The life I want to create

There’s a quote that keeps coming back to my mind as I stand in tadasana, mountain pose, hands at my heart center, eyes gently closed. The teacher is telling me to manifest what I want! She exclaims that the first step to the life I long for is to see it. To trust it.

The quote reads, “Maybe you manifested it. Maybe it’s your white privilege.”

There’s so much truth to this quote, and the essence of it has kept me far away from manifestation for some time. It’s easy for privileged, upper-class, white folks to dream big and have few or no obstacles in the way of getting what they want. Maybe I manifested away student loan debt. Or maybe my parents helped out? Maybe I manifested this dream home, or maybe my career trajectory and savings account is an unbalanced mix of hard work and having the upper-hand.

And yet here I am, practicing yoga at the end of a new year, flooded with wonder around what 2021 will hold, and what is actually in my control. What’s not up to me and what can I actually create?

If I swap out the word “manifest” for “create,” I ease up a little bit. To me, manifestation is wanting something, asking the universe for it, and then seeing it come to fruition. That, my friends, is just entitlement cloaked in some woo-woo magic. However, if I think of creation, I see action. With creation, I stop fretting about what is out of my control and begin to realize that I actually do have so much choice. I couldn’t stop the pandemic, or the shutdowns, or the endless uncertainties when buying and selling a house, job instability, and canceled trips. But. I chose how to react. My reactions weren’t always great, but I’m working on it. A work-in-progress. I can choose to be stressed, or I can choose to trust.

I don’t want this to sound synonymous with complacency. When there’s injustice, we should choose to be angry. Infuriated. Gutted. When the election was neck-and-neck, I chose to be anxious, knowing that anything less might be saying, “it won’t really affect me anyway.”

As we enter a new year, I am focusing on creating — not manifesting. I’m also slowly starting to understand that the things I want to create aren’t necessarily material items, either. I want to create feelings. I want to create peace, and safety, and joy. I want to create more curiosity, and confidence, and love. The truth is I have no idea what this year will actually look like. The biggest thing I learned from 2020 is we truly have no clue what will unfold in front of us. All we have is a choice of how we respond. All we have is an opportunity to create how we want to feel.

Here are the feelings I want to create in 2021:

Confidence
Security
Strength
Softness

More on those at another time. Much love.
Laura