Is Manifestation Effective? Science Backed Step by Step Guide

And there were a lot of moments where I felt myself falling into a negative self-fulfilling prophecy. You have this negative impression of yourself and then you kind of act as though that may be true. You get really quiet, you don't really express yourself or, you know, share who you are.

Mm-hmm.

So in that way, you're kind of fitting the negative expectations you have for yourself, but you can turn that around and make those positive.

Welcome to the Mind Body Space Podcast, where you can stress less and boost your performance and wellness down to the cellular level just by listening. Hi, I'm Dr. Juna Bobby MD, a mom MD passionate about sharing evidence-based tips to keep you and your family well. For the past 10 years, I've been teaching the science of resilience to high-achieving individuals at many different schools and organizations. And currently I'm on faculty at the Juilliard School Pre-College Division, teaching gifted students how to stress less and perform at their best. I started this podcast because I wanted to share what I learned with my students, fellow parents, educators, and anyone who's interested as I explore fascinating topics like neuroscience and meditation with experts in education, medicine, and psychology. Your support makes this possible. Please subscribe and share with a family friend, anyone who needs to stress less, boost performance, and be happier. If you have questions for my guests or for me, or if you have a topic that you'd like us to cover, please head on over to mindbodyspace.com/podcast and ask away, and we will answer your questions on the podcast on on the last Friday of every month. If you need a good night's sleep, head on over to my YouTube channel, Fall Asleep Easy, to drift off and sleep like a baby.

Hi, Christina.

Hi, how are you?

So good to see you. I'm so excited today. I have Christina Nelson with me. She is my fabulous intern. I'm so excited to have her on board. She is a rising senior at Barnard College. Of Columbia University. And tell us what you're majoring in, which is also why I was so excited that you're my intern.

I am majoring in psychology.

And you're interested in child psychology, right?

Yes, I am.

So Christina and I hit it off so well when we met for her interview. Uh, by the way, I posted the internship on LinkedIn and it was incredible. Like 100, uh, CVs and you were maybe the second person I interviewed and it was just, I knew you were exactly the right fit. Because more important than anything else is somebody's curiosity and interest in the topic. And not only were you amazingly well-spoken, you had all the same interest I do. So it was incredible, match made in heaven. So I'm so glad to have you here. And she is so willing to try anything, including being on my podcast with me, cuz we've had some amazing conversations already about psychology, about learning, about resilience and stress. So today she's joining me and hopefully this'll be the first of many. And we were recently talking about a topic that many of you might have heard of, manifestation. In fact, there was a guest essay, an opinion piece back in March on the New York Times called The Long Strange History of Manifesting by Tara Isabel Burton. She talks about how popular manifestation is, the word the idea of it, and she said that on Google data, online searches for manifesting rose about 600% during the first few months of the pandemic. I've heard this term a lot. Sometimes it irks me. I don't love the term manifestation. The word sometimes sounds like manifestation, like magical. You can just make things happen, but really it takes a lot of attention, focus, and vision. It takes a big dose of reality and some hard work, practice, and visualization to make things happen in your life. There is a scientific explanation of how you can actually have things in life happen that you want. This is kind of a topic that I talk a lot about in some of my classes, so I'm really excited to have this discussion with you. Christina, tell me about what you think about this term manifestation, self-fulfilling prophecy. You said so many interesting things to me. You took an amazing class at Barnard, right?

Yeah. A few years ago, I took social psychology with Professor Colin Leach, and I learned about something called self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, a lot of my friends and a lot of my peers talk about manifestation like it's a magical thing with no real background, but there's actually a scientific reason for why manifestation could work, and it's called self-fulfilling prophecy. So basically, it's something that we all experience every day. It's when an individual sets an expectation for an event or a situation, and that causes them to act in a way that makes the expectations come true.

Mm.

And so it's like when you're meeting someone for the first time and you've heard about them or something, you're like, oh, I think that person's unfriendly. So then you might subconsciously act unfriendly towards them, which causes them to in turn act unfriendly to you.

Yeah, that's exactly true.

I have friends that have journal the same thing that they want to come true 20 times in a way to manifest it. Although that might sound like, what's that really gonna do? Putting that idea in your mind and really sticking it to yourself that you're gonna make this happen actually has a lot of worth.

My daughter talks about it a lot. She's a rising junior at Princeton, and she started talking about manifestation kind of like in a joking way, but especially when they have finals and they're really stressed out and they wanna manifest grades or whatever is going on. So talk to me about your own experience with manifestation or that topic.

This is something I learned in my social psychology class, the 4 steps to self-fulfilling prophecy. And the first one is having an impression of a target or a situation. The target could be a person or an event or anything. And then the second step is acting as though that impression is true. And then the third step is the target, the person or situation, reacts to your behavior. Your behavior impacts that target. And then the fourth step is the prophecy comes true. And so, nice way, manifestation is a positive self-fulfilling prophecy.

You can, or you can make it into a positive.

You can make it into a positive. Yeah, because I'm thinking back on my own experiences, you know, starting college, you're nervous to meet new people. And there were a lot of moments where I felt myself falling into a negative self-fulfilling prophecy where you're meeting people and you want them to think you're cool, but you think you're not cool, or, you know, you have this negative impression of yourself and then you kind of act as though that may be true. You get really quiet, you don't really express yourself or, you know, share who you are. And so in that way, you're kind of fitting the negative expectations you have for yourself. That you can turn that around and make those positive.

Wow. So you're sitting there thinking, I'm so shy, they don't really want to hear from me, things like that, right? Everybody has those thoughts. I definitely have those thoughts. So I love how your professor broke it down into the 4 steps. And so let's go over those steps. So if you have an impression of a target, it could be negative or positive. So before you talked about, you know, if you heard somebody was unfriendly, Now you have that impression of that target. So that target, not a very friendly word, but target being that person that you have a negative impression of, right?

Yeah.

Then you act as though that person is truly unfriendly. This is what you talked about before. Then that person's like, why is this person being so weird to me? And so then they're unfriendly to you, obviously. And so now the prophecy came true. So how can we switch that into a positive? You wanna take over?

Yeah. So if you hear someone's unfriendly, you maybe don't wanna trust the source that came from, 'cause you don't know the person yourself. You can think, okay, I heard this person's unfriendly, but I'm gonna act friendly towards them and I'm gonna be my best self and I'm gonna be who I am. There's a possibility that you acting friendly can lead to them acting friendly back to you.

Yes. 'Cause you're affecting the other person. So if we broke it down into a positive way, maybe your impression could be, Well, the impression is that I don't know this person, right? So I heard things about them, but I'm gonna put that on the back burner and not let that affect my interaction with this person. You give the person the benefit of the doubt and maybe they were having a bad day or there was something going on that we would never know about. You act as if this person is a stranger to you and you just act in a super friendly way because you're meeting new people. Then you see how that person reacts to you and make your own opinion. Or even not make your own opinion immediately because maybe they are having a bad day. You never know what's going on with other people, right? That's where compassion comes in. I love it. So we could turn this into anything. So let's say you're going to go take an exam or you go on a job interview. You're going to have an impression that, oh, I can handle this job interview or I can handle this exam because I studied, as opposed to toxic positivity where you think, oh, I'm going to do great. Even if you didn't prepare at all, like if you have no idea what this interview's about, or you haven't studied for this exam at all, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about you've prepared and you've worked hard and you're conscientious, and then you can decide, hey, I can handle this.

Yeah.

And so when you say that to yourself, you will act in that interview or in that conversation as a different person, and you can affect your outcome that way. Exactly. So I think that's how he would we would describe manifesting.

Yeah, exactly. I remember when I started trying to switch my mindset in this way, I took piano lessons for many years and had many performances, and I would get so nervous even though I know I spent hours and hours practicing for this performance, and I knew deep down I was probably prepared. I've played it well many times, and I knew I would be okay. But when it really came down to it, right before, I would have all these negative thoughts in my head like, What if I go up there and I just completely forget everything? Or I'm gonna get up there and I'm not gonna know what to do. Having those thoughts in your head is not helpful because you have to be confident that you did prepare enough. And so you can use self-fulfilling prophecy to tell yourself, I'm gonna be okay because I've played this before and I prepared for this. And you have to just almost fake it until you make it.

We're not faking it because you actually did practice.

True. That's the thing. It's not faking it.

Yeah.

Not making it, but making the confidence maybe.

Yeah. Maybe you're switching that self-talk around.

Yeah.

Yes. That's an excellent analogy. And you've been playing since you were like 5 years old, right?

Yeah.

That's an amazing example. I work with musicians all the time about how they're talking to themselves and also using stress management techniques to get out of that fight or flight response. 'Cause you actually send yourself into a fight or flight response by talking to yourself in that sort of negative way. And when we think about it, it's completely false, right? You have practiced, basically an expert. You've been playing piano since you were 5. So yeah, replacing it with facts. Yeah. That's kind of like cognitive behavioral stuff, which we won't go into too much in this episode. But let's talk a little bit about growth mindset because it's very closely related to manifestation and self-fulfilling prophecies. And Carol Dweck's work from Stanford, She talks a lot about how believing that you can actually learn something in a classroom has one of the biggest effects on whether a student can learn or not. You've studied Dweck's work. What do you think about that?

I think it's so interesting because in this work, the way that you view your intellect and intelligence is categorized in two ways. There are entity and incremental theorists, and basically entity theorists believe that their intelligence is fixed. You know, they have a set amount of intelligence to them and that can't be changed. And that really impacts the way that they view failure and performance because entity theorists tend to focus mainly on performance as their goals, whereas incremental theorists believe that their intelligence is malleable and they focus on learning goals. And this changes the way that they view their failures and their performances. Because instead of like an entity theorist would believe, if they fail, that's because of them. That's just because of their set intelligence. If you're an incremental theorist, you think, okay, what can I do better? You focus on growing and moving on because you know that your intelligence can always grow.

So that's, it's basically how you view failure. And if you're gonna learn anything, you're a beginner when you start. So in order to become an expert in any sort of way, you're gonna have to fail so many times. So incremental theorists, as you described it, defines growth mindset that you can learn and change, and especially from failure. You can learn from failure with the correct feedback. This is something Dr. Dweck has been really emphasizing recently because she found out that a lot of people were just reinforcing students by saying, oh, you put in a lot of great work. Great effort. That's not enough though, because when you just praise the effort, you're not giving them enough correct feedback because they also need help and support in order to solve the problem correctly for the next time. So it's not just about, oh, you're working so hard and you're putting in so much effort, that's great. No, that's not enough. You have to give the correct feedback and they need to be able to then problem solve to get to where they wanna be. To learn from their failures. And the theory of helping students in that way is called scaffolding. So you kind of help them along with the support that they need so that they can solve problems that may not have been possible for them in that moment, but you give them extra tools and extra feedback so that they can actually learn to solve the problem on their own. So that's called scaffolding. That's something you can do whether you're teaching your child or your students or yourself, you get the support that you need to get to that next level.

Yeah, that's so helpful. And, you know, viewing performances and learning in that way could really help students view their performances more positively, because with the way that entity theory works is that, you know, when you perform, that's a reflection of your worth and your intelligence and everything that you've worked for. But if you don't view it that way, performance can be viewed as something positive and fun since it's not your reputation or your character isn't dependent on your performance.

Mm-hmm. And seeing it as that isolated point in time, like, that's how I performed in that moment in time. It has nothing to do with the future. And there's that word that Carol Dweck says, which is so incredible. It's like a magical word. You always say yet. So I am not this yet. And that basically gives your brain hope to try harder. That's the basis of learning. The curiosity, creativity comes when you have hope that you can change, you can learn, and you can change your brain. Super amazing shortcut to the growth mindset. And that's why I teach the courses I teach, and that's why I talk about this all the time. But when kids understand how their brain works, especially the concept of neuroplasticity, which is basically that when you learn something or you experience something, your brain makes new connections. For example, if you start to juggle, your white matter actually changes. The white matter of the brain is— it's white because it's fat. So the white matter described the fat that wraps around the axons of your neurons. So basically it's called myelin and it's made of fat. And that's how neurons, the little basic cells in your brain, and also in your gut connect with each other. So every time you learn something, every time you experience something, your axons are making connections with another neuron's dendrites. So it's making these learning chunking information together, whether it's procedural, like it's mechanical, like riding a bike. It's all how your neurons connect with each other. Jan Scholz of University of Oxford did a study on teaching people how to juggle. So they had them practice about half an hour every day for 6 weeks, and they showed that the white matter in that area changed in density. So it grew white matter in connections where they had motor activity and hand-eye coordination, and it literally changed their brain physically. So now we know all these things because we can look inside the brain with the functional MRI, magnetic resonance imaging machines. And we know literally that there are physical changes in our brain. I mean, it's not a new idea. The first time the term plasticity was applied was by William James, the famous psychologist, um, in 1890. And he referred to it as plasticity in the Principles of Psychology. So he was the first one who used the term plasticity. But through mankind, people have known, for example, the Buddhist knew that they can train their minds in a way by sitting and meditating and reciting and visualizing. Okay? So that's a real shortcut to understanding that you can have a growth mindset, that you physiologically and biologically can change the structure of your neurons, of your brain. Does that change how you think about manifestation now?

It does, because you can grow, you can change. Like there's actually a scientific basis for that. And you can help yourself do that by using self-fulfilling prophecy as a tool to actually set your goals into action.

Like, you probably knew this about neuroplasticity. You've learned about it. So when you learn the hard science of neuroscience, how does that affect how you think about change and failure?

I remember, I remember learning about this my first year of college, and it did flip a switch in my brain because it made me feel more in control of where I'm going, what my actions will be. Being the person I want to be and being confident in the way that I want to be is totally in my control. And I have the ability to grow the way I want to grow.

Mm.

And that was a real moment when I realized that because it gave me more confidence knowing that I was in control of everything.

And so that gave you agency.

It, it did give me more agency. My future and my goals and how I want to get there.

You can have agency over your life, meaning you have the power to affect your day-to-day life and your future. So that is one of the most amazing preventative factors that can decrease anxiety and depression, having that agency. Because obviously, even though we know that it's a factual thing that we can control things, we have that stress response come on, especially when things are overwhelming. We all have those moments, and all of this can go out the door. Do you have any tips on how you remind yourself about all the power that you have over your mind and your surroundings?

Yeah, one of the main areas that I've used this in the past few years in college have been in social situations where you can get nervous before meeting a group of new people, and you just have that negative self-talk and you don't know what to do. But something that I realized is everyone is always focused on themselves. Everyone has that negative self-talk. Everyone goes into these situations thinking about how they're acting, how they're being perceived. And so you can use that knowledge that they're not paying attention to you to give you the space to pay attention to yourself and think about how you wanna be in this moment, create positive change in your own actions and your own behavior to achieve what you wanna achieve.

That's a fabulous explanation for that. You actually think about that before you go out or you write it down or something?

Not as much anymore because it's worked. The self-fulfilling prophecy has begun to work because I used to be really nervous in social situations. You want to make a good impression, you want to make long-lasting friendship. I really would have to hype myself up before and be like, well, a lot of people think you're nice, a lot of people think you're friendly, so maybe these people will too if you just act that way, you act like yourself. Instead of being quiet and concerned. But if that's not how you want to act in that moment, you can take the time to really think about how you want to move forward.

I love it. This was such an amazing conversation, Christina. Thank you so much for being here and sharing with us all the amazing things you're learning at Barnard. If you want to learn more about failure and psychological safety, Amy Edmondson's with me in the episode called "Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well with Dr. Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School" is a must-listen to. And I also have a practical episode that you can apply to your life right away, and it's called "Visualization for Peak Performance." And it's a very short, simple meditation you can do anywhere, anytime to actually get that mental training going, to mentally train your brain. To think the way you would like to be. So it's a great meditation.

I love it.

Thank you, Christina. Thank you so much for being here. I can't wait to have you again. It was awesome.

Thank you so much. I had so much fun.

Yay.

Yay.

Christina is the only other person I know who ends our conversations with yay, which I've been doing for years, but okay. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you.