So I’ve been going through all sorts of upheavals at the moment, trying to improve myself and my life. Manifestation is a concept which intrigues me, and which I’ve been exploring more.

At its core, manifestation holds the following to be true: your thoughts create your feelings and your actions, which in turn decides who you are.

What you think about yourself dictates how you feel about yourself. If you think you are bad, incompetent, mean or ugly, you will feel like you are those things. If you feel like you are those things, then you will act like you are those things. If you act like those things, then you will become those things.

Don’t believe it? Look around at your life. For better or for worse, you are exactly where you think you should be. Don’t like that? Me neither.

It was one of the hardest realisations I ever had. Sitting with myself, unhappy with the way my life looked, I had to accept that I had made all the choices which led me to this place. Yowch. It was uncomfortable and painful, and made me want to scream or run away or curl up into a ball. But it was also one of the most important things I ever did, because once you diagnose a problem, you can fix it.

Listen, I’m not going to say things changed overnight, but they’ve certainly changed a lot since then. I’ve had to make some tough choices about what I’m willing to accept for myself and my life.

One of these choices was about my finances. I hated feeling so insecure about my funds, the stress of not having enough for the all things I needed—let alone wanted. I suppose that is simply part of being in your twenties, but I started working at 14 and I’ve never really felt like that before. So what happened, you might ask? Well, you know that saying, when it rains it pours? Boy did I feel that…

I was working at a job I really didn’t like, with barely any hours during the week. One shift, everything that could go wrong did, and I left feeling absolutely wrecked. I decided to quit, even without a backup, both because I felt my soul withering, my mental health (and physical health) declining and because I knew it was disingenuous to the workplace for me to stay if I wasn’t going to be a quality worker. Then my grandmother died. Then my car air conditioning broke. Then my university degree ended on a seriously anti-climatic note. Then I couldn’t get another job. I didn’t have many friends then either, because I had such a rough time of it mentally, and I let a lot of those relationships fall apart. It was all just…ugh.

I’m not going to play the ‘who has it worst’ game, but that period in my life sucked, and I can acknowledge that now. I also will not be saying that I manifested all these awful things happening, like my grandmother’s death, but not taking care of my car, not paying attention to my university situation, not being a better friend were all the results of my own choices, and I can own those too.

Learning to accept these things without making them mean that I’m a horrible person or that I’m manifesting bad things in my life is another important skill. You need to learn how to separate yourself from these instances at times, so you can think about them more clearly. Diagnosing these issues can be painful and frustrating, but again, you must figure out the problem to fix it!

I had let myself stop planning things properly, and I wasn’t putting systems in place to ensure I didn’t forget. I was letting important tasks slip through the cracks, and was paying the price.

The good thing about our lives is that there is no true defeat but death. Until we’re dead, we have the opportunity to get back up and change our circumstances—again and again and again! It took some time, but I was able to get my car looked at, accept a new job, work on my mental health, and make some progress.

All this change started with a shift in mindset. Was that the only thing required? Obviously not, it required help from others and changes in circumstance and time too, but the mindset shift is the one thing you and I can control here.

You are what you think, and at the time, I didn’t think that I was organised or focused or even capable of doing all the things I needed to make a change in my life. In fact, realising that I was the only one to blame for all my negative choices, helped me understand that I could make as many positive changes too.

Life isn’t perfect now, and I still haven’t got close to all that I want, but I do have a better picture that I’m working towards. Because of that, I can make better choices that will lead me to those goals. This doesn’t always work, and the beauty and frustration of life is that we can often take as many steps backward as we do forward. But taking enough steps forward will create momentum too.

So, who do you think you are? What do you think you are capable of? I challenge you with both these questions, and I hope you would answer yourself honestly. Who you think you are might surprise you, and I’m certain you’ll realise that you are capable of so much more than you first thought. We all are, in the end.