✨ 🦄 I Practice Magic & It Works! ✨ 🦄

How my journal manifested my desire (Letter 206)

Last week, I wrote about my daily journaling practice over the past five years in 💌 A Love Letter to My Journals. I’ll continue this theme this week and explore a reader’s question further. If you’d like to listen along feel free to play the play button above of my voiceover :)

Now, let’s dive into letter 206 from a learn-it-all. Enjoy!

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🖊️Writing

I'm a magician.  I can make dreams a reality.  Hyperbole?  Maybe.  But the story I am about to tell you is 100% true and honest and happened to me and maybe, just maybe it could happen to you (if you believe in magic).

People might think it was reckless to take a four-month self-paid sabbatical in Hawaii, a place with one of the highest costs of living in the U.S. I chose to stop delaying gratification by investing in the markets and to start investing in myself. It didn’t help that finding a job also took much longer than I anticipated. But I did it, and it worked out. And I’m still living in Hawaii today.

I was just about to run out of the savings I had budgeted to spend on my sabbatical from September to December 2021. 

Instead of panicking and telling myself I didn’t deserve fun social plans, I still went surfing in the west side swell, sailing, or swinging off of Tarzan ropes. I decided to balance having fun and buckling down on what I could control. I started going to a coworking space in an environment where I could have structure and less chaos, especially with the jackhammer going off under my apartment, which was unbearable from  9 to 5. 

Since living in Hawaii, I have become more open to unconventional experiences. A handful of examples include buying a moped before I knew how to drive it, buying a surfboard from a person I had just met, getting someone’s number at the surf break by recording them reciting it on my GoPro, going on a muddy hiking date in the wrong shoes, and making friends through Bumble BFF that I’d go to church with or get scuba certified with before ever meeting.

After accepting many unconventional invitations, I accepted the one that changed my life in March 2022.

I was invited to a women’s circle for a full moon manifestation ceremony. I had no idea what I was in for. My discomfort was through the roof as a woman spoke about steaming her yoni and how she dreamed of buying land to build yurts without plumbing and hosting parties. Everybody knew what yoni steaming was but me. I was too afraid to ask. I sat in silence and waited to get on with it. I was skeptical to drink whatever Kool-Aid they were chugging. But deep down, I welcomed this new approach. I was there to make changes in my life and wanted to see if this could help me find the clarity I sought. 

Most of the gathering was a journaling exercise in a new format I hadn’t tried before. We each wrote down our deepest desires and would later recite them out loud to the group. We would then drink the water from a mason jar, basking in full moonlight the prior 24 hours.

I was scared and confused, like a praying mantis out of its element sticking on for dear life on a car’s windshield, but I leaned into the uncertainty anyway.

The journaling template was to write in the present tense with the prompt “I am grateful (or thankful) that [insert desire]. I feel [X] because of this desire.”

I wrote that I needed to find a job in the thirty days making X amount of dollars, or else I’d have to reevaluate my life choices and move off the island. I also wrote “I am thankful to afford the Honeycrisp apples from Costco. They make me feel nourished without feeling indulgent. I am thankful I can sleep through the night without stress or worry consuming me. I feel energetic and ready to live each day fully.”

After writing down my needs and desires, I felt less anxious about life and more grounded in my reality of what to pay attention to. It gave me clarity on which problems I needed to solve.

Then, the world worked in my favor. I never knew meeting up with a stranger who DMed me on Twitter to meditate on a mindful morning in a forest deep in a valley would lead to him proposing that I work for him on an exciting journal project.

When he asked me, “What do you want?” I already knew.

I said what I wanted that I wrote a month prior in my journal, and eventually, I got it as a newly invented community role to join his company. 

Just like that, thirty days after that journaling exercise, I had an executed contract job making the money I sought to fund my life. This feels woo-woo that it actually happened. I am so grateful for my journal for helping me find clarity in my life.

I don’t sell my past self short though; my courage and leadership also supported me. I wrote publicly in my 2021 annual review about seeking full-time employment, which this new employer read about. He was also impressed that I was

1. Leading as a mentor for the third time in a popular online writing program called Write of Passage.

2. By my communication skills succinctly showcasing my portfolio of experiences in creating a video resume that articulated my professional path

I need to ask for what I need, and my journal helps me figure out what I need in a safe place. 

There’s power in writing something on a page and devoting attention to it.

My invitation to you is to try this experiment:

Write down “What I want in life is…”

What’s the next reality of your life you want to manifest?

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❓Question to think about

What’s the next reality of your life you want to manifest?

🎧 Listening

A Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton

This song was my friend Marissa’s favorite karaoke song, and I remember singing it in a village in Fiji with her eight years ago. It’s miraculous how a song can be recalled from just a few musical beats. What an iconic piano intro. Added in with the sentimental lyrics of wistful yearnings. One of my favorite one-hit wonders fosho apart from the infamous Dexys Midnight Runners’ “Come On Eileen.”

Makin' my way downtown
Walkin' fast, faces pass
And I'm homebound
Starin' blankly ahead
Just makin' my way
Makin' a way through the crowd

And I need you
And I miss you
And now I wonder

If I could fall into the sky
Do you think time would pass me by?
'Cause you know I'd walk a thousand miles
If I could just see you
Tonight

🔍Word to define

Manifest: (verb [with object]) display or show (a quality or feeling) by one's acts or appearance; demonstrate:

Ex: Ray manifested signs of severe depression.

• (often be manifested in) be evidence of; prove: bad industrial relations are often manifested in disputes and strikes.

• [no object] (of an ailment) become apparent through the appearance of symptoms: a disorder that usually manifests in middle age.

Etymology

late 14c., "to spread" (one's fame), "to show plainly," from manifest (adj.) or else from Latin manifestare "to discover, disclose, betray." Meaning "to display by actions" is from 1560s; reflexive sense, of diseases, etc., "to reveal as in operation" is from 1808 (Etymonline)

🌟Quotes to inspire

“Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German polymath and writer

"There is real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment." -Norman Vincent Peale, American clergyman & author of *The Power of Positive Thinking

📸Photo of the Week

Twas such a time to be alive last night. My friend let me helm his boat as this navigation computer crossed the 1000th mile of sailing across his three years of owning the vessel. The crew ended up serenading the beautiful 35-foot boat by singing an alternative version of “A Thousand Miles” song: 

“If we could sail a thousand miles, do you think time would pass us be?”

🙏Shoutouts

• This piece wasn’t written alone. Thank you to

  CansaFis Foote
  ,
  Chris James
  , and Melanie Keath

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I appreciate you reading this!

If ideas resonated, I’d love you to press the heart button, leave a comment, reply to this email, or reach me at vermetjl@gmail.com. If you forgot who I am, I welcome you to my online home.

Keep on learning 😁

Mahalo 🌺

Jen

PS - in case you missed last week, I wrote about my daily journaling practice over the past five years in 💌 A Love Letter to My Journals. This week, I answered a reader’s follow-up question to that piece.

PPS- if you have a question you’d like me to answer, i invite you to send it my way :)

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