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126 Manifesting Explained: What it Actually is and the Real Science Behind It · Stacked Intent: Your Guide to Authentic, Intentional Living

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, my name is Becca Stackhouse Morrison, and I am ready for you to tune in each episode to hear ways to become you.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Looking at ways you can be your authentic and intentional self, you'll finish each episode motivated to live life more authentically.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: I learned how to be truly me through relationships, chronic disease, finances, and taking each journey along the way.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Talk about the real aspects of life?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Relationships, finance, nutrition, hardships, exercise are all topics that we will discuss.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Pull up a seat, drive safely down the road, or get into that workout groove to be challenged, motivated, and encouraged to be you.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: This is the Stacked Intent podcast.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to Stacked Intent.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: I am Becca, your host and founder of Stacked Intent.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: I am joined by Amy Stackhouse, and today we are starting the manifesting arc of season 11.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to say up front, I came to this conversation with a bit of skepticism, not really hostile to the idea, but wanting something grounded.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what we're about to talk about actually delivered that for me.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that's exactly the right setup.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because manifesting has some reputation problems.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: On one end, you have the law of attraction crowded telling you that just think positively and the universe is gonna deliver.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: On the other side, you have people dismissing it entirely as delusional thinking, and both of these are missing something that is really important in it.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because there is something real happening when people intentionally focus on what they want and align their beliefs with it, and then take action toward it.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's actually science behind it.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we're talking about today.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: The mechanics.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: What is actually happening when manifesting is working, and what is actually happening when it doesn't.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start with a definition that strips away the mystique.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Manifesting is the process of intentionally bringing something into your life through a combination of clarity, belief, identification, alignment, and action.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: I want to flag those four parts because I think that people only hear about two of them.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Clarity is knowing specifically what you want.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Belief is generally expecting it to be possible.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Identity alignment becomes the person who has that thing, and action is the consistency with moving toward it.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Most conversations about manifesting stop at belief.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe clarity, but they skip the identity and action pieces entirely.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Which is why is it important for people to try it and don't see results.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: So you can't just write something on a vision board and wait.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Manifesting is integrating practice, so it starts in your mind, but it ends in your behaviors.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not a passive activity at all.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Not at all.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you don't have to believe in mystical universe responses to your energy for this to work.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: These mechanisms are real, whether or not they hold spiritual belief for you.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's the neuroscience in it and the psychology that stand on their own outside of that.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the neuroscience piece.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is what won me over.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Can we maybe talk that through?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you can talk us through it.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: So your brain processes an enormous amount of information every second.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: So millions of bits of sensory inputs, but your conscious mind can only handle a tiny fraction of that at a time.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: So your brain is filtering through things as a filtering system, reticular activating system, or RAS that describes what your conscious mind pays attention to based on what's been told that it's most important.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and I recently saw this in this exact example of buying a new car.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: You buy a new car, suddenly you set it see it everywhere.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Even like the color, all of a sudden every car I see is gray.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: So exactly, the car was always there, but your RAS just wasn't filtering for it.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: The same thing happens with your goals.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: When you get clear and specific about what you want, when you hold it in your mind repeatedly, your RAS starts filtering reality in a way that makes you more aware of relevant opportunities, people, and more information that were always there, but you might not have always been seeing.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: So the vision board we sit around and make isn't magically attracting things to you.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's training your brain to filter and notice those things that might already be available and present.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's a completely different frame, and it makes it so much more actionable.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's not hard to believe, it's it's not hard to believe hard enough, and then things appear.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's hard to wrap my head around, but it gets clear enough that your brain can start doing that, doing the actual job, right?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so clarity and focus genuinely change what you notice, what changes what you act on, and so ultimately that changes what your outcome becomes.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: So now the deeper mechanism, and this is where we're it gets really interesting.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me more about it.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Your brain has a strange bias towards consistency, it's wants your external reality to match what your internal story about yourself.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: So psychologists call this a cognitive consistency, which we are motivated, often unconscious to to act in ways that confirm what we already believe of who we are.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: So if you believe that you're not someone who's financially secure, that money is hard, that you don't deserve abundance, even when opportunities arise, you unconsciously create the behavior consistent with that belief.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: So you're gonna have self-sabotage, undercharging, holding back, and it's not even conscious, it's your nervous system doing what we've trained it to do.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is why manifesting without identity work fails.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you want something desperately and still block it because your unconscious belief about who you are is more powerful than what your conscious desire is.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: So then identifying level manifesting means asking not just what to do I want, but who is the person who has that?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then beginning to embody that person and the choices and your habits and your self-talk before the evidence even ever arrives.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: How about giving us a concrete example that we can kind of wrap our heads around?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you want financial security, you start making decisions like that person.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: You track your money, you plan, you say no to an impulse spend, you treat your financial decisions like they matter because the person you're becoming believes that they do.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Identity leads to reality, follows.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, Becca, what's the difference between someone who gets results from this and perhaps someone who does not?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Manifesting works when you're genuinely clear about what you want, your beliefs, about its possibilities, it's real, your identity is aligned with having it, and you're taking that consistent action in the direction.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it's having all four of these aspects working together.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: How about describing when it fails?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: You've been vague about what you want.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: You say that you want something, but your actions and you don't believe that it's possible, your actions are inconsistent with your stated desire.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Or, and this one can be big, you're using manifesting as a bypass.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't understand what that means.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Using the clarity and the vision boards to work to feel like you're doing something without actually doing the hard thing.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because self-love, self-manifesting, everything we're talking about in these arcs, it's hard work.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so vision boards instead of a job application, journaling abundance without changing spending habits, meditating on a relationship goal while avoiding the vulnerability of that real connection and conversation that's required.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: So manifesting becomes a way to feel productive without taking the uncomfortable action.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: So exactly.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: And real manifesting is completed when you take those actions, it's not a replacement for it.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: The clarity and the belief create the connection or the conditions, but the action is what actually moves you forward on that pendulum.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone's listening and they want to actually do this, what does a real practice require of them?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: It takes four things.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Specifically, not I want to be happy, but a detailed felt vision of exactly what that looks like.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Not I want more money, but a I want to earn X dollars by doing what lights me up by this time.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the specifics that the brain is seeking.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: The brain needs that specificness.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's genuine belief, not forced positivity, but real growing conviction that what you want is possible for you.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: This often requires identifying and dismantling the belief that say it isn't.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's identifying the alignment, embodying the person who has what you want in your daily choices before the evidence arrives and the aligned action, doing the thing that move you toward this consistency, even when the evidence hasn't shown up yet.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: So all four, not just the fun ones, all four.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that means what makes it real.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: So your action step four this week is identifying one thing that you're calling into your life, just one, and be specific, not a category, a vision.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so write it down in a specific, detailed way that you can, not what you think you should want, what you actually want.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you want to be?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: What does it look like and feel like?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: What's the difference about your daily life when this is present?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have somebody that can help you check in on it, feel free to reach out.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd love to be here and help you find this one thing to be present in your life.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: While that clarity is the foundation for everything that follows in this arc, I came into this conversation skeptical, and I'm leaving with a completely different relationship to the word manifesting.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: It is intentional living backed by neuroscience.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's the best summary, Amy.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining us for such a good conversation.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you for having me.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely loved it.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: So as this goes on next week, we will go deeper on the clarity piece because most people are far less clear about what they want than they think.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that is a big one of the biggest block there is.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Share this episode if it is shifting something, and I'll see you next week.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: That brings us to the end of this episode of Stacked Intent.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: If you love this episode as much as I did, head on over and rate and subscribe so you never miss an episode.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: New episodes are gonna be dropped on Thursdays until then.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: This is Becca, and don't forget to enrich your life by being intentional.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: This podcast was created, produced, and recorded and edited last year.