Restless STATE

What do you do with your ambition, manifesting and goal-setting when life as you know it hits pause? Brooke Le Poer Trench finds out how to live with disquiet

- Brooke Le Poer Trench

This time last year I was writing a feature on manifesting – which is to say, the self-help philosophy of using meditation, goal-setting and self-aware-ness to get exactly what you want. At the heart of this idea is the practice of saying no to things that are almost good enough, to make room for the dream (insert job, relationship, home) you’ve been mentally mood-boarding. All of which can make you feel significantly more in control of your life.

At the time, my article made sense to me. In fact, I dwelt on these principals while ruminating on an international move last year. We could have stayed in our life, which we really, really liked. But that nagging feeling that we could feel more grounded and connected to our life if we were “home” stopped my husband and me from sticking with what we knew. And so we uprooted our family and returned to the country we’d farewelled 17 years earlier. Fast-forward 10 months and this kind of rose-tinted thinking is a little harder to recruit. With news of a slowing economy and entire business sectors in hibernation, I’ve started to wonder: is settling the new manifesting? Has ambition become a kind of self-harming? Can we #liveourbestlife when we can’t move forward?