A Five Minute Practice to Manifest Your Dreams: Start Small, Dream Big

Living your best life may be simpler than you think

I noticed an odd thing about my attempts to manifest what I want for my future. It would start out fine. I would begin to imagine my life unfolding in the ways I dream, and then the strangest thing would happen — reality would intrude, an unwelcome visitor in my fantasies.

I don’t mean that my high-rolling lottery fantasy was interrupted with the statistics related to how unlikely it would be to win and live this fantasy. I’m talking about my dream house fantasy suddenly getting smaller and “more reasonable” as if the perfectly ordinary but beautiful house I was imagining was somehow outside the realm of possibility for me. It was as if I believed that I’m not allowed to want, or expect, too much.

Of course, this goes back to childhood, growing up poor, and being told that certain lifestyles were out of reach for me. If name-brand jeans were out of reach, how could I possibly ever travel the world or imagine doing so?

I was a child who dreamed big, beautiful dreams, but I grew into an adult who was constantly making adjustments to what I thought I could achieve. It didn’t help that every creative dream I had was checked by a peer or adult reminding me that I better get a good backup plan. If I didn’t want to fail, I had to lower my expectations.

None of this is helpful when we are trying to manifest the lives we want to live. In fact, once I realized that my attempts at manifestation were being checked by my own perceived limitations, I came up with a plan. For five minutes every day, I would dream without limits. I would imagine the life of my dreams without imposing any outside restrictions.

At the beginning, five minutes was tough. The pull of my earlier belief systems was strong. I wanted to keep making adjustments and checking my fantasies against what I thought of as my reality. With practice, I grew that five minute practice into longer stretches. It became a little easier to dream without limits and to finally see the full extent of my own longing.

Why couldn’t I have everything I wanted? Everything I want is actually very reasonable. I’m a single parent, but I want to buy a home for my family. This is challenging but not impossible. I want to write books for the rest of my life, and I’m doing that already. I’m making a living off what I love best. I even added the dog of our dreams to our little family. Everything I want is achievable — even if it’s challenging.

Starting small with a five minute no-limits fantasy can help us manifest what we want from life. Being able to consistently dream about what we actually want without stopping to check ourselves for the audacity of it can yield fascinating information about our values, priorities, and goals. If we want to achieve it, we need to see it, and we can’t do that if we are constantly adjusting even the mildest fantasy back to our current reality.

As a worrier and worst-case-scenario person, it’s easy for me to imagine all the ways something could go wrong. In great, gory detail. With all the emotions that go with it. It’s so much harder to imagine everything that could go right.

That’s why this takes practice.

We need to start small but dream big. Allowing our fantasies to run unchecked can help us determine what we want — and inspire us to go after it. What does a normal day look like in our ideal life? Focusing on how that would look and truly visualizing it can help make it feel achievable.

Figuring out how to write full-time while raising two children wasn’t an easy thing to do. In fact, I spent a year doing university research, market research, plasma donation, and one side hustle after another to grow my work into a full-time career. It wasn’t exactly the life I imagined — but it made it possible to create that life. While I didn’t love everything I had to do to get there, I knew that it was worthwhile to make sacrifices in the short-term to have what I wanted in long run.

That’s the benefit of being able to truly visualize what we want. If we see it, we believe it. Then, we want to work for it. Because if we don’t do the work, all we’ve got is a pretty daydream — nothing more than a way to pass the time. When we turn it into a visualization, we begin to manifest the lives we want. We find ways to make it work or to get as close to that dream as possible.

Start with five minutes. See the life you want. Start small, dream big, and know that you are worthy of your dream job, your dream relationship, and your dream life. In fact, it’s the only one you’re likely to get. Go out there and make it count.

“It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth — and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up — that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.” ~Elizabeth Kubler-Ross