A rationalist’s guide to manifestation.
Or, how to live a magical life
When you define what you want, you reach out for it, and the world starts to offer it to you.
A rational explanation of how to ‘attract what you want’
I’ve been helping my hyper-rational clients and peers manifest what they want for a number of years now, and I finally feel ready to articulate how this process works in the most logical, straight-forward terms possible. My goal is that this essay makes ‘manifestation’ make sense to anyone, and to explain it in a way that feels approachable for you, dear reader, to begin doing, today (and what better day to begin than the first day of a new year?). All I ask is that you set aside your priors associated to the word ‘manifestation’ before we begin, and open your mind to the possibility that you really could get the things that you want much more effortlessly—and perhaps even magically—than you’ve let yourself believe before. What you will see from reading this is that while there is some whimsy to this art, there is also a lot you can influence consciously when you actually understand how your mind works. That’s right: you’ll get to use your agency as well as your third eye, I promise. Now let’s begin.
Two key learnings to start.
The first thing I’ve learned is that despite the controversial reputation of the word ‘manifestation’, the process it refers to is actually incredibly logical, and when the rational mind comprehends the effectiveness of simply aligning your mind towards what you want, it becomes much more willing to do so.
The second is that once you understand the basic mechanics of manifestation, you become a weapon at rapidly up-levelling your life.
I’ll start with some friendly, approachable examples for how I think about manifestation in my life—which is, broadly speaking, that I think of it as cleaning up your inner world, identifying what you truly want and giving yourself full permission to pursue and receive it, effortlessly. Also, to embrace the part of it that really does feel like magic—which often looks like being given, offered, or invited to almost eerily aligned opportunities and moments that you have previously held in your mind’s eye.
Example 1: How I started manifesting fur coats.
Note: You do not need to want fur coats for this example to be useful. It is the arc of how the fur coats started appearing in my life that is relevant.
When I was dreaming up what I wanted my outer world to look like in 2025, I put two fur coats on a vision board. Before that, I don’t think I had even realized I liked coats like this, let alone acknowledged that I might want one in my wardrobe. Shortly after I did this, I found a fur coat in a vintage store that looked almost identical to the light brown one I had placed on my vision board, and I purchased it immediately—my intuition recognized it as the one I had already identified I wanted (or in manifestation-speak, I found the thing externally that I already believed was mine internally). I wore it anywhere it was reasonably appropriate to, and people started to notice.
Eventually, my nana (a very classy British lady who is definitely reading this) started to notice. She told me *she* also had a fur coat she had bought years ago that she wasn’t using that she thought I would like and wanted to give me, because she noticed I liked fur coats. For emphasis, let me repeat that: because the world saw me exuding the desire externally that I once held internally, it was now giving me what I wanted without my request. I met this gift with openness—I willingly received (instead of, say, resisting the gift or insisting that I did not deserve this beautiful coat, that really she should keep it, etc…) This second coat looked just like the second one I had put on my vision board—long, dark, luxurious. A gift I cherish (and am wearing as I write this!)
As I said, you might not want to start manifesting fur coats yourself. But the actual desire you are in pursuit of does not matter. It is the arc of:
>Identifying the desire
>Visualizing yourself already having it (i.e. placing it on a vision board, visualizing your desired object in your home, visualizing yourself in the place you want to be, etc)
>Updating your self-image to be the person that already has this desire, acting like you have it, being fully open to it finding you
>Acquiring it effortlessly / receiving it as a gift / finding it in the world without explicitly ‘looking for it’
>Openly & willingly receiving (say yes!)
This is a simple example to display how a desire that you hold in your mind, goes from a wispy idea, to something you start believing you deserve, to something you straight-forwardly claim you want, to something you reach for, until you actually make it yours. Then, the world catches on and gives you even more of it. The fur coats are a literal expression of this, but it applies to much more meta things than just luxury objects on a vision board.
Example 2: Attracting the community I craved // Being given experiences I was writing about wanting to experience.
When I first admitted to myself that I wanted to try writing seriously, I committed to publishing once a week. I eventually gained enough confidence to quit my job and start writing full time (that whole journey belongs in another essay). I wanted a life of freedom, that aligned with my beliefs and values, and that felt effortless to show up to every day.
I was far from living out this full vision embodied, but I was putting in the work and doing my best with the raw materials I had. Eventually, a friend of mine who had ‘broken containment’ on the community / world we grew up in, invited me to join him for a week in Mexico to immerse myself in the people, ideas, and energy that were flowing there. Without me asking or even saying it out loud, he had picked up on the new identity/frequency I was stepping into through my writing—and he reached out to offer me a highly aligned experience that matched this energy shift.
Without giving my rational mind the opportunity it so desperately craved to control the situation—to evaluate whether I really should accept this invitation, if I really could get on a flight tomorrow morning, if I really was worthy of this seemingly magical opportunity—I simply said yes (something I will repeatedly emphasize in this piece: willingly receiving is an essential part of manifestation). That week was more expansive experientially, than probably anything I had experienced in my life prior. It imprinted on me a greater sense of what I actually wanted—desires that would eventually be actualized in a similar effortless and serendipitous fashion later on.
Again, the simple process of ‘manifesting’ this was:
State the desire: I wrote about what I wanted to see and experience more of in the world.
The desire gets noticed by others: I was sharing my writing publicly, including with my existing community. The result of this was that anyone reading my work was becoming more aware of what I wanted, and could help me actualize it, if they wanted to help me.
Its consummation is offered by someone with the capacity to provide it: Someone who had experienced more of what I stated I was craving noticed my desire, and offered the experience to me. (Note: this step sometimes will be less of a give-receive dynamic, and more of a notice-and-ask, or a notice-and-take dynamic, depending on the context)
Willingly receive: I said yes.
Effortless actualization: I got what I wanted without ‘trying’ or ‘forcing’ it.
How magic actually works
I could go on with more examples, but hopefully these fairly novice ones illustrate the core thrust of this process. The arc that desires follow when you fully own them is essentially why words are magic and clarifying your mind so you can truly know what you want is one of the most powerful skills you can hone.
For modern cultural examples, see the current wizard of the moment: Timothée Chalamet. He understands that to get what you want, you need to repeatedly speak it out loud into the world (“I want to be one of the greats”), cast spells on others with your own enthusiasm and drive (“Marty Supreme, Christmas Day” is a mantra ringing through the skulls of millions around the world thanks to Timmy’s insane promo efforts…), and let the energy of your desires flow into others—owning what you want proudly, and acting in alignment with them (delivering a great performance, speaking shamelessly about it, making his bid for your attention worthwhile). He is becoming exactly who he said he will be. And we are all watching this process of his self-manifested greatness unfold live. What a privilege!
Name what you want. Proudly.
Putting words to your wants, to what you want to do, to where you want to be, to what you want to experience, is so important, because it tells you, and the world, what you are looking for and allows others to reach out and give you what you want.
If you want things to be given to you with ease, you need to at least know what you are looking for. If you want to increase the chances, you should probably state what you want, or even ask for the things you want explicitly (scary, I know! But shockingly effective!). And if you want to exert max agency over obtaining these things, you should go out and try to get them to the best of your ability yourself, while also accepting help from willing parties who want to help you.
Aligned action + willingly receiving is how you ‘manifest’ your desires.
It is not by chanting them loudly in a trance-like state inside an empty apartment, but by getting REALLY clear on exactly what you want, and going out into the world with shameless openness about your desires, a willing attitude towards receiving help, even asking for help when appropriate (I’ve written about how to gracefully ask & openly receive), and showing up in the world congruent with the person that already has them in the future.
This is how things seem to magically ‘be given’ to people who know what they want. They ‘manifest’ their desires effortlessly, because when you know what you want, you accept it when it is offered to you, and you reach out for it when opportunities related to it appear. Your desires come to you effortlessly because you believe you are genuinely worthy of these things.
This is the premise of ‘you attract what you are’. A more accurate representation of that statement is something like, you attract what you think you deserve [and you repel what you do not think you deserve].
If you want to begin getting what you want, you need to perceive yourself genuinely worthy of it. This will lead you to act like you are worthy of what you want, and when you act like you are worthy of something, it tends to be given to you with a lot less friction and hesitation. If your identity lags behind what you say you want, you will continue to energetically repel it, even when it is right in front of you.
You need to believe you deserve the higher salary. To be with the girl you have a crush on. To own the dream home. To live in the city you say you want to live in. To have written the books. You need to see yourself in these places, with these things, and you need to genuinely believe you belong there.
Because when you arrive at that internal knowing, that sense of genuine worthiness for these things you claim to want, they will start to find you with more ease. And you will know how to receive them. Because you have already accepted them as your own internally.
Don’t let your self-image lag behind your reality.
If you do not know what I mean by any of this, I encourage you to genuinely pay attention to the next time you have any sort of ‘levelling up’ experience organically occur in your life; look backwards and notice when your mindset shifted to perceive yourself as worthy of reaching that next level. Whether it was getting fit, connecting with someone who previously felt out of your league, charging more for your work, getting a better job, having a hard conversation that freed you, or any other ‘new level unlocked’ in your world. Look before the moment it arrived in your life, and ask yourself when you officially let yourself have that. You will likely see that there was an internal shift that preceded the external shift which made receiving this much easier.
Maybe you got fed up with a pattern that was no longer working, or finally snapped in a bad relationship and left, or had an epiphany that you needed to move out and get your own space. Whatever it was, something often clicks inside of us first that frees us to go out and get the thing we want in full alignment. Manifestation is simply making this process conscious, and doing it on purpose.
Your self-worth determines what you will let yourself experience
Sometimes, if you’re not yet caught up to your own worthiness and how the world perceives you, the world will force a ‘levelling up’ experience on you: giving you something you do not yet feel you deserve, or do not feel worthy of. If this happens to you, pay very close attention to the gap between your own self-perception and how the world is seeing you. Because that is the precise invitation for growth and expansion. And if you close that gap, you can get even more of what you genuinely deserve. This will ultimately calibrate yourself to where you ‘should’ be—as in: where you genuinely deserve to be!
It is humble to accept what you deserve.
It is worth noting that it is not egoic to accept what you deserve. In fact, it is quite humble, to actually allow yourself to be seen and rewarded for what you are worthy of. Denying blessings, gifts, invitations and offers is a sign that you have not yet allowed yourself to receive what you deserve. You are making things harder for yourself, for no good reason. Keeping yourself small, keeping yourself stuck. Because it is scary to take up space and be powerful, but if you want to actually taste and experience what you are capable of - it is entirely necessary. You won’t know what you can have until you allow yourself to receive what you are currently worthy of. This is how you ascend!
You grow by letting the world help you, by willingly receiving, and by becoming open to being worthy of even more. How do you become deserving of even more? By working on yourself, growing internally and meeting yourself even more honestly, so that your outer world can reflect the expansion and enhancement of the growth you have done internally.
It’s simple, really. I’ve written about how your self-image is the lens through which you experience reality, because we allow into our world only what we believe we are worthy of. I’ve also written about how to ask for what you want, and willingly receive it when it is given to you. Put these two ideas together, and you basically have manifestation, explained.
If you want your outer world to change, change what you believe you deserve!
And if you want to change what you believe you deserve, change your behaviour. Treat yourself like you deserve better. Some questions to ask yourself on this front:
Are you taking care of yourself the way someone worthy of what you say you want would take care of themselves?
If not, where is the incongruence? What is causing it?
Where are old patterns and habits playing out that are keeping you from getting what you want?
How can you align your actions more seamlessly with what you want?
Where might you be denying blessings / gifts / opportunities / generosity that could actually help you on your path?
What are others seeing in you that you are not yet seeing in yourself?
How can you soften your resistance or release any self-judgment around accepting this next level of what you desire, or what is being offered to you?
Tangibly, let’s say you want to get more fit. Great. Now, you need to actually become the fit person in your mind. This will change what you accept from yourself, and the world. You need to become the fit person in your mind. And you will begin to act like it, both in what you do, and what you do not do, in the world. For example:
You will no longer impulsively eat things that make you feel bad, because the fit person would not do that.
You will no longer skip the gym because you don’t feel like it, because the fit person does not do that.
You will no longer eat whatever is given to you at the function, because the fit person would not do that.
You will do what the fit person would do. Because in your mind, your identity has leapt towards becoming them.
When you change how you see yourself, you change how you act and the treatment you will accept from yourself and others.
When you start to see yourself as the fit person, you start to act more like the fit person, and those actions start to stack up to actually becoming them. By changing who you identify as, you create the conditions for you to become this new person. When you do this consistently, people adjust to you as this new version of yourself. The world starts to see you as them, and you see yourself more and more as them. You start to literally become this person externally that you first gave yourself permission to be internally. Do you see?
We shift our outer reality by changing our inner reality
This is how ‘inner work’ works. You clean up your inner world. Take out the trash. Release old beliefs that are keeping you stuck. Face what you are avoiding or in denial of. Own the bad habits you want to break. Claim desires you haven’t yet let become conscious. Unravel patterns you need to admit are no longer working for you. Let go of relationships that drain you. Let yourself yearn for the ones that you actually want to be in. Acknowledge your resentment for work that drains you. Own the magnificence and magnitude of your own potential. And slowly become the person on the other side of all of these acts, stepping into greatness and freedom, by first believing you deserve it.
When you change how you see yourself, your behaviour changes.
When you change what you believe you deserve, you create the opportunity for you to actually become the person with the aligned, meaningful work, the hot, kind, intelligent romantic partner, the fit body, the refined attention span, the consistent writing practice, the strong friendships, the healthy boundaries, the self-respect, the whatever-it-is-that-you-uniquely-want. If you want to be a certain way or have a certain thing that you do not yet have, ask yourself: why aren’t you letting yourself have it?
You change who you are by:
First: admitting who you want to be (i.e. admitting the identity you want to step into).
Second: acknowledging what you are doing or not doing that is keeping you from becoming this evolved version of yourself.
And third: taking seriously your responsibility to change your behaviour and self-image, and to act in alignment with who you want to become.
When you do these things, the world responds to you differently. It gives you more of what you want, because you know how to ask for it, reach out for it, take it, and receive it when it is given to you. (And because you know how to say no to what you do not want.)
“You attract what you are” is just another way of saying that your outer world will start to reflect your inner world if you have done the work to clean up what no longer belongs there. Clean up your psyche, and your life will start to reflect that cleanliness and clarity.
Simple rules of manifestation to remember:
If you don’t know what you want, the world does not know what to give you.
When you state or ask for what you want, the world knows what to give you.
The world cannot always give you what you want, but at least when it can, it will likely try.
When it does try, willingly receive; do not deny your blessings.
When what you want is in front of you but has not been offered to you yet, ask for it. Make it clear that you want it.
If you are falling into old patterns that do not align with who you want to become, reflect on what you still believe about yourself that is allowing you to act this way. Clean up this misalignment internally, then re-align towards what you believe you deserve.
Take action that brings you closer to what you want. Act like you are the person you are trying to become.
Practice seeing yourself as the person you are trying to become. Practice experiencing the feelings (literally close your eyes & fill your body with the feelings) you expect to have when you get what you want / you make the changes you are trying to make.
When you get what you want, humbly accept. Do not be overly surprised. Do not reject it. Do not listen to thoughts that say you are not yet worthy of what you are receiving (you receiving it is proof you are worthy!)
Self-doubt lowers your status & self-image internally, and will keep you stuck. Self-belief is how you ascend. Notice thoughts of doubt, and release them. Do not attach to or identify with them.
Focus on expanding thoughts associated with self-belief, write them down, practice thinking them, and start to believe them.
To manifest anything, you need to perceive yourself as worthy of what you want. This is how it all starts to find you, and how you start to find it: when you change what you believe you deserve, you change what can belong to you.
Without that internal calibration of believing you genuinely deserve it, you will find ways to avoid obtaining what you want that puzzle even you.
How to get anything you want:
In short: if your outer world does not look the way you want it to, turn inwards and ask yourself: what do I believe I deserve? If you don’t like what you find there, clean up your inner world, and show up to your outer world with a new self-image that attracts only what you genuinely want.
I work 1:1 with ambitious, introspective executives, creatives & talented professionals to clarify exactly what they want, unblock themselves, and actualize their desires with ease. My work is immersive, thorough and confronting. If you are interested in mastering the process I explained in this essay and feel genuinely ready to do the work, apply to work with me here.
What I’m manifesting in 2026: Writing for prestigious, external publications. Getting my voice and ideas onto a larger, public-facing stage.
Publications I want to write for (not an exhaustive list):
WSJ, GQ, Time, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Vox, Elle, Wired, the NY times, NY Post, The New Yorker, NY Magazine, Psychology Today, Palladium, The SF Chronicle, The Atlantic, The Spectator.
If you know anyone at one of these publications that you can connect me with, or if an idea / person / action popped into your mind that feels related to this ask that could help me achieve this desire, reach out to me here, on X, or by email. Thank you for helping me manifest.
I am also manifesting a move to New York City in 2026. More on that another time. Happy new year! What are you manifesting? Tell me below, and tell me what you absorbed from this essay that you’ll take into the new year.
Related essays of mine you are likely to enjoy: you’re allowed to want a beautiful life, how good will you let it get, comfort, on self-trust, on slowness, taste and living well
I’ve been using our subscriber substack chat lately to share process notes and to cultivate a dialogue with you on new essays I’m writing. Join me there.
