A lot of people come to manifesting through The Secret or Oprah or a vision board workshop. And then they try it and go: why isn't this working for me? 

Often it's because the way manifesting gets taught makes it sound passive. 

Like you just think the thought, feel the feeling, and wait for the universe to deliver. 

But manifesting isn't passive. The literal translation of the word is "to make real." And making something real requires action. It requires brain training. It requires you to meet the universe halfway. 

In this week's Chill & Prosper I'm breaking down exactly how manifesting works - my practical five-step process that I've been using and teaching for years. 

Inside the episode I cover:

• How the reticular activating system works and why it's the key to manifesting (this will change how you think about it)
• Why creating anchors and reminders of your goal is brain training, not just decoration
• The round-the-world competition story - and what it actually shows about how opportunities appear
• Acting as if - why you have to go to the open house even if you can't afford the house yet
• How to meet the universe halfway, and what that actually looks like in practice

Because manifesting isn't magic. It's a repeatable process. And once you understand how it works, you can do it deliberately for anything you want to create.

xx Denise 

P.S. Later this month I’ll be teaching my practical 5 step process and applying it to making more money in our 5x5 Money Manifesting Challenge.

Five days, five easy actions, live coaching from me, a community of thousands. It's completely free and I’d love you to be part of it.

Click here to register now then share this link with your friends denisedt.com/challenge

 

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Here is the transcript for this episode:

Today we're talking about manifesting, which is one of the topics I love talking about, and I have for years. But I do get a lot of questions about how it works, why it seems easier for some people, and what happens when it doesn't seem to work for you.

There's a lot of troubleshooting that I think we need to do around it.

So let's get started about manifesting.

Okay, so a question came in, and it was, "What's the most recent thing that you've manifested?"

And there's been a couple of things.

One, actually, it wasn't me. It was my daughter. She manifested cats, and the way she did this was using some of my techniques against me.

So I talk about my five-step manifesting process, and step number three is about creating anchors and reminders of your goal.

We do this so we don't have to sit and journal all the time, but we are training our brain. We're training our reticular activating system to look for the thing.

And so what she did was she covered our whole house in Post-it notes and pictures of cats.

And I am talking everywhere.

On the fridge, inside the fridge, on our power points, our light switches, our pantry, on my mirror, inside my mirror, inside drawers. She put them everywhere.

And it was such a funny thing because first of all, I was like, "Oh my God, she's using my magic against me."

But what those things are intended to do is to give your brain something to search for.

So of course, because she started saying, "You guys promised we're going to get cats one day. When are we going to get a cat? Oh my God, look how cute this cat is. It's time for us to get a cat."

We started saying "cat" so many times that the phones that are always listening can be really great manifesting tools in this way, and they started showing me all of these cat rescues.

And then, of course, every time we were at the local pet store and there would be a cat there, we'd be like, "Oh, well, yeah, let's have a look."

And when you have a look, it's just that one next process, one next step of meeting the universe halfway.

So then, of course, it just kind of manifests itself, right?

Because then you start looking, you see a cat that you like, you go and look, and then you end up with a cat.

And you go, "Is that really manifesting, Denise?"

I really like to break manifesting down in a very practical way.

So much of this is brain training. It's training our brain to look for the thing. It is making something real.

And that's what manifest means. It means for something to be real, to manifest it in real life, to make it happen.

We have to meet the universe halfway.

And if we want to manifest something new or unexpected, part of that is training our brain that it is possible for us to have that thing.

We want to believe it, but also that part of our brain that filters information, this is such a key part of it.

You will start to see things that feel like synchronicities, but it's just that you've put that thought in your brain: "Go look for this. This is important for us."

And then, of course, sometimes you see opportunities that you wouldn't normally see.

I wrote a lot about this in my book Lucky Bitch.

This is the first personal development book that I wrote, and I have to say, it is a little bit outdated.

So if you read it and go, "Oh, there's a few little things in there," I'm like, "Yes, it does need a bit of a redo."

But the main point of that book is when I manifested this round-the-world travel competition.

It was six months, all expenses paid, travelling around the world for free.

Amazing, right?

And when you read that book, you go, "Oh, wow, I totally see how this happened, how Denise manifested it."

One of the first things was I was on honeymoon, and I was living in London at the time.

I didn't really know what I wanted to do, and I wasn't very happy in my life, I would have to say.

And I remember going outside under the full moon and making a wish.

I was like, "More of this, please, universe. More of this."

And I kind of meant abundance and warmth and being on holidays and that beautiful feeling you have.

But I came home and I was like, "Okay, what does more of this mean?"

And I said to Mark, "Look, I think we should go travelling for a little while. A lot of our friends have done this, but we've kind of gone right into our careers and busyness. Let's do it. I want to have more of that feeling."

So I wrote this poster on my wall, and it was like, "Six months' travel."

Blogging was kind of new at the time, and I thought it would be so great if someone paid me to blog somehow, or I could get paid from my blog to be able to fund my travel.

And I wrote £3,000 a month.

It just kind of sat there in my visual eyeline, and I was like, "That would be really cool."

Of course, I was reading a lot of personal development books at the time too.

And I was like, "Okay, I need to start talking about this goal as if it's happening."

So I started saying to my friends, "Mark and I are going travelling soon."

And they'd go, "Oh, where are you going? What are you doing?"

And I'd go, "I'm not sure yet, but we're going. We're going travelling."

This was such a key part of the manifestation, talking about it as if it was happening.

Because all of our friends just believed us.

They were like, "Oh, Mark and Denise are open to travel. They're going travelling."

So then a friend of mine saw this job advert, and it said, "Couple wanted for the ultimate job in the world, travelling around the world, blogging about honeymoon destinations."

She saw that because there was something that pinged in her mind and went, "Oh, I know someone who would be interested in that, who is open to going travelling, who is ready to go travelling, who wants to go travelling anyway, and who has just started a blog."

And so she thought of me.

Now, no one else sent me that. I didn't see it myself, but she saw it and I just pinged in her mind.

So is that magic? Is that manifesting?

Yes.

But also it's real. Her brain remembered it because I talked about it.

So she sent it to me.

And because I had already started talking about it as if it was happening, if I hadn't, I might have seen that and gone, "Well, that's for someone else. That's not for me."

But because I had convinced myself, I'm like, "No, no, this is what we're doing."

It felt like a sign from the universe. It felt like a synchronicity.

So I was like, "Well, of course I'm going to apply for that, and of course I'm going to win it."

Mark came home from work, and I was like, "Oh my God, I found this. This is how we're going to go travelling. It's done. I'm ready for it."

And he was like, "Oh, okay."

We had to make a video. It was due that night at midnight.

And I'm telling you, you've seen me on camera. I'm pretty good on camera, but I wasn't so much then.

So I was like, "Okay, well, we just got married, so let's put on our wedding outfits and let's talk about how we're newlyweds and how we're the perfect people for this thing."

So you think, okay, pretty easy, right?

Now, mind you, this is like 2008, 2009. We had Nokia phones, so the cameras were a bit dodgy.

We didn't have any tripods or anything like that.

We set this up and we tried to get through this two-minute video.

Mark had never been on camera before, and he kept on screwing it up.

And I'm like, "You're an idiot. You're a moron. What are you doing? This is our thing!"

I was so upset by it because the reality of the work kicked in.

And this is what happens so much.

People say, "I want to write a book. I want to start a podcast."

And they start doing it, and the tech feels like it's a test.

The first hurdle feels like, "Oh, it's not meant to be."

And I'm like, "No, this is obviously meant to be. We have to get through this resistance."

Then I'd look at the video and I'm like, "Mark, you weren't looking in the camera."

He was looking over here. He looked like he was cross-eyed.

I wish I had the outtakes for this because we're like, "We're so loving. We just got married. We're the perfect couple."

And I was like, "What are you doing? How can you not do this?"

So we did it.

We edited it with very basic editing software, and we got it in about two minutes before midnight.

And here's what was fascinating about that.

I'd never really got anything in early, but somehow the universe helped me because at that very moment, the people who were running the competition decided they were going to extend the deadline because they were getting all this press.

They'd had, I think, maybe 200 people apply for it by the deadline, but they had thousands of people wanting to do interviews about it.

So in the end, 30,000 people applied.

But I was still, by some stroke of luck, one of the early ones where they were still watching all the videos and getting excited and watching them again and again and getting favourites and all that kind of stuff.

And by the time 30,000 people had applied, they were watching videos around the clock, probably delirious.

So I was super lucky, right?

But then I talk about all the other things that I did to win that competition.

They set us challenges that we had to do. We had to get our own press, our own PR.

Tim Ferriss, the author of The 4-Hour Workweek, I sent him a message on Twitter and said, "Hey, look, can you retweet this competition for me?"

And I knew that he was someone who was up quite late, so I sent it at a time where it was like 2am American time.

And he saw it and he retweeted it.

There were a lot of things like that where I was like, "I'm just going to try. I'm just going to ask."

Normally I'd be someone who kind of goes, "Oh, I don't want to bother people. I don't want to push myself forward for things."

But because I had that certainty in my mind, and I had put pictures of honeymoons around me, I was like, "No, this is meant for me. This is meant for me."

And so when I start breaking those things down in my book, it pretty much then served as my manifesting formula.

I'm going to take a quick break because I can feel my mouth is a little bit dry.

I want to quickly go through that formula and show you how that works, because it's not magic most of the time.

There are sometimes, when you're putting yourself forward for things and you're meeting the universe halfway, undeniably magical things that happen that you cannot explain.

But most of the time, there is always something you can do.

So a quick break, and I'll tell you the rest of the story in a second.

Hi, I'm Heather Landis, a food inclusivity mentor from the UK.

And my spark from the Money Archetypes course was to unlearn things I'd learned from a previous business coach.

I need to stop attracting the wrong people with the wrong values because it's too much hard work.

Because I know now that I'm a Connector, and it makes so much sense that I shouldn't be aiming for celebrities and feel like an imposter.

I can reorganise my branding and have entire networks of cool people attracted to me.

Okay, welcome back.

We're talking about manifesting.

Now, I know so many listeners of this podcast have heard me talk about this competition before.

For some of you, it might be brand new and you're like, "What are you even talking about?"

So we applied for this competition to go travelling around the world, and of course I was like, "This is for me."

Now, one of the first things I teach in my manifesting formula, step one, is declutter.

Get rid of everything that could get in the way of you getting the thing that you want.

For some people, it's like, "Oh, I want to write a book."

It's like, okay, well, you need to create some space for this. Literal space.

That might mean that you shift around your schedule a little bit. You're making space, you're creating a vacuum sometimes.

When I first started coaching people, I had a lot of people who wanted to manifest a soulmate.

So I had a soulmate business going for a while.

And I would always get people to declutter half of the wardrobe, the bedside table on the other side of their bed, literally time and energy.

When are you going to go on dates?

Are there any old things from old partners that you need to let go of? Old entanglements?

And so for me, I was like, "Okay, if we are going on this trip, and I'm 100% certain that they're going to choose us, what can we declutter?"

And I was like, "There's going to be some logistics that we need to sort out. What are we going to do about our house? What are we going to do about our commitments? What are we going to do about our jobs?"

All of those things.

So I started letting go of those things.

And one of the very early tests came when we got an invite to a friend's wedding.

It wasn't a super, super best friend, but a good friend.

And I said to Mark, "We're going to have to RSVP no."

And he's like, "What do you mean?"

And I'm like, "Well, when we win the competition, we will not be able to go to her wedding."

And he was like, "But we don't even know if we're going to win it."

And I'm like, "No, no, no, that's not the attitude. We are going to win it, and so we don't want to RSVP yes and then not be able to turn up. That's super rude. Let's just RSVP no now."

I just didn't want to leave anything to chance.

I think that's what happens sometimes, though.

People say that they want something, but then they don't want to let people down.

They don't want to say no.

They don't really truly believe it.

And so I'll say to people, "Oh, you want to manifest your dream house? Go to an open house."

And they go, "I can't. I don't have the money yet."

And I go, "Well, the money's not going to show up for you in any magical way because you don't believe that. You don't even believe you're worthy of going to a free open house."

Go test drive your car.

"Well, the money hasn't shown up yet."

But how can it? You don't even believe that you are worthy of sitting in that nice new car.

And so I was like, "We have to start doing these things."

We started doing interviews to sublet our place.

And I know this sounds so extreme, but I did give notice at my job.

I didn't give it straight away. It wasn't until we were in the top ten couples that I went, "We're going to have to do this."

Because between winning and leaving, it was like two weeks.

And that's with a lot of these social media competitions and things like that. You've got to go. You've got to be ready.

I was just trying to get rid of everything that was in the way.

Now, I know that sounds really extreme, and it doesn't have to be.

But I've heard people do that with something that is a timed thing, where they go, "I really want to go to that conference."

And it's like, "Great, book it out in your calendar."

And they can't even do that.

They're like, "Oh, but I've got this commitment."

It's like, "Okay, well, you're going to have to let go of that commitment."

"No, but I can't. I'll wait until the money comes."

It's like, "But then that's too late. You haven't made space for it."

So what can you do to let go of things now?

Sometimes you can do this symbolically.

You want more clients, you want a different business, go get rid of anything that's old stuff.

I've got a friend, AJ, who at the end of the year will have a bonfire at her property.

She's got a farm, so she'll put in old client files that she doesn't have to keep anymore, or anything that's related to an old business or an old identity.

If you've got a garage full of stuff from a failed business, let it go.

If you've got old business cards, let it go.

If you've got clothes from an old job and you're like, "I really just want to have my own business," let it go.

And it's in that faith sometimes that something better is coming.

I don't have to put up with things. I don't have to hold on to old identities.

That's a huge part of it.

And there is a huge practical part of this as well, because I know that when we got to the top ten, we had to all go away for a weekend.

It was like The Amazing Race, all these couples doing challenges.

And I know that there were couples there who were stressing about their jobs, stressing about what they were going to do with their house, who's going to look after their dog when they're away.

And I was just ready.

I'm like, "I'm ready. Free and clear."

And those little subtle things, you don't even realise sometimes how much of a difference that might make.

Someone has a little bit of doubt in the final interview, and the judges can see it in their body language.

They can see it, and they're like, "I want it, but also it's going to cause me stress."

So you just want to get rid of all of those things as much as possible.

That is a huge part of it. Decluttering, letting things go.

Step number two is deciding what you want.

For me, deciding that I wanted to go travelling opened up this whole avenue.

Deciding what I wanted meant that when the opportunity came, I went, "That is for me. I can see that that is for me."

Step number three is surrounding yourself with positivity.

For me, that was having that poster on my wall, having pictures of travel around me, listening to travel podcasts, reaching out to people who had done similar things.

Step number four is taking inspired action.

Reaching out to people, all of those things gave me those little bits of belief that it was for me.

I'm doing the work. I'm meeting the universe halfway.

And I think sometimes people think, "Oh, just research stuff."

And it's like, well, that's not really making a huge difference. That's not really something that's going to move things forward.

Obviously, quitting my job, giving notice at my job, that was an inspired action.

And I don't recommend extreme things like that to everyone if it's going to cause a lot of stress and trouble.

But it was something where I was like, "I'm going travelling anyway. I'm going, whether I win this competition or not. That's not the important thing."

And I think that's where sometimes people get caught up in, "Oh, well, I'll win the lottery."

And you go, "But what do you want to win the lottery for?"

And they're like, "Well, I want to go travelling," or "I want my dream house."

And it's like, "Well, focus on that. Don't focus on winning the lottery."

Because I knew that if I didn't win the competition, I was going to find some other way.

And so it's almost like the competition got swept up in my certainty, because I was taking that action.

Step number five is receiving, saying yes.

Seeing those little signs as signposts that you're on the right track.

But also, there's some real lessons sometimes in receiving in general, saying yes to things in big and small ways.

If someone offers to buy you a coffee, you say, "Yes, I receive that. Thank you."

If someone offers to help you, receive the help.

Because all of those things are symbolic of greater abundance.

And if you can't receive the little things, how are you going to receive the big things?

So you don't have to remember this process.

I've got a free course around manifesting where I break these into really practical steps for you.

It's really funny. I am very practical, but I know when I follow those steps and I meet the universe halfway, magical things do happen that I can't explain.

It does seem to happen like that.

So the free course, if you go to denise.com/manifest, I'll take you through those five steps.

Just practise with something. Just try it.

If you're someone who used to do a lot of those practices and they've fallen off the radar a little bit, and you're like, "Oh, why isn't it happening for me anymore?"

You'll start to realise, you'll go, "Oh yes, I forgot. I used to do that. Okay, I'm going to get back on the manifesting train."

Experiment with it. Play with it a little bit.

I've got one final little thought for you after this last break. Don't go away.

Hi there, this is Laurel Golden James with Golden Touch Health and Wealth.

I joined Denise Duffield-Thomas's Sacred Money Archetypes this go-round in 2022, and it was amazing.

I am a body, mind, life and business coach, and I mostly coach women with confidence and boundaries.

This course helped me realise that I could run my business the way I wanted to.

Being equal parts Nurturer and Ruler, I often have a tug of war within myself about how I can best help people.

This course has shone a light on all of those gifts that I have and some of the shadows that I have.

And it was so fun to go through.

Denise was so engaging. The support in the Facebook group over the six weeks was amazing, and there's just so much there.

There's so much there to take advantage of.

I really appreciate it. Thanks so much.

And if you're thinking about joining that course, I highly recommend it.

I've been going over and over it and getting nuggets from it every time I do.

Thanks.

Okay, so this episode has been all about manifesting.

And it's fine if you're a sceptical person. I am as well.

And that's why I think breaking things down into really practical steps is so important.

Go and read my book Lucky Bitch.

I don't even remember some of those things that I did, all those little tips and tricks, but I think it will inspire you to realise that you can control some of those things.

You can put yourself into a better state to have magical things happen.

You can literally control some of that, which is really fun.

So Lucky Bitch is available on Kindle, audio and paperback.

You can order it from your local library. They'll usually bring it in for you.

You can order it from your local bookshop, or most online book places will have it too.

And I read the audio version of it.

The free course is at denise.com/manifest.

Give it a try.

But my final thought for you is to allow yourself to dream.

Allow yourself to have that almost childlike feeling of wonder and excitement again, that good things are happening to you.

And some of my best manifestations have come from seeing good things happen to other people.

Actually, one of the things that preceded that competition, I think, was two of my friends getting made redundant.

And we were in our twenties. No one cared. We were just like, "Free money to not work for a little while? Yes, sign me up!"

And I remember feeling such intense jealousy around it.

Then I decided to switch that and say, "Good things are happening for me as well. My lucky break is just around the corner."

And that's kind of one of the seeds I planted, I think, to say, "Oh wow, this is my lucky break."

And the reason I called my book Lucky Bitch is because when I won that competition, I had strangers mostly saying, "Oh my God, what a lucky bitch."

But a lot of my friends were like, "Oh no, I saw all the things you did to manifest this. I saw all those little subtle things that you did and the work that you put in to make this almost an inevitability."

And I just thought it was such a funny, cheeky way of writing that book.

I also asked the universe for a bestselling title.

I heard Jack Canfield talk about that, and Lucky Bitch came to me in the shower.

So I think give yourself permission to ask.

Give yourself permission to feel that wonder again and that excitement that maybe you have lost.

And give yourself permission to dream big things because you just never know.

And if you don't ask, you don't get, right?

And why not? Why not you? Why not you?

All right, go check out that free course and let me know your manifesting stories, because I live for them. I really do.

You can always send me a DM. You can always send in an email and let us know.

And if you've got any questions about manifesting, let us know too.

But yeah, go check out my free course, and I will see you on another episode of Chill and Prosper.

See you soon. Bye!

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