Manifestation?

It’s been quite a while since I shared anything! The last year has been super busy just not on the public front. I’ve got lots to say though so here’s a start on my recent thoughts.

Hope you enjoy the read - CZ.

On her first visit to our new house in France a friend said to me, ‘you are the mistress of manifestation’. 

That quite took me aback. 

Of course I’ve read Rhonda Byrne’s books (amongst others!) but I had never thought of myself as buying into this ethos. Frankly, I found Byrne’s theories a little scary because TO ME all that ‘attraction’ held the dreadful danger that actually the negative thoughts were stronger than the positive ones, and how did I know that I wasn’t attracting the wrong stuff? 

And then I watched others who had ‘bought in’ become what seemed obsessively focused on thinking only about the positives or the things they WANTED to attract, and somehow it all seemed fear-based, which I really didn’t like. I’ve also never made a vision board, and my first husband had put me right off ‘affirmations’. 

I’ve never written a coherent ‘Five Year Plan’ or actually had much of a plan at all – frankly, any planning I undertook didn’t really pan out; life had its own ideas, it seems. BUT – I found myself looking at my water lily bowl yesterday and I clearly remember seeing so many of them in Bali, Thailand and Malaysia and saying to myself, one day I’m going to have one of those …. and now I do. 

And it’s true that I had said in 2022 that we would have a house in France and now we do.  And a surprising number of my friends said ‘ah!  So you did it!’  
And indeed there is a whole new life being lived, both material and immaterial, that when I look at it is so much of what I wanted and am so incredibly grateful to have.

But did I manifest it? Ever since our days in Oman, where everything was ‘inshallah’, I have said, ‘God helps those who help themselves’.  I meant it then and I mean it now. If you want something, you have to work towards it.

First, you have the idea, then you take the steps to put it into action. Whether it’s a thing, or a way of life … there’s no mystery to it. See, here’s the thing. Nothing, nothing happens overnight. Nothing is given.  Everything is a journey.

And every journey has to be walked, one step at a time. Sometimes there are detours, sometimes the detours become the destination because things change along the way – you change, circumstances change, the world changes. And when you get to the ‘destination’ you realise that it’s not a stopping point – far from it! 

Now you have new ideas, new thoughts, new developments – because you learned from the journey itself. THIS is the enormous value of learning to be present. Focusing or dreaming of the future – focusing on the manifestation - cannot possibly work if you aren’t rooted in the present, taking each step at a time and living your life on the way. 

So manifestation?  No.
The result of hard work and planning?  Yes.

But it’s the work itself – the journey itself – taking each step at a time – that is the real magic. Not the dream.  Learning to do that isn’t easy. It’s taken years, and I’ve had a wonderful amount of help along the way – my own coaches, Sifus, trainers.  So please don’t think you need to do it alone. 

A coach helps you keep it real, keep you grounded and keep you from fear by helping you find what you need in yourself, staying present, living your life while you’re getting wherever it is you are going. Because that’s already there with you, today. Not in the future, though that may well be rosy.