Manifesting For Mental Health (Results)

TL;DR - I spent 6 months hiking around Missouri and reciting positive affirmations to myself all day, every day - manifesting, visualizing, and shifting paradigms as some refer to this kind of work, and it didn’t resolve my mental health issues (I spent around 1.5 years in total “manifesting”). Although I didn’t achieve significant success, I realized how important it is to be your own best friend and to practice positive internal self-talk. Life is hard enough as it is and being kind to yourself will certainly serve you on your quest to mental well-being.

Well well well… it’s been over a year since my last post and a lot has changed. Things went downhill significantly, and fortunately, are much better now. I’ll elaborate on the gargantuan health swings in a series of future posts. For you to understand the full picture of what worked for me, I think it’s important to explain everything I had previously tried. We’re going to travel back in time a bit to the beginning of 2021.

I had left my job on medical leave and had been living with my parents for over a year (knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have moved back in with my parents - especially while trying to overcome certain issues like Misophonia).

The first year I was home progress had been sporadic, up then down then back up etc. I had been focusing on tackling my issues mostly from a physical point of view. I was trying different diets/supplements, seeing different doctors, and experiencing widely different results - none of which were very promising long-term.

Given the questionable results after a year at home, my parents and I stopped seeing eye to eye. They were getting fed up that it’d been so long and I hadn’t been able to figure out my issues and we were arguing more and more. It wasn’t a healthy environment for them or myself. I’d also been isolating, spending little time with anyone other than doctors and therapists, and telling myself that I was going to go out and do everything I wanted to do in life when I felt better and had cured all my ailments.

I knew I needed to make a change and didn’t want to pay rent for a single apartment in San Diego because ya know… it was expensive. After a little thinking, I had an epiphany one day. I love driving, I love listening to music, and I had never lived fully alone before. I told my sister about my idea of moving to a cabin in the woods and living alone, and she encouraged me to move forward with this plan. When my sister came to visit, we went on good ol’ Air Bnb and looked up a cabin with a fireplace. Given my budget at the time, only three locations in the US popped up. One of them happened to be in Missouri near Branson and Table Rock Lake.

So, I decided that come January, I was going to head out to Missouri for six weeks to live alone in a cabin in the woods. COVID had started and the world around me had shut down anyways. So, driving to Missouri seemed much more exciting than staying in my parent’s guest room waiting for results from different doctors to come in. Additionally, during this time I had delved deeply into the work of Joe Dispenza, Bob Proctor, as well as a few others, and wanted to be able to heal by changing my thought patterns. I had developed a strong affirmation and meditation routine, which I planned on continuing whilst in Missouri.

When January rolled around, I excitedly packed my car and headed out. Along the way, I stopped and stayed with friends before finally arriving in Missouri. I actually crashed my friends Harley Davidson in Arizona. Turns out, they’re a lot heavier than dirt bikes.

The first week of living alone in a cabin in the Missouri woods felt strange. This was a brand new environment and not having people around me I already knew felt odd. A bit of loneliness set in as I developed new routines. I spent several days questioning why the hell I’d thought it was a good idea to drive cross country to live alone. Thankfully, I was still able to talk and Facetime with friends from different parts of the world.

Slowly but surely I developed an empowering routine consisting of exercising, reading, yoga, and a few other activities. It was difficult to meet people because of COVID, but occasionally people would stop me on walks and we’d talk about life, which was very refreshing. It’s always been comforting to me to talk with older people about the healing/recovery journey because the older the person usually the wiser and more sound advice they have to give.

A lot of people in the Branson area were very religious. Both of my parents are from the South and my dad’s dad was actually a minister, so this felt familiar. There is a reason this part of the country is referred to as the bible belt. Just like anything else in life, I think there are a lot of pros and also some cons to religion. Religion is a complex topic and something I’ll dive deeper into in another post.

One woman I met nearly died from cancer. Her name was Susan and she owned a store in Branson, MO called The Copper Coin. She loved the penny because of something to do with when “In God, We Trust” was minted on the penny (I can’t remember the full story). Susan wrote a book, Against All Odds, and overcame cancer after surrendering her life to God. She and her friend placed their hands on me and prayed for my well-being. This was a really beautiful experience. Knowing there are others out there, strangers even, that deeply care for you and are rooting for you in the darkest of times is comforting. Susan encouraged me to maintain strong faith that my condition(s) would improve.

Every day I would wake up and meditate before embarking on a long hike. Arriving in Missouri in January was a bit strange because it was still winter, and the woods at this time were very eerie (see photo below). At any time it felt like I might turn around to encounter a bear or a herd of zombies (yes the bears were supposed to be hibernating at this time, but you never know).

I was very big into manifesting and believed I could affirm my way to what it was I wanted to achieve mentally by shifting my thought patterns. Every time I hiked, the entire time I would be stating positive affirmations to myself. “I am healthy, I deserve to be healthy, I deserve love, I am loved, I am beautiful, I am confident, etc” If you’re familiar with the book The Secret or the concept of manifesting, you’ll be all too familiar with this process. The goal was to shift any negative mental “paradigms” that were negatively impacting the way I was feeling on a daily basis. While there are people out there that claim this work has healed them from x or allowed them to achieve y, it ultimately didn’t work for me after nearly six months of trial. Of course, everyone is different and what works for you might not work for everyone else, but I can wholeheartedly say as much fun as prancing around the woods of Missouri and reciting these positive affirmations was (even when it was snowing - lol) it didn’t work in helping my Misophonia, Anxiety, etc.

While I didn’t get the results I was hoping for out in Missouri - there were a few valuable takeaways. I think being your own best friend and getting in the habit of speaking to yourself positively is an extremely valuable muscle to develop. To this day, I still try to always talk to myself positively. Whenever I catch myself “shoulding” (you should have accomplished this or that) or critiquing my appearance, I mentally say “stop, stop, stop” and get myself back on the positivity train. You can do an exercise yourself right now - sit or stand wherever you’re standing and repeat “I am strong” to yourself fifteen times, notice how you feel, and then switch to something like “I am weak.” When I do this, I notice a significant difference in how I feel after repeating positive vs. negative phrases internally. Maybe you won’t notice a difference. We’re all different.

Some other fun things that happened while in Missouri. I slid out on ice with my car for the first time in a parking lot and got stuck, along with four other cars. This guy who was missing a few teeth and smelled like he’d been chain-smoking cigarettes since the 80s jumped out of his car and in about 2 minutes had my car unstuck and back on the road. I tried to tip him and he wouldn’t take the cash. I felt so bad for judging this guy and felt like it was God or the Universe teaching me a lesson. A few weeks later I saw the same guy at a busy turn signal waving to a bunch of people in a lot to pull out ahead of him. This guy was living life right, being cheerful and exceptionally kind to others despite whatever circumstances he grew up in.

Tornadoes - something we don’t experience out in California. What is even scarier than the tornado itself is the warning system they have in place. I mean sheesh it’s already dark and stormy outside and all a sudden you hear this alarm blaring that sounds like it was plucked straight out of The Exorcist. Here’s a video clip so you can see for yourself. This phenomenon was wild and happened roughly five times during my stay in Missouri. Exciting, terrifying, and exhilarating these tornadoes were. Fortunately, I never saw one actually touch down.

Turtles - there are turtles in the road everywhere out here. I was constantly pulling over to move the turtles out of the road so they wouldn’t get run over. Of all creatures to cross the road turtles have it the hardest. Part of me wondered if it was some kind of Russian Roulette game the turtles play for thrills analogous to humans skydiving.