Does manifesting your dreams work? Well, no – but also, yes

2 months ago 6

If you’re drawn to manifestation – the idea that we can reach our goals by focusing on them with our thoughts – there’s plenty of celebrity inspiration online.

Lady Gaga reportedly used affirmations to achieve success, telling herself repeatedly, “music is my life. The fame is inside of me. I’m going to make a No. 1 record with No. 1 hits”. Actor Matthew McConaughey talks about writing down “win an Oscar for best actor” when he was in college – decades before he won one. As a struggling actor, Jim Carrey famously wrote himself a post-dated cheque for $10 million “for acting services rendered” – and 10 years later was paid $10 million for his part in Dumb and Dumber.

Yet you can’t help feeling there’s a teensy bit more to their success than just writing stuff down – like hard, dogged work and talent. There’s a hint of this in an interview with Kate Winslet at the premiere of her 2024 movie Lee, about war photographer Lee Miller. Winslet, who co-produced Lee, admits to believing in manifesting “a lot” – but also stresses the years of work and determination it took to get the film to the screen, saying: “You just have to keep going and literally not give up, and just say, no, I’m going to do it.”

Kate Winslet, who has won an Oscar, Emmy and Grammy, is a believer in the power of manifesting your dreams.

If you’re not up to speed with manifestation, it’s a trend kicked off by The Secret, the 2006 self-help book that promoted the law of attraction, the theory that our thoughts can bring us what we want in life. During COVID, manifestation blossomed again on social media. Now a ton of influencers offer tips on turning dreams into reality: anything from writing down your goals with a green pen (“green is the colour of abundance”) to simply texting yourself the message, “one year from now: you’re in your own home, debt is fully paid, a loving partner by your side, good health and a fat savings account”.

“Manifest” even became the Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year in 2024 because it had been looked up so often, prompting a warning from a psychologist who described manifestation as “magical thinking” that could lead to unrealistic expectations and disappointment.

Recently separated Jules Neale, whose husband AFL player Lachie Neale revealed their marriage breakdown last week, is the latest to “manifest your 2026 vibes” at the weekend.

“It’s crucial to know the difference between the power of positive thinking and the idea of moving reality with your mind – the first is healthy but the second is pseudoscience,” said Dr Sander van der Linden, professor of social psychology at the University of Cambridge.

More words of caution came from a study by University of Queensland researchers looking at about 1000 people who believed in manifestation and found that those who believed most strongly in the idea were also more likely to be drawn to risky investments, have experienced bankruptcy and believe they could achieve an unlikely level of success more quickly.

One problem with online success stories involving manifestation is that they tend to highlight wins but not losses, says Dr Lucas Dixon, one of the study’s researchers.

“Stories from successful people about why they succeeded can be unintentionally biased,” says Dixon, now a sessional lecturer at the University of the Sunshine Coast. “For example, if someone says they manifested a million dollars by writing a pretend cheque to themselves – like Jim Carrey said he did – they forget about the thousands of people who also wrote the same cheque and didn’t get their million dollars. What explains their lack of success? Is it that all those other unsuccessful manifesters didn’t manifest ‘correctly’?

“People tend to share their own little manifestation rituals and celebrate their successes on social media. Posting their goals becomes part of the manifestation process. But online environments like this allow people to curate the best parts of their lives, and perhaps share their ‘wins’ with manifestation more often than their losses.”

One principle of manifestation is the idea that like attracts like, also called the law of attraction. It implies that if we focus hard enough on something, it will come to us. It’s meant to explain why, when you’ve decided your goal is to learn to, say, play the cello, you spot an ad for a secondhand cello, and then learn that there’s a course starting soon.

“But this doesn’t mean you’ve attracted these things – you haven’t made them turn up or manifested them. Instead, it’s a cognitive bias called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, or frequency illusion, which means our brain has become primed to notice something we’re interested in,” says neuroscientist Dr Sarah McKay, author of The Women’s Brain Book.

Manifestation itself might be pseudoscience, but there’s good evidence for one of the tools it recommends – visualisation, McKay says.

“It’s used in sports psychology to prepare athletes to perform. For example, when you imagine yourself performing a movement, you activate the same brain networks that you would to do the movement. But it’s only one part of the process,” she stresses.

Visualisation is regularly used in sport to help elite athletes achieve their goals.

It’s the same with positive thinking, says psychologist Dr Suzy Green, author of The Positivity Prescription. Although positive thinking alone won’t get you to a goal, it can put you in a frame of mind that makes the journey easier.

“Our brain is powerful – we can learn to move out of learnt helplessness and become more optimistic thinkers with a solution-focused mindset, but that doesn’t take away the fact that there may be obstacles. Or that we can be on fire in a job interview yet still not get the job. But positive thinking also says: ‘I don’t have 100 per cent control, so what do I have control over? What is plan B or plan C? What are other pathways I can use if one gets blocked?’” she says.

“When we intentionally practise optimism, we’re training the brain to become more hopeful, just like training muscles at the gym to become stronger. Each time we choose a more constructive, hopeful perspective, we’re building new or stronger neural pathways involved in attention, emotional regulation and motivation. Over time, with repetition, these pathways become the brain’s default, while older, threat-focused patterns lose their grip.

“This makes it easier to stay calm under pressure, notice possibilities rather than problems, and direct our energy toward what matters. ”

A dose of compassion can help too, Green adds.

“Being compassionate in our thoughts and actions helps nurture a more positive emotional state of mind – and that can help us be more focused on solutions. So rather than manifesting success alone, maybe our New Year’s resolutions should include: ‘I’ll practise kinder self-talk and respond to others with greater curiosity and care so that my goals benefit both myself and those around me’. ”

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