Transcript | Ep. 134: How to Manifest Your BEST Life!

Cristen: Caroline, can I lead you in some affirmations?

Caroline: Please!

Cristen: All right. repeat after me: I am a money magnet.

Caroline: I am a money magnet.

Cristen: I attract money easily and effortlessly.

Caroline: I attract money easily and effortlessly.

Cristen: Caroline, you gotta say it like you mean it!

Caroline: I attract money effortlessly!

Cristen: And easily.

Caroline: And easily, also.

Cristen: OK, finally. Abundance is my birthright.

Caroline: Woah! Abundance is my birthright?

Cristen: Yeah. Yeah, you know what, hearing that, it feels a little weird. Let’s skip that one.

Caroline: Yeah.

[theme music]

Caroline: Hey y’all, and welcome to Unladylike. I’m Caroline.

Cristen: I’m Cristen. And today, we are embarking on a manifesting journey and tapping into the seductive power of positive thinking.

Caroline: Mm. Yeah, Cristen, you and I have had manifesting on our minds for a while now, and it turns out, we’re not alone. So, Google searches for manifesting started rising in the late 2010s, and over the course of 2020, they shot WAY up. Among the top manifesting related searches you have things like: manifesting money, manifesting weight loss and manifesting a text message.

Cristen: And by manifesting we’re talking about that idea of thinking positively about what you want, in order to attract those things into your life. And the ways to do it are everywhere. You’ve got long Reddit threads of women debating how to “manifest their best life.” There are approximately a bazillion TikToks, podcasts, and youtube channels all devoted to manifesting.

[CLIP Montage]

Youtube MUX

Video 1 - Hey guys welcome back to Lavandaire. It’s Eileen. So today I want to share some manifesting habits that I’ve used in my life to manifest and create this reality that I live today.

Video 2 - Hi everyone and welcome back to my Youtube channel. Today I’m going to be filming a very exciting video that I’ve waited to film for a long time. It is my Manifesting and goal setting for Beginners video

Video 3 - MUX - In this course, I’ll show you step by step methods on how to manifest money into your life effortlessly and easily.

Caroline: Now, manifesting in and of itself seems harmless! And as we’ll encounter throughout this episode, there are plenty of upsides to practicing positivity and getting clear on what you want.

Cristen: When manifestation gets monetized, however, is where things get murky. In fact, one of the reasons we decided to investigate manifesting is because we are constantly hearing from self-appointed manifesting coaches who want to come on Unladylike. And these coaches claim to know the secrets to women achieving career success and wealth through harnessing feminine energies, spiritual wellness and of course, manifesting. A lot of them also tout their own rags to riches backstories as proof that their mystical methods work.

Caroline: But the mystical methods these women are selling, usually to other women, could also leave you more broke than you started.

Cristen: Yeah, a lot of times they’re offering workshops and masterclasses that can range from a couple hundred bucks to FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS for one popular influencer’s month-long course.

Caroline: I mean, that just sounds like a way to manifest a much smaller bank account, to me.

Cristen: I mean, but you never know, Caroline! You don’t know what the universe wants!

Caroline: Well, given how hot manifesting is right now, we figured a lot of listeners had probably gotten into it one way or another. But when we put out a call, we were genuinely surprised to hear back from just ONE unlady. Her name is Lauren.

Cristen: Well, on the other hand, Caroline, that was arguably a sign from the universe saying we HAD to talk Lauren about what drew her to manifesting!

Lauren: I guess it was like the mythicism of like being able to think about something or write something down in a journal or cut out pictures from a magazine and paste it to a board and be like, I’ve - I'm manifesting all this shit here. And if I'm a good girl and I just keep manifesting, then I'll get what I want. and if it doesn't work out well then it's probably just that like whoever in the universe didn't want it for me at the time.

Caroline: Our second guest might tell Lauren that manifesting her goals has nothing to do with being a good girl with a vision board. Dr. Gabriele Oettingen is a psychologist and author of the book Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation.

Cristen: Gabriele has been researching wish fulfillment for decades, and she’s uncovered a fascinating twist on the power of positive thinking ...

Caroline: So today we want to find out: Why is manifesting especially appealing to women, and how can we make our wildest dreams come true?

[stinger]

Cristen: When Lauren was in her early 20s, she was not concerned about money. She’d been in a long-term relationship with a very reassuring boyfriend.

Lauren: And so, throughout my relationship with him, he was like, oh, you don't need to worry about anything because we'll be taken care of because my family is very wealthy. And I was like, oh, my God, this is great. I don’t have to worry about anything. 401K, I don't need that. This is perfect.

Caroline: But it wasn't. After five years together, Lauren’s rich boyfriend broke up with her.

Lauren: And then reality hit me, and I was like, oh, shit. I have been more I think at the time I've been working for like three years. And I was like, I don't have a 401k. I've been relying on this person because he told me that I didn't need to worry about it, and so I didn't worry about it, and now I really need to start worrying about my finances, my future, my money. And at the time, was I the most responsible person with money? Definitely not. My paycheck burned a hole in my pocket, and I needed to get that money out of my bank account as fast as I could and into the world and buying as much stuff as I possibly could. And so, my relationship with money was very flawed.

Cristen: After the breakup, Lauren decided to sign up for yoga teacher training. It was 200-hour course at her local yoga studio in Northern California.

Caroline: That’s where her favorite instructor introduced her to the concept of manifesting ...

Lauren: She would always tell stories when we were in, like a half pigeon or some kind of like yin pose. And she's telling the story about how she found her perfect home, and she said, “I was in a toxic situation with my roommate and I needed to move out. I had broken up with my boyfriend, and I decided I needed my own space. I needed like a sanctuary, a place to call my own.”

Caroline: The yoga instructor went on to say that when she finally found a dreamy spot, she knew she probably couldn't afford it but approached the owner anyway.

Lauren: The owner was like, “you know, it's it's yours if you want it, but I need to know that you have the money for it,” and she's like “I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, I don't have any money. I my credit cards are maxed out, but I will get the money to rent this place. I need to live here.” And the guy's like, “I don't know why, but I believe that you're going to get the money.” And so she was like, “A couple of days later, I had a yoga teacher training that opened up registration, and a couple of days after that, I had $30,000 in my bank account. And it's because I manifested it,” and I was like, oh, my God, what? Sign me up for this. This sounds amazing.

Caroline: Lauren couldn't wait to start manifesting her best life, too. She began with a simple technique her teacher recommended. Lauren wrote down her wants and wishes on a piece of paper…

Lauren: some of the things that I wrote on the note was like, I want to live in a high rise apartment building. I want to live in Los Angeles. I want to have a job where I'm making six figures. And like I want to go on one international vacation a year and one domestic vacation a year.

Cristen: Lauren then took her wishlist and put it in a box she’d bought specifically for the exercise.

Lauren: The box had like words written on it. I don't remember what the words were, but it was probably like I don’t know some kind of inspirational words. So, my notes all went in that box and it just sat on my dresser and then it was just like, OK, and go to work, someone else doing all this for me.

Caroline: While Lauren let her special box work some manifesting magic, she also started signing up for more manifesting courses — mostly through her yoga community. A weekend course in manifesting your best life here, a masterclass on money manifesting there ... each for a couple hundred bucks a pop. They were usually filled with women from the local yoga scene and maybe a token man or two.

Cristen: The central theme was the power of positive thinking. That whole idea of putting positive energy out into the universe in order to attract positive things back to you. In Lauren's case, the positive thing she was hoping to attract was money.

Lauren: I think that for a long time, I was very stuck in this idea of like. Just be positive, have a bright outlook, and positive things will happen to you. And I was really down on myself a lot because. I just you know, there's some people that they naturally default to like, they're just a happy go lucky person and they're just always happy. And you're just like sometimes you see those people and you're like can you just not be so fucking happy? Please?

Cristen: Yes.

Lauren: Well, I had this idea, this mindset that like, OK, if I want good things, if I want to, like, get what I'm putting out there in the world, then I need to be positive, I need to be happy. And so it was like I would always try to spin a situation and like spin it in a positive way, like Oh this is a shitty thing that happened. But like, but what's the lesson we can learn from this, that nothing happens to you, everything happens for you. And this is happening so that it benefits you. And I'm like. OK, so let's like get into this positive, positive mind frame...And I think also that’s... that was something that was really difficult for me. Because I couldn't be positive all the time. And so I thought that because I wasn't happy or wasn't positive all the time that I was doing something wrong or there was something wrong with me. And so, yeah, so sometimes when I wasn't getting what I was manifesting for, maybe it was because of me. So maybe I just have to try harder and I just have to be more positive. And that is also a very toxic cycle to get stuck in.

Cristen: Lauren was stuck in that cycle for EIGHT YEARS. She kept taking courses, and kept trying to manifest money.

Caroline: How much money did you end up spending vs. how much could be qualified as money that you manifested?

Lauren: I probably spent anywhere, anywhere from like three to five thousand dollars on all the courses and trainings and that kind of stuff. Money that I had manifested at the end of that, zero. Because I didn't have a savings. I didn't really have like a robust 401K. I didn't really have anything to show for it.

Cristen: It wasn't until Lauren moved out of Northern California to Los Angeles that things really started to shift. She was still doing yoga, but her new community was more about yoga for yoga's sake than positive thinking and manifesting. Lauren didn't intentionally stop trying to manifest, it just faded away as she settled into her new life in LA.

Caroline: But her money troubles did not fade away. Lauren would still blow through her paychecks and promise herself she'd do better next time, only to keep repeating the cycle

Lauren: Until I finally was like. I need some real coaching. I don't need some wishing or some craft time. I need some real-life coaching from a real financial professional, who is also a fiduciary to help me out with my money blockages.

Caroline: Lauren signed up for yet another course. This one cost $10,000 — except this time, it was with a certified financial planner. Over three weekends, Lauren and nine other women met with the adviser for an intensive overhaul of their finances.

Cristen: The first weekend, the adviser asked everyone in the class to go around and air out their dirty money laundry. When Lauren's turn came, she shared that for YEARS, she had an overdraft line of credit on her checking account. So if she overdrafted it would just charge her like a credit card. She was constantly overdrafting, and constantly trying to pay back her debt. And this was a secret she hadn’t even told her then-fiance.

Lauren: But in this group of women, I was like, this is my dirty laundry and this is my shame. And once I put that out there, it's kind of like it lost its hold over me. And so I think in that program, because there was that camaraderie of a group of women all working together who are all like in a space of non judgment, who are in a space of, like, wanting to better their financial lives. And the fact that the tools that you're given in that program are actual, tangible tools that you can use to right your financial ship and to move forward in your financial life in a healthy and productive way. I think that's why that program worked better for me.

Cristen: One of the most helpful things Lauren learned in the course was how to automate her savings. She also had ongoing consultations with a financial adviser to keep her on track. She and her partner have now socked away a hefty savings AND an emergency fund of six months of living expenses.

Caroline: Not too shabby, Lauren. Recently, she found that manifesting wishlist she’d stored away in her special box.

Lauren: And I was like, oh shit, look at these notes that I wrote in here. And I was surprised that so many of those what I had written down as actually I was able to achieve those things, but it's not because of manifesting. It's because I worked for those things, and I put in the blood, sweat and tears to get those things.

Caroline: What would you tell your younger self about money now, like looking back, whether it's, you know, baby Lauren who's developing those blocks around money or whether it was just you a couple of years ago thinking about manifesting?

Lauren: You know, I'm a very stubborn person. So I think part of the reason why I'm so clear on where I am today with money and finances and how I approach all that is because I went through a very tumultuous time with money, and I had to try manifesting to know that manifesting money doesn't work. I think if I were to go back and tell, like, 20-something year old Lauren, like, hey, manifesting money doesn't work, I would be like, OK, well I'm still going to try it. What do you know? So I think it's like that thing of like you have to experience it to know that it either does or doesn't work for you and then taking that experience and using that to move forward.

Cristen: That's a very healthy perspective, Lauren.

Lauren: Thank you. Years of therapy have gotten me here.

Caroline: Right?

Cristen: We’re going to take a quick break. When we come back, it's my turn to manifest. Sort of.

Caroline: And we get to the bottom of why manifesting attracts so many women

Cristen: Stick around!

[stinger]

Cristen: We’re back, and Caroline, I am holding in my hands my favorite Unladylike business expense of 2021 that I am fully prepared to justify to the IRS should we get audited.

Caroline: Oh lord - what is it?

Cristen: OK It only cost $6, and it is a Money Manifestation Coloring Book for Adults. Tagline: Relax. Color. Manifest.

Caroline: I am dying to know if you did all three.

Cristen: Well, I definitely relaxed and colored. TBD on the manifesting. But! I wasn’t just coloring. I also read a book by a popular manifesting influencer called The Money Is Coming: Your Guide to Manifesting More Money.

Caroline: Well Cristen. I mean, natural question: What were you trying to manifest?

Cristen: OK, you’re not gonna believe this but I was trying to manifest money, Caroline. I figured I'd swing for the fences and try to manifest a down payment for a house.

Caroline: Ok, that’s not nothing!

Cristen: No it is not, and even saying that out loud right now makes me a little nauseous.

Caroline: Understandable

Cristen: I took a month and tried working through all of the manifesting exercises in “The Money Is Coming,” and some of them were helpful, especially early on. Things like identifying my money blocks, and my personal fears around finances. But a couple weeks in, this whole concept of “acting as if” really started to throw me for a loop.

Caroline: Ok, what is “acting as if”?

Cristen: So, it means what it sounds. Like you are acting “as if” you already have the money

Caroline: Oh

Cristen: But at the same time, I was also supposed to be coming up with ways to get more money quickly AND also blocking out any realities to the contrary, which for me was like looking at home prices. And really all of that pressure to just stay positive ultimately left me feeling frantic and frankly avoidant. And I say “for me,” because, you know, this was my personal manifesting experience.

Caroline: Now there are all sorts of manifesting methods and just an infinite array of things people might want to manifest into their life. And by people, really I’m talking about women. At least judging by who’s buying and selling it the most these days. And Cristen, whenever we notice a gendered trend, our first unladylike question is: How’d we get here???

Cristen: Well Caroline, it sounds like it’s time to unpack some claptrap

[MUX - Claptrap]

Caroline: For listeners unfamiliar, unpack the claptrap is the part of the show where we whip out our feminist vision boards to find out why things are the way they are. So let's get to it.

Cristen: When we talk about women and manifesting, there’s one name that always comes up.

[CLIP]

Oprah: I am a powerful manifestor and I know that. You have to meet the vibration, You can’t be above or below it.

Cristen: Oprah famously — or infamously, depending on whom you ask — made the 2006 book The Secret a mega bestseller. It was written by Rhonda Byrne and is all about the law of attraction, or using your thoughts to manifest your dream life. And it was devoured by millions of women after Oprah promoted it. But Caroline, what I had NO idea about before going on our unladylike manifesting journey is how women were at the forefront of bringing this whole power of positive thinking into mainstream American culture a CENTURY ago, as well.

Caroline: Oh yeah, I had no idea. And what blew my mind even more is just how strongly those manifesting influencers from over 100 years ago echo the ones we see all over social media and on self-help bestseller lists today. But OK, I’m getting ahead of myself. Cristen, where does our women-and-manifesting story begin?

Cristen: It all starts in the late 1800s with the so-called New Thought movement. The movement was focused on the idea that our thoughts are powerful. Very powerful.

Caroline: The first person to really formalize this kind of mental spirituality was a Massachusetts woman named Mary Baker Eddy. In the 1860s and 70s, Mary established a new religion called Christian Science, which captivated so many folks in her community, it was initially nicknamed the “Boston craze”

Cristen: Another fun fact: My middle namesake was a suffragist and contemporary of Eddy’s who was huge into Christian Science. But Mary’s founding philosophy was problematic. She preached that physical illness and disability were problems created in the mind and that so-called “right thinking” — not medicine — was the real path to healing.

Caroline: By the late 1800s, the New Thought movement evolved away from health to wealth. Which, Cristen, brings us to our second original manifesting influencer, Emma Curtis Hopkins.

Cristen: Got a lot of three name ladies, here! So, Emma was a former student of Mary’s who struck out on her own. She stripped away some of the Christianity in Christian Science and developed her own theology centered around idealism, abundance and positive thinking. And one of the big reasons Emma Curtis Hopkins was sooo successful was her connection to the women’s movement of the day.

Caroline: Yeah, a lot of suffragist types were super into New Thought, which - it makes sense! Its emphasis on self-reliance and self-empowerment through positive thinking really resonated with their politics and beliefs that women should have more control over their destinies.

Cristen: Emma and her predominantly white, female followers were responsible for spreading the New Thought movement across the country and outside the US, too. They started dozens of what they called Truth Centers and essentially became these religious entrepreneurs, like spiritual guides and healers.

Caroline: By the way, y’all, it was Emma’s teachings that also inspired Norman Vincent Peele’s massively influential book The Power of Positive Thinking. That book came out in 1952 and is the best-selling non-fiction book in history, second only to the Bible. But back to the women.

Cristen: Yeah. Long before Norman came along, another former student of Emma’s really helped convert New Thought spirituality into what critics dubbed a “get-rich-quick religion.” And that woman was Helen Wilmans. And in 1899, she published a book called The Conquest of Poverty. And Caroline, just listen to this line from the preface. And fyi, Helen is writing in third person, so the “she” here is her — is that even more confusing? Here we go. “From poverty she has evolved to a condition of opulence, commanding to-day an income aggregating tens of thousands of dollars annually. From a position of shrinking self-denial she has risen to a plane of powerful selfhood, and through its power has conquered all undesirable environments; not poverty alone, but disease. At a time of life counted by the world as old age, instead of getting ready to die she is preparing to live."

Caroline: Ok, that’s intense.

Cristen: Well, and reminder that passage was written in 1899! So I can only assume that by old age, she’s talking about, like, she’s probably 32, 33.

Caroline: Oh, great

Cristen: But it immediately gave me the kinds of girlbossy, you-deserve-this-queen kind of vibes that we might see on an Instagram caption from a manifesting influencer today!

Caroline: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And like, the packaging may have changed, but a lot of what self-designated life coaches, energy guides and teachers like Lauren’s yoga instructor are selling as manifestation today is essentially the same as what ladies like Mary, Emma and Helen were proselytizing a hundred years ago!

Cristen: And in some ways, Caroline, that totally makes sense. Like, I have a hunch that manifesting appeals to so many women these days because it promises that path to autonomy and success that society (and patriarchy) still largely affords to cis white men. Psychological research has found that women are likelier to believe that we have less power over our own lives or that our life circumstances are more controlled by external, rather than internal, forces. Like, if our fates are at the whim of the universe, why wouldn’t we want to harness that power for ourselves?

Caroline: Well, we’re gonna get deeper into the psychology of taking control and achieving our goals — after a quick break.

Cristen: Stick around!

[stinger]

Cristen: OK, Caroline, when we left off, we’d learned that there is this entire history of women preaching the power of positive thinking to other women as a path to riches and success. But something that really jumped out to me in the manifesting book that I read and have noticed other manifesting influencers pushing is that the law of attraction isn’t magical thinking. It’s SCIENCE.

Caroline: What.

Cristen: Yeah. Like, they toss around terms like neuroplasticity and neuro linguistic programming to argue that manifesting is a scientifically backed way to rewire your brain into abundance mode … which, it doesn’t take a scientist to know, like, that is a HUGE logical leap to make.

Caroline: I think huge is an understatement! And listen, that is also why we really wanted to talk to our next guest for an evidence-based reality check. She’s an actual scientist who’s rigorously studied positive thinking and its role in achieving success

Gabriele: My name is Gabriele Oettingen, and I am a professor of psychology at New York University and at the University of Hamburg in Germany, and I am a passionate researcher in the field of psychology.

Caroline: When Gabriele first came to the US in the 80’s, she was struck by just how pervasive and entrenched the cult of optimism was here. The dedication to positive thinking was foreign to her, but y’know, it seemed like an asset – like, people valued being in a good mood, not focusing on their problems.

Cristen: So, Gabriele began researching the effects of these positive fantasies vs. negative outlooks when it comes to achieving our dreams. Like, can positive thinking spur us to act? What is its power?

Gabriele: In positive fantasies about the future, you can explore the possibilities of the future. You can experience the possibilities in your mind. You can temporarily put yourself in a good mood. And what is really important, you can find the direction of your doings.

Caroline: Gabriele’s decades of research on positive fantasizing and wish fulfillment became her book Rethinking Positive Thinking. It presents a research-backed way to work towards the same goals that manifesting tells us just to hope for…and it’s all based on a surprising twist that Gabrielle’s studies uncovered.

Gabriele: What we find is that the more positively people fantasize and daydream about a desired future, the less they put in the effort and the resources that are needed to actually implement this future and accordingly, the less success they eventually have.

Caroline: It seems almost counter-intuitive, but in study after study that Gabriele and her team conducted, they found that the more people dreamed about what they wanted in their life the less they actually achieved those dreams.

Cristen: So for instance, when Gabriele studied people who were looking for jobs, the ones who fantasized the most about their dream careers ended up sending out the fewest applications and ultimately making less money.

Caroline: Or take relationships. Gabriele found that the more folks fixated on their crushes, the less likely they were to make a move.

Gabriele: And what we find is that the people whom we had induced to positively fantasize about the future, that they felt already accomplished, they experienced a positive future in their mind, they felt it. And by feeling accomplished, they relaxed. So you can measure that by, you know, blood pressure goes down or self reported feelings of energy go down. And the problem is that we need the energy and the effort to actually implement these positive fantasies in real life.

Cristen: This is reminding me of a pattern that I've noticed with myself when it comes to positive fantasies, dreaming big, if you will, where I. I get that initial rush of energy. I get I get an idea, let's say, for a book that I want to write and. I get excited about it. But then once I realize the book has not been written and that I actually need to do the work, anxiety quickly moves in and I become very overwhelmed. Does that resonate kind of with what you've noticed in your research? Am I maybe like spending too much time in that fantasizing space?

Gabriele: I mean, it's pleasurable to fantasize. And what we find is, these positive fantasies about the future, they're linked to lower depressive feelings at the moment, but over time people get more depressed, and partly that is true because they are just not putting the energy into their endeavors and have less success. Now you could say, OK, let's get rid of these positive fantasies and daydreams. But we cannot do that. We found that these positive fantasies and daydreams, they are really important because they result from our needs. And therefore, we need to take these daydreams and fantasies really seriously. And by foraging for them and feeling them out, we understand where we want to go, and we want to go there where we have these deficiencies. So what can we do now in order to complement these positive fantasies and daydreams with something that gives people the energy? And that was then the next research question we asked ourselves.

Caroline: And what was that next step?

Gabriele: Well, we just thought, you know, if you start with these positive fantasies and daydreams, but then you compliment them with a healthy dose of reality, then people might understand, “Oops, I'm not there yet. I'm still in my mind, but it's not reality.” And by understanding what's the obstacles in the way I get the energy to actually hop over the obstacle, to surmount the obstacle. And if that obstacle is surmountable, then I really will go for it. But if the obstacle is such that I realize there is no way I get over it or it's just too costly, it doesn't fit in my life at the moment, then I can, with good conscience, either postpone that wish fulfillment to a later point in time. Or I can put all my energy into wishes that are more feasible and are more fitting into my life.

Caroline: Gabriele has taken her decades of research and created an evidence-based, four-step process called WOOP. That anyone can use - for free. It stands for Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan. So instead of just stalling out in positive-thinking territory, WOOP pushes you to get real about what’s holding you back — and it primes you to make a concrete plan to get around it.

Cristen: Now Caroline, since my mini manifesting experiment left me feeling so overwhelmed, I was really curious how it might compare to WOOP. And the example I ended up giving Gabriele in our interview wasn’t coming up with the money to buy a house, but it’s a dream of mine that could help me get there. And I was not expecting Gabrielle to walk me through the four steps of WOOP right then and there in our interview, but I’m so glad she did

[STINGER - sparkly sound]

Cristen: So, I’ve been struggling with a goal, and it’s writing a book. For one, it feels essential to who I am. And it feels like something that I want to give birth to. And yet it feels impossible.

Gabriele: OK, this is great. So, the first step is being slow and being quiet and just trying to feel out what is a wish that you have that is feasible for you, but at the same time also challenging. So if you look at your wish of writing a book, on what would you write the book?

Cristen: A book like, let's say a book about, oh, I feel silly even saying this out loud, a book about myself.

Gabriele: OK, great. So if you want to write a book about yourself, now I ask you what would be the best outcome?

Cristen: I feel like the best outcome would be clearing out the stories and ideas that I have carried around in my head for most of my life, of finally accomplishing the one big dream that I really had when I was a kid.

Gabriele: OK, so if I ask you to summarize in about three to five words, what would be the best outcome? How would you feel?

Cristen: I think I would feel - I would feel worthy enough to put myself on the page for other people to consume.

Gabriele: So is that a feeling where you where you jump?

Cristen: Where I jump? Like that - a feeling that makes me anxious?

Gabriele: No, where you jump for joy.

Cristen: Oh. In theory, yes, I don't know, because I don't know that I fully feel that yet, but I would I would like to feel that. Yes, yes.

Gabriele: Can you imagine that?

Cristen: Yes, I have goosebumps right now imagining it.

Gabriele: OK, good. You have goosebumps, perfect. All right. So imagine it. Imagine it once so that your goosebumps stay a little bit. Can you?

Cristen: Mm hmm.

Gabriele [00:27:34] All right, because this imagery is very important in WOOP, because the second step, the outcome, needs to be imagined. And if you get goosebumps, then your imagery sort of glues you to the sky if you want. It makes you really understand the direction to act. And then we switch, and I ask you, what is it in you, then, that stands in the way that you write the book about yourself? And that you feel this feeling you had right now with the goosebumps.

Cristen: The first thing that comes to mind is fear of rejection.

Gabriele: OK, can you imagine that fear of rejection creeping up?

Cristen: Mm hmm. Yes.

Gabriele: OK, imagine that for a moment. Really vividly imagine it. OK?

Cristen: Mm hmm.

Gabriele: OK, And now I will ask you, so what can you do to overcome that fear of rejection? What would be an action that you can take or a thought you could say to yourself in order to overcome the fear of rejection, what could you do?

Cristen: The first thing that comes to mind is, write it anyway.

Gabriele: OK, great. Write it anyway. Now, do you know when this fear of rejection comes up next?

Cristen: The next time I sit down to write, probably. Let's say this evening, because I need to do some writing.

Gabriele: OK, let's say this evening, can you can you say about where and when?

Cristen: At home in my - at my desk at around 6 o'clock.

Gabriele: OK, great. So. Now, you can actually put things together and you say, if my fear of rejection creeps up. You said tonight at home at my desk around 6 o'clock, then I will

Cristen: write it anyway,

Gabriele: write it anyway, and now you say the sentence once more: If - what was the obstacle?

Cristen: If my fear of rejection returns, at - when I sit down to write this evening at six o'clock,

Gabriele: then I will

Cristen: write it anyway.

Gabriele: OK, great

Cristen: I'm getting goosebumps again.

Gabriele: This is great. Actually, thanks for being really courageous and going through a WOOP. But this is WOOP.

[STINGER - sparkly sound]

Caroline: So Dr. Oettingen what makes the WOOP exercise so effective?

Gabriele: when you go through a WOOP exercise the future outcome, you know, this feeling of fulfilling your wishes, gets linked to the obstacle in the way. So, for example, your anxiety or any kind of feeling which is standing in the way which you defined. And so the future is linked to the obstacle of reality and the obstacle of reality is linked to the behavior to overcome the obstacle. So before you even know, you sit down and you write it anyway. You use your nonconscious processes to actually do what you specified ahead of time and you recognize these obstacles of reality more readily. And what else happens too is you get more energy, because by understanding these obstacles, the energy kind of comes and people feel more energized…

Caroline: And I think one thing that is so powerful about WOOP is how concrete it is, it is - because Cristen, for instance, could take WOOP. She's got this larger goal. But what I took from your book is that she could then take it down to even smaller steps along the way.

Gabriele: Exactly. And the nice ramifications of WOOP are that it leads you from one wish to the next. So, you know, you have this overarching wish to write a book, but then, you know, to write a book is not a trivial thing. So it's a real long journey. But along the way of writing the book, you can use WOOP for all sorts of short term and long term and trivial and life deciding wishes. And, you know, you can also make a routine out of WOOP. So I, I WOOP every morning, which is super helpful. So for the day saying what, what is my wish for, for the day. So what, what do I want? And then it gives you so much clarity on what is feasible for you and and how you go about it. And then certainly what what is it that you really want. and very different wishes come up than you thought because very often we, you know, we run responding to our environment. But if you really think, what do I want for today? What do I really want? Some very different wishes come up. And that's super nice because now you feel in touch with what is really important to you.

Caroline: Cristen, I have to admit I was initially skeptical about WOOP.

Cristen: Ok, why is that?

Caroline: Honestly, anything with a cute acronym makes me suspicious of its effectiveness.

Cristen: I hear you. I hear you on that.

Caroline: But I gotta say, like I read Dr. Oettengen’s book, Rethinking Positive Thinking, I did some WOOP exercises of my own, in a quiet dark space. And it really helped. It really helped. It was like a therapy session by myself in my closet. Because, like we talk about in the interview with her, it gave me concrete ways to not only like be real with myself about what I want, but be real with myself about what is my obstacle! And so, it allowed me to, instead of just shooting for one giant pie-in-the-sky intimidating goal of “make enough money to pay your rent for 6 months” it allowed me to break it down into individual, more digestible goals that I could WOOP and set plans in motion for myself. I’m curious though having listened to your experience WOOPing through your book goal, like, how did that compare in your mind to like the manifesting homework you were doing?

Cristen: Much less anxiety. I totally understand what she’s talking about in terms of establishing those unconscious processes, with like paying attention to the goosebumps and paying attention to those heightened emotions that you can create fantasizing about what both the positives and negatives could be - because that’s actually similar to a style of therapy that I do called EMDR, which y’all can just Google that acronym- another acronym!- that is based on similar kinds of principles, so maybe there was a familiarity to it? But I gotta tell you, zeroing in on what that primary block was around my fear of failure, of not being good enough etc - and then having my answer to it that is ready, “write it anyway”, it’s been very helpful! I have been able to write it anyway. Now, does this mean that the words have magically appeared on the page, and that I never feel that fear of failure or procrastinate from writing - no, but! It is a powerful process. And I understand that any successful manifesting influencer will tell you there is work to manifesting. It’s not just set it and forget it. However, the biggest red flag for me is the total resistance to and disengagement with any negativity.

Caroline: Oh yeah.

Cristen: And, as Lauren talked about, when you don’t ultimately manifest your way to self-made millionairess status, it has nothing to do with anyone but you and it is your fault. So that’s why manifesting is so seductive, but it’s also why I think it can be potentially destructive. Especially if you are someone who is in dire financial straits and you see someone who says they have the answers to everything, all you have to do is pay X amount of dollars, just buyer beware is what I would say.

Caroline: Yeah. if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Cristen: It probably is, yeah. … To learn more about Gabriele Oettingen’s work and WOOP, head to her website woopmylife.org where you’ll find tons of resources. You can also find Gabriele’s book Rethinking Positive Thinking at your local bookstore.

Caroline: You can find us on instagram, facebook and Twitter @unladylikemedia. You can also support Cristen and me by joining our Patreon; you’ll not only get our undying love, you’ll also get ad-free bonus episodes, like the one we just recorded on the Gabby Petito case and Missing White Woman Syndrome -- it’s all over there at patreon.com/unladylikemedia.

Cristen: Nora Ritchie is the senior producer of Unladylike. Michele O’Brien is our associate producer. Gianna Palmer is our story editor. Shruti Marathe transcribes our tape. Our music is by Flamingo Shadow, Amit May Cohen and Sarah Tudzin. Mixing is by Andi Kristins. Sound design and additional music is by Casey Holford and Andi Kristins. Executive producers are Peter Clowney, Daisy Rosario and Unladylike Media.

Caroline: This podcast was created by your hosts, Caroline Ervin

Cristen: And Cristen Conger of Unladylike Media.

Caroline: Next week...

Helen Ngo: When it comes to investing, you know, that's I feel like that's being gender-ized too. Like and like me buying Tesla stock or a mutual fund or an ETF or opening up a 401(k) - that is not man or woman. That's just me. Normal human being, trying to make some frickin cash.

Caroline: It’s our latest Ask Unladylike episode --money edition! Helen Ngo, our beloved financial planner will be answering your questions about spending and saving, divorce, ethical investing and more.

Cristen: You don’t want to miss this episode! Make sure you’re subscribed to Unladylike. Find us in stitcher, spotify, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Caroline: And remember, got a problem?

Cristen: Get Unladylike.