I’ve always been a dreamer. And a planner. Which has really worked in my favor over the years. Anything I’ve ever aspired for, I made a plan for. Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a little spontaneity in certain aspects of my life or that I think everything in your life needs to be carefully planned out. It also doesn’t mean that all or even any of my childhood plans have come into fruition. But what it does mean is that over the years I’ve learned a lot of how to turn my dreams and my goals into tangible successes.
While plans are important in providing you with concrete steps toward achieving all of your goals, I actually think that type of success starts with your mindset. Because—and hear me out—I think that if you want something badly enough, you can have it. Obviously, there’s more to getting something than simply willing it into existence. But I do think there’s some strange power in mindset.
I think my active fascination with manifesting first started about two years ago—after I listened to an episode of the popular feminist celebrity podcast, The LadyGang. At first, I just used it as an alternative to the New Years resolution. The way I was taught manifesting, through the podcast, used categories to separate goals into different aspects of your life. This method also approached setting goals by directly setting action steps to achieve those goals. Instead of “set a fitness routine,” your manifest would read “do yoga twice a week.” Then this goal would fall directly into the health and fitness category of your manifest. Make sense?
I created a manifest for myself earlier this year—as I’ve been doing for a few years now. But to be honest, I haven’t really given it a real read-through since I made it. It’s no secret that this year hasn’t exactly turned out the way many of us may have hoped and I think that may have contributed to my hesitation in re-visiting some of these now seemingly unattainable goals—specifically the goals I had for travel. But this year has given me a lot of time to manifest results in categories like work and money. So there’s has been a certain balance. For those of you that are curious in diving deeper in the actual making of a manifest, I figured the best way to start would be to share mine with you.
Family
This was one of the categories where I didn’t exactly set any tangible goals. The only thing I decided on when it came to my family this year was to approach situations of disagreement and discomfort with patience and understanding. I’m not incredibly close to my family and we often disagree. But since having moved back to my hometown, I see them a lot more than I did before. So it’s important for both parties to maintain a civil relationship. At the end of the day, I can only control my actions, so I continue to approach conversations and interactions with an open mind.
With social and political climate rising in tensions every day in the United States, patience and understanding is needed in abundance right now. So this is also something I’m having to practice outside of my house.
Friends
With social isolation being a bit of a life requirement—and having been for the majority of this year—it’s been a bit difficult to work on this area of my manifest. I wanted to have more honest conversations with my friends and find a way to be okay with missing out on events that I couldn’t attend or simply didn’t want to. And I think I actually accomplished a lot of this in 2020. While it may be seen as a decline in our communication, my lack of consistent messaging or planning hangouts has actually made the time I have spent with my friends more meaningful.
Work
While my “find a stable job” goal hasn’t exactly been achieved, I have been better at accepting the fact that perhaps the typical 9 to 5 just isn’t for me. And I did decide at the beginning of this year that I didn’t want societal pressures to decide my work life for me. I wanted my work to be something that fueled my long-term passions. I’ve been doing a lot more work for my business and brand, which makes me happier than anything, so I would call this area of my 2020 Manifest a success.
Money
This is one thing on my manifest list from this year that I’m actually incredibly proud of myself for keeping up with. My biggest goal for this category was to start financially investing in my future—AKA, establishing a better savings system. And not only have I opened a savings account, but I’ve been saving a percentage of money every time it falls into my hands. This has all worked toward my goal of financial freedom and helped me fund things like resources for my writing or travel trips.
Health
As with the start of a new year, “establish a fitness routine” once again made it onto my list of goals. I actually did quite well with this—for the first month or so. Which again, isn’t really out of the ordinary for this type of goal, I don’t think. Every month, I’ll try to start up my running or at-home yoga schedule again, but I always find a way to make excuses for why I can’t work out the next day.
Sometimes you find that maybe you’ve set a goal that you don’t really care about, but it sounded productive and it fit into this category of your manifest so you put it in there anyway. This actually ends up being counter-productive to the whole “manifesting your destiny” idea. Be critical about the items you put in your manifest. Make sure they’re things you actually care about and will devote time into. I may have to revisit my fitness routine goal for my next manifest.
Home
Moving out of my parents house has been on my manifest list since 2019. I moved back home to sort out my life, and while I haven’t exactly sorted anything out yet, I told myself 2020 was the year to get back out into the world with more independence. Understandably, I haven’t really made any moves to leave my house since quarantining first started but we’re still keeping this one in our thoughts—maybe by online apartment hunting once a week when I can’t sleep at night or something like that.
Travel
I, unfortunately, was the most excited about this part of my 2020 Manifest. I had planned to go on some type of trip or adventure at least once a month this year. The spring season didn’t see a lot of any kind of travel, but with this part of my manifest being somewhat vague, I have started re-working some trips into short-term getaways or solo road trips. I have also changed my way of thinking about traveling—specifically financially. While you definitely do need money to travel, there are ways to get to your dream destination—even without a big girl job and even without thousands of dollars. I’ve invested a lot of time into learning more about budget travel and I’m really excited to build off of that in my travel goals for 2021.
Love
Dating hasn’t exactly been in the cards this year, due to a lot of different circumstances. But I’ve been true to my word and have been a lot more open to the idea since having spent so many years out of the game. Yes, I am accepting applications for my latest lover. That was definitely just a joke; I think what I really need is a “How to Flirt Flawlessly” guideline or something.
Fun and Self
In 2020, I’ve gotten my fifth ear piercing, dyed my hair, traveled solo, learned a new language (or am actively learning), and started a new hobby. Not bad for somebody who’s typically so productivity minded.
I think it’s clear that even I’m not an expert on creating manifests or even the idea of “manifesting your destiny” as a whole. But I’ve accomplished so much more by changing the way I think about these big dreams of mine. And I hope that you took something away about creating your dream life too.
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So, is it really that easy? Can you really just manifest the kind of life you want to live? This is one of those topics that I feel like could take you in so many different directions, but I love hearing what other people think about it. Let me know what your thoughts and opinions are in the comments section down below! Also, I’m so thankful for those of your that have stuck around for the entire post!
So, I have some really exciting news for all of you… I’ve been keeping it to myself for a while now, but I think it’s finally time to share it. I’m publishing a new book! On Sunday, 18 October, my second poetry collection, Poems About You, goes on sale on Amazon! Full of Poetry’s favorite topic—love—Poems About You follows a full zig-zag type journey through the magic of falling in—and out of—love. I’m seriously beyond happy I get to share this collection with you. This book and my style of writing has grown and changed since the release of my debut collection, SPACES, so there’s so much more descriptive story and emotion for you to explore. As we get closer and closer to publication day I’ll have more and more updates for you guys, so keep an eye out for that!
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samanthasabio 