Manifestation Series: Overcoming Doubt + Working With The Law Of Attraction

“Our dreams come into fruition when we align our thoughts, our feelings, our beliefs with them.” – Alyse Brautigam

Doubt is an insidious thing. It can weave its way into so many aspects of our lives and remain largely undetected. How many times do we neglect to align our actions with our higher selves out of a fear of failure? Or out of fear of the unknown – that whatever the unknown is, we’re incapable of adapting to it?

Doubt has creeped back into my life by virtue of myself being thrust back into hospitality full time. Whilst the post I am in is temporary, the effects have been considerable. It wasn’t until a couple of days ago that I had this realisation. For the past year, I had been studying pharmacy at a community college. As the months went by, despite challenges I faced along the way relating to time management and finances, I grew in confidence exponentially. I felt what it was like to achieve again, to learn, to grow. This also led to an increase in my tenacity and creativity with music and writing because I had been nurturing my brain and my soul. Because I believed in myself.

I walked into college everyday feeling good about myself – feeling smart, capable, accomplished and for the most part well-liked. It’s only with hindsight that I’m seeing how paramount this was as a condition for the growth of my self-esteem.

Now I’m back to waitressing for the summer and when it comes to my post in hospitality, I feel a bit insecure there. It’s not where I want to be, so in that sense I don’t excel. I get the impression that my colleagues and bosses believe this about me also, which makes me feel judged and looked down upon. Although I take pride in my work where I can, for example – trying to have positive interactions with customers, it feels as though every shift I work, I make a mistake or do something wrong. If that isn’t a recipe for low self-esteem, I don’t know what is.

I also feel like there is this perpetual conflict of interests and priorities between myself and my colleagues. I am someone who prioritises self care to the best of my ability. In hospitality, you gain respect from others by putting the work first and yourself last – sometimes at the expense of your health. Hospitality is crawling with martyrdom. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”, “I’m not hungry”, “I don’t need a break” are phrases you hear all the time. One of the chefs at the moment has a running joke with me where he refers to my days off as “holidays”, as chefs are notoriously overworked.

In a nutshell, it’s not the right environment to better yourself or feel good about yourself – at least not for someone like me that’s mellow and creative and, I guess, caring. So how has this affected the rest of my life? And how do I plan to take action and feel better about myself again?

Firstly, it’s drained my energy, creativity and productivity. This summer, I was so looking forward to making as much music as possible and now that has translated to me feeling under pressure. I’ve also been adhering to my manifestation practice less and less. A few weeks ago, I set the intention to read out my list of goals and dreams to myself in the mirror every morning and I felt so great when I did. Lately, I’ve let this slip and I think it’s because I’ve stopped believing. I had a conversation with a friend yesterday and when they asked how I was going to go about securing gigs for after the summer, I felt full of doubt.

In order to regain a sense of high self-esteem and belief in my abilities, I want to start working with the law of attraction. I watched a YouTube video about this yesterday and the law of attraction basically comes from the premise that we create our reality through our thoughts, words and emotions. So this would mean that having a negative perspective on things predicts negative outcomes and having a positive outlook on things predicts positive outcomes. This could be because in a positive mindset, more things are possible whereas negativity can be incredibly limiting and disempowering.

Although I’ve already been acquainted with the idea of creating a vision and expressing gratitude, using the law of attraction seems to be more proactive. It involves the visualisation and immediacy of feeling like we already have what we want which is integral to the manifestation practice I was doing before; but it also involves replacing negative thoughts and words with positive ones. So instead of saying to yourself “I feel tired and miserable”, you could say “I want to feel vibrant and awake and here is how I can achieve that…”. The most important thing is to focus on what you want rather than what you don’t want. I guess it’s essentially a way of rewiring the brain to see opportunities rather than obstacles.

As a disclaimer, I’ve never been into the “fake positivity” thing and I know the importance of expressing your true emotions; so I think working with the law of attraction will require me to find a balance between having positive intentions but also being authentic with myself. Journalling is a great way of expressing emotions in an authentic way because you can really let out your darkest or brightest thoughts without fear of judgement. So I guess my journal will be my sanctuary throughout these practices.

In addition to substituting negative thoughts and words for positive ones, I also intend to complain less; or at least, change the way in which I complain. I saw a great Instagram post about complaining (I’ve unfortunately forgotten where I saw it!) where this person suggested the idea of following every complaint with a “but” to be followed by something positive. I like this idea because sometimes it’s not realistic to completely eradicate negativity from our lives, especially if we’re in a difficult place.

Speaking in a more balanced way is an approach I’ve adopted more and more over the past few years. Especially if I’m talking about others and I say something negative, I always try to counter it with something positive because I know that regardless of my opinion of the person, everyone is doing their best with what they have.

Ultimately, working a job I don’t like very much is an opportunity to cultivate a greater resilience. We grow the most in the face of adversity and gain tools we can use for life, even if at the time things seem tedious or difficult.

I’m excited to commence an overhaul of the way I think and speak and I’m interested in what the results will be!

Do you work with the law of attraction? Do you consider yourself a more positive or negative person? Do you think too much positivity is a bad thing? Leave a note in the comments!

Thanks so much for reading.

– SMUT. ❤ xxxx