How to Manifest Anything You Want (Dream Job)

Should you quit your day job to pursue your dream job? You read all these articles about how to manifest money, your dream job or dream life, but it seems a lot more complex than just thinking it into existence, right? That’s because it is (well, kind of).

There is action involved, too (moving in the direction of that dream, taking massive action, creating space for it, raising your vibration to match what you’re asking for, etc.)

Prefer to listen? 👇

But, if you want to hear how you can manifest your dream job successfully,  from someone else who’s done it twice, read on.

You aren’t alone in what you want. And you aren’t crazy. Manifesting what you want is real.

Can I Actually Manifest My Dream Job?

This is a question more and more people are asking themselves. And a lot of people are doing it successfully. We are in an age where a person can monetize their interests, passions, skills–their dream job!

I’m going to preface this whole blog article with this: I believe in serendipity, The Law of Attraction, manifesting, quantum energy, God, Universal Intelligence. Whatever it is you prefer to call it, it’s very real and an important ingredient of a happy, successful life. I also believe we can create whatever we want. We are creating our reality right now, every day. There are very few limitations to what we can manifest. (So be careful what you think about, and what you ask for)

According to Wallace Wattles, our minds are made up of “thinking stuff” that forms things from the formless. In other words, if you want something and truly believe it can be yours, then Universal Law states it must come in to being. Our thoughts become our actions that become things. 

How to Manifest a New Career

I’ve changed the course of my life and my career a couple of times. It’s daunting and confusing, but it’s certainly not impossible. I did this using the aforementioned “Law” and a lot of hustle. If you are already doing bits of the new career you want to transition into, it shouldn’t be as difficult. But if you have an idea and you’re starting from scratch, it may take a little longer to launch and adjust.

For me, what started off as my side hustle took center stage and became my new career. I transitioned from a full-time fashion designer to branding and marketing professional because it was what I had already been doing anyway. For several years, in tandem with design, I was doing PR, digital marketing and brand building. Sometimes shifting careers can be as easy as extracting one aspect of your current career that you’re most passionate about and just doing that one thing. Niche is good, especially in a very noisy world.

Choosing to do something else with your time is essential if you’re feeling a tug in that direction. Just know that it will take courage to start the wheels turning, and faith and patience to keep them going. The first thing to do is: just start.

What Do You Want The Most?

I think what a lot of us want is freedom. It’s what I aimed for most of my life. Up until the last decade, none of us had as much opportunity as we do right now. We are living in a very interesting and incredible time where technology, creativity, and global connectivity allows us to do things we never thought possible. We are learning spiritual practices at levels we hadn’t heard before, too.

Whatever it is you love to do when you’re not working, find a way to turn that into your business and go for it.

Whether you want to blog full time, or go freelance or be a consultant, make stuff, etc., I am going to say first and foremost: There is plenty of room for you to accomplish this. The first rule is to define what it is you want and change your mindset. Erase any limiting beliefs that separate you from anyone else out there who is making awesome shit happen. The only difference between them and you is mindset. They believe they can, and so they do. “I think, therefore, I am.”

See yourself as a superhero of whatever it is you do or plan to do. Wake up every morning or go to sleep every night with your mantra of, “I AM A MASTER AT ______.” Dr. Joe Dispenza teaches us about “becoming supernatural” in his book, Becoming Supernatural. He explains in great scientific detail how our thoughts create our reality and how we must reprogram our thoughts to change our lives.

Whatever you state, you become. This works for better or for worse. So stop saying you’re fat, ugly, broke, etc! Stop the negative self-talk TODAY. (If you want to read more on this subject, check out my previous article, What The Secret isn’t Telling You)

How I Manifested My Career

I’ll tell you a little back story about my experience.

Quitting my hamster in the wheel scenario, being financially independent and working from home (or Hawaii, or wherever I found myself at the time) was my ultimate goal two years ago. And I was on a mission to make sure I accomplished this. But many, many years before this second epiphany, I found myself in a similar place.

In my 20s, I wanted nothing more than to be a fashion designer. At a party for spiritual gurus, movers and shakers, I met an incredible woman (she was the hostess of the party). She didn’t know it, but that night she would change the way I thought forever. She taught me the valuable lesson of ‘Speak it and be it.’ 

She looked at me and asked, “What do you do?” And I started with an unconvincing, “Well, I want to be a fashion design..” That’s where she cut me off and asked me to state out loud, right there, “I AM a fashion designer.” She watched me mouth the words aloud and gave me a gentle head nod as she reinforced the statement, “Speak it and be it; Speak it and become it.” She was a life-changing miracle. 

At the time, I was a 26-year-old who had only one semester of design school under my belt. And as for personal spiritual growth, I was a mere babe. I had only read In the Meantime by Iyanla Vanzant. My journey was just beginning and this amazing woman was light years ahead of me. But I trusted her word beyond measure because she spoke with such conviction, and had proof to back it up. She was truly a Teacher and a Guide in my life path.

Do you know what happened 2 years later? I was hired as a Fashion Designer with no college degree for a large company in Dallas. In that 2-year timeframe after I met that wonderful woman and spoke what I was to be, I designed dozens of garments and collections for some of the largest brands in the USA, and sold over a hundred dresses under my own label I had designed from my little apartment.

But before all of that came to be, I envisioned myself as a designer, worked on myself, honed my skills, put in the work, and developed some major street cred because of the commitment I made to BE a fashion designer.

I manifested my dream job!

My career didn’t end there. I went on to become one of the industry’s best female denim designers. I managed and designed for multi-million dollar lines, created hundreds of pieces, was approached by factories, Parson’s design grads, and major companies to either show them how I created my CADS or design their denim collections. 

Fast forward to 2014.

Over 10 years had passed and everything for me had totally shifted. I was no longer interested in doing corporate fashion or designing clothes. I had been juggling fashion, brand building, and social media marketing for the last several years. But now I wanted (needed) something that provided more freedom, less stress. I wanted a career that was more fluid. My current profession as a fashion designer was going to have to go to make room for the new profession I found myself in, which was helping business owners build their companies through digital marketing.

I struggled with this because so much of my life was spent in fashion design. My identity was built into it and I was having to disassemble everything and tell myself and the world a whole new story (a lesson in rebranding). Shifting gears in my late 30s-early 40s was weird.

I listened to every TedTalk and YouTube guru I could find until it finally sunk in. The overarching message behind every successful author, businesswoman/man, public speaker, motivator, etc. was this: Decide. Make yourself valuable, stick to the decision, believe in yourself 100% and be willing to go fearlessly in the direction and do the work.

I had already decided: fashion design was simply not conducive to me working from a warm beach in Hawaii or south France. It required way too many accessories (fabric, samples, rulers, mannequins, etc.) So, I got rid of everything fashion-related. I literally DECIDED, and it changed my course.

Decide: Cause to come to a resolution. To ‘cut off.’ Latin decidere ‘determine,’ from de- ‘off’ + caedere ‘cut.’

Decision Creates Change

“The principle of life is that life responds by corresponding; 
your life becomes the thing you have decided it shall be.” -Raymond Charles Barker (Author, The Power of Decision)

After my big decision, and after I kind of went into autopilot and started purging all of the things in my life that didn’t serve or match to the end goal, my office space was now clutter-free and I no longer had the weight of dead, expensive projects hanging around my neck. With the fat trimmed, I was able to concentrate on the meat of my goal.

Nobody ever said switching tracks in your career is easy. It was scary for me, and it had plenty of ups and downs but I believed in myself enough to know I could handle it. If this is where you’re at right now, you can handle it, too. Everything is going to feel hard at first.

Everything is new and unfamiliar, until it isn’t.

Your mind is hardwired to resist change and the unknown because it wants to protect you from danger. Become aware of your thoughts obsessively. When negative self-talk comes in, remind that voice, “I’ve got this. Shove off, please.”

As soon as you get used to the change, and the more you tell your mind to fuck off, the less your mind will stop freaking out. And you will, too. So give the changes some time to adjust but KEEP MOVING FORWARD and continue with faith to starve the fears.

Feed your faith and you’ll starve your fears.

Over the course of the next few years, I repeated what I had done before. I became a practitioner of the digital space and content currency. I read every article or book I could get my hands on about digital marketing and social media, I plugged away with blogging, building WordPress websites, working with dozens of clients on various projects, creative content, and learned how to make passive income with eBooks and affiliate networks; I learned SEO, Google Adwords, Facebook advertising and got pretty darn good at social media marketing. I was now deep in the trenches of digital marketing, and earning a good living doing it! 

The Power of ‘I AM’

You see, what you want and who you want to be, or the life you want to live isn’t about asking and hoping your wish will be granted, nor is it about negotiation; It’s about YOU being the ultimate CREATOR of YOUR life and story. Doesn’t that just sound and feel awesome and limitless?

Good, because that’s exactly what it is! Don’t overthink it. Creation begins with a statement of “I AM ______ (fill in the blank with whatever it is you want to be/do).

So, my  ‘I am’ in 2016 was this, “I am earning $5,000 per month and earning $100K per year by the end of 2017.” 

When I said this, I honestly had no idea how, I just knew I would. And I hoped it would be from my own digital marketing business. In fact, I was pretty sure it would be. It was my BIG GOAL, after all. And a Digital Marketer is who I said I was, so the rest had to follow, right? Of course, it did. Just as it had decades prior.

Define Your Big Goal 

So you have THE BIG GOAL, which is to travel, be financially independent and earning $20,000 per month (or whatever your BIG GOAL is.) Once you define THE BIG GOAL, all of the little goal steps you make along the way will be in alignment with THE BIG GOAL. Or at least, they should be. If you are faced with a decision about something, ask yourself, “Is this in alignment with where I want to go”? If it isn’t, throw it out. Stay the course!

Your Actions MUST Match Your End Goal

For example, if you want to take a direct trip to Los Angeles, California, you wouldn’t take a highway up to Montreal, Canada, would you? The same is true with your end goal. Once you’ve made your mind up for what THAT is, all decisions, actions, goals should match with your end result. Once you tell your brain where you want to go, it (and the universe) will help you in getting there. When we decide to be or do something, our brain not only sets us up to go in that direction, but we find we are accomplishing every goal along the way that leads to the big goal. Call it an energetic occurrence or whatever, but it seems to be a universal law. If you find yourself all over the place, it’s most likely because your goals and thoughts are all over the place. Remember, wherever your thoughts go, energy flows. If you keep changing up the story, the road trip is gonna be a long one before you finally get to LA. 

What do you want to experience?

If you find yourself changing your course often, ask yourself not what you want to do, but what it is you want to feel or experience. Many times, we may find ourselves floundering because we are lacking something deeper and more emotional. Perhaps we are looking to address an emotional need and we do this by trying to replace it with tangible stuff or projects.

Ask yourself this question when it comes to your job or current business model: Does it serve my end goal?

The 6 key steps to manifesting what you want:

1. Deciding what you want – Decision is a powerful action. Do it without hesitation. Get clear on what it is you want.

2. Using thought and imagination to see it – visualize and see yourself in the end with whatever it is you desire.

3. Speaking it into creation – Don’t allow for negotiation on who or what you want to do, or be. Speak it. It is yours.

4. Committing to that goal 100% – This means staying focused; commit yourself to become valuable in whatever it is you want to do or be. Hone your skills, learn everything you need to learn. Honing your skills is your “side hustle.”

5. Knowing it is yours and staying the course – It may be scary or tiresome sometimes, but you have to keep pushing forward, knowing it’s coming, knowing it’s working itself out. HAVE FAITH.

6. Maintaining a positive energy field through kindness, happiness, joy, giving freely, gratitude! Be careful of what you put into your body. Healthy, high vibe foods are best. Maintain a positive circle of friends and be careful not to watch too much TV (violence, drama, or whatever feels negative or bothers your psyche)

Get out there and be fearless, write the story of your life. ❤️

P.S. If for a moment you think you can’t do what I did, drop me an email. I will get you back on track!  😉

Can Being Fired from a Job Cause PTSD?

When we hear the term PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) we automatically think: War Vets, medical first-responders, victims of violent crimes and experiences. But have you ever stopped to think that a form of PTSD can also affect anyone, even the average guy or gal who never served in combat or witnessed a traumatic scene or experience?

I am going to refer to this experience as ‘PDE’, or Past Distressing Experience because rightfully so, I cannot call it a Disorder if it is not diagnosed or diagnosable by a doctor. Secondly, I hate the word “disorder.”

I feel as though it holds entirely too much power than it deserves.

I recently discovered that PDE can affect anyone, at any time and for a variety of reasons, not just violent traumas.  Let’s first think about trauma and what it means.

Trauma is a deeply distressing or disturbing experience.

Can You Have PTSD from Job Loss or Being Fired?

Can suddenly losing a job be a traumatic experience?  Of course it can.  Can being left with nowhere to turn and no money in reserves be a traumatic experience? Absolutely. The trauma can affect our entire state of well-being. We rely so much on our jobs for emotional and financial security, stability, identity, provision, future plans, the roof over our heads, food in our refrigerators and warmth. Imagine what it feels like when this is suddenly taken from us without warning.  Can this not cause a devastating effect, a deeply distressing and/or disturbing experience?  Of course it can.

Related Reads:

How to Deal With Energy Vampires

How to Manifest Your Perfect Job

Should You Quit Your Day Job for your Day Dream?

There aren’t any terms or words for those who experience trauma in our lives.  We aren’t given permission to grieve or process trauma when we go through it unless it’s “real trauma” or horrific.

Who gets to slide the scales on what’s traumatic enough to be called PTSD?  Dr. London says it best in his article relating to PTSD-like symptoms:

I have seen a fair number of cases where people had symptoms that masqueraded as anxiety and depressive disorders, but when we explored the historical events in a person’s life, these symptoms could be traced to milder traumatic or unpleasant experiences that are not normally associated with PTSD. And yet, their symptoms were exactly those of PTSD. In my experience, a milder traumatic event does not necessarily lead to a milder set of symptoms.

Causes of PTSD

PTSD (or PDE) can happen to anyone, and for a variety of reasons. Regardless of the circumstances, it’s essentially a huge loss of any kind that rocks your life upside down. You may suffer a major loss and disruption of lifestyle, or even the betrayal of trust, or the loss of a relationship. We can all experience trauma from shock, betrayal, and loss in many different forms and from different sources, whether a job loss, a death of someone close, a house fire or bankruptcy, walking in on a cheating spouse or seeing something horrific that continues to haunt us.

The emotional impact can be the same.

Symptoms of PTSD

If you are not sure if what you’ve experienced, or what you are currently experiencing is PDE or PTSD, here are some of the signs:

Having recurrent nightmares, flashbacks, upsetting thoughts, or memories; feeling distressed when you’re reminded of it; having physical symptoms, such as a racing heart or sweating when it comes to mind; irritability, jumpiness, angry outbursts, or difficulty sleeping; or feeling distant, negative, or uninterested in activities you used to enjoy.

If you are experiencing trauma from a loss, or job loss, I encourage you to give yourself permission to grieve and feel whatever shock, pain or loss you feel. Talk to someone (a friend, relative or professional) about how you feel and work through difficult feelings.

In time, it will pass and you’ll come out on the other side with a lot more clarity and wisdom from the experience.

On a Personal Note:

I experienced a form of PTSD after a job experience and loss a few years ago. It was hard moving through those feelings, but once I learned what it was that I was experiencing, it helped me to navigate and overcome the fear and negative emotions. I realized the job I “lost” was nothing more than a job with a toxic environment. And while being cut loose was the best thing that could have happened, the portion that caused the most trauma was not having a plan in place when it happened. Relying too heavily on an untrustworthy company to give me what I needed to give myself (security) put me in a place of vulnerability. Ask yourself what you can do to empower yourself, or explore what you learned from your experience and how you can set yourself up for success the next time you’re in a workplace that feels unstable or toxic. If you find yourself in a job where there is no stability, give yourself permission to leave, and change the scene.

Why ‘Intuitive Entrepreneurship’ is Crucial

Lately the phrase “intuitive entrepreneurship” has been popping into my head.  Perhaps these are buzzwords which are being used more often. Or perhaps, the need to employ this way of thinking is more crucial than it has been before. Letting go of old paradigms is really hard, but I guess it’s much harder when you find yourself left behind because you were afraid of change and taking a risk.

“Entrepreneurs are different. They have the ability to deal with uncertainty, to take risks and tolerate ambiguity. They usually have a personality that is mercurial, and they have highs that are really high and lows that are really low. There’s good evidence that they have strong self-confidence but also tend to be overoptimistic. They rely extensively on their own intuition.”  -James V. Koch
Old Dominion University

As natural-born entrepreneurs, we are kind of wired to take risks and be rebellious.  We learn really early in life what interests us and what doesn’t.  This is probably why I sucked so much in school.  I never understood the point.  I was incredibly bored. I saw myself, my life and my future in a space that had nothing to do with anything going on in those classrooms.  Life was more interesting, more intelligent and grander than the education I was getting there. I couldn’t wait to get out of school to actually create my life the way I saw it. 

I think this is one trait of an entrepreneur that really stands out. If you are a natural born entrepreneur, you probably know you are a bit of a stubborn individual. You live in a bubble of your own ideas, often times feeling like you speak a different language than others.  You are totally driven and would rather stay up all night planning and doing research than sleeping.  And for anyone who tries to sway you from your vision, your hustle and gut instincts -well, that’s all but impossible.

I have been exercising my intuition and trend forecasting skills for a long time now. So the methods and skills I use are pretty natural to me.  My career as a fashion designer has meant that using intuition, and awareness with research is vital to creating collections or pieces that are relevant. I was told in my career that, “If it didn’t scare me, I wasn’t thinking big enough”. A design manager at a company I worked for wanted us to “make him a little uncomfortable” with our designs.  So taking risks has been a huge part of my life in my career and in my own entrepreneurship.  And I embrace it wholeheartedly.

What exactly does it mean to be an intuitive entrepreneur? Sometimes it means taking a little time to think over and research an idea, and sometimes it means moving rapidly on an idea that sparks almost out of nowhere.  With so much information being served to us on a daily basis, sometimes all we have is our intuition to go on. Taking your time on an idea just for the sake of pragmatism isn’t the wisest choice, even if it sounds wise to everyone else.  If you feel deep in your gut that an idea is a hot one, I encourage you to go for it.  This, in my opinion, is the purest form of intuitive business strategy, and the nature of an entrepreneur.

The ability to be creative, think on the fly and make key business decisions with little time amidst the tsunami of external information is vital. Intuition is the natural intelligence that allows us to see ahead of the curve, to generate innovative ideas, to communicate powerfully and to do so without having to study spreadsheets or gather piles of data.  -Simone Wright

On more than a few occasions, I was designing 3-6 years ahead of the game.  And because of that, I either hit it out of the park or swung too quickly and struck out.  In 2008, a collection I worked on wasn’t market relevant, yet. Prospect Denim, a denim collection I helped create and launch in 2008, become relevant – 5 years later.  In fact, every denim company launching in 2013 offered that ‘homespun, made in USA the old fashioned way’ branding message that I created for Prospect in 2008. My partner at the time had the foresight to predict the laser technologies in denim finishing long before any other mainstream denim companies were doing it.  In 2007-08 I foresaw the return to the small batch, USA-made apparel roots happening before it did. Collectively, we saw the direct-to-consumer selling approach. Unfortunately for Prospect Denim in 2008, the rest of the denim world needed more time to “catch up”.  We made our dent in the fashion industry with our innovative thinking and award winning website but it wasn’t enough to translate that into multi-million dollar conversions.  Had we launched two years later, we would have completely crushed our competition.

Being too far ahead isn’t aways a bad thing, but timing is important.

I struck at the right time in 2009 with my first real apparel company, Berry Jane.  At the time, the ‘leggings as pants’ movement was still really new.  It was Berry Jane and Black Milk who were paving the way.  It was hugely successful in it’s first 6 months, and by month 7, we were already on our way to multi-million dollar revenues by year 2. My only kiss of death with that brand was allowing three of the four devils of branding and the wrong partnerships to enter into the picture.

They were:

COMMITTEES (water down inspiration)
BUREAUCRACY (rules override initiative and the ability to think)
RED TAPE (not being nimble and adding layers just because we think moving slowly is somehow smarter than moving swiftly)

As a creative entrepreneur, you simply can NOT let other people into your sandbox or business before the vision (or business) is fully realized.  I can’t stress that enough. Your brand and vision cannot afford to be compromised before it is fully realized. As an intuitive entrepreneur, you can seen how this will play out. Chances are, you have visualized the success of your project like no one else can. You can’t let other people change that. Most importantly, if you are going to change anything, it needs to be because you saw the areas that needed improvements or changes and you did it.  Use your intuition.

Be brutally honest with yourself. This is lesson #1 in intuitive entrepreneurship.

Be OPEN to seeing, hearing and feeling when something isn’t right and quickly adjusting or tweaking areas where you feel it needs to change.  If you discover that your idea simply sucks, or there is just not enough white space for your brand or business, it’s OK to adjust the sails or just fucking scrap it.  Spending time beating a dead horse or living in the past keeps you in that present state: beating a dead horse that will never rise and living in the past that will not propel you forward.  If you see something changing, or if the old ways of doing things aren’t working anymore, you owe it to yourself and your company to figure out why. Spend some time observing and taking it all in.  Pay attention to what is going on around your space.

Ask yourself: What does this project feel like?  Am I doing everything I can with it? What are the successful people doing?  Where is all of this headed?  As a consumer, what do I want? What does all of this feel like?

When you tune in more, you will get better at it.  Take time to be alone with your thoughts and meditate. Analyze your questions and answers.

In my past experiences, I learned to strike when it felt right and to avoid big decisions if I felt hesitant.  I also learned to avoid too many naysayers or partners who tried to change or complicate my flow of things. I learned how to walk away quickly from a person who felt “off”, or a project that just didn’t have the legs I thought it would have. Nor did I partner up with a person because I was desperate for funding or creative collaboration.  I was not attached to the projects or brands simply because I had invested so much into them.  That’s not a good enough reason to continue investing your time, your life, energy and money.  If it’s a project that needs changing in order to be successful, do the necessary changes that it needs, otherwise, be OK growing it slowly or toss it.  There has to be a return.  If it isn’t paying you back financially or emotionally, it’s not worth it. This is another area where your intuition will not lead you astray.  If it feels sucky, let it go and move on.

You have to be willing to hear and see what’s going on around you and predict what’s coming next. Where do you want to be in that game?  In 2008, Tony Robbins hosted a seminar on entrepreneurship. He talked about the economy in the USA, starting a business, and how it was going to challenge all of us.  He also spoke about the power of giving back and truly connecting with our clients and customers in a very personal way (through social media). If you have 30 minutes to spare, I highly recommend this video.

Anticipating is the ultimate advantage in business and in life.  Be ahead of the game, don’t wait to react.  Play the game. KNOW the road ahead.

 

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