CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS: THOUGHTS BECOME THINGS

ONE OF THE most valuable things I ever learned was that our thoughts become things. What we put our minds to becomes our reality. Manifesting is a word you may have come across. Maybe you’re into it, maybe you’re like, “That’s a little ‘woo’ for me,” but it’s a thing.

The goal is to manifest what we want by focusing on what we desire and taking intentional steps to make those things reality, but it’s also possible to manifest what we don’t want by becoming overly fixated on them. For example, have you ever been so worried about making a mistake that your hands were shaking or you were distracted and made the exact mistake you were worried about making? Have you ever ordered a “coffee, no cream” and been handed a cup with lots of cream in it because the word “cream” was what came through super clear whereas the word “no” was less emphasized?

When there’s something we want to accomplish, we’re conditioned to think we need to hustle like crazy to make it happen without giving much attention to the nature of our thoughts and to how we’re taking care of ourselves and holding that space for what we want. An example might be working around the clock and letting stress rule our thoughts and actions without questioning where that stress is coming from and what effects it’s having on our situation. While it’s still beneficial to organize and prepare (think: a business plan for the year ahead, a book outline), doing the inner work on ourselves is when a lot of people see the real magic happen. When I say “inner work,” I don’t mean anything that far out there—I mean exploring our feelings and beliefs and taking thoughtful steps to shift what needs shifting. Inner work could be journaling, therapy, meditation, mindfulness, or another practice that helps you tune in.

Similarly, what we read and write can also seep into our minds. Have you ever typed something you were saying out loud or vice versa?

It’s easy to get distracted from your goals and from the positive thoughts you’re trying to nurture, so reminders to redirect your thinking can be so helpful. One of my favorite little hacks is to change your passwords to reflect your goals or the mind-set you’re trying to cultivate. For example, if there’s a word or phrase that sums up what you’re working toward, something that makes you feel happy or uplifted, or even an income goal, work it in. It’s a tiny drop in the bucket, but considering how many times per day we’re asked to enter passwords, it can add up, big-time.

I spoke with holistic wealth coach and author of Beautiful Money, Leanne Jacobs, about looking at the big picture of what you want—and why it’s important to reframe your journey as a story about energy management.

Identify What You Want

Whoever came up with that business about “Don’t say your wish out loud or it won’t come true” was full of shit. Don’t be afraid to get really, really clear about what you want to accomplish or what you want to see in your life. Similar to how we say, “Awareness is the first step,” you have to declare what you want to manifest. Knowing where you want to go gives you a destination so you can ask yourself along the way, “Is this helping me get to where I want to be?”

Resist the Urge to Compartmentalize

We often look at themes like money, health, and relationships as separate, but Jacobs stresses, “It’s about balance. Sometimes we get a little too hooked or attached to one particular dimension. Maybe we’re overly attached to work or obsessed with nutrition to the point where we put ten labels on how we eat and who we are, which becomes unhealthy. Our goal is to remain open and flexible and kind and loving, and the more labels we put on ourselves, the more it makes our energy system brittle.”

Everything is a part of a whole, she explains. When looking to make a change or manifest something we want, “It’s about scanning our body and our life as well as scanning our fear and how our issues can affect health.”

So if you’re looking to manifest something in one area of your life, assess how other areas factor in. For example, when I was first trying to grow my private practice, I had to take an honest look at how some of my other work commitments were impacting my sleep habits, which in turn had an effect on how I came across at networking events, on calls with potential clients, and online in my blog and social media.

Make It About Energy

Jacobs believes we need to shift from being time managers to energy managers in order to get to our next level of prosperity, success, and health. “We need to graduate from hustling,” she emphasizes. “Yes, we have to know how to manage time, but once you have that down, it’s more about being mindful of where we hemorrhage energy and the poor choices that are keeping us unhealthy.” You can be eating all the kale (or whatever stereotypically healthy food you can imagine) but if you’re leaking energy and burning yourself out in other areas of your life, you’re never going to get to that place of optimal wellness.

Expect That What You Want Is Coming

“We want to train and instruct the subconscious to command what we want”—not in a super controlling or fearful type of way, says Jacobs, but in a positive way that makes us feel excited and hopeful. When we’re in that open-minded, optimistic state, we may have an easier time receiving or spotting next steps we might not notice if we were feeling down or burned out.

While I’m usually the first to roll my eyes at that Cinderella “someday-my-prince-will-come” thing, if you think about it, she so truly believed that this dude was on his way, you might say she manifested the situation that led her to make his acquaintance at the ball.

That doesn’t mean you can be lazy or avoid putting in the work. For example, if Cinderella had told her fairy godmother to get lost or if she had refused to get in the pumpkin carriage and insisted her prince was supposed to literally come to her doorstep, the outcome of the story would have been quite different because she would have just sat at home waiting all night.

I mean, sure, we don’t have real-life gourd wagons hauling us around, but being open to recognizing which things could lead us to our destination can be valuable. Maybe it’s an invitation to an event that’s intriguing but outside your comfort zone, maybe it’s a chance meeting with someone new, maybe it’s reading a line in a book that fell open on the floor that gives you a brilliant idea and propels you toward your goal.

Choose Your Tools

Any little tool that helps you expect that what you desire is on its way helps, explains Jacobs, so when you’re feeling low-energy or slipping into a negative headspace, that tool can help us feel a little bit more hopeful so we stay in a positive, open mind-set.

There are so many tools you can use to help manifest things. You can try vision boards, affirmations, journaling, crystals, and plenty more where that came from. Choose what speaks to you.

Jacobs shares, “I like Kundalini mantras. I don’t use them just for money, but I will pick one that may focus on abundance or on prosperity if that’s how I feel that day. My phone is also always programmed with podcast episodes and e-books, so that when I’m on the go I can use those to program my subconscious toward prosperity and abundance.”

She’s also a fan of affirmations, often tweaking ones she likes so that the message rings true on a deeper level. If something you hear or read resonates with you, you can tweak it slightly so that it most accurately reflects what you want and how you want to feel. “When it’s your own wording, your cells are going to believe it more than if you take someone else’s because it sounds good.” She also likes to use a tool like Canva, a graphic-design tool website, to make it look pretty.

And, like me, Jacobs is a fan of changing your passwords to reflect a specific goal, be it an income goal, a mind-set you want to cultivate, or something else that speaks to you.

Commit to New Wiring

“I think our caveman brain is wired to wait until there’s a crisis to move,” says Jacobs. “We’re all good at being obsessively busy and chaotic. We don’t need to work on that. I think we need to be more focused on the inner work of disciplining the five senses not to be unhealthily attached” to things that don’t serve us.

“The brain is a muscle that has to be built,” she adds. “It’s new wiring we have to commit to, and it takes a lot of practice. It’s a daily practice. One of my teachers said, ‘The ego is really smart and very persistent.’ We’re going to make breaks and breakthroughs and feel really amazing, and then we’ll have a day where our ego and our old habits take over and we feel like we’re going backward, and we have to just learn to be at peace with the humanity of it all and not be so hard on ourselves.”

Those challenging times, after all, can give us valuable insight into where we struggle (for example, how fear, stress, and anxiety can hijack our thought patterns and actions) so that we can learn helpful strategies to handle those situations.

Looking at how different facets of your life align with your values is another way to weed out what doesn’t serve the big picture. “If we don’t align with our values, we’re doing a job we don’t like, we’re in a relationship that’s toxic, or we’re not taking care of ourselves, we’ll get complacent, and it’s easy to get stuck in that unhealthy space where we can’t feel the fire” that keeps us self-motivated and confident. “I do believe there is a correlation between powerful self-motivation and self-esteem.”

Make Rituals Part of Your Self-Care Routine

To be more magnetic, says Jacobs, “I truly believe that when we’re taking care of our health and looking at the body, our energetic system is wider, denser,” and helps attract what we desire.

“I believe that self-care rituals strengthen our energy system to a level that will draw the world in. If we’re not taking care of ourselves, we likely won’t draw what we desire to the same level or with the same speed that we would if we were feeling amazing.”

Jacobs explains that, rather than getting lost going down the to-do-list and research rabbit holes, “If I’m looking to manifest something specific, I always start with my own energy system and ask myself, ‘What do I need to shift inside to draw that into me?’ I do feel that rituals in self-care are so much more powerful than we think.”

An example she gives is that if someone is working on their financial health, “It may become a ritual practice for somebody to check their credit score each week” as just a part of their self-care upkeep, not unlike how we look at brushing our teeth or some similarly mundane activity.

One of her personal go-to rituals is, “When I’m feeling chaotic, I go to my drawer that holds my utility bills and I clean them out and pay them all off, and instantly I feel healthier. I consider that a health ritual more than a money ritual.”

Keep It Simple

“It is sometimes hard to sustain if we do too many rituals,” says Jacobs. As we talked about in the chapter on routine, you don’t have to rise before dawn every morning to do a two-hour meditation or spend exorbitant amounts of money on treatments and gear.

Jacobs likes to point out that many of the best rituals are free—like drinking water or taking a bath. If yoga is your thing, you can find amazing low-cost and no-cost resources. Libraries are a great place for books.

Generally speaking, though, says Jacobs, “Anything that will lighten how dense we feel is a health practice.”