What Is 'Manifestation Journaling?' Here's Everything You Need To Know

While we know journaling offers a wide variety of benefits, it can also be a powerful tool for manifesting the life you want. According to the law of attraction, what you think about is what you’ll manifest. Visualizing your hopes and dreams is the first step to making them a reality — and you can think of manifestation journaling as giving your future self a gift. 

While we’ve all heard of “good vibes,” many of us don’t realize what it actually means. Everyone has their own level of vibration. People with a high vibration are optimistic, loving and peaceful, whereas people with a low vibration are sad, negative and fearful.

By writing down your innermost desires and daydreaming about living your best life, you’re vibrating at a higher level and putting that positive energy out into the universe.

What is manifestation journaling?

“Manifestation journaling is clearly writing your intentions down to bring them to fruition. It is the concept of attracting what is already yours,” Hannah Tishman, LCSW at Cobb Psychotherapy. “When you are living purely and with intention, your manifestations are more likely to become a reality.” 

Living with intention creates a positive ripple effect in all areas of your life, and journaling is a powerful manifestation tool that can help you get there. 

“Manifestation journaling is effective as it allows you to be more aligned with the universe, reprograms your subconscious mind, leads to living more intentionally, and helps you to think/feel/act as if your desires are already a reality,” Tishman states. “It releases old beliefs, thoughts, and feelings and allows space for new ones to enter.”

How manifestation journaling works

Whether it’s landing your dream job, working to attract love, or traveling abroad, manifestation journaling is a powerful way to connect with your higher self. But they key is being specific.

“Manifestation journaling is being specific by writing down what you want so that you can better manifest, or create it,” says Leslie Gunterson, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Master-Certified Trainer of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Time Line Therapy ®, and NLP Coaching.

When you’re writing and visualizing positive experiences or feeling the emotions associated with those experiences, it stimulates all of your senses.

“It's effective because it uses all of your senses and emotions, to put you in the state of vibration to receive,” Gunterson explains. “When a person is negative, the vibration that they emit is one that pushes away. Only negative thoughts seem to penetrate, therefore only negative results come from these vibrations.” 

Manifestation journaling literally rewires your brain. By changing the way you think, you change the way you feel and behave, and it goes without saying that will give your mental health a substantial boost. “It puts one in the state of expectancy, contentedness and even bliss, which are all high vibration inviting frequencies,” explains Gunterson. “These thoughts and feelings lead to positive actions and speech which leads to positive results." 

Manifestation techniques to attract abundance

Gunterson recommends the following five techniques:

A gratitude journal 

Write down at least 5 new things per day that you are grateful for. 

A day in the life

Write down what your most ideal day would look like. Make it rich to the senses. 

Achieved goals

Write your goals down in the present tense, and with gratitude is even better. "I am so happy and grateful now that I have... by today, (goal date)."

See, hear, feel, smell, taste, and think your way to a desire

You have to not only have to know what you want, but be able to see the picture of what you want, hear the sounds you will hear when you have what you want, you have to also feel the feelings, smell and taste what you want, and lastly be able to congratulate yourself for it.  In a journal entry, you can do all of that with creative thinking and writing. 

Imagine your life as a movie

Write down what you would see if you went to the movie theatre and saw you on the screen, being your best self, performing your very best, feeling your best, and looking your best. Who are you with? What do you do together?

To make the most of your journaling practice, Tishman suggests trying these tips:

• Remember that it is your journal and no one else's
• Feel free to openly write without fear of judgment 
• Journaling for manifestation is imperfect and that is okay
• Be specific on what you want
• Express gratitude
• You have to practice believing whatever you are writing down

Get Started with these journaling prompts

Here are best journaling prompts for manifesting, recommended by Gunterson:

If you could change anything in your life today, what would it be? What would it look like? What/who would you hear? Feel? Taste? Smell? and be saying to yourself if you could change this? 

What is the story you like to tell the world, how would you like to be remembered? 

 Here is a blank page, if you could create anything you can write about here, what would you want to make? 

Most importantly, remember to have fun—when it comes to what you can imagine, the sky's the limit. 

Have you tried manifestation journaling? Let us know in the comments. And while you're at it, make sure to subscribe to Silk + Sonder today. 

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