The Surprising Science of “Manifestation”

Hello and welcome to the near and Far Podcast. I'm here with Nir Eyal and we're going to be reading the surprise Science of Manifestation, one of Nir's new articles. Nir, you want to say hello and what we're doing?

Absolutely. Thanks so much again for doing this, Nick. Just for everyone listening. So this is a reading of one of my latest articles and Nick Gray is back with us again today. And Nick is a good friend of mine who has generously offered to read my articles. And then we kind of stop from time to time to elaborate where it makes sense.

Let's get into it. The surprising science of manifestation Manifesting is bull. There, I said it. According to Oprah, manifesting is bringing something tangible into your life through attraction and belief, I. E. If you think it, it will come. It encourages people to bring a goal to life by making vision boards, writing in manifestation journals, chanting positive affirmations and speaking it into existence. Cue eye roll. However, as much as I hate to admit it, manifesting may have benefits, but not for the reasons self help gurus say it does. As several scientific studies cited below reveal, good things happen to people who have a positive outlook, regardless of whether they channel the energy of the universe. Manifesting teaches adherence to expect good things to happen. And when we open ourselves up to opportunities, we tend to see things we may otherwise miss. In that respect alone, there is indeed a basis for the science of manifestation.

Yeah. So you can sense here by the tone of how I wrote these first opening paragraphs that, you know, I'm not a big fan of.

Woo.

Woo. There's a lot of stuff out there, whether it's horoscopes or chakras or healing crystals that works, but works because of placebos. It doesn't have any kind of, I don't think, any kind of magical connection, any kind of supernatural. And manifesting was in that bucket. And manifesting got really big with the publication of the book the Secret, which I read and it's. It was a very nice read. But the whole purpose, the whole kind of thrust of the book is that if you put positive thoughts in the world, they will come back to you. So if you think about money, and it'll come to you. If you think about love, it'll come to you. And it has some downsides, right? Namely in that it doesn't directly lead to action, right? If you just think, okay, good things are going to happen to me and I'll sit here and wait. But the idea here is that actually manifesting in some interesting Way like, even though I was very skeptical about it at first, the more research I had done into this area, I, I think I now connect the dots into why people believe it works. Because in many ways it does work. But it doesn't work because you're aligning your chakra, stone, crystal things. It works because of something else. And that's what we're going to get into in a minute.

I can't wait to hear because even I have curious questions about making vision boards and things like that. Continuing. If you look for good, you're more likely to find it in many ways. Expectations shape our reality. This can work in your favor or against you. While people with bright outlooks tend to focus more on opportunity and positive outcomes, those who tend to focus on the bad have far more trouble seeing the good. My experience is what I agree to attend to, wrote William James, an American philosopher, historian and psychologist in his 19th century book the Principles of Psychology, Volume 1. Interpretation, what we choose to give our attention to grows in our mind. Focusing on the negative makes it loom large. Consider the implications this has on your life choices. You might not be able to see opportunities because you're not looking for them, or you might misinterpret an opportunity as a risk. Perhaps you applied to a graduate school program because you wanted to switch careers and you were accepted. Congrats. If you're a pessimist, you'll likely focus on the reasons not to follow through. Quitting your full time job or taking on debt. If you're an optimist, you might place more stock in the reasons to go for it. For example, pursuing a career you enjoy or earning a higher income. That's interesting. What do you think about that? Yeah.

So this William James quote really is the reason that manifesting works. It's my experience is what I agree to attend to. So when you believe good things are going to happen, you're more likely to see those good things happening. Right. Like that phrase on Wall street that when in bullish markets you look for bullish news. That when there's a trend, when things are happening a certain way, you look for more reasons to confirm your beliefs. And so that's what I think is probably the core of how manifesting works.

It's that idea of the optimists find good things and the pessimists find bad things, like you said.

So if you truly believe and you convince yourself I am putting good energy into the universe and it's going to come back to me in the form xyz, you're more likely to see that opportunity to find the love of your life to think that good things are going to happen to you because you have a rationale already around why this should happen.

Studies show that having a positive outlook pays off. It's well known that looking on the bright side has benefits. Optimists are more likely to be promoted. One study found that when compared to pessimists visionary work optimist, those people in the top quartile for optimism as compared to their peers are 40% more likely to get a promotion over the next year and six times more likely to be highly engaged at work. Another study shows that optimists spend less effort job searching and are offered jobs more quickly compared to pessimists. Yet another study shows optimistic people work harder and are more likely to remarry if they've divorced and save more money. It's possible the visionary work optimists were promoted not because they manifested it, but because they believed they had influence over their potential promotion and thus did the work that put them ahead. Unlike pessimists who may think a job promotion is out of their hands. That's a neat phrase that visionary work optimists.

Yeah. And so this gets back to this idea that I've written about in the past around locus of control. This idea that people who have an internal locus of control versus an external locus of control. An external locus of control is associated with people who think that the world happens to them as opposed to an internal locus of control. These are people who believe that they have agency in the world. And so this also very much relates to manifesting in that if you believe that whatever it is that you are doing is having an impact, it's almost like this placebo effect for the external world in a way, right? That because you believe that you have done something to affect change, that gives you agency, that gives you belief in your own power to change things, that, that refocuses your, your outlook as an internal locus of control. And I think that's what makes that type of optimism and you know, feeling you have control, why that becomes so effective in making more good things happen for you.

It's neat that you mentioned that optimism because that leads into the next section that's called optimism, but not blind optimism. Although a positive outlook is powerful, willful positivity and blind optimism can fail us sometimes. Persuading ourselves that something is going to go well can backfire by removing our motivation to achieve a goal. In fact, while the study above found optimists save more money and work Harder. It made a strong distinction between moderate optimists and extreme optimists. Moderate optimists display prudent financial habits and work longer hours. Yet extreme optimists have short planning horizons and save less and work less. It suggests extreme optimists are overconfident in making decisions that aren't wise. This is where manifesting can get people into trouble. By encouraging people to write down their desire 33 times in three days or comment yes on an Instagram post to manifest $20,000. Manifesting steps too close to blind optimism, a condition of oblivion that prevents consciousness or self determination. Blind optimism can lead to inadequate preparation and convincing oneself of desired beliefs without reality checks.

So, you know, I'm really big into the science. If I'm going to make these claims, if I'm going to say manifesting is bull, I need to say why and why not, right? So, you know, all my articles are full of these studies and I hope people will actually go back to the original article and click on some of these links to see these studies for themselves. But I think it's important to talk about. Okay, so we've established that optimism can be very good. And so I cite what, three or four different studies showing how that can have a good impact, but also that there's a certain type of optimism that we don't want to step into, which is blind optimism. I think it's so interesting about how, you know, if you're, if you're an extreme optimist, if you're a moderate optimist, that's great, right? You expect good things to happen. You see those things, those opportunities in your life. But if you're an extreme optimist, you start getting into the same territory of where I think manifesting gets dangerous and why the secret, the story of the secret, the book is dangerous. And that if you just kind of sit back and wait for things to happen to you and don't make the, the action in your life that needs to occur in order to bring those things to you, then you're. You're over in that category where it becomes harmful.

It's that idea, like you said, that it suggests extreme optimists are overconfident in making those decisions that aren't wise.

Personal story here, you know. So my father, I think, would fall into the extreme category of optimistic. And sometimes it's incredibly annoying to the family because everything is always awesome all the time. Like we go on a vacation. I remember we went one time many years ago, we went to Guatemala and we got stuck in this not very good neighborhood, we didn't feel very safe. We like went on this tour to see this ancient relic that turned out to be just like somebody's personal scam that they were running to bring tourists into their town. Anyway, long story short, it was not a good experience. And he was such an optimist. Like, this is great, this is fantastic. That it not only annoyed the hell out of everyone else, but I think it turns off his brain sometimes into being more skeptical. Where you need to, you need that as well. You need that balance. So being overly optimistic and sometimes in his life, he's made kind of bad financial decisions, which I think echoes this study of if you think, okay, everything's always going to work out all the time, you lose some of that prudence.

So what do we do? Well, going on to the next section. Using the science of manifestation to become more positive and optimistic. Start by examining the origin of your current outlook. Perspective and expectations are shaped by a variety of factors, including genetics and age, but mostly by our life experiences. Your childhood, your relationships. Whether you had success early in life or not. All of these things influence whether you skew toward negativity or positivity. In psychology, a trapped prior is a perception of reality that's colored or trapped by past experiences. To let go of trapped priors release harmful perceptions about yourself. Many people avoid opportunities or perceived risks because at some point in the past they decided they were incapable or they were self sabotaged by thinking something just wouldn't work for them. By letting go of past perceptions of what you can or can't do, you're treating yourself with kindness and giving yourself a better chance to thrive. Next, understand that stepping outside your comfort zone seriously improves your life. You'll always be able to think of a reason not to do something. But sometimes the outcome of a risk or a challenge might surprise you. It could turn out to be just what you needed to shake up your expectations. Don't simply manifest your goals. Instead abolish negativity that's tainting your outlook and see the opportunities right in front of you.

Yeah, that sums it up that I think this. One of the things that works really well in manifesting is that I think it changes people's perception of why they do deserve something. So one of the exercises that manifesting people have people do is to talk about why, you know, who are you not to expect the universe to give you what you need. And I think that's actually, even though it's, it's a little woo woo, it doesn't Work for the metaphysical reasons they say it does. But I think it does break the shackles that people have around self image. And I've talked about this a lot in indistractable around how when you call yourself a certain identity, when you think, oh, I am someone who has a short attention span or I have undiagnosed ADHD even though you've never actually gone in to see if you really have it, or I'm a Sagittarius and that means I can't, you know, I can't do this or that. Whenever we have these harmful perceptions about oneself that we encode as a label, as a noun, that I am this thing, that's a very limiting belief that typically does not serve us. So one of the things that manifesting does help us do is break those moles. But we don't need to necessarily subscribe that it's something metaphysical happening. We can just examine in our lives. Where are we holding ourselves back? Where do we have a perception of ourselves as being a noun rather than a verb? Right. A human being that does things. Right. A human, what do they say? A human doing rather than a human being. And so by releasing ourselves from that label, that doesn't serve us. That's how we can be more optimistic one have greater agency in our life and be more likely to achieve our long term goals.

I thought it was really interesting what you noted about a trapped prior and you wrote a great article about trapped priors and why it's so hard to shake the way that people make you feel. You said in the article and it was bolded to let go of trapped priors, release harmful perceptions about yourself. Is there anything there that's worth noodling on or just kind of doubling down on?

Yeah, trap priors are a really big thing in psychology. It explains why people have phobias. So when someone has a trap prior around, let's say they're, they're deathly afraid of dogs, it's typically because they have some kind of bad experience. In the past, maybe a dog attacked them when they were young and now every time they see a dog, they have this uncontrollable fear. Well, what do you do when someone has this trap prior that all dogs are scary and harmful and might might attack you? Well, the best technique we know is exposure therapy where you start changing that trap prior. You release the trap prior by starting out with a picture of a puppy dog and then you move up to a video of a dog and then you bring a tin, tiny, cute, adorable dog. Into their presence and you put it across the room and then you bring the dog close, and then eventually they can pet a Rottweiler without being scared. And so this is what we have to do in our own lives, that when we have these trap priors that that become cages to what we think we are capable of doing in life. The idea is to step out of our comfort zones. As I mentioned in this article, that's exactly what exposure therapy is all about. You don't want to get close to that dog if you're incredibly afraid of it, but by. But through successive exposure, this is how you unshackle yourself from that trap prior.

That's great. Well, I'll read that last line again and then I'll wrap it up. Nir says don't simply manifest your goals. Instead, abolish negativity that's tainting your outlook and see the opportunities right in front of you. Hey, this is the near and Far podcast, if you like this with Nir Eyal. He's reading his latest articles and I'm getting him to talk a little bit about them and give us some more details. Will you write back and give them some feedback? We'd also love a review in whatever podcast app that you listen to. An honest review. Nir reads them all. It would really mean a lot. Thank you so much for listening today, Nir. Any final thoughts or comments, everyone?

As well, please go check out Nick Gray's book, the Two Hour Cocktail Party. It's a fantastic book. Nick has been kind enough to do these podcasts with me. I'm so thankful that he does. But you should absolutely check out his book. It is free. Fantastic. If you've ever wanted to host a cocktail party or you want to bring people together and you're not really sure how this book walks you, step by step, exactly how to do it in a way that's. That's effortless and fun.

Thank you for saying that. This is our first time by the way of doing video and I was like, oh my gosh, I am under pressure. I have to make sure I read every single word right because if I don't do it right, I'm going to get cut. So if you would like to apply for my job, near may be taking a rotating cast of characters based on my narration skills.

Skills.

Feel free to send him an email. Thank you so much for watching. Okay, good. Thank you so much for watching and for listening, everybody. We'll see you at the next episode.