How to Start Manifesting Your Dream Life

People ask about the secrets to manifesting your dream life all the time. 

And I always think about a song lyric I heard a while back that has stuck with me ever since. 

“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die.” 

The point, as I see it, is that we all want the dream life, but very few of us are willing to do what is necessary to get that dream life. 

Note: it is not about hard work. It is not about working even harder than you already do. It is not about killing yourself or actually dying. It is not about hustle culture. 

Manifesting your dream life rests fully on your being willing to change who you are on a fundamental level.

That’s it. 

Simple. 

Not easy. 

Changing Who You Are

Look, there’s a reason law of attraction teacher Abraham Hicks calls us the three percent. 

About three percent of people are even open to the possibility of growing beyond our perceived limitations, of expanding our minds and hearts, of accepting that we are far more powerful than we can comprehend, and that, yes, we are fully responsible for every single thing that happens in our lives. 

As spiritual teacher and writer Marianne Williamson famously says: 

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?”

Indeed. Who are you not to be? 

You came here to be all those things. 

You came here, into this human body, to push through perceived limitations, connect with your higher self, and make real magic happen. 

You know how I can be sure of that? You are here, reading these words right now. 

For all your negative self-talk and emotional pain, you are here, ready to take each simple step to discover how manifestation works. 

Your limiting beliefs and negative energy have held you back for long enough. 

When the student is ready, the teacher appears. 

And your spiritual practices will be the most of your hard work. 

So, while many people my sit and think about how to manifest the life of their dreams, or think about how unfair it is that they have not manifested it, after all this hard work, you are here, in active pursuit of real solutions to manifesting the life of your dreams. 

So now you know the secret: you must change who you are. 

Why? 

Because if the person you are today was capable of manifesting that life you dream about, you would have already done it. 

You don’t need to change what you are doing. You need to change who you are being. 

That person living that life you envision is real, authentic, and possible. You just have to become her. 

Dr. Joe Dispenza writes extensively about this process in his book Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself.

So how do you do that? 

Begin Within to Manifest Your Dream Life

All change begins with you. 

So, if you have been working to perfect the circumstances in which you live, to fix everything, and everyone, around you, stop. 

It’s not them. 

It’s you.

It’s never those things out there. 

It’s always you.

Sure, if you are in a toxic relationship or environment, you need to leave. 

That’s step one in any healing and growing, self-love process: get yourself safe, and do so by any means necessary. 

But once you are there, it is time to work on your internal mechanisms. 

Sit with these words: to get a life you really want you must change who you are.

It is scary, and your whole body, mind, and system will fight you. 

You have, like most of us, likely been driving through life on autopilot. 

You have allowed instincts and triggers to navigate your way through life. 

You have been playing out the same stories, stories you adopted when you were a child and have compounded since then, for perhaps decades. 

And those stories will continue to determine your life for you until you make the decision to break free, to unlearn those stories, and to do something different. 

It will be painful. 

But everything is painful. Living life on played out stories is painful, which is what brought you here in the first place, looking for your dream life. 

The question is, do you want the pain of discipline or the pain of regret? 

My husband and I have a favorite scenario we like to play out, wherein we imagine that on our deathbeds, our very last day on earth, if we have lived the life we dreamed, the very best version of ourselves will appear to us and be a close or exact match to who we are. 

If we have not dared to live the life we dreamed, that very best version of ourselves will appear to us, and it will be like hell looking at all we could have done and been had we just had a bit more courage. 

Courage to endure the pain of discipline. 

Meditation

The first step to unlearning all those stories that do not serve you, to breaking the habit of being yourself, after you have gotten yourself safe and accepted that you do indeed need to change, is to sit with yourself. 

Rather than digging out a bunch of old pipes and sitting in therapy for years figuring out how broken you are (nothing at all against real, therapeutic counseling which can help you cope as you grow), practice just sitting with your feelings. 

Meditation is a great way to do this sitting. 

Take 20 minutes each day, before you do anything else, do a little yoga to wake up your mind and body and balance your breath, and set your timer. 

Sit in a quiet space and perform a whole body scan, from your crown chakra down to your root chakra, and check in with yourself, clearing chakras and loving yourself gently. 

As you close out your meditation, make a commitment to just be self-aware for the whole day. 

Self-Awareness

The next step to manifesting your dream life is to be painfully self-aware. 

You will have to learn to love the parts of yourself that are not so great, to not push them away or justify them, or sit in shame over them. 

If you snap at your kids, witness yourself with love. Stop. Take a breath. Apologize. And start again. 

When you lash out at your husband, witness yourself with love. Stop. Take a breath. Apologize. And start again. 

Make a commitment to be your most loving self, to allow the ego to take a backseat. 

We don’t want to kill the ego, or the parts of ourselves that are not so great; we want to thank them for taking such good care of us over the years. We want to allow them their own voice, and then forgive them for the damage they have caused while in survival mode. 

And we want to invite them to take a backseat. 

And then we put love in the driver’s seat. 

This process is painful. It is hard. Nobody wants to look in the mirror.

“Nobody wants to die.” 

But it is necessary to manifesting your dream life. 

Allow yourself to go through this meditation and self-awareness process every day for a month, and watch how much your heart and mind expand, watch how you slowly, gradually, start to shift. 

And when you backslide, forgive yourself, love yourself, pick yourself up, and start again, this time with experience. 

You can do this. 

Now, you have set the changing process into motion, it is time to start manifesting. 

Manifest Your Dream Life

It begins with a vision, so you can start with a vision board. 

Sit with yourself once a week. Give yourself a day off to dream off and on about who and how you want to be, what you want to do, and what you want to have. 

And create a board, little by little, that brings those visions to live. 

Cut out pictures from old books and magazines and even social media, and fashion a board that is a tangible, powerful tool to plant in your subconscious mind every time you look at it. And keep it somewhere you can see it. 

As your vision takes shape, be sure to keep your dream life broad enough to allow the Universe to give you “this or better.” 

Remember, the Universe has a far better imagination that you or I could ever have. 

Don’t ask for a specific job; look at the career or profession of your dreams. Don’t ask for a specific man; seek a man who does this, feels this way, or is that way. 

As you are creating your vision board and planting those images in your mind, imagine what she looks like, who she is, how she behaves, how she dresses, what she eats, who she’s friends with, how she treats her loved ones, how she wakes up every morning and goes to bed every night, as much detail as possible. 

Then, during your days, become her. 

Take one step, then another, toward that woman you are becoming who lives that life of your dreams. 

Allow your negative thoughts to simply be byproducts of a wild imagination that has brought your wildest dreams, and keep a clear picture of your dream life, and all the good things that come with it, from being drenched in negative energy. 

It is yours for the taking, and this manifestation process allows for small steps toward big dreams. 

Most people underestimate what they can do in two years and overestimate what they can do in two months. 

Give yourself time, be in the present moment as much as possible, and feel your spiritual awakening taking place in every one of those moments. 

Your positive energy will grow, eliminating much of your negative emotions and negative feelings, and allowing you to live your best life on simple terms. 

Happy manifesting!