World Leading Psychologist: How to Manifest Anything & Create the Life You Want

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Much of what you treat as fact is imagined

  Clinical psychologist Dr. Cassandra Vieten, who directs UC San Diego's Center for Human Imagination and leads its Center for Mindfulness, says many of your beliefs about yourself, other people and 'how the world works' are stories you've imagined and then live as fact. Her example: 'the only way to be successful is a 40-, 50- or 60-hour-a-week job.' Some limits are individually or collectively imagined. Real constraints exist too, and the skill is telling the two apart.

• 02

  We are trained out of imagination, and we lose awe

  Around ages 9–11, kids hear 'time to get real.' The pendulum swings too far toward the serious and rational, and people start filtering out awe, wonder and synchronicities. Vieten notes these are the moments people later remember as the most important of their lives. Her promise is that imagination can 'bring magic back into your life.'

• 03

  Most people feel they're reacting to life, not creating it

  Mel cites a survey of her audience in which 70% said they feel they're just reacting to life. Vieten's three tools are visualization, manifestation and imagination. The third means tapping a part of yourself outside your usual way of being, which holds information and energy you can't access any other way.

• 04

  Mental rehearsal improves real performance

  Vieten says athletes who imagine practicing basketball or soccer perform better than those who don't. Tennis great Billie Jean King would picture the ball coming at every angle before sleep. Adding imagination to rehearsal tells your brain 'I'm still training,' even while you sit drinking tea by the window.

• 05

  Manifestation is about who you'll be; magical thinking is about what you'll get

  Magical thinking wants things you can't control to appear, or wants other people to change. Vieten's best use of manifestation is to picture how you want to show up: honest, supportive, authentic, setting boundaries, with different energy. Then imagine the results that might follow. Those are things you can actually do.

• 06

  Imagining the worst puts your body through it anyway

  Vieten quotes the line often attributed to Mark Twain: 'I've experienced many terrible things, most of which have never happened.' If you brace all day for a layoff or for never finding love, you send your body stress signals as if it had already happened, even though today you still have the job.

• 07

  Everyone has an imagination profile, and all of them are strengths

  Not everyone sees vivid pictures. Some people imagine through sound, feeling, smell or taste (chefs imagine flavors), and some are practical imaginers who know exactly how things will fit. Vieten says we need every type, so visualization works even if you don't 'see' images.

• 08

  Break out of your 'reality tunnel'

  The term comes from 1960s consciousness circles around Timothy Leary: we each live inside a tunnel of what we think is real, possible and impossible. A stay-or-go 'tennis match' about a job or relationship can last for months, years or decades, though there are usually 10–25 real options. Her book, Mel notes, frames the antidote to despair as 'the skill to generate hope.'

• 09

  Diseases of despair run on stories you don't know you're telling

  Vieten cites Columbia's Lisa Miller on 'diseases of despair': addiction, depression and anxiety, where the mind tells untrue stories you believe because you don't realize they're stories. Learning to notice the story is the first step to telling a different one.