Sunday Talk

I’m not a prolific user of the word manifestation—it’s never really been part of my vocabulary. And while I don’t take issue with what it claims to represent—intention, belief, visualization—I do find its marketing slightly troubling. Not for what it means, but for what it implies: that through the power of belief alone, we can think our goals into reality.

Manifestation has become yet another euphemism—like so many others in modern language—that helps us distance ourselves from reality. We don’t fail, we pivot. We’re not broke, we’re reallocating energy. And now, we don’t act—we manifest. Soft language that mutes the regularities. A gentle detour around the unavoidable friction of real life. It offers an elegant illusion—that thinking and focusing are enough. That if we simply align our energy, the universe will handle the logistics. It simply won’t. And if it does, it would be entirely by chance. 🎲 

The core tenets of manifestation—focus, believe, act—aren’t inherently flawed. They’re not far off from most behavioral frameworks. The problem arises in the optionality. Once action becomes optional—just one of the three steps instead of the engine behind them all—we quietly downgrade our own agency. Belief becomes the performance, not the prelude.

And fantasies are comfortable. They protect us from the discomfort of failing, the boredom of consistency, and the vulnerability of effort. But nothing real moves without movement. We don’t need amorphous words—we need crystalline ones. Words that demand action, not cushion it.

If anything, action should be the over-weighted variable—don’t let hope and belief do the heavy lifting.

These words aren’t just harmless padding. They blur reality. And when widely adopted, they reshape our collective sense of what’s acceptable or urgent.