It’s A Rant: Manifest?

Brace yourselves, it’s a rant. Against Hippies.

I have a lot of hippy friends.

Not just friends; I used to live in an area characterized by grow-ops & people competing at being the most trendy version of New Age Hippy aka: who is the most organic, natural, progressive, non-shaving, anti-conformist, professional fair-trade coffee drinker dressed in all Lululemon & other various over-priced brands?

Consequently, my social media is often full of people talking about “positivity”, “manifesting”, “good energy”, blah blah blah. 

Now don’t get me wrong here; I believe in the power of the mind. I work in Mental Health, so I see the power of the mind acting in polarity: destructive, debilitating out-of-control force or resilient, empowering mechanism for healing.

We are our thoughts; it’s an oversimplification but I believe it to be a true statement.

That said, I’ll come to the point of this rant.

Sometimes life is hard. Sometimes it just straight up fucking sucks. Most of the time, we’ll be able to look back on turmoil & suffering & find the hidden lesson. But that doesn’t lessen the fact that pain can swallow us & hard times mean constant struggle. Sure, your mindset will play a role in how you deals with struggle, but it won’t lessen the experience or change the fact that life can be hard & you just have to deal with the difficulty.

You can’t run from the struggle or gloss over the ugly parts of life. You have to feel it, live it, & work it out. Just because life isn’t always wonderful or easy doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. Our greatest lessons are often our toughest to get through.

The second part to this rant is this: you can’t out “manifest” continuously making bad fucking decisions. 

That is one of my biggest pet peeves; this whole “The Secret”-induced manifestation obsessed trend that people grasp on only most superficial of levels from some idiot who made a sound bite out of ancient traditional Buddhist teachings. The Secret is like the gossip magazines by the cash registers of spiritual beliefs. 

Until you take responsibility for the fact that your decisions lead your life, you can “manifest” all you want but you’re going to keep doing stupid shit. People like to think they can “manifest” thoughts that would change their poor decision making, but I would argue that is putting the horse before the cart.

I struggle with passive personality types & sitting back to “manifest” is (to me) the ultimate example of someone who wants their life to change but doesn’t want to get uncomfortable.

Even the most positive changes in our lives can be difficult or painful & they often come from looking at parts of ourselves we’d rather not acknowledge. If you want change, you make it happen. 

It’s a hell of a lot harder to do work than it is to “manifest” but if it’s legitimate change you’re looking for, then you need to suck it up & get your hands dirty & face yourself honestly.

Much less glamorous. Much less fancy sounding. 

But if you don’t like hard work, you shouldn’t be reading anything I write.

Party on…