The Secret To Manifestation: How To Stop Wanting Something You Want

The plan, if there ever was one, was to send the manuscript to my agent and be done with it. When she responded, saying she would be out of the country for a few weeks and would let me know where she was with it in a month, I told her to take her time. No rush.

I had planned on being done. On applying for jobs. Put it away, I told myself. Out of your mind. Move on to the next thing. Easier said than done. Three weeks went by and though I knew my agent was in Europe, though I knew she had dozens, if not hundreds, of other manuscripts to read, I spent every waking second wondering if she was reading mine.

The submission of the manuscript coincided with my first interview since I began my job search. I had a great call with the recruiter and the hiring manager, and they said they’d let me know in a week about next steps. This was Friday. A week went by. By the following Friday afternoon I was depressed, despondent. "I didn't get it," I told Jay. "You don't know that," he said.

Saturday came and went. Unable to think about the job, the manuscript, distracted by the kids, I forgot about both. Then, Sunday morning, I got up to make Ellie a bottle and checked my phone and there were two new emails. One from the company, one from my agent.

The company rejected me. My agent asked to set up a call. The emails came within two minutes of each other. Huh, I thought. That’s weird. Both emails I’d been anxiously waiting for, came in that sliver of time I wasn’t thinking about them. When I was asleep.

There’s a common theory in sales that if you want a deal to close, go on vacation. Even Jay, all logic and science, adheres to this phenomena. This rule. This weird, unexplainable fact. Deals close when you leave the office. Your soulmate arrives when you swear off men, ditch the heels and go out with your girlfriends in sweatpants. Your kid takes his first steps when you turn your back. You get pregnant when you stop trying.

I have always been a firm believer in the power of the universe, of vibrations, of energy and karma. Do good things, and good things come back. I’ve always said that’s why I don’t fear the future. Because I know, if I work hard, do the right things, trust in myself, the universe will take care of me. Things will happen when they need to happen.

Here's an example of what I mean: When I was laid off and the manuscript was only a few thousand words, I got a letter in the mail. In the envelope was a royalty check from The Book of Moods. The biggest royalty check to date. Enough to pay my half of the mortgage, a month's daycare tuition. It was a sign, I told myself. Just keep trusting the process. Just keep doing what you're doing.

Recently, however, I’ve lost some of that faith. Somewhere between the manuscript, the layoff from my last company and the rejecton of my first interview, I’ve lost, as Joan Didion said, “the conviction that lights would always turn green for me.”

As I accepted the rejection of the job, I obsessed over the email from my agent. She didn’t say anything about the manuscript. If she liked it, didn't like it. She just asked to have a call later that week. I went from feeling positive to thinking she was dropping me as a client. All that nervous energy was back, not on the book or the job, now on the call.

I scratched welts into my head, my nails were chewed until they were raw and bleeding. I couldn’t sleep. I showed the email to the babysitter. I showed it to my mom, the cleaning lady. I sent it to my brother. Everyone had different interpretations. I wore myself down, obsessing over what the email, the call, could or could not mean until Jay finally exploded. STOP READING INTO IT! YOU CAN'T CONTROL IT. IT'S OUT OF YOUR HANDS. JUST LET WHAT HAPPENS, HAPPEN.

I knew that. What I wanted to explain to Jay was: I don't know how to let it go. I don't know how to stop wanting it. I also know that chances are, the more I obsess over it, the more I want it, the less likely I am to get it. I know that universal truth. As soon as you stop wanting something, you get it. What I don't understand, however, is how do you stop wanting something you want?

I decided to put all my nervous energy into answering this question. I would distract myself from the call, and everything I hoped would come from it, by figuring out how to stop wanting it.

According to the Law of Attraction, when we want something, we put that vibration out. Once that want is embedded in us, we embed it in the universe and consciously and unconsciously work to make it happen. This is known as manifestation.

Take getting a new job, for example. We fix our resume. We upgrade to Premium on LinkedIn. We start applying. We start talking to more people. Putting our feelers. Consciously and unconsciously, we start moving the gears and levers towards this new goal. And these efforts, combined with our manifested goal, our new vibration, starts opening up new opportunities.

Maybe an old colleague gets a job somewhere and reaches out. A neighbor show up with a tip. This is the power of manifestation. We’ve all seen it play out.

The next step is where we mess it up. Once we know what we want, once we put our goal, our want, into the univerise, and do all the things within our control to get it, the next step is to walk away. Leave it there and trust the universe to deliver it. Only we don’t do that. We obsess. We fixate. We stare at our emails, our Bumble profiles, our pregnancy sticks. We wonder why it’s not happening. And that obsessive desire, that attachment to the end result, is where we stop vibrating and start closing off all of that positive energy.

Going back to the job example - we want a new job, but desire whatever we think the job is going to bring into our lives. Money, security, validation. Thus, we start obsessing over how much we need the job, because without it we don't have the money, the stability, the validation. It's not about the job anymore, it's about all the things we currently don't have that the job will give us. We are no longer vibrating our want, but our attached desire for whatever that 'want' is going to bring us.

When your thoughts are focused on desire, and the belief that you do not have that desire, the universe manifests exactly that, more desire, and more not having. When we focus on what we don’t have, we create an energy of lack which, paradoxically, moves the very thing we want away from us.

According to the Law of Attraction, when we let go of our intense desire or attachment to our want, our goal, we feel more at ease and open to new opportunities. This creates the sense of detachment that allows for unexpected positive outcomes.

Detachment doesn’t mean you don’t want those things anymore. Detachment means you’ve let go of the desperation and needy feelings that can come with desiring something.

Detachment, then, is the answer. Easy in theory. Practicing it, however, is another story. How do you want something but not attach to it? How do you hope for something without desiring it? I’ve come to understand it’s something you can only do when you’ve hit a certain rock bottom.

I finally spoke to my agent.