Forget Resolutions — 2023 Is All About Manifesting

Eating clean. Exercising five times a week. Meditating every day. Saving or making more money. With 2023 right around the corner, you may be thinking about New Year’s resolutions you want to make. But, as it happens, manifestations might actually be the way to go for 2023. What’s the difference? Well, according to experts, resolutions are often all talk and no (or little) action due to a lack of conviction, while manifestations are all about truly believing and seeing your goals actualized in your life and putting in the long-term work to make them happen. The key here is your mindset.

“Manifesting means creating results in your life and reality based on your beliefs, emotion, and energy,” Maria Concha, manifestation coach, speaker, and founder of Manifesting Ninja, tells TZR in an email. “Setting a resolution is actually part of the manifestation process — it’s the first step you take when you want something to come to fruition: You choose the desire/goal. However, you can’t just set a resolution and expect it to manifest without taking any further steps.” In fact, research has found that 80% of people give up on their resolutions by the second week of February due to their mindset — not focusing enough on their goals and not taking enough action toward them. So manifestations can set you up for success in a more actionable and productive way.

But how? Monica Berg, an international speaker, spiritual thought leader, and bestselling author of The Gift of Being Different, Fear Is Not An Option and Rethink Love, adds that manifestation is all about process. “It’s about bringing potential into being,” she tells TZR in an email. “Manifestation works through the micro-currents of our lives. It’s small change after small change that accumulate to manifest the big changes.”

She says to think of a goal like the seed of a beautiful fruit tree. “If you set it on the table and hope or wish or imagine that it will become a tree, you won’t be very successful,” she explains. “But if you nurture it, it can become a towering fruit tree that bears fruit for generations to come.”

Berg says the same is true for our soul and for the things we want to manifest in our life. “The key is to understand that the process of manifesting anything in our lives is a multi-step pursuit.”

How Manifestation Differs From Making Resolutions

“Manifestation differs from making resolutions and goal-setting in that it goes beyond stating the desired outcome,” Amina AlTai, a holistic business and career coach, tells TZR in an email. “With resolutions, we may say, ‘This year, I want to make more money.’ But with a manifestation practice, perhaps we’d set the same intention, but then we would move through a specific set of experiences to ensure we arrive at that desired outcome.”

With manifestation, your mindset should be aligned with the desired outcome. “In the mindset cycle, our beliefs direct our thoughts, which direct our actions, which direct our lives,” AlTai explains. “When we are manifesting something, and work with that manifestation at the level of beliefs, it becomes a vehicle (or an opening) for designing our experience aligned with our highest vision. It’s like setting the GPS for our lives and allows us to shift from an experience that happens to us to true visionhood.”

To see this at work, for example, AlTai says you may want to bring in more money, but at a belief level, you don’t feel you are worthy of having more money. Or you may want to apply for a certain job, but your limiting belief could be saying: I’m not qualified for that. “In these cases, you need to uproot the limiting beliefs and potentially heal the trauma that is standing between you and your manifestation,” she says.

How To Set Realistic Manifestations

“‘Realistic’ is subjective,” says Concha. “As long as the person is willing to put in the work, and can buy into the fact that [their desired outcome] will manifest for them, then they can set any goal they desire.” Like AlTai, Concha says it’s important that your beliefs align with the very things you want to manifest in order for you to see them come to fruition on the level that you want them to, or at all.

“Flip the script and write a ‘to-be’ list, rather than a ‘to-do’ list,” adds Berg. “To accomplish that goal of exercising more, you might identify that you will need to be dedicated, accountable to yourself, and patient in seeing results so you don’t give up too soon. So there’s your ‘to-be’ list.” Similarly, if you want to write a book, she says to first write “author,” and then every characteristic that embodies for you, on your “to-be” list.

“When you look at those qualities on your new ‘to-be’ list, be brutally honest with yourself,” Berg says. “Are those qualities you already possess? If yes, amplify them. If not, what needs to shift in your life for you to embody those qualities? Simply by focusing on who, and how, we want to be, we become and embody those characteristics — and we become the person who can manifest our desires.” This way, you become the person you desire before planning what you want to do. “And when you become that person, everything else falls into place.”

AlTai also recommends keeping the manifestation connected to a feeling versus a very specific desired outcome. “This is because there is often a more profound desire behind our original statement,” she explains. “Going back to the money example, if you’re manifesting more money, what do you actually want to feel? Is it freedom? Abundance? More joy? Connect to the feeling, not just the desired outcome — lean into the ‘why’ behind it.”

How To Sustain Your Manifestations All Year Long

Speaking of the “why” behind your manifestation(s), AlTai says this is one of the most powerful ways to sustain them — since we all know New Year’s resolutions often quickly fall by the wayside. “I usually ask clients to journal on the feeling (or experiences) they want to create in this particular area of their lives,” she says. “So, in the work context, they may want to feel more empowered and authentic in their role — so we’ll start to see it’s not really about the raise or the new job than it is more about being fully expressed in the work they do.”

Concha also has some ideas on how to sustain your manifestations all year long. Like Berg, she recommends creating a “to-be” list. “Then ask yourself, ‘Who do I have to be to accomplish/manifest x, y, z goal?’” For example, if you want to focus on fitness and go to the gym more in 2023, you’d ask yourself what kind of person you have to be to consistently go to the gym. “You most likely have to be disciplined, focused, and positive,” she says. “So create a list of characteristics that you have to be and affirm this list to yourself every day. Brainwash yourself into believing that you’re the type of person who goes to the gym so that you can actually become this person.” She says if you don’t believe this is who you are, then your actions of not going will be just that.

Concha also suggests following a three-step process for manifesting, starting with goal-setting. “In order to choose goals that you truly desire to see manifest, you have to ask the right questions,” she explains. “So instead of asking the ‘should’ questions, like ‘What should I be doing next year in my career,’ which is most likely influenced by someone else’s idea of what you ‘should’ be doing, ask yourself three key questions.” These are: What would be so much fun to manifest next year and why? What would make you smile for a whole week if it manifested? Who would you celebrate with? “This is you manifesting from inspiration instead of desperation,” she says.

“Next, embody the characteristics of the person who has/lives the kind of life you want, and by the way, this person is future you,” Concha says. “How are they showing up? What kind of person are they? How do they think? How are they being? How can you show up like them?”

“Third, practice aligned action,” she says. “Now that you’re showing up like the person that you want to become, create actionable steps that align with your goals and put them in your calendar.”

On a related note, to enforce their manifestations, AlTai has her clients read them out loud daily. “If they don’t believe [a certain one] is possible for them, we need to work to reframe their mindset so they can align their beliefs with this intention,” she explains. “And we usually do that by finding evidence in support of it already happening in their current reality.” For example, this may be looking at their current sources of abundance if they’re trying to manifest more money.

“Once we’ve identified the new belief or intention, we want to reinforce it with examples from our lives,” AlTai says. “We can do this through a daily list of how we’re feeling more empowered in our work and in our lives, or ways we were able to easily bring in more money. I recommend that clients reinforce these manifestations during (or after) a meditation practice, when our brains are more relaxed and available to new concepts.”

Another tip AlTai recommends is expressing advanced gratitude for what you want as if it’s already here. “This is one of my favorite practices and may sound like, ‘Thank you for the ability to do aligned work that impacts the world in a loving way,’” she says. “With this practice, we start to feel as if we’re already living with the manifestation, taking us out of scarcity and further reinforcing the power of what we desire.”

If we want more goodness to enter our lives, AlTai adds that we have to make space for it by releasing what we are no longer willing to carry. “It means we’ve cleaned up our mindset to align our beliefs with our true desires and have taken the aligned actions to make them manifest,” she says.

Another key when it comes to manifesting is surrendering and leaning into faith, AlTai says. “Surrender isn’t waiving the white flag or giving up,” she explains. “Surrender is an absence of resistance. It’s about living into our power through attraction and not activity, a quiet receptivity.”

Don’t Forget To Enjoy The Process

Berg adds that as you set out to make this year your best one yet, don’t forget to enjoy the process. “Make it a practice of having gratitude for everything you have already accomplished and for all the blessings you already have,” she says. “Have fun, take time to relax, and reward yourself when you cross a milestone.”

She also says to keep in mind that people often think manifestation is something that happens to us, not through us. “They talk about it as though it’s some external happening, as though something tangible will come into our lives through magical attraction or belief alone,” she says. “It’s easy to buy into ‘manifestation-made-easy’ promises and to mistake thought for action. While we know that thought is a powerful element in creating form, thoughts alone — without action and follow-through — won’t achieve much. They make a great first step in manifesting, but from there, it’s up to us to continue the process.”