The art and science of manifestation: Why goal setting is such a struggle and resolutions fail
“We can think all the happy little thoughts we want and nothing will change FOR us without change IN us.”
-Ericka Thomas
Transcript
Ep 199
The art and science of manifestation: Why goal setting is such a struggle and resolutions fail
Hey there, welcome back. Today marks the episode 199 of The Work IN podcast and as we are set to enter 2025, and celebrate our 5th season. I can’t even believe that. I didn't even think I wanted to do a podcast! But here I am looking ahead and wondering what’s next? As we approach the new year, many of us are setting goals for next year. Or trying to. I don’t do resolutions any more and my goals setting would appall business coaches everywhere. I’ve given up resolutions in favor of a more organic goal setting and a manifestation practice for both my business and my life. Our Work IN today is a look at the art and science of manifestation and why goal setting is such a struggle and resolutions fail.
Many years ago I stumbled upon Steven Covey’s 7 habits of highly effective people. I was a young mother of 2 at the time and had just started Tae Kwon do as a way to get out of the house and do something for myself. And in that book there’s an exercise that allows you to see what areas of your life are in balance and which ones need some work. Those areas are physical, social/emotional, mental and spiritual. Sounds a lot like our koshas doesn’t it? In the exercise you write each of those in a circle on a piece of paper and then draw a line around them in a way that indicates how focused you are on each of those parts of your life. It usually ends up looking a bit like a wonky octopus. The idea here is to visualize where you need to balance out your energy. It also included a goal setting worksheet. That was the first time I had ever really thought about how or what I wanted to bring into my life. But I knew I wanted better things so I filled out those worksheets and put them away. Little did I know that I was taking my first steps toward manifestation long before it was the buzz word it is today.
I had done New Years resolutions probably every year since I was old enough to understand the concept. They rarely stuck. And if I'm honest they were pretty boring. But resolutions are often negative even when you’re looking for a positive outcome. Most often a resolution is something that you don’t want to do anymore. Like quitting smoking, drinking or losing weight or giving up junk food. I’ll explain why they fail in just a minute.
Beyond goal setting
Fast forward to a year after I filled out all those 7 habits worksheets. We were packing up to move back to the midwest and I stumbled upon a folder buried deep on the “desk of requirement” You know the pile where all the things you don’t know what to do with but a perfectly good and you might need them later live.) Inside that folder were all those worksheets. As I read through them I was surprised to discover that every single thing that I wrote down happened that year. I didn’t keep track or pay attention and because of that I didn’t notice when they happened but they happened. Right down to the 5 private personal training clients that I worked with.
Ordinarily life coaches ask us to create very specific SMART goals. Specific, measurable, Attainable Realistic and time bound. And of course keep them somewhere visible so they will be top of mind and focus and track each and every thing. (In other words, not at the bottom of the junk drawer.) I didn’t do any of that. What’s going on? If I’m not driving my own success, who is?
It sort of flies in the face of the intellectual productivity goal setting checklist idea for creating success in your life.
What is really going on when we sit down with pen and paper to design our future?
Mind and Brain
Here’s where we get into the science part. A bit of biology. As you may remember from 9th grade biology our brain is made up of several different areas. Each of those areas are responsible for different jobs. Scientists used to think that these areas were distinct and separate from each other but what we know now is that there is a lot of overlap and the communication within the brain and between the brain and body is very complex. It is also beyond my scope to go too deep into brain anatomy but there are 2 important areas of our brain that play a big role in how we live our lives that don’t really get a whole lot of air time.
The first one is a newly discovered area within and part of our motor cortex located in the outer layer of our brain (cerebral cortex). It’s called the somato-cognitive action network (SCAN). This area has documented connections to brain regions known to set goals and plan action.
"Basically, we now have shown that the human motor system is not unitary. Instead, we believe there are two separate systems that control movement," said radiology professor Evan Gordon of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature,
"One is for isolated movement of your hands, feet and face. This system is important, for example, for writing or speaking -movements that need to involve only the one body part. A second system, the SCAN, is more important for integrated, whole body movements, and is more connected to high-level planning regions of your brain," Gordon said.
The second area of the brain that is important for our discussion today is the RAS Reticular activating system. It’s located in the brain stem and acts basically as a filter and a spotlight for all the information that comes into the brain through our senses. It detects and directs our attention to new and possible dangerous things in our environment. And it filters out less or non important pieces of information. It blocks the irrelevant or repetitive stimuli so you can focus on more important things. In this process the RAS helps regulate our stress response in the autonomic nervous system through the HPA axis (hypothalamus-pitutitary-adrenal axis) And adapting to change.
The RAS is our subconscious gatekeeper. 99% of the information coming from our senses Outside, around and inside our body, is filtered out, ignored by the conscious mind. Until it becomes important.
How does this part of the brain know what's important enough to send to the conscious mind?
First, all new things will be most important. After that we tell our brain what is important through our SCAN. We can do that in several different ways. The most obvious of course is conscious thought. But we also reinforce importance for the brain through our behavior. The actions we take , the experiences we expose ourselves to, how we move, what we eat and the emotions we live in.
Because we receive information from all of our senses we can leverage all of our senses to communicate focus, intention and importance through our senses.
Writing down a list of goals and losing the paper for a year places enough importance on those goals in the subconscious to make a difference. How much more could there be with a little more reinforcement, with conscious thought, emotion, action, intention and purpose behind it?
Once we give the spotlight of the RAS a direction then we start to see opportunities, coincidences and serendipity show up over and over again. Is that random? No. Magical? I think so. It's the brain giving you the opportunity for what you desire.
But this doesn’t guarantee success does it? There’s more to it than this almost magical ability of our brain to put us at the right place at the right time.
Manifestation v. magical thinking
This is about more than wishing and hoping for something better to happen in our lives. That’s magical thinking. We can think all the happy little thoughts we want and nothing will change for us without change in us. And this is the key to truly manifesting wildly fantastic dreams and the reason that so many never reach them.
It’s not about crafting the perfect affirmation, SMART goal list or putting a post it notes on every surface of your house. Manifestation begins with a shift in your state of being.
The brain can’t tell time. So we can leverage the power and importance of our emotions to put ourselves in a bio psycho social and even spiritual state of gratitude or any other powerful emotion that you would feel when that goal or desire comes true - as if it’s already true. Gratitude tells the brain (RAS) that this great thing has already happened or is currently happening. Our state of being draws opportunities to us faster than anything else.
And this is more than just feeling but it can start there. WE can reinforce it with our other senses as well. Mantra and other sounds like particular music, visualization of yourself doing and being in the life you want, tasting particular food, creating physical sensations and even using the sense of smell can shift our state of being. THis is why vision boards are so powerful. They bring in more than just words on a list. They actually tap into the somatosensory movement in making them as well as a different kind of focus in the act itself.
Changing our state of being is a big ask. Change is hard. This is another reason so many people fail in their resolutions. We want something different. We want to change something about our lives. But we’re unwilling to change anything about the person that got us into this life.
We set goals without asking ourselves what am I willing to do differently to achieve this? What do I have to change about myself to be the kind of person who achieves this?
The truth is that we are responsible for the life that we have at this moment. The person we are got us to where we are now. That’s not to say that we are at fault for bad things that have happened to us. Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason. We can’t change our past but we can change our future. And we can make it absolutely anything we want it to be but not without some change. I truly believe that.
Now here’s the thing that I want to be sure to highlight. And I believe it’s the thing that’s missing from the general idea of manifestation that we get from the cultural zeitgeist about it. And that is that there is a cost. When I say opportunities fall in your lap, that doesn’t mean there isn’t effort required. It doesn’t mean you won’t have to invest something, money, time and/or effort, in order to bring them to life. Magical thinking is believing that you deserve to have and get what you want without some kind of energy exchange. There is always some kind of energy exchange. It is a false perception to believe all those rich, successful people in the world got where they are without any effort. In fact effortlessness in anything in any given moment is inversely proportional to the effort that has been put in up to that moment. So don’t think you can make this manifestation happen without showing up.
Be Ready
When you start to tap into this body-mind connection to manifest your desires it can feel unreal. You might not be used to getting what you ask for or having really great things happen to you out of the blue. But they will. You need to be ready to take action when the universe (and your brain) drops the opportunity of a lifetime right in your lap. I had a couple of opportunities show up for me that I thought I wanted and when they came I turned them down. Not everything we want in this world is what's best for us. And it’s ok to change our mind.
THis is where thinking through what you’re willing to do, willing to change, willing to invest, comes in. And the question becomes how much do you want this thing, this change. What is your “Why”? When I worked more in the fitness space as a PT I used to ask clients this. Many would come in with general ideas about trying to get healthier, wanting to lose a few pounds, inches, dress sizes. And I would help them construct that as a SMART goal. But without a “why” that outweighed all of their excuses there would inevitably be a failure. When you think about it, ultimately 10 pounds isn’t as important as being able to get down on the ground to play with your grandkids in the face of wine and cheesecake, or beer and wings, or sitting around in front of the TV to wind down from work every night. Or whatever it is. The truth is no one sticks to any health or fitness program if it doesn’t help them FEEL better. We have to learn to tap into that.
And that’s where the overlap is between general health and wellness goal setting/ new year resolutions and manifestation. Tapping into the FEELING of health, success, abundance and gratitude and staying in it makes the process of all the little things you actually have to do and change about yourself to get there, makes them FEEL easier.
Getting started
So now if we have a better grasp of what manifestation means and how to harness it, how are we going to put this into practice for ourselves? What can that look like in real life? Well, next episode I’ll be sharing more about this with you and offering a free opportunity to get support on your journey. But you don’t have to wait for that. You can start right now with a pen and paper.
We’re going to start by looking back over the past year.
Looking back at what we’ve accomplished is a part of living a more conscious life. It's important to check in on your life and like my friend and teacher Carri Uranga says, “What went well and what could have been better?” But this exercise is a little different.
We’re going to start to wake up that reticular activating system in our brain. So grab a pen and paper, put on a 5 minute timer, and write down all the things you’ve accomplished in the past year. Big, small, doesn’t matter. Write them all down. Not the stuff that didn’t happen. THis is just all the things that you did, whether you planned to do it or not. Every little thing counts. Now observe how even after the timer goes off your brain will keep coming up with things that you forgot all about. Right those down too if you want. The time isn’t important.
Now along with waking up the RAS we have also triggered a nice little boost of dopamine. You might know dopamine as a hormone of reward, so it’s present when we feel good about ourselves after accomplishing something but it’s also a hormone of motivation and drive so we can use it and the feeling that accompanies it to tell the brain and body that we’re succeeding. Which in turn places more importance on your goals and desires. Give yourself a little gift this season and let yourself marinate in the successes you’ve already come.
Then when you look at that list you can use it to help direct vision in the new year. I’m sure your brain will give you lots of ideas in this state.
Our next episode is episode 200! And we’ll be celebrating by taking these concepts and putting them into practice. So be sure to join me for that!
If you're looking for ways to handle the effects of stress, physically, mentally and emotionally through the body head over to savagegracecoaching.com/theworkin you’ll find all the show notes for this and other episodes plus lots of free resources. And if you’re in a place where you are ready for more and you live in the Dayton Ohio area I’m taking private clients for trauma informed yoga and trauma release exercise in person and online. So book a discovery call and we can have a real life conversation. And of course I’d be ever so grateful if you would take a moment to like and subscribe to this podcast wherever you’re listening.
Thanks again everyone and as always stop working out and start working IN.
Hey there!
I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a health coach and trauma informed yoga professional bringing real world resilience and healing to main street USA.
I offer trauma release + yoga + wellness education for groups and individuals…regular people like you.
Book a call to learn how I can help.