Manifestation isn’t about holding the universe hostage with affirmations. It’s about capacity, safety, and alignment at every level.

In this episode, Kim and Vicki explore why manifesting can turn painful when it becomes performative, how cultural expectations distort desire, and why your body must feel safe before expansion can occur. This conversation offers relief, perspective, and a gentler way forward for anyone who’s ever burned a vision board in frustration.

Welcome to the Ember Wing Collective podcast.

I'm Kimberly Veer.

And I'm Vicki Jarica.

And today, Vicki and I want to have a pretty real and raw discussion about manifesting.

I.

You and I both attended a vision board workshop.

This we did just a few days ago.

And yeah, lots of surprises on your vision.

I loved that.

Yeah, I do too.

We're just following the feel.

Following the feel.

And I think that's that such a great lead in to what we're talking about with real.

With manifesting versus.

What did you say earlier when we were offline?

It's not.

It's performance.

Yeah.

Perform any.

Yeah.

So many people are doing these loud, performative, manifesting things.

I see that everywhere.

I follow a lot of accounts where the people that are the influencers in our world on social media are out there screaming about manifestation and how all you have to do is just be aligned with it and speak it into the world and do your vision boards and write your vision and.

And you will manifest the things.

And I. I agree that that's part of the process, but it definitely leaves a lot out of the conversation.

Yes, yes.

I think it does too.

I do think it is part of the process, but it's not the whole process.

I think before you start that process, you have to go back and really get grounded and get clear and know who you are and know what are the possible pitfalls of what you're wanting on your vision board.

Right.

Because I think there's a lot of things that maybe some unfinished business or you're coming into the manifesting process and you're not grounded and you're flighty and you're very chaotic in your energy and all of that.

It's going to play a part in how well the manifesting process occurs.

Absolutely.

Well, in Gestalt, we have learned that clarity and unfinished business and all of those things definitely impact the way that we show up in life.

And you definitely do not want to get yourself caught in that.

And also, we know that there's a lot of other people's expectations that can get really, really wrapped up in what we think should go on our vision board or our manifestation board.

So, yeah, yeah, it's a treacherous.

It's a treacherous space.

And I do want to share a cautionary tale about a friend of mine.

I think it's a great place to have this Conversation about manifesting.

Because I do think that there can be a whole lot of shame and guilt and just really icky feelings when manifestation is something that you focus on and yet it doesn't happen.

So a friend of mine and I, years and years ago, we had shared an experience at a training around how to manifest things.

And it was very much a cheerleading expedition, right?

The, the person who was leading was, this is what you need to do.

This is how I've done it.

They're very successful, by the way.

The person that was leading the workshop is incredibly successful.

Like the person that you would look up to and say, I want to be that person or have those things that are similar.

I want to embody that type of energy.

And it had been a few months since that and my friend had done all the things right.

She had gone down the checklist, she'd done the vision board, she wrote her vision, she, she put all of the things in place and she even did her personal work.

Like she showed up like it was not half assed.

She showed up in the biggest way.

And yet in lunch when we were talking about it, she broke down in tears because she's like, I don't know what I'm doing wrong because none of this stuff is happening.

And part of that was time allowance, right?

It wasn't that.

It had been, you know, years and years since it.

Since we had taken the workshop.

My heart broke for her because the way that she was beating herself up and saying, what's wrong with me?

Or why am I being punished?

Like, you can really turn that into retroflexion really, really quickly and a lot of really bad negative self.

And I don't know about you, but I've been there too.

I've looked at the things on my manifestation board and gone, why, why do I not to get these?

Why do I not deserve that?

What's wrong with me?

Have you ever done that?

Oh, absolutely, Absolutely.

I've had a very similar experience where I've spent time and effort checking everything off my vision board and manifestation, going through the steps, quote unquote.

And, and nothing happens.

And not only do I beat myself up and start to question myself, but then I also really question the connection that I have to the universe and to the spirit and, you know, what's going on.

Did they not hear me?

And for me personally, like, holding myself with self compassion and when some of those wishes and desires didn't manifest, you know, was a, an important part of the process in general is saying it's not me.

Right.

There's nothing wrong with me for wanting whatever it is on my board, but maybe being compassionate enough to understand.

Maybe the timing's not right.

Yeah.

Or the environment is not right.

Or the environment's not right.

Or I need to learn more things before that happens.

Right.

I feel bad for your friend.

I've been there.

It's very painful.

It is painful, and it's unnecessarily painful because of, I think, the cultural expectations that get put on people of.

Okay.

If you can envision it, and I mean, think of how entrenched this is.

I can remember.

Good grief.

This has been in the 90s.

I read this book, and I don't know if you've ever read it.

It's called the Celestine Prophecy.

Have you ever read that book?

So the whole basic premise of this book, which is a super fancy, fast read, by the way.

And then there's another one that has been very popular lately, the Secret.

What is the Secret?

Something or another.

Well, there's the Secret.

I mean, there's that secret.

I think that's it.

It's the one where it talks about, like, you visualize what you want and you speak it and you concentrate on it.

The Celestine Prophecy is this oddly fictionalized, sort of biographical.

It's a fictionalized biographical version of the same thing.

We read those books, and then they become so popular in our culture.

And I even think they made a movie out of the Celestine Prophecy.

I don't know for sure.

They did make the movie of the Secret.

They made the movie of the Secret.

So, yeah, it gets ingrained in us.

And, you know, that's the interesting thing about the work that we do as hypnotherapists is because we understand that even though you may, like, say, okay, consciously I understand that.

I'm not just gonna think it and it's gonna appear or whatever.

Subconsciously, on some level, when you're sitting in the movie theater and you're watching that, or you're in the workshop with that influencer who's telling you about how they did A, B, C, D, and got X, Y, Z, it really sort of gives you your subconscious, the.

The process of saying, okay, I can.

I can relate those two concepts together.

Right?

I can relate.

If I believe it hard enough, it will happen.

And if I don't believe it hard enough and it doesn't happen, that's my fault, because I didn't believe it hard enough.

Right.

You know, I didn't.

There's something defective in me because that process obviously works because we've seen it in movies, we've seen it in TV shows, we've read it in books, we've seen it from influencers, we've seen it from workshop leaders, we've heard it from our coaches, from our mentors.

You know, it's just.

It's everywhere.

And I was recently at.

In another workshop with another shaman woman who is flat ass amazing.

And basically her statement was manifesting is, you know, so last year you can get beyond that.

It's not the necessity that you think it is, and it's not the process that we get sold sometimes in, in how we show up for it.

Well, I definitely think that there's the cultural expectation and pressure is there for sure.

And I think understanding what manifestation and manifesting is, you know, it's not forcing the universe to give us something specific.

Yeah.

You're not holding it hostage with a pistol and thinking, you need to hand me this.

That's right.

Instead, it's more like just becoming available for what you want.

Right.

On every level.

Yeah.

I think that's a lot of it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When I think of it from a mindfulness perspective, I think of, are my thoughts and my body sensations and my emotions all in alignment for whatever it is that I'm trying to manifest, or is there something hidden way back in the, you know, in the back corners of my mind that's gonna put a hard stop to that because it feels too big or unrealistic, or I have negative beliefs around it that's going, you know what I mean?

All of those things.

So I can think of two stories I want to share here.

One of them is, you know that question that people sometimes ask you about, like, what is it?

What's one piece of wisdom you've learned in this lifetime that if you could share it with the entire world, you would share it with the entire world.

Like, you have an impact.

I think my piece of wisdom, and especially to my younger self, is that you have to learn how to draw the difference between what is what you want and what is what the rest of the world wants for you.

I'm not even gonna say for you or even on your behalf, on your behalf was on my tongue to come out, but it's really not even that.

It's more of what we have collectively decided is the thing that we all should have.

So my story there is with my physical body.

I am not a little woman.

And it has not gotten past me in my own head that in the contract that I signed to Come in here in this lifetime.

Part of what I asked for was to not be a skinny little waif.

Like, I. I think I have experienced that in the past.

And I'm like, okay, I want to be able to look at food and be satisfied, you know, and be.

And be healthy, right?

And I came into this world in a voluptuous body.

I came in with boobs and a butt.

And I. I mean, even me, culturally ideal weight, I still am not a size 3 ever.

You know, I'm.

That's not going to be who I am.

And yet from the time I was a kid, I have really strived to be that waif thin person because I was told that's what I wanted.

So it's not even for me or on by my behalf because that's not healthy for me.

And it's actually the pushing myself and trying to achieve that has actually created an unhealthy state in my body.

Not just mentally, but physically.

The way that my body holds and moves things is damaged because I tried to make it into something that I'm not.

And I think that a lot of what we talk about, when we talk about manifestation, a lot of the things that end up on our manifestation list or that we end up focusing or concentrating on, sometimes the reason that we don't get exactly what it is that we want or what's on that board, and I won't even say what we want, what is on the board, or what is on our thoughts or what we're focusing on is because that is not even possible.

Like, it's not part of the contract that we're here.

And I think you hit on that a little bit when you were talking about it.

And it's just, It's a.

It's a thing, right?

The other story I want to share is that sometimes you ask for something that, yes, you deserve.

You.

You can.

I don't want to say the word deserve.

I.

That word came out of my mouth and erased that.

Like, then, yeah, no, no, no deserving.

Because there's no deserving.

Here you are.

Make yourself available for what you want.

Okay.

You know, all of us want more money.

I don't know many people personally.

Sure there are some out there, but I don't know where they live or exist that say, I want less money in my life or I don't want it, don't want any richness.

But one of the things that happened to me is I grew up in the family I grew up in, and we had a farm and we were wealthy by certain standards, like if you look on a balance sheet at a bank, the number is impressive, right?

It's a really cool number.

And yet.

And I grew up here, right?

I grew up in this, but I didn't earn it.

Like, I was not the person who put the work in to get it.

And when my mom passed away and it was fully mine and I inherited it, there was this several year lag in me being able to become the person that needed to operate it because I didn't have that skillset.

And it was a really, really shocking hard row to hoe kind of a situation.

And I almost lost the whole thing because I didn't have the skill set or the practice or the.

Even though I knew how it was running, I'd never done it.

So I had to learn that out of the school of hard knocks.

So I know that there's people say, oh, I want to become a multimillionaire.

And there's all kinds of perils involved with that, which you and I have had major discussions around, you know, like your thought of who multimillionaires are.

And like right now in particular, billionaires are on my shit list.

And I don't know, many need to eat who they are, who are there, who have them on their, like, oh, I love you list.

But you know, people who have a lot of money get there.

There's a lot of things that come attached to that is what I'm saying.

Sure, a lot of cultural things, A.

Lot of cultural things.

But if you have not created the environment within yourself and outside of yourself in order to be able to hold what you are asking for, even though it is something that is possible or probable or expected or absolutely available to you, now may not be the time that you're going to be able to get it, because that environment to create it is not sustainable for you.

And what I went through, I feel like, well, one, I'm going to have some words with my parents about, hey, you know, if you want me to keep the damn thing, you need to spend a little bit more time with me.

And I need to swallow that for my own situation with Nick.

But it, you know, you've got to, you've got to create within yourself the environment and the field and the space and the ability to handle what you're asking for.

And sometimes the universe is saying, look, I see you sister, I really do, but you are not ready for this yet.

And so I'm going to send experiences your way that are going to help you be better prepared for that Makes sense.

It totally makes sense.

And when you were talking, I'm like, yeah, so the vision board that we kind of started off with, right.

Everybody's like, oh, well, this is what I'm going to do in the next 365 days.

But the universe doesn't work on our timing.

It works on divine timing.

That, and that could be.

You might get that thing, that's thing that is on your, your vision board, but not this year.

It's a two year, three year process because like you said, you've got to get into alignment and do the personal work needed to hold it and to hold it successfully for whatever it is that, you know, that comes into being.

So I, I think that's good.

I, I have thrown fits over some of my vision boards, not coming to fruition in the past and have literally burned them.

And it would be interesting to see from this space of greater awareness and wisdom if I go, if I were to go back to some of those older visions and look at maybe not the specific things of, I want super specific things this or super specific that, but if I looked at the energy around that particular thing and the person that I needed to be to hold that thing, if I didn't gain some of that in the years since I posted the vision and where I am today.

Do you know what I mean by that?

I do.

And I would be willing to almost lay money down if you had the eidetic memory to know what was on there, that you would find that a lot of that has happened.

But it doesn't look the way that you wrote it down on the piece of paper.

Absolutely.

Or that the picture that you put on the vision board.

And I think that's the thing, right.

That's why we teach people.

When you and I do vision work with clients, I think both of us teach people do not go for the hard and fast.

Like don't say, ooh, I want, you know, a new car and yes, you can do the new car that you want, but also realize you're going to leave room open for that to look differently.

Like the paint color might be different or it might not be brand new, it might be a couple of years old or it, you know, realistically it could be something that is completely different, but solves the problem that whatever that thing you were picking up on or creates the opportunity that whatever that thing you were picking up on.

So we tell people to write with from a feeling perspective and to choose images that promote feeling.

I just recorded a whole episode for the be more business podcast around using your primary sensory modality of whether you're visual or auditory or olfactory or kinesthetic or you know, using those things of how you communicate with yourself using those in your intention work and in your visions and that kind of stuff.

Because that is what you are aiming for.

And I would bet if you went back, you would find way more of that actually occurred than you would thought or given it credit for when you lit the match, right?

Absolutely.

And it makes me think of one thing.

So I do know that one thing that I've carried on over the course of a couple vision boards was I wanted a statement vehicle, a statement truck specifically.

And I wanted people to notice it.

When I was driving it, I wanted people to notice it.

I'm not particular on brands, but there's a specific look the old time truck.

But I wanted it to have a brand new motor and work really well so it could tow things Anyway.

So in my head and on my vision board I had cut out a picture of the truck that I wanted.

Right.

But when I stated it, it was always one a statement vehicle that always started, a statement truck that always started fast forward.

So that never came to be.

Never.

No matter how many times I stuck it on the board, it never came to be.

A couple years ago, probably about five or six years ago, my father in law was downsizing his farm and had called up my husband and said, come get what you want because I'm just going to dump it, I'm getting rid of it all.

And so my husband and my children went up there and they took a bunch of the stuff from my father in law's farm and brought it back.

And one of the things that they brought back was a very distinctive older model truck.

Every single person on the road knows it's coming when it comes.

It is a statement.

Yeah, I've met this truck.

It's hard to miss.

It's hard to miss.

And it was like, that's for sure it does.

And it was like, wow, it's not what I was intending, but here it is.

And when I can get past of it's not what I wanted, but here it is.

That truck has started for me every single time I've turned the key and it's like 100 years old.

Not really, but it is a very old truck and it turns key like that.

It starts up and it gets me from A to B.

It gets me where I need to go.

In its own unique style.

So I think that too is another reason why if you are, if you're too specific about what you want and you get stuck on the very specific, it's got to be.

It's got to look like this, sound like this, tastes like this, be this versus well, it's this.

The idea was, is I wanted a memorable truck that people would notice.

That worked for me and got me from A to B.

This truck does that.

Check the boxes.

It checked the boxes.

And so it was up to me to do the work on going well, it's not what I visualized, but it is what I asked for.

And I've had that happen so many times in my own life.

I, I look up.

I do keep a manifestation board in my office because I do think it's important to remind your subconscious in particular, and your conscious for that matter, to remind them of what you are aiming for.

Like, what is, what's the goal?

Like, that's, you know, the, the old statement of keep your eye on the ball.

Like, that's definitely something I, I firmly believe in.

But I also realize what happens doesn't really look the way that it looks.

And I have a bunch of thank yous I put.

When I get something.

This board is probably two years old, but.

And I leave it up there.

I.

It's not a vision board that I change every year.

Like, and I didn't want to get rid of my vision board this year.

By the way, I liked my last year's vision and I just set it off to the side because it's still working.

Like, there's still work to do on that board.

And so I left it in my peripheral.

But this one, I, I put thank you notes when it fulfills whatever the, the underlying part of that is.

Yeah, yeah.

And, and I love putting the little thank you stickers up there.

And I even went to the effort of putting the.

Putting what I wanted next to it.

There's.

There's actually a bobcat on there.

Not a, like, round bobcat, but the bobcat machine.

I want the bobcat machine.

I need to make that clarification.

Like, I really want a bobcat machine.

And Bobcat, by the way, is known for being super women friendly.

And I really want that brand.

And so the, the picture on my, my thing is, is actually a bobcat brand one.

But what it says above it is well maintained because that's what I'm aiming for.

Like, the bobcat to me is not a status symbol.

It's not a representation.

It's not this.

It means that my land is well maintained because that's a vehicle to get me to that point.

And so I think in our manifestation work, if we can look for when we do this, if we can look for what that underlying piece is like you did.

I want a truck that starts and I want it to make a statement.

I want it to work for me.

And I think at the end of the day, that's where we need to judge on whether we're actually creating what we want from our manifestation work or whether we need to modify our environment internally or externally so that that can manifest.

And I know we're getting ready to wrap up here, but one thing I do want to say that was a really important quote that Vicki and I both got attached to when we were working up the notes for this episode.

And we've talked to both of them, we've both hinted at it, but I wanna say it very explicitly.

If your body feels unsafe, your psyche will resist the expansion.

Absolutely.

If you are not the type of a person who would feel safe right now as a millionaire, you are not gonna make it to the millionaire status because that it doesn't feel safe.

And here's the thing that our conscious mind loves to do.

It weaves these illusions over us that make think that yes, the money is the safety, right?

But underneath it all, if we're not confident that we can hold the space and we don't feel safe in that space or like we belong in that space, it's really, really difficult for us to manifest that particular thing.

So when you're looking at your manifestation work, please, I think the bottom line to this whole episode is don't beat yourself up.

Like, look for the positive, look for the good signs and have a ton of self compassion for who you were when you made that board or who you were when you wrote that vision.

Absolutely.

And where you are now and the progress that you've made, no matter how small it is, it is still progress towards that ultimate goal.

Yeah, I agree, I agree.

And come from it from a grounded space, right?

Understand who you are right now in this moment and settling your body so that you're not coming to your board or to your.

Your manifestation process all scattered and, you know, elevated and stuff like that.

But when you come from a space of deep groundedness where you're very self aware, that really opens up the channels because you have better access to what, what you're in alignment with.

And it gives you information on the things that you need to work on personally.

Yes.

So that you can hold whatever it is that you're.

And feel safe.

And feel safe doing it.

Because as soon as you get dysregulated, boom, there go the doors close, the walls go up and everything.

Because you're, you're not out of, you're out of creative energy and you're back into survival energy.

I know.

So, yeah, great.

A hundred percent.

I love that quote.

I love it.

I love it as well.

And we're going to leave you dear listeners here for this episode.

Our next episode in two weeks is going to talk about intention and focusing, which is the work that you're doing in the process of all of this.

And we're going to cover some how tos around that, as well as some of our own thoughts about how to healthily, mindfully and supportively create intention and focus.

So we'll see you in that episode.

Meanwhile, find us@the EmberwingCollective.com we have a brand new website that's up that explains all about the community.

So you can go have a look, see what that we're all about.

And I would encourage you to do that and also follow us on Instagram.

Emberwingcollective.