The first step to manifesting anything is to know what you want. It doesn’t matter we’re talking about tonight’s dinner options or your life’s purpose.
But what if you DON’T KNOW what you want? That’s a common problem, you know – especially among people who grew up hearing a lot of “because I said so” from their parents. Childhood is when human beings learn how to want and wish and expect it to come true. Some children aren’t allowed that freedom. It has nothing to do with how much money their families have, but with how their parents nurture their dreams.
So what if today, now that you’re no longer a child, you still don’t know what you want? What if you don’t know how to formulate a desire that’s purely for you – not for your family, your partner, your boss, or what society wants you to want?
First, let’s acknowledge that there’s a part of you that always has desires and know what those desires are. It’s your heart – your connection to your soul. And even at times when it feels difficult to connect with your soul, there is a way to figure out what it (you) wants.
In fact, there are multiple ways, but I stumbled upon something new and so crystal clear that I was stunned I hadn’t seen it before.
It’s a way to discern what your heart desires most, with 100% certainty:
Look at what you’re afraid of.
Think about it: The things that you don’t want, you’re neutral toward. You don’t have any feelings about them at all, so there’s no reason to put up resistance to them.
It’s like if someone put brussels sprouts right there in front of you and you don’t like brussels sprouts. They could sit there all night long and you would hardly have a thought about them.
But if someone puts a piece of chocolate cake next to you, or whatever your favorite temptation is, and you’ve already told yourself that you don’t deserve nice things like chocolate cake (which is equivalent to the subconscious programming in many people), then at some point soon you’re gonna have to start coming up with arguments about why that cake is no good anyway, otherwise you will surrender to your natural instinct to enjoy it’s chocolate yumminess.
That’s how it is with heart’s desires too: When there’s something that your soul craves, the magnetic energy emanating from your heart will start drawing it toward you, powerfully and quickly. The only way that thing (situation, person, opportunity, etc.) won’t completely manifest for you is if you push it away. So you create interference by projecting fear-based energy into the situation.
Understand too that this interference might not look like fear. It might be anger, resentment, judgement, guilt, shame…any form of negative resistance you can think of. (At the heart of any of those is fear. All emotions distill down to fear or love, and fear is only lack of love anyway.)
We humans are really good at justifying self-denial, whether it’s chocolate cake, being loved, or abiding in sheer joy and abundance. It’s about time we stopped that, don’t you think?
But in the meantime, by knowing our tendencies toward resistance and self-denial, we can use it as a tool to help us see what secret desires we’re hiding.
So if you want to get clear about what you really want, let your fears point the way.