Whenever I start whingeing about life, one of my best friends pushes a copy of The Secret by Rhonda Byrne — the book about manifestation that has sold more than 30 million copies since it appeared in 2006 — into my hands, as if it were the very elixir of life. My friend is a wildly successful, once-in-a-generation kind of businesswoman who firmly believes (she’s American) in the book’s transformative powers, which is why I’ve never had the guts to tell her that not only have I never so much as read a single page, but also I find the concept of sending positive messages to the universe, well, utterly ridiculous.
I am clearly the idiot here because the hashtag “manifestation” has had more than 24 billion views on Gen Z’s global megaphone, TikTok. But it’s not only the younger generation — earlier this year Google Trends reported a huge surge in searches for the word and the website Life Coach Directory has seen a 450 per cent spike in people looking for advice on how to manifest. I wouldn’t call that a flash in the pan.
The main principle of manifestation is willing success, riches, love or whatever else your heart desires, through positive mental visualisation and mantras. So when I hear that manifesting’s evangelist du jour, Brit Roxie Nafousi, 30, is about to publish her second book on the subject, Manifest: Dive Deeper (her first, Manifest: 7 Steps to Living Your Best Life hit the Sunday Times bestseller list in January), curiosity gets the better of me. So off I go to Megan’s, a cute café in Made in Chelsea heartland on the Kings Road, to meet the former party girl who once dated the artist Damien Hirst.
● Roxie Nafousi’s beginner’s guide to manifesting
The immaculately groomed, dark-haired beauty huddled at a corner table, wearing a black hoodie with the word “Manifest” printed in white across her chest, stands up to greet me with a worried seriousness. Is it possible the universe has already communicated my thoughts?
Actually, why am I here? Partly Fomo, I love boring my friends about things they don’t know about, but also a little curiosity. I’ve been in therapy on and off for more than 30 years but other than endlessly going around in circles, I’m not sure it has helped much. So I decide to park my cynicism, at least for the duration of lunch. Who knows, I might actually learn something useful.
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The idea of manifestation loosely originated from the principle of the law of attraction (a concept born among New Thought thinkers in 19th-century America), namely if you think of thoughts as energy, then positive ones such as gratitude yield positive outcomes, whereas negative ones yield bad ones. Scientific communities have long questioned its viability, but does it need to be scientific? My fiftysomething generation have mainlined antidepressants since the Eighties, we’ve gone to endless therapy sessions, but I’m not sure any of us are closer to finding the panacea, or indeed the harmony, we seek.
I explain this predicament to Nafousi. “Have you read the first book?” she asks. Yes, I croak, unconvincingly. “Understanding mantras and how they work is integral. You don’t have to believe it. Your subconscious will believe whatever you tell it. You will have a physiological response.” Really? But she isn’t finished. “If you imagine distress, you are more likely to feel it, whereas if you think of something serene, your brain will calm itself. You can’t read the book and not know that.” Ouch. But I see her point. “If you’ve grown up believing ‘I am too loud, I am not loveable, I am not good enough’, once you start reprogramming, your subconscious will start to believe it.”
Nafousi tells me she practises mantras every morning. “I say to myself: I am enough, I have always been enough. The first time I did it I cried.” She even does it walking down the street, apparently. “I wasn’t an addict for no reason, you know. I’m still very much on a journey.”
In 2018 she hit rock bottom after years of partying and booked herself on a yoga retreat. The second she was back in London she went on a 48-hour cocaine bender. She thought she’d never find a way out. Then a friend suggested she listen to a podcast on manifesting and everything clicked into place.
Two weeks later on June 7, 2018, Wade (the father of her three-year-old son, Wolfe) messaged her on a dating app and a year to the day later, on June 7, 2019, she gave birth. The couple are no longer together. I resist asking if she manifested that or not. “We are best friends, we see each other every day,” she adds, the universe eavesdropping on me again. “I vowed on the day Wolfe was born I would never go to that place [addiction] again. I’d reached my breaking point. When I found manifesting, I found help. I used it to change my life.”
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The way she speaks, with almost febrile purpose, feels combative, empowering, as if she’s giving the keynote speech at a rally. I observe her, wondering where that fire comes from. How has she gone from being such a self-declared mess to having a baby, writing two books, setting up workshops (her next ones are at Alexandra Palace on February 4 and 5), podcasts and launching a clothing line (ergo the black hoodie), all in the past three years. Because whatever it is, I want some of that.
● ‘Manifesting’: the buzzword of 2021
“I follow my seven steps, I f***ing live and breathe them,” she answers with unflinching evangelical zeal. “I am so clear in my vision, I do the manifesting meditations, I make vision boards, I am so clear on who I want to become, I embody that person.” And who is that? “To just be the person I am becoming. The most empowered, contented version of myself. Somebody who is here to be of service to others, but also to enjoy life in my family. I believe my purpose is to help people see the light in themselves. I feel I am on earth to do that. Every painful moment I ever experience is so that I can truly empathise with the pain of others.” She pauses. “I just want to help people.”
She suddenly starts crying. I must look alarmed because she immediately reassures me. “I’m not, like, upset. I’m not feeling pain or sadness, it’s just a release. It’s actually nice to feel, you know. When you spend so many years blinding yourself on drugs and being numb to everything, it’s nice to feel.” She then says something that resonates with my own experience — how life is better lived with a slow drip of dopamine, that happiness is about enjoying the mundane moments instead of chasing extreme highs.
I unexpectedly find myself reappraising the young woman sitting opposite me. Her defiance now feels much more tangible and real, visceral even. It saved her life and she has turned around what so many have tried (particularly my generation) but failed to do. “Life can start at any time,” she says. “Every one is in pain, everyone needs to heal and find a way back to themselves. The child in you just wants to fit in and be liked. For you now, it’s about saying, I choose a new beginning, to feel better than any other year that has come before.”
Her words startle me: the idea of saying anything positive about myself out loud feels so wrong, shameful, as if by uttering it I am making a fool of myself. And yet, would I be?
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Can you please write a book for my age group, I ask her. “Actually, the 18 to 25-year-olds are not a big part of my audience,” she says. “With Gen Z it’s more of a TikTok thing. You know the ‘I’m going to manifest passing my exams’ type. So I tell them, you still have to f***ing revise, you know.” I think it’s great they have an understanding of their inner power, but they have no idea how to achieve it. Manifesting is ageless, genderless. My biggest demographic is 30 to 50-year olds.”
As we part company, I think to myself that what she has embraced, and done so in a digestible way, is really just another way of saying what we humans have known for centuries — namely, a negative attitude leads to negative outcomes, a positive one to what we desire. Reductively, it translates as be kind, both to yourself and others. Back at home I try speaking to myself in a way I’ve always found excruciating — I say something nice about myself. I keep doing it for days. It beats the hell out of therapy and unexpectedly puts a smile on my face. I even read her book. Not so ridiculous after all.
How to turn envy into inspiration
In an extract from her new book, Roxie Nafousi says we should face up to our negative emotions and then flip them
We often try to deny and bury envy rather than validating it. The antithesis of envy is inspiration. So to let go of envy we must become aware of it, remove self-judgment around it, learn from it and then turn it into inspiration.
I find envy to be such a fascinating emotion. When you feel it, it hits you hard. It brings with it a whole array of other emotions: sadness, fear, anger, bitterness, shame, guilt. It’s unsurprising then that so many of us try to push it away, deny or struggle to process it. But we need to process it. We need to learn to validate it and process it so that it does not negatively impact our manifesting process.
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Very simply the first step to doing this is to become aware of envy and then to take ownership of it. When you feel it,
I want you to admit it to yourself without judgment. For example, if you feel envious of your co-worker who got a promotion, or your friend who seems blissfully happy in her new relationship or the person on your Instagram feed on holiday, pause and say to yourself, “I feel envious of this” or “seeing/hearing this has made me feel envious”. In stating how we feel we validate ourselves. When we validate ourselves, we offer ourselves the opportunity to understand, accept, process and ultimately let go of the emotion.
One of the most problematic things about denying envy is that we instead pass it on as judgment. Think about times you have judged or criticised somebody else. Do you think that you would feel compelled to do so if there wasn’t a personal fear or feeling of lack that was driving it?
Rather than judging ourselves for feeling envious, or deny that we are experiencing it at all, we must use envy to help us on our manifesting journeys. Envy can show us parts of our self that need bringing to light so that we can clear our path to abundance. For example, instead of saying, “I can’t believe she got promoted; she didn’t even deserve it”, say to yourself, “I am happy for her success; I am so excited for how it will feel when I get promoted too”. Practise making this switch every time you feel envious and see how much better you feel instantly. Remember: your subconscious will believe whatever you tell it. So say the inspired thought to yourself, even if you don’t quite believe it yet.
Extracted from Manifest: Dive Deeper by Roxie Nafousi, which is published on Thursday by Michael Joseph at £16.99
