than 15 push ups, and you eventually have the body that you’ve always wanted! This is manifestation.


Embodiment: Grounded vs. Ungrounded Manifestation



I always notice that the word embodiment seems to have the word bodhi in it! Bodhi is the Buddhist word for the state of enlightenment. To me, you cannot have enlightenment without embodiment. If you exist purely in your mind, you are not existing in the root of your Being.


That is where this next piece comes in. Embodiment is a natural state of being that we have been culturally conditioned away from. Because it is a natural state, it is easier than we think to return. However, we do have to break through harmful cultural narratives that have a powerful hold on us.


Manifesting your dreams means planting spiritual seeds that become real tangible gifts that you are able to harvest for yourself. It’s like planting a fruit tree. You must plant, then tend, wait patiently for it to grow, and then pick the fruit once it is ripe.


Embodiment is important because it is the difference between a real fruit tree and a drawing of a fruit tree. Visualizing what you want in your mind isn’t enough if the energies of your visualization don’t flow through your blood stream, your muscles, your organs, and your bones.


You must become your vision - mind, heart, body, and soul.


To assess your current relationship to embodiment, first consider the feelings that you have towards your body. Do you love it exactly as it is, flaws and all, or do you have some sort of judgment or hatred towards your body?


More importantly, regardless of your feelings, consider your attitude towards the body. Do you consider it as somehow inferior to your mind? Is it just a simple meat suit? Not worthy of your attention? If this is the case, you will not get far in your embodiment practice.


Consider expanding your mind to a place where you can acknowledge the divine intelligence that lives in your body. Your stomach even harbors an ecosystem of its own via gut bacteria. The body is alive. It has loves, wants, and needs just like your mind. It has its own intelligence, its own role, and its own opinions about your behaviors.


Our brain stem travels through our bodies via the nervous system. So, we can view the nervous system within the body as the convergence of mind and body. At this point, it’s difficult to determine where the mind ends and the body begins. This is true embodiment - when the mind and body are one divine intelligent being within you.


Embodiment is a choice, but it’s also a practice. The more you do it, the better you get. The better you get, the more your fruit tree becomes less of a drawing and more of a living, breathing thing. Let your dream be alive through your body!


Here are 3 simple ways to practice embodiment:


First Method


Close your eyes. Pay attention to your breathing for a few moments, considering the concept of gravity.


Now, actually feel the force of gravity protecting you. It holds you to your seat. It gives you orientation. It allows your internal organs to be held and organized by your body. It makes life around you possible. And it is a physical force in nature, so you can actually feel its weight pressing you into your seat!


Next, bring your attention to your hands. Feel each hand. Feel the sensations in your hands. Do you notice your pulse coursing through your palms? If your hands are touching anything, notice how it feels on your skin. Feel the warmth of your hands. Become aware of your hands as an extension of yourself.


Following this process, do the same with your feet. And then bring your attention up through your arms and legs, using the same process of feeling.


Let this awareness of body sensation flow into your core, up your neck, and into your head.


When you reach your head, do not pay attention to your thoughts. Actually feel the sensation of nerves in your head. Feel the skin on your face. Feel the muscles in your head and face. Feel your head as an extension of your body. Then, take a few breaths while feeling your whole entire body at once! Practice this, and notice what occurs without judgment or expectation.


Second Method



Close your eyes and pay attention to your breath for a few moments. Then, bring your attention to your feet.


Imagine that beautiful roots are extending from your feet and down into the earth. Imagine that these roots extend all the way down, through each layer of the earth, all the way to the core of the earth.


Trace the roots all the way down each layer. Imagine that as you follow these roots down, you are strengthening and nourishing them with your breath and attention.


Notice what shifts as you travel further and further down into these roots.


When you are satisfied, travel back up the roots and back to your body. As you do so, imagine that your roots have tapped into a great wellspring of fresh water. With each breath, bring this water up through the roots and into your whole body. Imagine your whole body filling up with fresh, clean, divine earth energy. Practice this, and notice what occurs without judgment or expectation.


Third Method


Stop somewhere in your day and bring your attention to your breath for a few moments. As you do so, begin to tap into your senses, one at a time.


For sight, pay attention to details in your environment.


Take a look around. See if you can look at things without labeling them. For instance, if you see an apple, pay attention to its color and its shape. Notice that it is shiny and round. Notice its size.


Come up with all the ways you can describe the apple without calling it an apple. Stick to your senses.


You might now move onto touch. You can pick the apple up. What does it feel like? Maybe it’s smooth, slightly hard, or slightly soft. Feel the weight of it. Maybe you like the feeling of holding it, maybe you do not. It does not matter either way. You are simply engaging embodiment strategies, which is about noticing, without judgment, how things feel.


Taste and smell is easy with an apple. Is it tangy, tart, sweet?


Then, close your eyes, and notice what you hear. Is it noisey or quiet? See if you can describe what you are hearing. Maybe it’s the droning of a fan, or the buzzing of an electronic.


Finally, see if you can take it a step further and try to actually hear the silence. In the background, beyond noise, is a silence. See if you can breathe in that silence for a few moments.


Then, open your eyes, and re-enter your day. Ideally, you’ll be more engaged with your senses than you were able to be before.


Try employing one or all of these embodiment strategies right before you sit down to do your manifestation process. I can guarantee that your manifestations will be clearer and more powerful if you do so from a grounded place.


Passion: False vs. True


As a general rule, true passion inspires us to take right action. If we are not inspired to take right action, then we are not tapped into our passion. Without passion, no one really wants to do much of anything.


Yet, passion exists inside of us in a multitude of ways. The body has a passion to live and keep living. The soul has a passion to live its purpose. The heart has a passion to love. The mind has a passion to learn. This is true for most, if not all, human beings!


However, is it possible for us to stop feeling our passion? Absolutely yes!


It is also possible for us to chase false passions. You know what this feels like if you’ve ever been in a relationship that you regret. We can get so caught up in the idea of a loving relationship that we forget that the passion to love is actually rooted in self-love.


Yes, the relationships in our lives give us purpose and meaning. But we lose that purpose and meaning if it isn’t rooted in our true passion as individuals.


We actually don’t want just any relationship. We want a relationship that ignites passion in our own hearts! This means saying no to relationships that end up distracting us from that passion.


You must dig deep to find what you’re truly passionate about. And you have to be able to dig deep enough to get beyond whatever traumas that caused you to cut off your access to your passion.


Identify what fears, limiting beliefs, and false narratives are in the way of your access, and weed out your garden! Fruit trees can’t survive where there are too many weeds.


Identify The Source


Check what your desires are rooted in. Are they rooted in fear or love? True manifestation is always rooted in love. If they are rooted in fear, you are not manifesting. You are simply chasing your own tail. Fear is an essential thing to notice in us, because that is where our traumas are buried. And from this trauma, springs false passion.


If you’ve ever struggled with addiction, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Fear can create a blinding kind of desire. And what we chase to mediate that fear is not our true desire. It is false passion again.


It’s important to identify these fears and traumas without shame or judgment. It is only through noticing where these fears live that we are able to practice any discernment about what we are manifesting. Developing discernment is key especially because our false passions are entangled with our true passions.


For instance, creating music is a huge true passion of mine. Why? Because I love music! It nourishes my soul, end of story! Somewhere along the way in my music journey, I became addicted to the idea of being famous. The music was my true passion, but fame was my false passion, and I stopped being able to tell the difference.


When I awakened to my circumstance, I was able to trace the thirst for fame to its source: major insecurity. I was so terrified of not being seen, not being known, not being worthy, and not being loved that it colored my judgment and I went down the wrong path.


When I was able to recognize the false passion that sprang from insecurity, I was able to change my manifestation into something more true to me. I need the space, time, and resources to be able to create music. Everything else was just about chasing distractions in an attempt to escape that fear and insecurity.


There are healing modalities to help you move out of that fear. But first, identify where that fear lives, and disentangle it from your manifestation efforts. This is not about being perfect or without fear. It’s about choosing to be fully human - improving your choices and healing over time!


Attitude Adjustments



Check your attitude! Everybody has their own unique path, but each path requires you to cultivate certain qualities.


Often, these qualities show up as discipline, perseverance, willpower, faith, trust, and tolerance for discomfort - just to name a few!


We don’t come into this world knowing how to do them all. And unfortunately, even less of us learn all of these things from our caretakers in the developmental years.


It takes practice and dedication to learn these qualities.


I sometimes see people who think that they’re stuck, but the only thing that is really stuck is a poor attitude around cultivating any of these qualities!


If we enter our path with an attitude of ingratitude or self-defeat, then we’ve lost. It takes some real grit to embody any of these qualities. Try and see if you can pick one to master. Don’t overwhelm yourself.


Let’s say you feel that discipline is your biggest hurdle, so you must become someone who is disciplined!


That does not mean that you’ll magically become a zen master overnight. It might look like practicing getting up an hour earlier for 6 months until you’re ready to move onto the next thing.


For a while, your discipline practice might only look like 15 push ups a day. Stay on the step you are on, work one muscle at a time, go at your pace, and eventually you’ll be that zen master. Just stay consistent, patient, and keep the faith!


As you work on these 5 tips, keep in mind that you are the Sovereign Being of your own life. It is a very empowering thing to discover that your path is more in your control than you think.


But that’s only the case if you are willing to open your heart and mind to improved ways of being. Joy is at the root of positive effort, and you’ll tap into that joy once you’re giving yourself the attention, love, breath, and dedication that you need to succeed in your manifestation process.


Good luck, and schedule a session with me if you’re really serious about creating a kickass manifestation process that could change your whole life!



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