The secret of getting what you want – solved!

There’s a story on page 26 in this issue about the art of ‘manifesting’, where several women are convinced that they simply asked the universe for what they wanted in life, and got it.

I realised while reading it that I’ve been doing this all my life. I just didn’t know it had a trendy, mystical-sounding name. I was 15, living in the deeply unfashionable suburbs of Sydney, when I started imagining a future career, working in magazines in London. It sounds mad, I know, and plenty of people lined up to tell me so. But I couldn’t shake the fantasy. I pictured the whole thing, even down to actual outfits and scraps of paper on my future desk. Well, I never did end up wearing taffeta to work, nor finding a scrap of paper on my desk that read, ‘Please call Boy George’, but the rest of the dream stayed pretty intact. It was my earliest use of ‘manifesting’ – setting myself on a path where I was attuned to the opportunities that would make a dream real.

Years later, and I was the mum of a four-year-old about to start school. I still needed our childminder in the afternoons but couldn’t afford to pay her for full days. Plus, my daughter Evie loved her, too. When she then took a training course to be a teaching assistant, we agreed: wouldn’t it be perfect if she got a job at Evie’s school – they could come home each day together, have the same holidays, too. So I encouraged her to be friendly with the teachers at the school gate every afternoon, get the lowdown on comings and goings. ‘It’s only a matter of time before someone gets pregnant!’ I joked, but sure enough, that’s exactly what happened and she was in the right place to slot into a maternity leave vacancy.

It’s not magic, it’s ‘focus’. But it is more fun to give it a fancy term, so I’m a big believer in ‘manifesting’. It’s about stopping to declutter your mind and work out what it is that you really want or need. That’s the first step to understanding what will help you get there and acting accordingly.

That said, for many years I often thought that being the editor of YOU magazine looked like a great job. One day out of the blue about two years ago, I got a call asking if I’d be interested in doing it. Maybe I was unwittingly putting some magical vibe out there? I’d love to know your thoughts and, of course, if you have any stories of your own successful manifesting!

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