The Successful Mind Podcast Debunking the Magic of Manifestation in Business
Manifestation. If I had a nickel every time I heard that word I’d have a lot of nickels. Today, there are so many conversations on social media about manifestation. Many people believe you can bring clients into your business just by making an intellectual or emotional adjustment—as if business will magically show up, without you taking any action. This is simply not true. It’s time to take a long look at debunking manifestation in order to better understand how to use it properly to move ahead.
There are certain fundamental business propositions needed to grow a business. You can’t just vibrate your way into getting what you want. You can’t wave a magic wand and manifest clients, money, and leads out of nowhere. People see manifestation as a magic pill. But the truth is, business requires you to learn things like marketing and sales. You have to make presentations, sell, and get past your own insecurities. Receiving money is based on the Law of Cause and Effect.
In today’s episode, we discuss:
- The experience of being a facilitator for Bob Proctor—and why I was able to fill seminars, yet my peers struggled and eventually went out of business
- How people hear what they want to hear—and avoid taking action on things they don’t want to do (people had magical thinking about manifestation long before The Secret came out)
- How to manifest what you want—and why being clear on what you want is the first step
- Why you must build an image in your mind of the thing you want, impress it on your subconscious mind, and get emotionally involved in seeing it via your imagination
- How constant space repetition speeds up the process of getting what you want
- How we think in frequencies via the Law of Vibration—and this tells your mind what to focus on
You can’t reach a goal without growth, and growth requires action. It doesn’t happen when you sit and think.
The manifestation process is triggered by a decision. You have to make a decision and take action. Decide that you’re going to create the outcome you want. Whether you’re inventing something, trying to reach a goal—e.g., a money goal, a physical goal, a health goal—or wanting to buy a house or car, it all starts with making a decision. Nothing happens without a decision.
Links & Additional Resources
Episode 289 – Six Steps to Manifestation
Inside Episode 314 – The Hidden Path: Truth in Manifestation
Episode 522 – Recreational Manifestation
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Steph
David, how’s it going?
David
It’s going pretty damn well.
Steph
Same here. Same here. The topic of today’s podcast that we’ve previously agreed upon is manifestation.
David
Yes. The old manifester, huh?
Steph
Boy, I think if I had a nickel for every time I either heard that word, read that word, like, I would have a lot of nickels.
David
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, so to be fair for everybody to understand, what we’re talking about is that as we are looking at different conversations that are happening via social media, various other areas, there’s this conversation around bringing business into one’s business through the use of manifestation as if it’s a thing. When you and I first started talking about this, I was thinking to myself, this is really interesting that this is still an issue, because I go back with this where it was an issue before The Secret came out.
Steph
The first time I actually heard about manifestation was The Secret.
David
Yeah. And even I know for a fact that later in Proctor’s life, I don’t know that he regretted doing it, being in The Secret, but he was not happy with what they portrayed. He didn’t have any say over the production value of that program. But the thing was, they made it sound like you could just vibrate your way into manifesting what it is that you want, and it’s not true. And he went around. I mean, for the later years of his life, he went around telling people that’s not true. Like, you’re hearing you’re hearing the bits and pieces that you want to hear, but it’s absolutely not true. Which brings me to an interesting story, because I go back before The Secret.
People hear what they want to hear, right? People hear what they want to hear. Anyway, when I first started in this business, I was a facilitator for Bob Proctor. What does that mean? That means that in the late 90s, he decided that part of his dream was that he wanted facilitators all over the world teaching his programs. And I was in the very first group that was offered to buy the right and to be trained to be able to teach his seminars as a business. It was an interesting situation because there were a lot of people that loved the material, that would have loved to be able to figure out, well, how do I get to where Bob Proctor is? Or how do I get to where Tony Robbins is? It was a very unclear goal back in the 90s, right? I mean, you saw somebody at Proctor and Roan and Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield and Tony, and there were people that wanted to do that as a living.
You’d hear in conversations when you would go to seminars like, damn, I wish I knew how to do what they were doing. But the steps were very unclear as to how you actually get there to turn this into a business. Anyway, I got to benefit from them literally creating, like, a first step situation. Here’s a step, we’ll teach you how to teach a seminar. You don’t have to create your own material. We’ll give you some fundamentals as to how to start the business. And the fundamentals back then were really bare bones.
It was pretty much, how do you get a hotel, right? How do you get a hotel to a ballroom, rent a space in a hotel? How do you kind of set up the chairs and the tables and that type of thing? And how do you run a seminar? And that really was it. So, I had gone to enough seminars over a period of time that I had some ideas as to how some of this worked.
And I had been coaching with Bob for a little while, so I dove in head first into becoming a facilitator. And the first program that I learned how to facilitate was The Science of Getting Rich. I eventually learned how to do all of his seminars, and that was it. It was your own business. Here’s the box, right? You buy the product from him, and you go out there, you find your own people, you fill your own seminars. He had nothing to do with it from that standpoint. They gave a little training throughout the year, but not much as far as how do you actually put butts in seats?
And so, I figured it out really quick. I didn’t have a choice to not figure it out. I wasn’t going out of business. I figured it out really quick. I was putting a ton of people in seats. I was making money. I was doing good, and they noticed it.
And they said to me, Bob called me. He said, we got a problem. I want you to know if you’ll help me out. And I said, what is it? He said, well, the other people that bought this, the facilitator stuff, they’re not selling anything. And I said, none of them. He said no, not really. So, he wanted to know if I’d be willing to go to Toronto. And I would go up, I think it was a couple of times a month, and work on training them how to sell. How do you sell? How do you fill these seats? I was on cloud nine when he asked me that. That was like a dream. I was excited. Those are exciting times for me. And I did, and I went up there, and I started working with these folks. They started coming in, and we started working with them.
And what we found out was what I found out was very interesting was that almost without exception, now, of course, I didn’t have a conversation with every single one, but basically, this is the situation. Every one of them, when they bought the rights to be able to teach those programs, they were really stuck in magical thinking as to how people would show up in the room. They thought just because they bought this, that if they put their shingle out there and said, I’m a Bob Proctor facilitator, that people would just show up in the room, and they really believed it, and they were shocked when it didn’t happen.
And then you could kind of see a little defensiveness happening when you said, well, you know, you have to actually learn how to sell this. You have to go make presentations. You have to go to find people that are actually going to buy this. And people shut down really, really fast because they were really stuck. You could tell that there was a lot about the information that they did not understand when it came to manifesting, when it came to the Law of Vibration, when it came to how do I manifest this, that or the other in my life.
They thought it was about just an emotional adjustment and then everything would start showing up. And that’s when I learned, because I never had that. I never thought that. But that’s when I learned that people really hear what it is that they want to hear, and they deflect the rest, the things that they’re actually afraid of.
So it was a fascinating experience because there were a few people that we were able to teach that got past their own insecurities. That did a little bit of work. They did a little bit of work for a while, but the interesting thing about it was that, so that’s like 24 years ago now that I did that, there’s not one of those people that are left. And it’s not because they weren’t passionate about the material. Everybody was just as passionate as I was about it. They all had experiences in their life where going to those seminars made a difference in certain areas. But they couldn’t get past the idea that was stuck in their head. That if they just changed their emotions and that would show up and people would get indignant about it, Steph, they’d be like, this is the way that it should be. And it’s like, where did you get this idea?
And I used to sit back and think sometimes like. Did they say this in a seminar somewhere, am I missing something? And the answer was no. The answer was that they did use the terminology. They talked about the Law of Vibration. But for those of you that are listening to this podcast, I want you to think about something because we are on the other side of The Secret phenomenon. I’m talking about before The Secret. I’m talking about many years. About eight years before The Secret ever wasn’t even an idea. That was not the language that was being used at the time. It wasn’t like the Law of Attraction and you just vibrated your way into something happening. I mean, the Hicks people were teaching the Law of Attraction and they did teach about adjusting emotions, but they never in any way said that you didn’t have to do anything, that stuff would just show up. But they were also off kind of more on a spiritual idea of what they were doing. But there was nothing like this.
So this was I think this started off with the idea of people getting very excited. Of course, all of us that do these seminars we’re all salesmen, right?
We were very good at selling. We’re very good at presenting. We’re very good at making the material seem exciting. That’s our job to do that. We’re very good at teaching it.
And people then they kind of go into this place where they hear what they want to hear because they want the result. But changing is actually scary for them. So, they hold on to something that they can be right about and then they wish that something would change. And then, of course, with The Secret it got really bad because those people that were in the know, those business people that were business people knew that that was complete bullshit. That’s not the way that this was going to work. And then, of course, you had people that went off on their own with it and that kind of just turned into a disaster. But the remnants of it are still out there. You still see people talk about manifesting in this idea that there’s an intellectual or emotional adjustment that they can make and business is going to start just showing up with no outside of the Law of Cause and Effect. Right? They think that’s the cause. Yeah.
Steph
That’s key is that they think. That is going to show up outside of the Law of Cause and Effect. They actually think that the cause of the effect that they want to experience is just them thinking differently without taking any actual action
David
Yeah, absolutely.
Steph
I’m on Facebook. I’m on Instagram. I see all the time, like, manifest science, manifest money, manifest leads. And I think that that term has been used so long, so dysfunctionally, that people see the word manifest and they’re either like, yep, I want that magic pill. I want to learn how to wave my magic wand and manifest what it is that I want in my life, or they see that word and they run for the hills.
David
We’ve had clients quit Steph over the years because they’re so steeped in the idea that there’s another way of doing this and they absolutely refuse to buy into the sales and the marketing that we try to teach them as fundamental business propositions to grow their business. They’re so steeped in the spiritual aspect of it that they just won’t hear it and they’ll quit.
Steph
So I know what the answer is. I’m going to ask you. Anyway, what is manifestation? What is actually manifestation?
David
So, let’s think about it. According to the laws, the manifestation as we know it is the result of Cause and Effect. So, one of the first laws is the Perpetual Transmutation of Energy. Energy is always moving from a non-form into a form and back into a non-form again. What does that mean? Well, energy just is neither created or destroyed. It’s 100% equal in all places at the same time along with the knowledge of that energy. So, if we want to manifest something, what are we talking about? Well, we’re talking about an image in our mind or a desire in our heart to actually experience a real life goal.
I mean, whether you’re inventing something or you’re trying to reach a goal or you’re trying to reach a money goal, a monetary goal, a physical goal, I mean, maybe like a body health type goal, or you want a car, a house or whatever it is. Manifesting it is the receiving of that into your life. And when people talk about manifesting, that’s what they’re talking about. I want to have this thing come into my life. So that’s what that means. But it also means if I want to have that come into my life and I want to use it because I could just say I want to hit the goal. I want to hit a goal of losing 20 lbs. I want to hit the goal of getting a hot new car. I want to hit a goal of having more people come into my business on a regular basis to do business with. I mean we could change the language of it, it means the same thing. There’s nothing mystical, there’s nothing spiritual, there’s nothing weird about the word manifestation. It’s just something that caught on for whatever reason. And I think that it gives people the idea of doing something without having to do things that they don’t like to do.
Steph
So how does someone manifest something?
David
Okay, great question. So the idea is very the first thing is you have to be extremely clear on what it is that you want. Right?
Steph
Let’s say I want a house. I want an oceanfront home.
David
Okay? You want an oceanfront home. So, first of all, let’s talk about what a goal is and what a goal isn’t.
If you want something that you’ve actually done before, that’s not a goal. A goal implies that growth is needed in order to accomplish whatever it is that you want to accomplish. It doesn’t mean that you can’t have something that you’ve had before, but it’s not something that we would ever teach somebody to put in a category of an actual goal. Okay? So that means that if I’m going to pick something that I want and I have to grow, the first thing is I need to get a clear image in my mind of what that is.
Now, there’s a couple of ways of doing that. One is you visually see in your mind. You use your imagination to create the image of what you want. You could either draw that image out on a piece of paper, you could have somebody artistically draw it for you, you could find it in a magazine. Wherever it is that you’re you want you need an image to work with.
You also need to understand on the physical basis of life what do I need to acquire that thing? So you said a house, right. Okay, so if you want to buy an oceanfront house, what is the ocean front house cost and where is it? Right. So we need to know those two things now. Now it moves into the Law of Cause and Effect. The Law of Cause and Effect states that every effect has a cause. You acquiring or manifesting the ocean front house is in effect. What’s the cause of that? The cause of that is that you trade the amount of money that the people want for that house, for the house itself, and it becomes yours. So, if you don’t have the money for it, then based on the Law of Cause and Effect, you have to earn the money. And then there’s, of course, there’s many different ways of this.
Nobody wants to hear it because how are we going to earn the money? Well, when we’re talking about business people earning the money, it is asking somebody else for the money. You’re selling products and services in order to acquire money at a profit so that you can go out and live the dream that you want to live. A profit is key there. It has to be at a profit. Right. If it is any other way. What different ways are there of earning money? You could have a job, You can get a loan, but that’s it, right? It’s a loan, it’s a job. It’s earning the money through some kind of business dealings so that you can have the money to go out and actually buy it.
Just thinking about it’s not going to do anything. Imagining it is not going to do what is necessary based on cause and effect. The reason, do you want me to go to the imagination part of this?
So when you hear somebody like myself say you need to build an image in your mind of the thing that you want and impress it on your subconscious mind to have it. The reason that we impress it on the subconscious mind is to turn the cause and effect of acquiring that thing into a habit. That’s the only reason we’re impressing it into the subconscious mind.
As I impress an idea into the subconscious mind, it becomes a habitual thing that I think about, and it becomes a habitual thing that I do.
So we say, see yourself with the house. See yourself doing the things that are necessary in order to acquire the house. So you’re moving it because you get emotionally involved in seeing that. It’s exciting, it’s fun, it’s a great thing to do. Use your imagination. You move that image into the subconscious mind and you do it over and over again with something called constant spaced repetition.
And it starts off with the habitual way that you think, and then it has to turn into the habitual way that you behave. Anything that you want, that’s a goal, there has to be a change in behavior because behavior is the cause and effect of actually acquiring the thing that you want.
So why do we need to make a habit? Because if we don’t, the subconscious mind is already filled with habits and paradigms in different ways that you conduct your life every day. If we’re going to grow, we have to put new ones in there. Otherwise we repeat the old ones. And the old ones can only give us what we’ve got. They can’t give us any more than we’ve got. So if we’re going to change it, we have to change what’s in the subconscious.
Now, what about the idea of the Law of Vibration? You want me to go and talk about that?
Okay, because this is important, and I think this is probably where people start to get this a little mixed up. When we think, we think in frequencies, just like a radio is operating in frequencies. And I really encourage people to think about it this way because this is exactly how it works. Whatever room you’re in right now probably has at least ten different frequencies of radio stations in that room, at least, if not more, that you can’t hear unless you have a radio that’s actually dialed into that frequency.
But the frequency is in the room. It’s all playing in the room you’re in right now. So, if I have a desire to listen to that, to a rock station, say, in Charlotte, I need a radio, and I need to find out what the frequency is on that radio, and I need to dial it into that station. And instantaneously that music comes in, it comes in in a form where I can hear it, because the radio transfers the signal into something audible to the human ear.
It’s already in the room at a frequency, it’s just not audible to my ear. So, the radio transfers it into an audible sound that I can actually hear. Now, as we think as we think we think on frequencies. What does that mean? Well, it’s interesting. Our mind is both a sending and a receiving station. That means that all of the knowledge that ever was or ever will be is already 100% present in all places at the same time just like the radio waves in a room. The thought frequency of the things that you want and how to get it are in the room that you’re in now. What’s important is that we’re thinking on those frequencies. So, if I build an image of that house, if I build an image of me making sales, if I build an image of me making money, I’m thinking along those frequencies.
What does it do for me to think along those frequencies?
Number one, it’s telling my mind what to focus on. So how do we know that we’re actually experiencing something we’re focused on?
Well, we’ve got five senses. We see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. So what we’re doing is we’re telling our eyes, we’re telling our brilliant senses to see something that we’re currently not aware of. And the idea is that the opportunities that bring us the people that we need, the money that we need, the opportunities that we need, it’s not so much that it actually even shows up, it’s that we can actually see it because we’re focused on it.
They’re always there. Everything that we need is already here. We have to tune our mind and our senses into the frequency in which we can see the opportunity that will allow us to make the sale for the client that will allow us to receive the money that allows us to take that money and pay the person that’s selling the house or get the loan from the bank. But the cause and effect is the action that you take between the frequency and the opportunity to manifest the result that you want
Steph
And the thing that starts this whole process off is the decision.
David
You can’t do anything without the decision.
Steph
And that’s where most people stop before they even start if they want to see the opportunity before they make a decision. Because they bought into the fact that if I just think about this thing, then it’s just going to appear, right? They haven’t made a decision that they will have that thing and then begin to think on the frequency of how to bring that thing like how to create cognitive ability to bring in that thing.
David
Right, and if you were to just have a conversation with them, you could help them realize that there’s nothing else in their life that they acquire that doesn’t come in this way. Generally, when a person is not making a decision, it’s because there is an unrecognized fear going on that is controlling their experience. So, if I say, hey, listen, you want to buy this house on this beach, go out and make these sales and you’ll make the money to do it. And instantly the person is thinking to themselves, I don’t want to be rejected, I don’t want to be seen, right? I don’t know if I’m good enough to do that.
Those are the thoughts that are causing you to make a decision not to do it. So, then we don’t want to let go of the dream. So if there’s any way for us to hold on to it, right, without us having to experience the thing that we’re afraid of, we’ll do that. And that that’s where a false belief like manifesting or the Law of Vibration giving you something for nothing shows up.
Law of Attraction is a secondary law.
Steph
And the idea behind the Law of Vibration is that it puts you in your thoughts, puts you on a plane where you’re able to see opportunities, not where the thing lands in your lap.
David
That’s right.
Steph
And that’s the piece that’s left out of The Secret.
David
And that’s the biggest piece.
Steph
It’s a huge piece. It’s like disconnecting the whole train. Right?
David
And it’s interesting because the argument is that it did good. It did good because the people that really want to know the truth found the truth regardless. But it made a lot of sales based on the idea that you don’t have to do much. And it played off people’s hopes and dreams, in a way, for my understanding, anyway. But the thing is that it really comes down to how much you want it. Because again, there is no goal without growth, and growth requires sacrifice. You have to sacrifice something of a lower nature to gain something of a higher nature.
Steph
You don’t grow when you sit and think.
David
You gather information when you sit and think, which is fine, but then you have to organize that information in a way for you to grow, which means that you have to make a decision. You have to take action. You have to put into employment the Law of Cause and Effect. And then you have to make adjustments as you go based on the results that you’re getting or that you’re not getting.
Steph
And that’s the truth. You can see the whole process, right? You make a decision. You’re super clear on what it is that you want. You’re emotionally attached to it. You have a picture of it in front of you. You then start thinking about how to bring in the money to have the thing that you want, which then puts you on a plane where you can begin to see an opportunity to make that money to pay for what it is you want, which then creates the opportunity, which then you have to take action on.
David
Yes. And if you want to think along magical lines, think about this for a second. The ability to do that is extraordinary. A squirrel doesn’t have the ability to do that. Right? There’s no other form of life that has the ability to do that that we’re aware of, the fact that we do. If you look at all the different things that human beings made, it was first an image in the mind, but they had to work it out in the physical to have it. But the idea that we have the ability to do that is extraordinary.
Steph
You know how I feel about a company’s vision, right? I yell from the rooftops the importance of a vision, because a vision starts this process. You decide what the vision is, and then you get your entire team thinking on the same plane, and then opportunity shows up for everyone on your team to grow toward what it is you want to create with your company that doesn’t just work for individual people. It works for groups, organizations, and companies. It’s how you create the life that you really desire.
David
And everybody gets to bring their expertise to that vision, right? So, it’s just not the fall on the shoulders of one person. It requires a lot of experts in order to create a company vision. So, it’s absolutely essential, and it’s fun and it’s exciting. And the things about it that people kind of poo poo or push away or don’t do is just out of they just don’t know. And if they would just take the time to sit down and learn what it is, they would be so excited about the things that happen in their business. And we know we show people how to do this every day. That’s why we’re in business, because we show them how to do that.
Steph
Yes, very much so. Thanks, David. Great conversation and I hope it cleared up any confusion around manifestation for all of our listeners.
David
Absolutely.
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