Do you believe in ‘manifesting’?

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Do you believe in ‘manifesting’? This is the idea that if you visualise what you want, change your beliefs, focus on your desired goal and act as though you have already achieved it, you will do so. Basically the same idea as is touted under various other guises such as ‘the Universe will provide’. A little while ago I was at a conference on psychotherapy and mental health, and one of the speakers was a Dr James Flowers who runs a mental health practice in Texas. He managed to speak non-stop for 90 minutes about the power of manifesting and how reinforcing our neural pathways can influence our behaviour. He started by talking about how, as a young child, he was told by his teacher that maths just wasn’t his thing. This was reinforced by his mother who told him she wasn’t any good at maths either and it was probably a family trait. So for years he continued to struggle with maths, even though he did well in all other subjects, until a different teacher made him change his mindset. This teacher asked him to write down phrases such as ‘I am no good at math’ (sic) and then cross them all out, rip up the sheet of paper and write another filled with positive phrases. This one he was to keep with him and look at whenever he had the opportunity, every day. Sure enough the more positive approach brought about a change and soon he was excelling at maths as well as everything else. Dr Flowers then went on to talk about the M. D. Anderson cancer centre, how their logo (see above) was simply the word ‘cancer’ crossed out and how their approach had led to successful outcomes for so many people including his sister. Obviously he talked about a lot more than this – relating the story of how Jim Carrey manifested himself a cheque for $10,000,000.00 for acting, dated five years in the future, which he looked at every day and finally achieved a couple of months before the date when he was given a starring role in ‘Dumb and Dumber’ for the exact fee (which of course raises the question of why Jim Carrey didn’t date the cheque for just a few months in the future and he would have made the $10 million sooner), and also talking about more serious issues such as ‘re-wiring’ the brain to help with chronic pain – but I can’t go into all of it here. The thing that gets me, though, is; yes I understand that a positive mindset will undoubtedly help with things you have some control over such as doing better at school, but I don’t believe it is enough to beat an incurable disease. If that was the case, we would all be permanently healthy and live forever just by believing it! If a positive belief means you can cure yourself of cancer, that implies that if you die that must be your own fault because you didn’t believe and manifest a cure strongly enough, you didn’t struggle hard enough. I’ve already lost three friends to cancer and another old friend is in a hospice slipping away day by day right now. And that’s not because he didn’t want to live – of course he does! The people for whom this approach works, or is perceived to have worked, are the ones who tell their stories. No-one bothers to say that they visualised themselves a cheque for $10 million and five years later they were still a jobbing actor on the breadline. And those who visualised themselves as cured of cancer but died anyway obviously are not here to give their side of the story. What are your thoughts? All rights reserved. © Text copyright Fleur 2025.