What to do When You're Manifesting Things You Don't Want
One of my best girlfriends planned a Vegas trip for her 30th birthday. She was planning this thing for at least a year, and to be honest, I kinda dropped the ball on planning. For a while I didn’t think I was going to be able to swing it, but in the last couple months I scraped together some airline miles and crammed the trip in the middle of a very busy week.
I woke up the morning of my trip to a notification: My flight had been cancelled and I’d been re-booked on the next available flight. My first flight was the same, but my connection had been pushed back 6 hours!!
I spiraled through several emotions over the next 5 seconds. Starting with denial, then anger, disappointment, and finally feeling like a failure because I had somehow manifested this. Then finally back to denial.
Then I got up at started getting ready because I still had a flight to catch. I decided in that moment that things were going to work out. Instead of panicking and immediately messaging my friends to tell them I would miss the whole first day, I decided to continue as if I was still going to make it on time.
Now I’d like to say that I just flipped my mindset, felt great all morning, and showed up to find it was an error and my flight wasn’t cancelled after all! But none of that would be true.
In fact, not even my mindset went as planned. As soon as I got in the shower I started worrying about what would happen on my return flight and the fear really set in. If my return flight was delayed 6 hours, then I would have to cancel the event I was hosting that night. I started imagining having to tell people, trying to reschedule, or even refunding people, and the embarrassment! All this for the flight that hadn’t even been cancelled yet!
As I fought to gain control of my rapidly spiraling mind, I remembered tapping or EFT. Sitting in the Lyft headed for the airport, I silently tapped through the fears that were surfacing about missing out, being late, and airport issues. Then I re-framed those thoughts into positive affirmations. I decided I was going to make it on time or earlier than planned.
I got to the airport with plenty of time for my flight and headed to the assistance counter. My flight had indeed been cancelled, and all other flights were full, the next direct flight wouldn’t leave until 8pm either. I was devastated, but determined. I stayed calm and polite while asking the woman if there was anyway I could get on a wait list and maybe get on an earlier connection that was full. She said she could put me on stand by for a flight that was only 2 hours later than my original, but I’d have to cancel my evening flight and potentially be stuck in San Francisco for the night! So she gave the flight number and told me to check at the gate when I landed. As I was thanking her for being so helpful, she realized another problem: my bags wouldn’t make the transfer if I did that. So she ran off to speak with her supervisor, and I waited, silently repeating the positive affirmation in my head: I would arrive on time or early.
When she returned she held a new ticket and boarding pass. They had completely re-booked my trip to fly through Seattle instead, and I would land at the same time as my original flight!!! I thanked her profusely and excitedly headed off to find my new gate.
As I waited to board my flight, I listened to a training on manifestation and the topic of manifesting challenges came up. The teacher spoke on how often, when we are manifesting a big desire, we first manifest a challenge to work through our limiting beliefs.
These moments are not failures, we haven’t done something wrong to manifest something we don’t want. They are opportunities to apply what we have learned. To use the tools we know to shift our mindsets when it matters most.
I had a choice that morning. I could have complained. I could have held on to my anger and bitched and moaned about how unfair it was. I could have been mean or demanding to the woman working the counter. But at the end of the day, I would still have had to wait and I would have been in a shitty mood all day because of it. My first day of vacation would have been spent in an airport stewing in my anger while all my friends were celebrating, and that would have set the tone for the rest of the trip.
I chose the other option. I chose to trust that things could still, and would still, work out in my favor. I chose to use the tools I had to influence the outcome, through my mindset and taking action. I chose to stay calm, polite, and grateful in my interactions. I chose to believe and it all paid off.
The lessons I took from this experience are:
Not to let the circumstances in your life define you. We create our realities, but it doesn’t mean something is wrong with you if you find yourself manifesting challenges. Trusting the process and that you are on the right path is hardest when things appear to be going wrong, but that’s is also when it is most important.
You have to ask for what you want. Someone cannot give you what you do not ask for, and that applies to the universe as well as the woman behind the counter.
And finally, don’t fly through San Francisco because they apparently cancel flights all the time!