Using the Law of Attraction: Can “Faking It till You Make It” Really Manifest Your Desires?

Have we all heard the saying, “Fake it till you make it”?

Initially, I thought I understood this phrase to mean I should pretend to do the things I aspire to. While this can be a useful approach, it’s challenging to incorporate into daily life consistently. How can I pretend to live a luxurious life while working in a dimly lit office with ten others? Pretending to be on a beach with a mai tai in hand doesn’t magically manifest that life. Let me share what I’ve learned because following this process might lead you to believe that manifestation doesn’t work, but it does.

I first read Rhonda Byrne’s book “The Secret” in my junior year of college. The book began to transform my life and set me on my current spiritual path. The Secret is that the Law of Attraction can manifest the life you desire. It can also manifest a life you don’t want. Like attracts like. If you express gratitude for what you have, the universe will bring more things to be grateful for. Conversely, if you’re miserable and ungrateful, it will bring more reasons for misery and ingratitude. While the principle is sound, I didn’t fully grasp how to apply it correctly.

I started applying The Secret when possible. I created vision boards and wrote letters to myself with the return address of a million-dollar home in Palos Verdes. I wrote fake checks for $1 million for future dates and said “thank you” with each step. I bought a gratitude rock and made significant donations to my local church. (All this time, I still didn’t deeply feel it was that easy.) But it began to work… just very slowly. Because that’s what I felt to be true. I graduated, moved to Los Angeles to start my career, and gradually earned more in my sales job. I found my now husband and welcomed him into my life. However, none of my imagined goals came true. I never made $1 million or got the house in Palos Verdes so doubt crept in.

I slowly adopted a scarcity mindset about finances, and my earnings dwindled. Sales decreased, and then I got pregnant with my first. My husband and I had saved enough for a significant home down payment, so we moved to the suburbs. Around the same time my view on consumerism changed, and I lost interest in pushing products for money. Then Covid hit, and I had to quit my job after nearly 15 years. Where had my dream life gone? Well it was the life I had believed I had earned deep down.

Throughout all this, I continued working on myself and my personal development. My spiritual life grew, and my husband and I established strong roots for our family. But I couldn’t truly be grateful for the life I had manifested. I kept trying to apply those principles, but it always felt forced and fake. Which lead me to continue to doubt it’s power.

Enter psychedelics. More posts will follow on my experiences, but for now, let me say they changed my outlook on life. I fully understand, grasp, and feel gratitude for everything in my life. I mean everything… for example: I look at the laundry on my bedroom floor and feel grateful for the time to do it. I’m grateful for the tiny humans I get to do laundry for. I’m blessed to have a running washer and dryer and amazing solar panels (paid off) so we don’t pay for the electricity to run them. What a blessing to have a pile of laundry to fold.

Previously, I saw it as a minor annoyance that my house wasn’t clean. I’m the type who can’t relax with something to clean, and I think many can relate. But now, all I feel is gratitude.

Things haven’t manifested as I wanted them to, but they manifested as I felt them to. I didn’t truly believe I could make $1 million by writing a check. I didn’t feel it was possible to own that million-dollar home in just a couple years without making a major change in my life. What I did manifest, was my ability to feel that now. I feel the power of The Secret to be true. And it’s changed my life.

I still haven’t made that million dollars. In fact, I just quit my job to write full-time. I don’t live in my million-dollar house either. But I’m so grateful for this beautiful life, and I’m living “there” now too. I’m living in the present, free from anxiety’s shackles. It’s liberating, and I hope you find this peace with me. So fake it till you make it. Say you’re grateful until you feel it. Even when you don’t feel it, keep going… it will come. Trust the process. I’m proof of that. It took me over 15 years to understand and feel it deeply. It took 15 years for me to make it. I hope you find it faster, but it’s never too late to change your life.