I had watched The Secret, read all the books, and was ready to begin my manifesting journey. I was so excited to begin and create the life I so desperately craved. All I could think was this would be the vehicle to support me in creating globs of cold, hard cash, business success, and every little-girl dream I had which remained unfulfilled.
I immediately begin writing affirmations, watching YouTube videos, acting as if, and doing all the things I had read about. I set alarms to remind myself and was diligent in my manifestation practices. For I thought this was what would bring me my results—you know all the things I really, really wanted to manifest.
I began to notice some areas of my life were on fire, and manifesting was easy peasy. I had some huge wins. I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and used the power of mind and God’s grace in ways beyond my own imagination.
Every prayer was heard and answered, and during the entire breast-cancer journey I saw myself as healed and thriving. Even during chemotherapy I sat and planned luxurious vacations to Mexico like a healed woman (and yes, I later actually took those vacations).
However, when I looked at my business journey, there were scattered, haphazard results—nothing consistent and definitely not the business success of my wildest dreams. I had worked with coaches (lots of them) and had invested heavily in myself and my dreams. However, my dreams seemed to continue to elude me month after month and year and year.
I decided to reflect and really put my life under a microscope.
How could I manifest a loving, amazing nanny and not the business success that set my soul on fire? How could I manifest opportunities in some areas of my life, and yet business success slipped through my fingers like sand? How could I co-create the most beautiful breast-cancer healing journey, and still miss the mark with creating the business of my dreams?
The answer: my self-concept.
In some areas of my life, the way I viewed myself was healthy and whole, while in other areas my self-concept was wrangled and mangled with self-hatred, a lack of self-compassion, and overall not feeling good about myself.
According to Dr. Saul McLeod of Simply Psychology, self-concept refers to “how someone thinks about, evaluates or perceives themselves. To be aware of oneself is to have a concept of oneself.”
Things began to make more sense.
I could manifest a loving nanny, because I had no previous failures or negative experiences in this area. I could manifest luxurious vacations with ease; I had traveled extensively before, and enjoyed travel. I could manifest a breast-cancer healing journey, because I believed God was with me, and I fully trusted the process, believing wholeheartedly in my healing.
Wow, the lightbulb had come on and was now shining bright.
It made perfect sense to me! I had lost a business that was once thriving and really successful. I had endured financial trauma and self-inflicted shame; therefore, my self-concept around my entrepreneurial ventures was bruised and battered, to say the very least.
I carried an unhealthy self-concept in this area of my life, and I was trying to use my business success as a soothing mechanism.
Yep, I had attached my identity to my business success and felt business success would complete me, validate me, and put all the pieces of me together that were missing.
The good news is I immediately embraced that I was already complete, whole, worthy, and more than enough. The business success was the cherry on top, but I was the cake, the cake plate, the icing, the restaurant it was being served in.
The business success was a measly cherry. Yet I had valued my business success more than my worthiness.
I used the following actions to heal my self-concept, and you can too.
1. Recognize and acknowledge that you have valued success in some area of life as more important than you.
A dream car, dream lover, dream career, or financial freedom will not complete you. You are worthy and amazing in this very moment.
2. Practice engaged, authentic gratitude.
I used to mindlessly write gratitude lists for days. Now I only list 3–5 things daily in my gratitude journal. This helped me deeply and authentically connect to what I have to be grateful for.
3. Write down your beliefs.
If you are struggling to manifest in certain areas of your life, get super clear on your beliefs in that area. I adopted the notion that a belief is simply a thought. So I began jotting down thoughts I had about manifesting my business success. And whoa, many of those thoughts were directly linked to the business failure and challenges I had experienced.
4. Love and care for yourself on deeper levels.
Self-concept is how we view ourselves; self-care is how we nurture ourselves. Often we neglect ourselves, and we feel depleted, tapped out, and we lack the emotional stamina required to weather the storms of life. I upleveled my self-care and began thinking of it as a holistic, loving practice and not simply a glass of my favorite wine or a bubble bath.
My self-care practices began to include: going to bed earlier, playing with my dog more, asking for what I really wanted (yep, I stopped settling), taking a social media break, celebrating all the things going right in my world, and other actions which set my soul on fire.
5. I embraced an attitude of divine nonchalance.
I stopped taking score in my business. I stopped measuring each and every action and the outcome it achieved. I adopted a divine nonchalance mindset. I began to interact with my business like the kid who knows what is in every present under the tree on Christmas morning.
I embraced a calm knowingness that the business I dreamed of was mine NOW. This took the burden off and allowed me to trust the process, trust God, and magic began to unfold in my life in ways which were beyond my comprehension.
Remember, the Law of Attraction works always—always. However, we only attract what is a vibrational match energetically to us. When you heal a wounded self-concept, manifesting your big dreams happens with so much ease and grace.
