Can You Manifest A Promotion?

From TikTok to the boardroom, we explore what the act of manifestation which has become a social media phenomenon - actually means.

- Karishma Tulsidas

At the beginning of the year, Kavitha Moorthi, artist and founder of Ambi Arts, attended a vision board party and manifestation workshop hosted by Shifaa Sheikh, cofounder of networking platform for women, Tinted Wateva. Her ask? To be featured by local news station Channel News Asia (CNA). Kavitha created a mock-up article with her picture and a headline, and stuck it to her vision board.

“This helped her have a strong visualisation of her desired reality and boosted her confidence,” says Shifaa. “A month later, she was interviewed for her first media feature! Her photo ended up on the first page of Tamil Murasu as she had pictured, and she was very excited. To her, it’s a huge step to being featured on CNA next.”

You might be familiar with the pop culture version of manifestation, as proliferated by influencers on Tiktok or Instagram. Techniques like the Lucky Girl Syndrome or 369 method essentially espouse that if you want something hard enough and perform some ritualistic tasks – such as repeatedly saying “I am lucky” – the universe will conspire to make it happen.

WHAT IS MANIFESTATION?

Manifestation is rooted in the belief that every action and every consequence starts with a thought, an idea, an intention – and it urges us to be intentional about that thought. It’s when desire, belief and action are aligned.

The first step is to truly understand why you want something. For example, if you want to “get rich”, delving into your subconscious would help you understand the real reason why you want to be rich. Your underlying desire could be to achieve financial freedom instead, and this understanding would help you take necessary steps to build a nest that allows you to be your version of “free”.