The Key to Manifesting Your Desires: Vibration

This post may contain affiliate links. Please see my full disclosure here.

If you’ve ever wondered why your desires aren’t manifesting, you’re probably missing the most important ingredient. 

You can visualize until the cows come home or script until the fat lady sings, but if you’re not vibrating at the frequency of what you want to manifest, it’s not going to work. Simple as that.

But vibrate? How? WHAT?! What even is that? And how do you know? 

Good vibrations.

Don’t worry about the scientific or literal meaning of this word. Think of it as its much more casual offspring, “vibe.” It’s the vibe, or energy, you’re giving off in relation to a subject. 

And where does that come from? Your vibration is a conglomeration of your thoughts, beliefs and attitudes. We have vibrations around us in general, and we have them specifically about certain topics. 

We read people’s vibrations, or vibes, all the time. It can be an accumulation of practical observations of someone’s behaviors , à la Sherlock Holmes. Or it could be something more metaphysical, like reading someone’s aura or energy. Either way, it’s the process of reading into how someone truly feels about the subject at hand. 

Vibrations don’t lie. Words do. Or, they can. So can thoughts (and they do—often). Any LOA tool or “secret” is designed to shift your vibration in the direction of what you want. The tool itself doesn’t do the manifesting; your vibration does. 

So if you’ve been thinking positive and working those LOA tools and nothing has happened, there’s something held up between the tool and your vibration. The tool alone isn’t working. 

What gives?

Subconscious subterfuge.

You never understand as much about yourself as you may think. There’s this humdinger of a thing called the subconscious mind, and it’s feeding you messages all day long. Not only that, but you’re not aware of most of those messages, and many of them are fear-based. 

So while you think that you’re being very clear about your desire of “I want money” (or whatever it is), one of two things is happening:

1. You’re actually focused on the lack of money by actually saying “I’m scared of having NO MONEY,” or
2. You’re saying “I want money” but you’re also saying, “Money is hard to come by,” “I don’t deserve money,” “Money is bad,” or something similar that contradicts your desire for money. What results is either a mixed bag or an overall negative vibration regarding money. 

In both scenarios, you’re not getting that money.

LOA in a nutshell.

I have an LOA 101 post here, but to save you a click it goes like this:

1. Ask the universe for what you desire.
2. The universe delivers it to you.
3. You allow it.

Steps one and two happen instantly and without your conscious control. Step three is where things go hinky.  

I know. I know—it sounds crazy, right? Why would you not allow it? Well, because to do that, you have to match the vibration of what you want. And matching the vibration can be pretty hard because the thing you desire hasn’t manifested into physical reality yet. 

So it’s not hard exactly. But it is tricky. You have to learn to tune your frequency to the right vibration.

But how do you know what that vibration is? Your feelings.

Your feelings are your map.

In LOA-land, feelings aren’t just byproducts of your brain chemicals, or your relationship with your mother, or what side of the bed you woke up on. Feelings tell you how close you are to your desire—or more accurately, how close your thoughts and feelings are to your inner being’s thoughts and feelings. They aren’t a result; they’re an indicator. 

Your desire is usually born from a negative situation. Let’s say you don’t have any money, and now your internet gets shut off, and you can’t afford to buy good groceries, holiday gifts, etc. The desire for more money comes automatically out of that situation (step one), and your inner being aligns with that more money immediately and gets it ready for you (step two), though in a vibrational sense.

Step three is your job. Now you need to align with more money. But if you feel badly about your money situation, then you’re not aligning with it and it’s going to have a hard time coming to you.

Remember, emotion isn’t just a response to a situation, it’s an indicator. Bad feelings don’t mean things are crappy. Bad feelings mean that you aren’t following your inner being towards what you want.

I know, I know. It’s backwards AF and it’s hard to get used to because you have to get happy about things that aren’t currently happening. Usually it works the other way around, right?

But the map isn’t the territory. Exactly. 

Emotions indicate your vibration, but it’s not the same thing as your vibration. It’s like the difference between temperature and the thermometer: One changes, the other interprets the change. 

If your car overheats, you don’t fix the thermometer (well, unless that’s the issue, but you know what I mean). If you do, the car still overheats. You go to the cause. You fix the radiator. 

(Or something. It’s been so long since I owned a car.)

I say this because in attempting to change your vibration, the easiest access is through your emotions, but you have to make sure you’re diving deeper. Forcing, ignoring or strong-arming your vibration into changing will not work. You have to deal with the source, namely, your underlying beliefs and thoughts. You can certainly reach them through your emotions, but be careful that you aren’t just putting a band-aid on your feelings, or “smiling through the pain.” 

How do you know? Get familiar with your friend resistance. 

Resistance.

Flow versus resistance is another common LOA metaphor. Let’s go back to the LOA process. Steps one and two happen instantly because they don’t involve the human you. The desires flow and are met easily and instantly in the vibrational world. 

Everything that holds you up between steps two and three is some form of resistance. If you have no resistance, then the desire comes quickly. Think about a stream, and your desire is a boat on that stream. If you do nothing and don’t hold it up, resisting the current, the boat will flow downstream. 

So you don’t need to do things as much as stop resisting them. Make sense? 

But of course, this is easier said than done. 

How to change a negative vibration.

So, you have some ideas about what changing your vibration feels like: change your emotions by changing your thoughts and beliefs, get rid of resistance, etc. But still… how does one do that? 

There are loads of tactics on how to raise your vibration, from making vision boards to scripting to petting your cat. Abraham Hicks’ book Ask and It Is Given has 22 processes at the back of the book. Any method you employ will involve coaxing your vibration from negative to positive. There’s no magic bullet here, but some tactics will work better for you than others. You have to find what works best for you, and it’s different for everybody. 

Most likely, this will take some practice. Start with really tuning in to how you feel, and what exactly a negative or positive emotion feels like.

What does a negative vibration feel like?

While I hate the word “negative” because even so-called negative things have value, I’m using it as a blanket term to mean a vibration that is resisting your desire. 

There are lots of ways to feel negatively, but here are some quick examples, in no particular order, and some of them redundant:

• Fear
• Resistance
• Fundamentalism
• Desperation
• Worry
• Trying to control the future
• Trying to control other people
• Being obsessed about others’ standards or assessments of you
• Comparing yourself to others
• Fretting
• Perfectionism
• Despair
• Hopelessness 
• Loser-talk

For me, desperation is the one I’m constantly up against, usually about money. We need money to live, and we have definite deadlines to pay this money, so it’s really hard to be all “whatever, man” about money. But that’s the challenge! And it doesn’t mean you don’t care, or you’re not responsible if you let go of worry, fear, etc. It actually means you’re being resourceful and productive, if nothing else. 

Now we know what a positive vibration is not, what is it? What does it feel like?

What does an allowing, positive, step-three vibration feel like?

You might think a positive vibration is something like joy or excitement. Those feelings are, but there’s more to it.

Have you ever scheduled a trip and gotten really excited about it? But then, a week or a day before, you’re not really excited about it. It’s just happening, and you’ve accepted that, and you’ve moved on to other issues: Have I saved enough money? Will the plane trip be okay? Should I have booked that hotel in Barcelona? 

My point is, you’re excited, sure, but you’ve moved beyond excited. When you want a new job, you just think about getting that job. Then once you get it, you’re excited at first, but then you have a new set of variables to work with, and a new set of desires. You don’t just want the job anymore because you have it. You want to be good at it, you want your co-workers to like you, you want to find the rhythm of the new routine, etc.

Sometimes when people practice Law of Attraction, they think that overly positive, upbeat energy is how to succeed in manifesting their desires. But it’s usually not. This could easily steer you into the “smiling through the pain” area. (Hi, Harold.)

Don’t get me wrong—true happiness does sometimes manifest as this ebullient energy. However, more often than not, that’s an example of forcing your vibration. 

The vibration of truly having what you desire? It’s usually much more peaceful, easy and matter-of-fact. Mundane, even. And it has a quality of detachment.

So: Take it for granted.

I call this “taking it for granted,” because… well, that’s what it is. That phrase is so common because so many things people do take for granted: health, family, friends, a home. It’s a feeling that’s known to be negative, but you can use it to your advantage. 

Think about something you really want. Got it? 

Imagine what it would be like to really have it. Like, really have it, as if it’s your everyday reality.

How did that feel? It might have felt off. You might have had thoughts pop in, like, “Well, I’m not there yet,” or maybe it felt like a far-off reality. That right there—that far-away, “not me,” or “not right now” feeling—is an indicator of resistance. 

When things finally manifest, it feels like the next logical step. It may be a surprise, but it’s not like it landed from outer space. It’s usually a safe distance from your comfort zone.

So, do the emotional work to get your comfort zone closer to where you want to be. There’s no easy answer of how. Play around with the tactics I mention above, or find new ones: meditate, do some affirmations, do fitness affirmations, set a timer and daydream, do a rampage of appreciation, go for a walk, do a workout, or anything else that makes you feel better. If you can’t feel good, aim for better, and keep at it.  

Know what you’re aiming for—a quiet, easy assurance when you think of that thing you want to manifest. There’s no desperation or need, just an “of course.” 

It might be fleeting. You might get a glimpse before it’s overshadowed with doubt, worry or instant cynicism. That’s okay. Play with it. Massage it. Build that feeling up. Hold it for longer each time. 

THAT is the vibration of what you want. THAT will help you in manifesting your desires. Anything else is a tool to get you there.

Happy manifesting!