As a disabled person, I have a real beef with Manifesting. The Secret, the Law of Attraction, all that kind of stuff gets really dark really fast when you’re sick.
Nobody deserves to think that they’re sick because they brought it on themselves with their mind.
But it’s seductive to believe. It’s nice to think we could have that kind of control over things. Imaginary power is the only power some of us get.
There’s also a grain of truth to it, so it’s easy to get sucked in. We can change our lives by changing our thoughts, but not by manifesting. Through the cognitive model.
The cognitive model is a psychological theory that a lot of our current therapy modalities are based on. It’s essentially: your thoughts influence your feelings, which influence your behavior. How you perceive things affects how you feel about them and what you do about that.
For example: You have an interaction with a friend where they act a bit out of character. If you think they acted that way because they were unfairly mad at you, it might hurt your feelings, which might make you withdraw from them by not returning their calls.
Maybe your friend was being a jerk and you’re right. Or maybe they had just gotten terrible news, it wasn’t about you at all, and you just ruined your own day with a story you made up. Your thoughts influenced your feelings which influenced your behavior.
We’re not in control of a lot of the events of our lives. We didn’t cause most of them and we’re often stuck without being able to change much. Believing you have the ability to create your whole reality with your thoughts is guaranteed to heap shame on your head when the regular old adverse life events occur. But learning to check in and see if there’s a different way to go about things can literally lead you to freedom.
In my old life I spent a lot of time talking with people in abusive relationships and trying to help them build tools in order to successfully leave. Getting people to see that they don’t deserve to be harmed is the easy part. Helping them see the possibilities ahead of them is where the real work was. People in abusive relationships are conditioned to dismiss opportunities and taught that they are incapable of life on their own. Problem solving skills, self efficacy, faith in a different future – those were the topics I spent time talking about. We worked on learning to see the world a different way, and learning to see themselves a different way, so they could find a way out on their own terms.
Psychologists call this skill “reframing,” and it is so incredibly powerful. It’s looking at an issue from a different perspective to see if it changes what you think about it. Which would then change your feelings, which will change your actions. It’s examining what you’ve been taught to believe in a new way and seeing if that teaching holds up. You don’t have to believe in the vision of the world you inherited. You can decide what you believe.
I was taught that the world is a terrible place full of sin and predators and the only way to stay safe was to obey a very strict set of rules and live as small a life as possible. I don’t believe that anymore. It doesn’t actually match my life experience. I’ve run up against a lot of predators, sure, but most of them came from within my own communities. Strict rules didn’t protect me, and at the same time, the outside world wasn’t as scary as they claimed. I’ve been shown incredible grace and kindness from strangers, and been welcomed with open arms into spaces I was taught to be afraid of. When I mindfully looked at what I’d been taught, I reframed those beliefs. The world isn’t scary, people just wanted me scared.
You can decide what your values are, how you feel about yourself, what makes a good person, what makes a happy life, what you need out of relationships, and every other issue in your life. When an adverse life event comes your way, instead of telling yourself a story about why you brought this on yourself, ask if there’s another way to look at things.
We’re all gonna get sick. We’re all gonna die. No matter how high the vibes there’s no escaping that reality. So how can you bring something on yourself, if it’s something that happens to everyone? If it’s just a regular part of the human condition, maybe you didn’t earn it by failing. Maybe it’s just a thing that happened.
We can’t get whatever we want in life just by wishing real hard. But we can build a life full of possibility by learning new ways to look at things, and having the courage to try a different way of thinking.