Why Manifestation Isn’t Magic... It’s Just Good Subconscious Programming [ep. #261]
Hello lovely lady and welcome to The Subconscious Expert!
Are you writing your affirmations 55 times a day and wondering why nothing's changed? Let me tell you something... Yes, manifestation techniques work, but not for the reasons TikTok tells you. It’s just good old subconscious programming.
In today's episode, I'm breaking down the viral manifestation methods everyone on TikTok is obsessed with right now: the 369 manifestation method, future journaling, vision boards, the 55x5 method, and acting as if.
I'm going to tell you how manifestation works and explain what's actually happening in your brain when you do these manifestation techniques because it's not the ritual that creates the magic but the good old subconscious mind programming. So next time someone tells you they scripted their dream partner and he showed up in three weeks, you'll know it wasn’t moon dust. It was the neuroscience of manifestation.
I'm not here to kill the magic. I want you to keep it. But I also want you to stop outsourcing your power to a ritual and start using your mind like the powerful tool it actually is. Because when you understand the mechanics, you stop waiting for alignment and you start creating it.
Topics covered on Why Manifestation Isn’t Magic... It’s Just Good Subconscious Programming:
How does the 369 manifestation method actually work, and when does it completely fail?
What’s happening in your brain when you’re scripting or doing future journaling, and why are most people doing it wrong?
Why is your vision board collecting dust instead of creating results?
Is the 55x5 method just a short-term dopamine hit?
How does "acting as if" become embodied instead of just pretending (yes, your nervous system knows the difference)?
What is your reticular activating system, and what role does it play in every manifestation technique?
What’s the actual process that creates lasting results, and how is it different from viral manifestation methods?
Connect with Rebecca Haydon:
Quote:
"Manifestation says wait for the alignment. Subconscious strategy says we create it." - Rebecca Haydon
Transcription:
Our AI tried its best, but expect a few quirky typos in the transcript. Embrace the imperfections and enjoy the read!
[00:00:00] Hello, gorgeous lady. Welcome back to the Subconscious Expert. It is a bit of a fun day, but I actually thought it was quite a good scope for a podcast episode of really diving in to manifestation and how it's literally just good subconscious programming because if I see one more TikTok. Telling you to whisper someone's name into your hand or charge your water under the full moon with your crystals in it, or write your dream life 55,000 times for five days straight.
[00:00:41] I want us to have a little bit of a talk. I want us to have a little bit of a talk because yes. It looks like everyone's manifesting their dream car, their soulmate, a seven figure business, but what's really happening underneath is mechanics, and I want you to keep the [00:01:00] magic in it because we love a bit of magic, but actually if you know the mechanics and the neuroscience and the language and the behavior underneath manifestation.
[00:01:15] When you understand that, you actually stop outsourcing your power to a ritual thinking that that's the thing that's actually changing the whole game, and you start using your mind like the powerful tool it actually is. Okay, so today. We are breaking down the most viral manifestation techniques on TikTok.
[00:01:39] So the scripting, the 3, 6, 9 methods, the 55 times five method, and we're actually going to look at what's actually happening inside your brain and with your subconscious when you do them. Okay. Because a lot [00:02:00] of the time it's not the doing itself, like the attracting the outcomes. Um, it doesn't, it's not just because you're writing them down in a notebook under the moonlight of the full moon.
[00:02:13] You create them by communicating with your subconscious clearly enough that it starts to filter the world differently. So let's have a little bit of a breakdown. I just wanna preface this. I'm not shitting on manifestation, okay? I'm just giving you the bit underneath it. Okay? Now, manifestation really went viral for a reason, and that reason is because it gives people hope.
[00:02:46] With a bit of instruction. So when life feels uncertain to anyone, your brain wants two things. It wants control and it wants comfort. And any ritual, [00:03:00] any ritual offers both. So if it says write it three times in the morning, it feels productive. If it says, say this under a full moon, it feels quite mystical, right?
[00:03:15] We get this instant dopamine, we get this instant calm, right? And actually these rituals are actually regulating anxiety, right? They give your subconscious and your nervous system the illusion of certainty. And in the moments of chaos, certainty feels like safety right now. The funny thing is many of these manifestation techniques do create change a hundred percent, but not for the reasons people think.
[00:03:52] And they, what they're doing is they're accidentally tapping into the exact processes we use in [00:04:00] NLP and subconscious work, which is focus, repetition, emotion, and behavior. So when you see someone say, I scripted my dream partner, and he showed up in three weeks, what is actually happening is the woman's reticular activating system, which is the brain's filter, started paying attention to possibilities that were always there, but she's previously ignored.
[00:04:37] So she didn't like attract him through frequency. She literally simply noticed, noticed him because her mind, he primed her mind to do so. Right? That's how powerful your subconscious is. And your subconscious is filtering billions of bits of information [00:05:00] every second, right? It only shows you what matches your dominant thoughts, your dominant language, and your dominant emotions.
[00:05:11] So manifestation trends are basically working with neuroscience. Like if we actually look at it, and I know. Again, I don't want to remove the magic of manifestation, um, but sometimes it's so nice to understand what you are actually doing. With this magic that you're using. So a couple that I wanted to go into today.
[00:05:38] The first one, like of the viral rituals that I see on TikTok is the 3 6 9 method. Now this one is everywhere, so you write your desire three times in the morning, six times at midday, and nine times before bed. Now what it's meant to do is attract your goal [00:06:00] through repetition. What we're actually doing is repetition, priming.
[00:06:06] Now, each time you write that phrase. You are strengthening a neural pathway and you are telling your reticular activated system, you're telling your RAs, this is important. Prioritize this. So your brain starts scanning conversations, scanning posts, opportunities, opportunities related to that goal. So yes.
[00:06:32] It works, but not because the numbers are magic. It is literally because of the repetition. Now, the caveat here, something I wanna talk about is if what you are writing doesn't feel believable, your subconscious will reject it and you will feel [00:07:00] friction. Maybe even disbelief, maybe a bit of resistance.
[00:07:05] Your subconscious, as you're writing it almost goes like, Hmm, no, that's a fantasy. That's fantasy world, and it will literally file it away. So when we look at the 3, 6 9 method, that only helps if the statement feels emotionally plausible to you. Right. You could be writing, I make a million pounds a month, 3, 6, 9 times in the day when your subconscious is still panicking about you paying the mortgage or paying your rent, right?
[00:07:40] Your brain can't bridge that gap. It will, it will actually freeze. So what I want you to do with this, if you are using this manifestation tool at the moment, is I want you to write something that builds kind of this believable bridge. So it might be [00:08:00] every week I'm becoming more confident at making money.
[00:08:05] That's probably a pattern that your subconscious can follow. The second thing we see so often, and by God I talk about it too, is scripting, future journaling. Okay? And the TikTok advice is kind of like, and they've been using chat GPT for this as well. Like, write my dream life, or write your dream life in the present tense as if.
[00:08:30] It's already happened again. Magical. Yes. The reason why I get my clients to do this is it is classic future pacing. When you write vividly about your desired future, you are creating this detailed internal movie. It's kind of this full sensory simulation. And your brain can't tell the difference between a vividly [00:09:00] imagined event and a real one.
[00:09:03] So actually what it starts to do is it starts to generate the same responses, the dopamine, the oxytocin, the anticipation. And what that does is it makes the outcome feel familiar. And the subconscious, say it with me, loves the familiar, right? And it moves towards what feels known. It wants to move towards what feels familiar, and it wants to avoid what feels uncertain.
[00:09:35] So scripting isn't asking the universe for it. What you are actually doing is you are teaching your brain, this is safe, this is normal. Let's fricking go here. Right, and actually the thing that I see people get wrong with this is they write the story without the state. Okay. They sit [00:10:00] down and they feel disconnected because that's why they're doing this in the first place.
[00:10:04] And they write, I'm living my dream life. And the subconscious doesn't read the words. It reads emotion, and it really drives from emotion. And when there is no emotion, there will be no imprint in the neural pathways. So if you are going to script, I want you to close your eyes and I want you to feel it in your body and then write.
[00:10:29] Okay? Otherwise, it's literally you're just writing a story. Okay? The third thing. The good old, the faithful, the trustee, the vision boards, okay? We've all seen the Pinterest perfect boards, the villas, the luxury handbags. The dream weddings and vision boards actually are visual anchors, okay? They activate the same neural pathways as a visual [00:11:00] submodality in NLP is what we call it.
[00:11:03] But the power actually isn't in the picture. The power is in the emotion that that picture evokes. So the reticular activating system, it prioritizes information that feels emotionally charged. So if you are bored, if your Pinterest board genuinely excites you and you look at it daily and you are in that elevated state, your brain will link that emotion to the certain images, right?
[00:11:37] When you see similar cues in real life, it will light up and be like, oh, this matches this emotion. Okay. That's why you suddenly spot opportunities that align with your vision board. You are literally doing pattern recognition. Feels magic, but that's what it is, right? So if your vision board sits [00:12:00] in your office collecting dust or it's on your screensaver, yes, and you maybe see it every day, but there is a no emotion attached to it, you are.
[00:12:10] It's literally, you might as well have a picture of your dog on there, okay? You have to interact with it, not just stare at it and be like, I hope one day that it will be. I want you to feel it actively. Yeah, I want you to pair the image with movement, with energy, with action. That's how the association forms.
[00:12:31] The next one I wanna talk about is the 55 plus five, right? Write your desires 55 times for five days. I mean, again, we're just purely in repetition. Yeah. Now repetition primes focus. The more you repeat, the more the phrase imprints, just like we said with the 3, 6, 9. So for a few days you will find, [00:13:00] especially if you're just doing it for those five days, your retention will heighten.
[00:13:03] You will probably feel optimistic. You will notice these tiny coincidences, you'll call them signs, but then. U dopamine fades and so does the fricking manifestation because actually there was a never a plan underneath it. Okay? It is this short term, high, not long term change, and that's what we want. And then there is acting as if, right?
[00:13:30] Finally, the trend. That's actually rooted in something real right now in NLP. This is identity level anchoring. And you know how much I talk about this, if I'm honest. I say be as if rather than act as if. 'cause I feel like it's slightly different. And when you act as if the version. When you are acting as the version of you who already has what you want, you fire the same neural [00:14:00] networks that she would, okay?
[00:14:02] And your subconscious wants this, this congruence at all times. So it aligns your beliefs and your emotions and your actions to match your identity. Okay? The thing with this is. And this is why I pair it so beautifully with the work that I do with my clients, not just focus on this alone, is that it only works if it's embodied, not if you are pretending.
[00:14:30] So when you fake confidence, this is why I don't like the phrase, fake it until you make it your nervous system or your subconscious almost senses that. Inauthenticity, right? When you embody confidence, you are breathing slower, your shoulders are back, you are focused, you're calm, your physiology agrees.
[00:14:51] Your physiology and your psychology work together so closely, right? When that happens, that state becomes [00:15:00] self-reinforcing, like it becomes your baseline. So yes, acting as as if is a hundred percent valid, but it's not cosplay, right? It it has to be from an identity level as well. You have to do the work underneath.
[00:15:18] Now, why do people swear that manifestation works? Because it does temporarily sometimes, right? Every ritual we've talked about, if we actually look at it, it shifts the same three things. Focus, emotion, behavior. So focus is the Raz filtering for what matters. Emotion is the feelings that change and then that drives what you're doing.
[00:15:54] And then the behavior is the new focus and the emotion, which gives you the [00:16:00] new action. Okay, and then what follows action? The result and what follows the result. Reinforcement of the same thing, right. So you believe the ritual worked, but really it wasn't the ritual. It was you. It was you. And actually that's why two people can follow the same manifestation trend and only one will see results because the one who's subconscious believed it enough to behave differently is the one who would get the results.
[00:16:40] Yeah, it's where the focus is going, and yes, we can play into the magic, but actually there is so much behind it that you already have full control of, with or without the 3, 6, 9 method. Okay, so as we've spoke [00:17:00] about the reticular activated system. That's usually what they're using in these manifestation techniques.
[00:17:08] I mean, that is the gatekeeper of your attention. Okay, now your Raz is filtering billions of sensory inputs and again. Like I said, it lets through what you deem to be relevant at that time. They always talk about it when you decide, I want a red car, you suddenly see red cars everywhere. Yeah. I always remember when I used to teach dance and one of the women that used to work where I used to work went and bought this mini.
[00:17:40] And it was this orange mini, and she like literally got back, like before she went and bought this car, she was like, I have not seen this color mini anywhere. Like I love it. I, it's amazing. I'm gonna be the only one with it. And I remember, so like, it's a core memory in my head and I'm not sure why, but she went and bought the mini and on the [00:18:00] way back home from her driving the mini to work, she saw six of that mini.
[00:18:08] Right. They've always been on the road. They've always been there. It's not because they just magically appeared because she'd literally just bought one herself. It's because her filter updated. Right? That's what the RAs system does. It happened when I went to Australia, when I was moving to Australia, everything.
[00:18:27] Everywhere was Australia. I rung to cancel my phone bill and all of a sudden they were playing the land down under, you know, it wasn't a fluke, it was just, that's what I was listened to. The same song would've played, but my Raz was filtering Australia. Every chase, you know, the chase on tv, every question was about Australia.
[00:18:46] It wasn't, it was just my, my Raz was filtering on that. It was really focusing on that Now. Your limbic system attaches emotions to those filters, so what feels exciting? [00:19:00] Or what feels really urgent, gets priority. And that's why emotionally charged goals are easier to achieve than really rational ones.
[00:19:12] Okay. And when that happens, then your prefrontal cortex comes into play and it plans the behavior around that focus. Yeah, and then we go into. The things and your habits, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's the real law of attraction. It is focus, emotion, action, habit, evidence, belief, reinforcement. You literally train your brain to notice, to act and believe in alignment.
[00:19:47] That is manifestation. Minus the moon dust. And I'm not saying like, honestly, honestly, I've put my rocks in water and put the water on my windowsill under the full moon. I've done it [00:20:00] before. Okay. When I, I really, really leaned into manifestation in Australia because I needed hope at that time. Right now, the process that I teach instead, and I very, very, very, I think I've never used the word manifestation actually, and people will know that I've said this before, but this is what I teach.
[00:20:19] I say instead it's the same thing, but just through my words. That make sense. And I know that sometimes they make sense to you too. Hopefully. First thing you want is to decide what you want clearly. So be specific and I want it to be in sensory detail. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel when it's done?
[00:20:42] Yeah, see what you saw, hear what you heard. Really feel the feelings of when it's done. That's how you program your subconscious map. Second thing I want you to do is I want you to future pace like we were talking about, especially with emotions for. [00:21:00] 30 seconds a day. Okay? Close your eyes. Breathe into the state of already having it.
[00:21:06] If you want, tracks that support you with that, come into the subconscious membership. There is so many that really future pace you into that with the emotion and the safety behind it. But let your body feel that familiar. Let it be familiar rather than really far away or fantasy or never gonna happen for me.
[00:21:27] Then I want you to anchor the state. Now you could, when you're doing this, touch your wrist or breathe or use the same phrase each time. Maybe you have a piece of music that you do it to each time. This then becomes your shortcut to access that on demand anchoring. It's an NLP practitioner technique that I teach.
[00:21:50] It is so, so powerful, and then pair it with a micro action. So every single day, and this is what I did in a challenge that I run in [00:22:00] August every single day, do one thing that proves that version of you exists Now. The brain learns so much safety through evidence. Give it the evidence and then at night find one sign of your progress.
[00:22:20] Yeah. This prime filter, that's how you train your Raz to keep filtering for the winds, not the worries all the time. Okay. Be in that subconscious leadership and that for me is measurable. It's, you can repeat it and. You have control over it. Okay. So manifestation has exploded, especially for young women, uh, you know, across a lot of entrepreneurs.
[00:22:51] Absolutely. Because it offers something traditional goal setting, never did. And that is the permission to. [00:23:00] Desire what they want without the guilt. It kind of romanticizes ambition. Yeah. It makes dreaming socially acceptable again. And that for me is a beautiful thing. Right? The problem is when it's replaces, when it kind of replaces responsibility with the ritual.
[00:23:20] Okay? And when I see women start believing the outcome, depending on the moon. Rather than actually their own mind. And it, and it, you know, I see it very often create this kind of like emotional vulnerability because it promises certainty in uncertainty. That's why it spreads really. Right. It soothes and it soothes amazing.
[00:23:44] Yes. S but actually we wanna look underneath it so. I'm not dismissing the people who love it. I absolutely know what it gives people who do it. And you know, again, I have, I have and do these [00:24:00] techniques. It gives you hope and control and community and comfort. But then what we want, we want to do as well is give it understanding self-leadership, the real subconscious tools that makes it last longer.
[00:24:16] Than a TikTok trend. Okay? So if you take one thing from today, let it be this. You don't have to be whispering into your water. You just need to map, okay? You need to map your subconscious. You want to build a clear representation of what you want. You want to anchor the emotion that aligns with it, and then you want to repeat and repeat and repeat again until your brain treats it as safe and achievable.
[00:24:51] And if there's any resistance there, do the subconscious work underneath it. Okay? Manifestation sometimes says. [00:25:00] Or you know, we'll wait for the alignment. Subconscious strategy says we create it. Okay? We want to use this active wiring instead of passing your hope onto the water, right? When you understand the mechanisms, you kind of stop trying to manipulate the energy, and you actually can master where your focus goes and what that's going to look like.
[00:25:27] So. Next time you see someone on TikTok telling you to write it 55 times and it will appear smile because you know actually, ah, that's what's really happening in the brain, right? You are watching the brain work and how the brain work. Let it be magic a hundred percent, but now you know the kind of mechanisms underneath it.
[00:25:56] I hope you've enjoyed today's podcast episode, and I will see you [00:26:00] on the next one.
More about The Subconscious Expert:
Welcome to The Subconscious Expert, the podcast where your subconscious becomes your one-way ticket to the mind-blowing results you desire in your life and business! I’m your host, Rebecca Haydon, The Subconscious Expert who went from being stuck in victim mode to a multi 6 figure business owner. Each week, I will be giving you the subconscious tools and techniques so you can become the woman who is living out her vision with a life and business that she is truly OBSESSED with. I have said it before, and I will say it 100 times again: "Your business can't outgrow your mindset, and if you want to grow your business, it always starts with growing your subconscious." So let's dive into the subconscious breakthrough you so deeply deserve!