(No.3) In defense of high hopes
An alternative to manifestation—permission to fail and a blessing to savor tough wins
Success as an old[er] person is drawn out and precarious.
An A+ test handed back in grade school or the first time down the ski hill as a kid is momentous and concise. But something about buying a house or getting a new job feels like a tumbling tower. The adults I’ve known seem to favor the grin-and-brace (for the next disaster) technique when something big happens. Scare celebrating. Maybe one dinner. Because even the smallest toast might jinx it all.
The reality is that things go wrong a lot. The little worry clouds in our heads will throw a fit and pour if we don’t pay attention to them and admit this. I say we give them what they want... in small doses.
The practice of manifestation, based on the Law of Attraction, means focusing positive thoughts on desired outcomes. This practice has become popular during the pandemic. People needed and wanted a lot during that time. They still do. Success stories for manifestation surged on social media channels, bolstered by parasocial authority and sheer hoping.
There’s a pretty heavy bias in manifesting as pop-Western culture has come to know it. First, no one manifests their trauma. So our experiences aren’t retroactively manifested, or any other logic loop that TikTok might claim. Second, white privilege is embedded in the concept of manifestation. The Law of Attraction only recently entered into collective vocabulary in the 1900s, surging in popularity after the success of white-authored publications like Think and Grow Rich (1937) by Napoleon Hill, The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) by Norman Vincent Peale, and You Can Heal Your Life (1984) by Louise Hay. It’s rooted in the New Thought movement of the 19th century, which is a little bit like the melting pot of diluted spirituality. But in order to have success just by wanting, you need a stable socio-economic safety net and the backings of societal privilege behind you. This begs the question: is it success or is it bias?1
Although there are some spooky-great things about it—like how the 4 steps of manifestation match up exactly with the preset impulses of the 4 phases of menstruation—manifestation alone isn’t enough to make something happen, bias or not. Gabriele Oettingen, author of Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation, says in an interview with Vox:
“The more positively people dream about the future, the better they feel at the moment,” she told [the interviewer]. “People relax and their blood pressure goes down. But you need the energy to implement your wishes, and over time, they actually get more depressed, partly because they’re putting in less effort and have less success.”
Oettingen opts for something called mental contrasting, which calls for an intense focus on the obstacles you might face on the way to success, rather than the success itself. This strange and somewhat pessimistic strategy has better results and doesn’t rely on whispering wishes and white privilege to lay a foundation for its guidelines to goal completion.1
Focusing on obstacles allows the mind to imagine failure. It gives you permission to fail because you’ve already done it once before in your imagination. I argue (and agree with Oettingen) that anticipating failure(s) along the way to your goals won’t discourage you. It’ll do the opposite.
If you never exercise the worst-case scenario to your lofty goals, the scary will stay looming. And even your most signed-sealed-delivered wins could be infringed by superstitious dread. Exercise the mental contrasting procedure of Wish-Outcome-Obstacle-Plan, without getting caught in a dwelling cycle circa the obstacle phase, and you're on your way to satisfying goal completions.
Quell the eerie hunger of failure and your celebrations will feel lighter, freer.
All the mental contrasting and superstition-free forecasting in the world is ineffective, though, if you haven’t granted yourself permission to feel celebratory first. We're warned all the time about preparing for the worst but are we really prepared for the best?
It might seem like a childlike exercise, but try to recall the simplistic freedom in receiving permission. The euphoric news that you can go to a friend's sleepover. The relief of hearing that the milk spilled all over the floor is no call for tears. Children ask "why" almost as much as they don't, especially with the good things. They accept truths, situations, and permissions in their favor easily and get right down to enjoying themselves.
Looking to a trusted guardian for the say-so on mental relief, aka permission, is a luxury for children. And providing that service for yourself is hard, especially if you didn't have a stable childhood or experience with caring, authentic, and responsible guardians to use as a guide. If we're able to cultivate that permission button and act as a subject-ending voice on anxious topics, we can be our own feet-only adults in the Tom and Jerry of our lives. A towering authority figure with an almost cerebral scope.
Our in-body minds are scared and scarred. They are constantly working with risk management strategies and minimizing damage down here on the ground. But there is mental relief in giving yourself permission to want something. There is relief in allowing yourself to be devastated because your higher self gave you the go-ahead.
Accept comfort from your cerebral self when you fail just like you'd accept consolation from a parent, close friend, or partner. Give yourself the old "it's nobody's fault and you tried your best" routine. The flip side is that there are also congratulations to accept when you succeed. A deep and hearty congratulations, one you might dole out for a child. One you may dole out for yourself.
There's another thing—celebration is an action item. And it requires action item protocols. I know that sounds corporate, but what I mean is that celebrations should be:
Manageable and frequent
Dissimilar to coping behaviors
To the first point, making a point to sit back and savor the “goods,” small and tall, builds a Lego masterpiece of achievement. A bunch of little, important pieces. A big sigh after reading a flattering email. A walk around the block dedicated to the restored health of a family member. Little celebrations are more manageable than big celebratory dinners and/or drinks. They're not laced with as many financial or social expectations.
Treating these goods as successes in their own right helps with what I call "big excitement dampening." It's exactly what it sounds—something big like buying a house is so drawn out that it reflects back as torture instead of a worthy pursuit. Your excitement (and success if you have one) is dampened. How can you celebrate after you've been anxiously waiting for your champagne-popping-movie-moment for months?!
These little "goods" make up your Lego masterpiece. They are the training wheels to adult celebrations. They contribute to a solid feeling of well-being and accomplishment that's integral to our lives as adults.
In addition to being manageable and frequent, your celebrations should look different than your coping behaviors. They should be oppositional. Decide whether watching your comfort show or online shopping is something you want to do when you need to cope or when you want to rejoice. Good or bad, the action dedicated to that mood will wholey console, congratulate, or something completely bespoke because you have created it with a set mood in mind.
Forming behavior patterns in this way creates routes in your brain for expected moods. You lay paths to mindfulness. Being present in your behaviors, and your moods by helpful proxy, helps your body know what to expect from your mind. You may be able to access discernment in the anxious roar of yearly reviews and dental cleanings and childcare (not that I would know anything about that). But most of all, these behaviors will sink in. You'll celebrate harder, cope harder. And turn a new page faster. You're in the action seat.
I wrote this essay because I recently came out of a long and painful job search. No amount of excitement could make up for how ragged I was when an offer finally came through. It was a good offer too! I just didn't have the gusto to be happy for myself. I didn't nurture any excitement because I wasn't in a place to be devastated by my own desires. My mentors told me to keep my professional developments "close to the vest," or "plant many seeds," or so many other figures of speech that all meant the same thing—things wouldn't work out. But if excitement isn't nurtured, dread will win out. And it did.
In the tricky and sticky wrapping-up of my last position, I allowed various partners and colleagues to congratulate me. It was almost like the permission I was speaking of earlier, but extending outwards. They were hesitant to be happy for me. Either for fear of the infamous small business spread-around of the lost colleagues' various duties or for the societal barricades to show explicit pity, envy, or any other socially unsavory emotion. I have felt what I anticipate they were feeling. But there's room for congratulations in a dense environment. (That last sentence is something I literally said on a zoom call.)
I want to build my hopes a fortress. I will reinforce the battlements with permission. I will charge a cause of devastation, and in the ashes we may forgive.
Manifestation alone is appealing for the promise that we could make something real just by wanting. But in reality, we have to prepare for the bad as much as we celebrate the good.
Mental contrasting can help propel you (and me) (and us) to take action steps and imagine a situation in which failure occurs; a micro-grief that will hopefully prime your mind for loss, should it become reality. This may also help to locate fears so they can no longer lurk and loom over celebrations. The sticky suspicions of Murphy's Law be gone I say.
[Fin]
As a white author with secure financial and social ties, my struggles are inherently lesser than people of color and other minorities. My successes are more easily acquired and my failures are more readily forgiven. This is not for brownie points, this is factual.