Manifesting for a Skeptic
Photo by Blair Baker
I am a Type A, control freak, and I don’t see it as a bad thing. I think that my Type A qualities make me motivated, passionate, and a hard worker. I am a strong believer in if you don’t like a way part of your life looks, change it. In the past, I had been able to harness control over my friendships, my grades, and my future. If I want something to happen, I do everything in my power to make it happen. Ask me my five-year plan, I dare you. It’s my lullaby that I fall asleep to most nights and colors my daydreams. You can imagine that the things out of my control are the root of deep anxieties. Want to challenge a control freak? Enter COVID-19.
Fundamental stepping stones in my five-year plan crumbled beneath my feet. It wasn’t just a shakeup of plans, rather it was a steep cliff leading into an unknown future, and I didn’t have anything to grasp. There I was. There we all were. Falling, falling into the unknown. No one wants to fall, but in falling, every person has a choice. Do you panic and cry in terror, or do you enjoy the cool breeze rushing across your face and trust there will be a soft tuft of grass to land on, preferably with daisies? I chose to panic and cry. My chest tightened, and it stayed that way. The anticipated two weeks of the pandemic became three, and now we’re at about seven months. You can’t live with the tight chest feeling for more than a few weeks. It’s unbearable.
Here is my integral choice. Do I push the air deep into my chest, in an attempt to break up the tension? I forced the air in.
Last year in a class, I was tasked with writing a six-word memoir: “Trapped in thought, set me free.” A plea to escape from the voracious waves of thoughts. In the sharpness of an inhale and the deep peace of an exhale, I found a placid moment of peace where I turned my chin up to the sun, closed my eyes, and was still. I found a place where “set me free,” turned from a desire to be freed to the way I was freed. My own mind set me free.
Maybe the things out of my control can be put into my control? The issue is that the videos of claims like, “I manifested abs,” seemed out of reach to me, but the concept of attraction theory made sense. The logical side of me had learned in psych classes that attraction is based on proximity and similarity. This counters, “opposites attract,” by saying that you are actually attracted to those like you. Okay, so how do I manifest things into my life? I become the things I want. I want a job. I want loving friendships in my new city. How do I become those things in their absence? When I am working, I feel motivated, driven, and creative. In friendships, I feel excited, loved, and blissful. These are emotions I can achieve. I can find moments of productivity and creativity in side-projects and passions. I can feel loved by my friends from afar and excited and blissful in the simple company of myself. What will come of it, I don’t know. But what I do know is that I am working on finding everything I need right now, within myself.
Blair Baker is a recent graduate from Emory University. You can find more about Blair at: BlairBaker.biz.