Wishful Thinking
Wishful thinking is an attempt to overcome what we trust. Said another way, wishful thinking is hoping for something that we believe is impossible.
It is an attempt to fool ourselves or find a way around our beliefs.
What We Trust
Buying a lottery ticket can be an example. A person may want to win and may imagine what winning would be like, while deep down not believing that it is truly possible for them.
What we trust always triumphs over what we like, desire, or think we want. Desire alone does not necessarily change the beliefs underneath it.
The practical solution is not to increase the amount of wishing. The solution is to shift what we trust.
This is part of the work in Your Body Never Lies training. The Playshop, for example, addresses the underlying trust of being “not enough.” As that trust changes, our choices and possibilities can also change.
Magical Thinking
Magical thinking is not necessarily negative, but it can become a large distraction for someone who is untrained.
Superstitions are common examples. A poker player may believe that a particular shirt, chair, ritual, or gesture creates good luck. Someone else may react to a black cat, a number, or another symbol as though the symbol itself controls what happens next.
The mind may connect two events and assign power to the connection without examining the underlying evidence.
A trained person may sometimes use what appears to be magical thinking to create an effect. It no longer feels magical, however, when the person genuinely trusts that the result is possible and understands something about the mechanics involved.
Manifestation
In many manifestation exercises, a person visualizes a desired result while remaining in Low Potential after the visualization.
The visualization creates a High Potential expression: attention and intention are directed outward toward the desired experience. Low Potential then creates room to receive information, notice opportunity, and allow the next step to appear.
The difficulty comes when the visualization conflicts with what the person fundamentally trusts.
We can attempt to make our desire follow the rules of what we already trust, or we can shift what we trust so that it aligns with the desire.
Creative Manifestation
When trust aligns with an affirmation or visualization, the process is no longer merely magical thinking.
Desire, trust, affirmation, visualization, and choice begin moving in the same direction. At that point, we are not trying to overpower a contrary belief with positive words. We are creating from a place of internal agreement.
This is creative manifestation.
Wishful thinking asks us to hope for what we do not believe can happen. Creative manifestation begins when what we desire and what we trust are no longer working against one another.