Can you really “manifest” your own destiny?
This story was produced by our colleagues at the BBC.
When pop star Dua Lipa headlined the U.K.’s Glastonbury festival in the summer, she said she’d manifested the moment — that’s the idea that can think your goals into reality. And manifesting is now part of a global trillion-dollar wellness market.
Toronto-based Alicia Tghlian has gained 60,000 followers on TikTok in less than a year by posting videos about manifesting.
She makes Instagram and TikTok content, which she gets paid for thanks to brand deals and the TikTok creator fund, which pays out based on views.
“So there a few different avenues,” Tghlian said. “Coaching, you can do; if you make TikTok reels, you can make money off of that or Instagram, as well. There’s a lot of brand partnerships.”
Tghlian’s online success is part of a larger trend that emerged during the pandemic, with searches for the manifesting rising more than 600% in March 2020, according to Google data. But the business of manifesting goes beyond social media.
Emma Mumford is the U.K.’s leading manifestation expert, a bestselling author and host of the “Spiritual Queen’s Badass Podcast.” She makes her money through book deals, the wellness retreats she runs and individual coaching sessions. She’s found that manifesting’s appeal has broadened.
“I think it tends to be younger now as well,” Mumford said. “When I first started seven, eight years ago it was more people my own age — kind of in their 30s, 40s, 50s. Whereas now I can see, and I can have people in my groups or even come to a one-to-one session, they could 18, or they could be 60 or 70.”
Type “manifesting” into any search engine and you’ll be inundated with podcasts, articles, books and inspirational quotes. But not everyone sees the industry so positively.
Lucas Dixon from Queensland University, Australia has researched the psychology behind the concept of achieving financial success through aspirational thinking.
“On average, as people score higher in their kind of belief in this, there is a higher probability in our studies that they reported being bankrupt,” he said. “Manifesters were more likely to believe in get-rich-quick schemes. And they were also more likely to be bankrupt.”
Emma Mumford disagrees, saying she’s never known anyone personally go bankrupt from manifesting. “If anybody online, regardless of a manifestation teacher, or, you know, anything — self-development — if someone is telling you to do something, and it doesn’t feel right, use your discernment with that, trust your intuition with that.”
But with the likes of Dua Lipa endorsing the idea of manifesting, it’s expected to become an increasingly important part of the lucrative wellness market — forecast to be worth $8.5 trillion by 2027.
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