Manifesting Perfect Moments (Even for a Second)

It’s 2022. Am I weird that I don’t actively think about manifesting? Manifesting is all about goal-setting, right? We talk a lot about goal-setting on our blogs and podcast and it’s a subject that’s near and dear to me. This year one of my goals is to manifest great moments in my life. 

Dave Elkins from MAE

Recently, one of my coworkers and I went to a concert of my favorite band, MAE (Multisensory Aesthetic Experience), at the Granada Theater in Dallas and it was a perfect night to manifest great moments. Normally, I would leave with the crowd afterward but she convinced me to stay behind and see if we could catch the band. I’m glad I listened to her because I actually got to meet my favorite singer, Dave Elkins. This moment was special to me for two reasons: The first was that I was at their initial Granada concert when they came to Dallas seventeen years earlier and the second is that MAE was actually one of the things that got me through quarantine two years ago.

Dave Elkins and I

Aside from being incredibly nervous talking to my favorite singer, I told him that his music literally saved my life. He asked me to elaborate. Quarantine was a dark time for me. Not only was I isolated from my friends and my family, but I was also stuck 24 hours a day with my then-husband. Being stuck with someone that you don’t normally spend much time with (because I work a lot) can go one of two ways: endless gratefulness for the time spent together, or realization that maybe there was a reason I subconsciously elected to stay at work long hours at a time. 

When the pandemic started, Dave started giving acoustic concerts every Saturday on the band’s Facebook page. You can watch those videos here. I lived for those Saturday concerts. I eagerly waited for the setlists to come out every Wednesday in anticipation of his upcoming acoustic shows. I watched and commented and sang along to the music. That was one of the only things keeping me going during the pandemic other than work. When MAE announced they were touring again, I was ecstatic. I constantly checked their website for tour updates in the hope they would come to Texas. Finally, they announced a fifteen-year anniversary tour of their second album, The Everglow, and they had planned dates in Texas. I knew I had to attend the concert. Surprisingly enough, my work friend got us tickets and gave them to me as a secret Santa gift.

I don’t often claim favorites in my life unless I like everything about that particular thing, and this includes everything from bands to authors. If I claim something as my favorite, I’m going in full force. I ran across the band MAE in 2003 after they released their first single “Embers and Envelopes” from their debut album Destination: Beautiful, and quickly bought their CD. I loved every single one of their songs because I thought their laid-back music embodied my personality. I always described my love for the band as if my soul could represent a form of music, it would be their music. Over the years, MAE has been the one band that I consistently followed despite only attending one of their concerts before.

After the concert, Dave and I talked for a while. We talked about quarantine and the last time the band played at the Granada. He ended up giving me a copy of the setlist, and the band members signed it for me. Not often do I get to experience moments that I describe as perfect. To me, perfection rarely exists, and the beauty of life is in its flaws. But, that night, the stars seemed to align at that moment at that concert, and it took me back to all the moments I spent in 2020 listening to Facebook live. In those quarantine moments, the world was uncertain. We didn’t know when or if life would go back to normal. Slowly but surely, two years later, I am doing things again like going to concerts or the movies that I hadn’t done since the fall of 2019. When it comes to healing, all it takes is time.

I want to hear from my readers. What was one thing that got you through quarantine? Let’s continue the conversation on our Facebook Group: MMC Chat and on our Facebook Page.

Out With the Old

It’s the summer of 2014 and I’m standing in the house I grew up in amongst the trash and remnants of my childhood. I feel sadness about the years of neglect as the last of the boxes are hastily packed in a moving truck and carted off to storage. When does a bit of clutter turn into the tendency to hoard?

Hoarding is the difficulty of parting with possessions because of a perceived need to save them. When we think of hoarding, we often think of the popular television show that airs on A&E. Those, of course, are extreme cases of hoarding. I never thought that it could run in my family. However, according to Psychiatry.org, hoarding does run in the family, and I fight my tendency to hoard constantly because I love to shop. That summer, my dad was downsizing from a three-bedroom house to a two-bedroom apartment, and I discovered that my parents kept everything. They never threw anything away. As I was going through 20-year-old bills and throwing away food that was years out of date, I thought to myself that I would never become a hoarder to this extent.

Boy, was I wrong!

At the time, my mom explained to me the sentimentality of 40 plus years of marriage, and how one just “collects” things over the years. Yeah, I got that, but I only had a few possessions that I could never get rid of. I will admit that I am a book hoarder; I’ve kept every book that I ever read, and carried every book (including a dictionary collection) with me every time I moved once I turned 18 – and I moved every two years. I couldn’t fathom hoarding bills and receipts as my mom had done. I regularly shredded my mail. I have never been a fan of clutter, but it was something I dealt with growing up. I always remembered our house being so full of things that it was oftentimes hard to walk through.

As an adult, I thought I was done with the clutter and the hoarding, but then I married a hoarder. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my ex-husband did little things that bothered me, like never throwing away trash, and it reminded me of my dad in the sense that he didn’t throw away trash either. They say women tend to marry their fathers, and I felt like I was always picking up after both of them. Throughout our relationship, my ex and I also began to pick up clutter and possessions. After we moved from a three-bedroom house to a two-bedroom, I realized that we had become hoarders. We kept everything that anyone had ever given us, and it was hard to neatly organize our living space.

When quarantine hit in 2020, I suddenly had to teach from home, and I found I had no space in which to even set up a desk. My ex-husband and I had so much stuff that we were navigating through little trails to get through our house and the piled-up boxes. Deja vu. After our separation, I made some SMART goals that would get me through 2021 and one of them was to get rid of the clutter.

Christen gave me some sage advice when I started the process. She quoted Marie Kondo, “look at everything and ask yourself, ‘does this make me happy?’” So, I did. It took me three months and about 10 trips to the thrift store to downsize my life after my divorce. I went through every possession I owned and considered whether it made me happy. When I was done, I no longer felt like a hoarder. I felt great…accomplished.

So, why does getting rid of stuff feel so good?

According to the article “Why Getting Rid of Stuff Feels So Good” by Shifrah Combiths, there are several reasons why getting rid of stuff makes us feel so good, but the reason that resonates with me the most is that “separating from the past can heal” and that is what I did. I hung on to so many things because there was a sentimental value attached to them. I didn’t want to get rid of certain things because “my mom gave it to me” or “my dad used it” at this certain time. But, I realized that possessions aren’t memories, and I can still keep the memories of my parents within me without keeping every single thing that they owned. That, in itself, was freeing.

So, whenever I tend to hoard or my house gets to the point where the clutter is out of control, I remember that moment I had eight years ago when I realized that there is such a thing as “too much.”

Are you a clutter bug? Are there things that you keep and you don’t know why? Let me know in the comments, and let’s continue the conversation in our Facebook Group.

You can find Marie Kondo’s website here.

Heard It on the Podcast - March 23, 2022

 

Did you miss a link we mentioned on the podcast? Here's a quick post we'll do every Wednesday to share any links or information from the podcast. We'll also keep a running post on the "Links from the Podcast" tab so you can refer back to any previous episode. Here's the links for this week:

23-MAR-2022

S2E13: Manifesting

• One Little Word by Ali Edwards:  https://aliedwards.com/projects/one-little-word
• Cultivate What Matters and Power Sheets:  https://cultivatewhatmatters.com/pages/about
• Christine Kane:  https://christinekane.com/about/
• The Secret (Book):  https://amzn.to/3sIokef
• The Secret (Movie):  https://amzn.to/3ChRfsL
• M. Night Shaymalan's Signs:  https://amzn.to/3hJ2h0I
• What Kind of Clutterbug Are You? (Quiz):  https://clutterbug.me

* *Please note, as an Amazon Affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

Vision Boards: Are they Magical, Scientific, or Just Fun?

 Hi there, it’s Christen!

This week on the blog and podcast we have been talking about vision boards! Cindy discussed various types of vision boards and Amber discussed how they can be artistic as well as inspirational and educational. I wanted to touch up on the aspect of vision boards being used for manifesting - and how the process works. 

When I was younger, I thought of vision boards as a big collage that I could create with images that I liked; a display of my style or images that expressed me visually. When I think about vision boards now, I see this powerful tool that anyone can use, a tool that wills your desires to life. So when I said, “Hey let's talk about vision boards”, what I really wanted to talk about is the power to manifest- through vision boards. 

First I want to touch on what manifesting is. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the word manifest (verb) means to show something clearly, through signs or actions. Hence, manifesting means visible evidence is produced or occurs based on some sort of action. Think of the concept of cause and effect; action/thought creates a reaction.

The term manifesting has been trending all over social media for the past few years, but influencers that walked this earth centuries before the invention of social media have long been attesting to the power of the mind. The commonality is that our mindset is the origin of our life's blessings. Consider these:

“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

– Mark 11:24

"The universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you already are."

- Rumi

“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

- Newton’s third law

Newton was talking about physical science, but it is still relevant. We are talking about bringing something into reality with thought and action. Now, we are going to take a deeper dive into what the act of manifesting is in a later discussion, so I don’t want to take you down that rabbit hole today. I just want to give you a little taste of what it is, if you have not heard of it before. 

I highly recommend the book “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne. You can also watch a piece on Netflix about it - I actually recommend that first, because it's a quick watch with a high impact. It is a great source of inspiration and information on how to manifest by using the law of attraction, which is, in-a-nutshell, a condensed version of the Hermetic Principles. “The Secret” explains it in a way that is easy to understand. All you have to do is think positively about what you want (and not about what you don’t want), believe that it will come to you, and it will manifest into your life. 

How does manifesting work with vision boards, you ask? There are a few questions you will need to ask yourself to help get you started. Following this process will take your simple collage from just an artistic expression to something that not only looks good, but will work for you behind the scenes. 

1. Determine what you want to manifest. Are you wanting to manifest a better version of you? Do you have a specific goal in mind, or some area in your life that you want to improve? 

2. Envision you at your best self; what are you doing, what is around you, what is your day like? Sit and close your eyes for a moment. Stop and really speak to yourself. Get a detailed glimpse of what you want in your mind.

3. What actions do you need to take to get to that best version of yourself or reach the goal?

4. Now you are ready to collect images. Ensure that your vision board includes images and words that relate to your best self, your goal or whatever it is that you want to manifest. Pick out images that speak to you. Avoid any images that are things you don’t want.

The act of creating your vision board is enough to start the process. Now that you have created your vision board though, the idea is to keep it where you can see it everyday. I believe that this is a key component to making the vision board work. When you look upon it, even for a microsecond, your subconscious is reminded of this best self you have envisioned. Consistently triggering your subconscious is an important part of the process. Since your subconscious is being triggered often with these images, your mind will take actions (or thought processes will generate choices) that you may not even notice making. This will lead you towards things related to your vision that you see in real life. If you are interested in the science behind this, a great starting point to read is this article in Psychology Today. 

In short, just hang that vision board up where you can see it often, and let it do its thing - or you do your thing. Whatever you believe, whether it magically comes to fruition, you are tricking your subconscious, or you just like to make pretty collages that make you feel good, it doesn't matter; what does matter is that you are doing something for yourself that makes you feel good, and you are surrounding yourself with positive imagery. 

What do you think? Are vision boards effective? Have  you made one and seen the power in action? I would love to know what you think in the comments. Don’t forget to follow us on social media, and continue the conversation in our Facebook Group MMC Chat.

*Please note, as an Amazon Affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases.