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By Lisa McCourt, author of Free Your Joy: The 12 Keys to Sustainable Happiness
One of the juiciest things I teach at Joy School is how to want. Because most of us are just wanting wrong, and wanting correctly is the secret to having. In every moment, you are placing orders with the Universe, and the Universe is always filling them precisely to your specifications. But the language the Universe speaks is one of energetic vibration. No matter what words you’re using (in your prayers, your affirmations, your manifestation techniques), all the Universe is hearing is your vibration. That’s why having desires from an energetic state of joy and presence (what I teach in Joy School) places an order with the Universe that is vibrationally very different from the order we place by having desires from a state of scarcity and fear (the state most of us have sadly been conditioned to live in as our default setting.)
Wanting has got to feel good when you’re doing it; that’s where so many well-intentioned manifesters go wrong. When you’re wanting that thing so bad, and you’re visualizing it so hard, you’re just keeping it perpetually at arm’s length.
Pause your reading to do a bit of self-inquiry with me now. Take that 24-inch journey from your head down into your heart. Invite your soul to finish this statement: “I want . . .” Just be loose and open and see what pours out of you from there. Anything you desire! Let yourself be surprised by what pops up when you invite your imagination to run wild with that prompt. Pause your reading and do that now. I’ll wait.
Done? Okay, I want you to place your hand over your heart and honestly notice the feeling you’re experiencing after giving that bit of attention to your honest desires. Did your energetic state dip down, or do you feel it elevated now? No judgment either way. Just notice.
Whenever wanting feels bad, that’s your indication that you’re not in the right dance with the energetic laws of manifestation. That’s not a sweet spot for bringing your desires to fruition. Wanting effectively means getting yourself to the place where the wanting feels yummy to you, where your desire elicits delicious, tantalizing anticipation, because that means you actually believe you can have this thing you desire. Manifestation can never outrun your most authentic expectations and your deep-down beliefs about your deservingness. If, on a deep-down (even unconscious) level, you don’t believe you deserve to have this thing, you’ve handcuffed the Universe. There’s no way, energetically, that it can deliver.
Effective manifestation of your desires requires a certain degree of detachment to outcome. If you’re sending out an energy of desperation around this order your placing, it’s clear to the Universe that you’re afraid it won’t happen. Your subconscious knows when that’s the case, and the bulk of your manifestation energy is coming from your subconscious beliefs. That’s why we do the work of bringing those long-stored subconscious beliefs up into our conscious awareness. When the thing you want takes on the energy of a thing you need, it’s an energy that, ironically, pushes the thing away. It seems so unfairly set up; I’m sorry for that. But it’s not for us to judge the energetic laws; it’s just for us to understand them and work with them.
Whenever you have a strong desire that remains unrequited, and you notice the desire doesn’t feel good, it means there’s another energy you’re emitting that’s eclipsing the energy of what you want. It’s the energy of not having it. Maybe you have a strong desire that does feel happy to you sometimes, and at other times you notice feeling dissatisfaction about not yet having this thing (because we sometimes vacillate between these feelings.) The problem, even in this scenario, is that, at best, the vibrations you’re emitting are just canceling one another out. You have to get the positive feeling bigger and stronger than the negative, so the signal that
you’re sending is clear and unmistakable and carries the energetic signature of already having this condition or situation or thing that you desire.
Look back at what your soul showed you. Does feeling into this desire bring your energy up or down? Does it feel like contraction in your body, or expansion? Does it bring a smile to your face, or create a pit in your stomach? This is how you assess whether or not you’ve been wanting correctly. Please don’t judge your precious self if you’ve learned that your wanting skills could use an upgrade. Let that insight inspire you to give more time, attention, and energy to cultivating joy in your life and raising your personal vibration. There’s no more worthwhile goal, and no greater boost to your powers of meaningful, beautiful manifestation.
Lisa McCourt is the Founder of Joy School at LisaMcCourt.com and author of Free Your Joy: The 12 Keys to Sustainable Happiness and other books about joy that have sold over 9 million copies
(Excerpted from Free Your Joy: The 12 Keys to Sustainable Happiness)