Back in the introduction to this book, I explained that different emotions have different vibrational frequencies. Emotions such as shame, anger, jealousy and guilt all have a low-vibrational frequency. On the other hand, emotions such as joy, happiness, love, peace, contentment and appreciation all have a high-vibrational frequency. The universe does not really hear our thoughts; it responds to the frequencies that those thoughts create: we attract what we feel.

When I first learned that our emotions had the power to shape our reality, I instinctively knew just how true it was. I started to recall countless occasions when I had experienced low-vibe emotions (such as anger, sadness and despair) and, as a result, I had manifested negative situations into my life. In fact, although I didn’t admit this to myself at the time, I constantly manifested negative situations into my life to support my belief that I was unworthy and that life was unfair. I would play out worst-case scenarios in my head, and then when they happened in real life I would say, ‘I knew this was going to happen.’ For example, when I was twenty-two, I left my first nine-to-five job, working at Diageo, and decided to set up something on my own. I’d always known that I wanted to help empower women so I thought that perhaps I could use my love of fashion to help women present themselves in a way that made them feel their most confident. So, I decided to try and become a ‘fashion stylist’. I started to approach potential clients (basically, my friends and acquaintances) to ask if I could help re-vamp their wardrobes, but whenever I reached out to them I heard my inner voice saying, ‘They’re never going to say yes because they know you are not good enough.’ Then, when they replied, politely declining my offer, the voice would say, ‘I told you so.’ Suffice it to say that my career as a ‘stylist’ never took off, and in two years I only managed to acquire one single paying client before I decided to give it up altogether. The sole reason for this lay in my own lack of self-worth and the constant attachment to low-vibe emotions that were holding me back. I simply didn’t have the self-belief or the fearlessness to take action or to move forward when faced with obstacles. This is just one example, but in truth I spent an entire decade searching for evidence that I was a failure who was destined for unhappiness. Now, I can see that I was responsible for keeping myself trapped in that stagnant space for so long. The power to manifest had always been in me, but I’d been using it in the wrong direction.

Can you think of a time when you’ve been angry, jealous or fearful and then you have manifested something negative into your life? Or have you ever had one of those mornings when you’ve woken up late and felt tired and grouchy? You wake up in that flat, low-vibe mood and you just can’t shake it. You sit down for breakfast and spill your coffee everywhere, you leave the house and, halfway to the station, you remember that you’ve left your phone at home so you go back to get it and miss your train, then you get a text from your friend cancelling a meet-up later that you’ve been looking forward to. You just have one of those days where you literally say, ‘Ugh, it’s just one of those days!’ If you really think about it, do you believe it’s a coincidence that those things so often happen in succession like that? Recently, I was feeling angry with myself about a mistake I had made at work and, as I walked out of the room, I stubbed my toe on the door, and I actually laughed to myself. It felt like a little message from the universe that said, ‘Hey, don’t forget I’m always watching you.’ Our vibe matters.

When I first understood the power that we have not only to draw abundance to us but to attract negativity to us, too, I panicked. Perhaps you are reading this and panicking a little, too. You might be thinking, ‘Does that mean every time I feel angry I will attract something bad to me? Or on the days I wake up feeling flat something terrible will happen to me? I can’t be expected to be “high vibe” all the time, can I?’ No, of course you can’t be expected to, and it is important that we do give ourselves space to feel, validate, accept and honour the full spectrum of emotions. So, what do we do when we feel overwhelmed with a low-vibe feeling? We use gratitude.

Gratitude is defined as a feeling of appreciation, and this feeling has an extremely high vibrational frequency. Gratitude is one of the most powerful emotional tools we have at our disposal and when we understand how to practise it we can use it to instantly pull ourselves out of any low-vibe experience, to change our state, to shift our vibration and to completely unleash the abundance of the universe. On a day where we feel flat, low, angry, jealous, resentful or fearful, we can turn to gratitude to help us. We can take a moment to pause, to find stillness, and then to cultivate and embrace gratitude to override any low-vibe emotion we are experiencing.

THREE CATEGORIES OF GRATITUDE

Gratitude for the self

These are things that you can appreciate about yourself,

e.g. I am grateful for my strength, I am grateful for my health, I am grateful for my mind.

Gratitude for your life

These are the things in your life that you appreciate,

e.g. I am grateful for my job, I am grateful for my family and friends, I am grateful for where I live.

Gratitude for the world

These are the things you feel grateful for that are universal to us all, e.g. I am grateful for the sunshine, I am grateful for connection, I am grateful for the ability to travel and experience new cultures.

You can use these three categories to help guide you in practising and cultivating gratitude into your life.

Note: Some days you might find that, in the midst of a particularly intense feeling of fear, sadness or anger, you are unable to feel gratitude for yourself or for the things in your life. That is why I have laid out three categories of gratitude for you, so that you can always find something that you can feel grateful for: if you are struggling to feel grateful for your own life today, focus on your gratitude for something universal. Just remember: there is always something to be grateful for, if you take the time to focus on it.

When we feel grateful for the things we currently have, we feel content, present and at peace. We raise our vibe instantly. Let me show you … Take a second now to think of one thing you feel truly grateful for. Think about it, visualize it clearly and allow the feeling of gratitude to really flow through your body. Do you notice how, when you think about something that you’re truly grateful for, your body physically shifts? Your muscles start to relax, you may begin to smile unconsciously and you feel immediately calmer.

About a month after I first discovered manifesting I came across Dr Joe Dispenza. I heard him speak on a podcast with Gwyneth Paltrow and as soon as it had finished I typed his name into YouTube and sat listening intently to him talk in countless videos. I found his knowledge and his passion so insightful and so inspiring. But there was one finding he shared that really stuck with me, one that influenced my own manifesting journey from that moment on: studies have found that, in just four days, transforming your fear to ‘gratitude, appreciation and kindness for just ten minutes a day, three times a day, can strengthen your immune system by fifty per cent’. How incredible is that? Replacing your fears and doubts with gratitude can actually change your physiology, change the behaviour of your cells, shift your vibrational frequency and even help to protect you against disease. This was a massive wake-up call for me. It was scientific evidence of the incredible power of our minds – the power that we have to change our reality – and it was evidence of the immense power of gratitude. This is what manifesting really became to me from that moment: the joining of science and wisdom. The understanding that we can use our minds to shift our energy, to raise our vibrational frequency and then change our reality. And gratitude was very much at the core of it.

In that moment, it all started to make sense. I looked back at my own journey and my own behaviour up until then. If I was honest with myself, I had never embraced true gratitude. I was always complaining about what I didn’t have, looking at others wishing I had what they had, or waiting for something or someone to come into my life and magically make me happy. Perhaps you know what I mean … How many times have you thought, ‘I’ll be happy when …’ or ‘If I had what they had, then I’d be happy?’ This pattern of thinking is so limiting because it keeps us locked in a scarcity mindset. It sends a message to the universe that says, ‘My life is lacking,’ or ‘I don’t have enough,’ and so that is what the universe will continue to give you: lack and scarcity. But it limits you in another way, too: waiting for something or someone to make you feel a certain way gives away your own inner power. It prevents you from taking responsibility for your own happiness.

TO MANIFEST, WE HAVE TO FIRST UNDERSTAND THAT WE ARE THE CURATORS, THE ARCHITECTS AND THE CONDUCTORS OF OUR LIVES AND OUR DESTINY.

At the time, though, if you’d asked me, ‘Are you a grateful person?’, I would have said, ‘Yes, absolutely.’ I really believed that I was, but then I would say things like ‘I know I’m lucky in so many ways, but if I was in a relationship, I’d be so much happier.’ I was always attaching caveats to my gratitude, and this is what was preventing me from feeling and experiencing true gratitude.

I began to realize that people were almost always attaching caveats to their gratitude. They’d say something like ‘I love my house, but I can’t wait to be somewhere with more space,’ or ‘I love my job, but it would be so much better if I was paid more,’ or ‘It’s great I made some sales today, but I was hoping to have sold out by now.’ These caveats are attached so casually and automatically that most people are not even aware that they are using them.

I started to ask myself why we always attach caveats to our gratitude. I believe that one of the reasons is because many of us hold a subconscious fear that if we are completely happy with what we have, then we won’t ever strive for more. For example, if we have complete gratitude for our current salary, won’t that stop us feeling motivated to work towards a promotion? Or if we are totally happy with the house we live in, doesn’t that mean we will never end up experiencing life somewhere new? There is an underlying belief that true and full gratitude comes at the expense of drive, motivation and our ability to progress. I am here to remove that fear for you: true gratitude, without caveats, does not hold you back. It is, in fact, an integral part of your manifesting journey.

You have to be clear in your vision and about where you want to go while simultaneously being entirely grateful for all that you currently have: this is what I call the manifesting sweet spot.

I thought I’d tell you a little story of how I used this step myself to manifest my current home.

When I had just discovered that I was ten weeks pregnant with my son, I had no career, I was making very little money and I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I had manifested meeting Wade a few months previously, but I was not prepared for what happened next: falling pregnant. I’d been living in a beautiful apartment which I could no longer afford, and Wade and I had nowhere to go. My dad very kindly said we could live in his apartment in Waterloo. I walked into an extremely run-down flat which had been left in a complete mess by the previous tenants and I was immediately hit by this foul smell. The decor was the same as it was when it had been purchased over twenty-two years ago, but now there was a hole in the door, marks all over the walls, mould covering the tiles in the bathroom and the shower did little more than dribble water. I thought, ‘I am twenty-eight years old, having a baby with a man I met just three months ago, and this is nothing like the life I imagined for myself: jobless, pregnant and living in this neglected apartment.’ I’d wanted to manifest a glamorous life, I thought. This was not glamorous. I was a total brat about it all. I was always complaining about the space, and I would lie down, trying to imagine where I would be next, thinking that visualizing it would be enough to manifest it. I cringe now, thinking back on it.

But as time went on and my baby bump grew bigger, I started getting into ‘nesting mode’, so I redecorated the apartment, slowly but surely, sold all the stuff I no longer had space for at car-boot sales and really started to make it a home, ready for Wolfe’s arrival. I began to like it more, but I was still saying to myself, ‘This is good for now, I guess.’ I was trying to be grateful, because I knew that I should be, but I wasn’t truly embracing it.

Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit and Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that we must all now ‘stay at home to save lives’. The home I had once resented moving into became my sanctuary. It became my home, my office, my gym and my play area. I fell totally in love with it. I had so much time to reflect and, as if a penny had dropped, I finally thought to myself, ‘I am so, so lucky to have a roof over my head. I love the home I have made for my little family. I am ridiculously fortunate to be living in an apartment that my dad worked so hard to buy. I am genuinely so happy and content to be here.’ I meant it, from the bottom of my heart. I felt immense gratitude fill me up. Then, on one of our many daily lockdown walks, Wade asked me, ‘What does your dream home look like?’ I described an island kitchen with a double-door fridge and marble worktops and a glorious bath to soak in. My dream home. The next day, I went on Instagram and saw a friend upload a video of herself working out in her home, with an island kitchen behind her. I messaged her and said, ‘Wow, your house is so beautiful.’ She replied a minute later, saying, ‘Wanna buy it?’ I jokingly replied, ‘Lol, how much?’ The timing had aligned in the most incredible way and the flat, which should have been way out of my price range, was being hugely undersold at a figure I could actually afford. By now, I had carved out my own career and I was working extremely hard (aka aligning my behaviour and taking action!), but I knew in my heart that it was my sincere gratitude for what I already had that had led me to manifest my dream home in just a matter of days.

When you want to manifest something into your life, you must be clear in your vision, remove your fear and doubt, align your behaviour, overcome tests from the universe and then embrace gratitude without caveats for all that you currently have. Allow that feeling of appreciation to shift your entire state of being. Feel the gratitude raise your vibe and keep you in an abundant mindset.

THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD CAN ONLY BE EXPERIENCED BY SOMEONE WHO IS WILLING TO SEE IT.

If you are willing to see all the beauty and love and abundance that are already present in your life, you will effortlessly attract more beauty, more love and more abundance to you.

To live in ‘an attitude of gratitude’, we must cultivate it so that it becomes part of our essence. We must practise it over and over again in order to begin to rewire our neurological pathways so that we automatically focus on all the good in our lives rather than the bad. If you do this, you will change your natural state, redirect your attention to abundance and allow your manifesting process to become effortless. Remember that where attention goes, energy flows. So, focus on what is good, and more good will come to you.

Here are some things you can do to cultivate and embrace gratitude (without caveats).

JOURNALING

I absolutely love journaling and it is a self-development tool that I come back to again and again. Consistent gratitude journaling can be used to retrain your brain on a neurological level to focus on the good in your life, making this a powerful manifesting practice.

Here are two ways to practise gratitude journaling.

Technique 1: Gratitude lists

Every night, or every morning, write down fifteen things you are grateful for. I like to choose five things from each of the three gratitude categories above. So, I start with five things that I am grateful for about myself (e.g. I am grateful for my resilience), then five things that I am grateful for that happened in the day (e.g. I am grateful for the time I spent with my baby boy) and, finally, five things that I am grateful for in the world (e.g. I am grateful for the sound of the ocean).

Technique 2: Positivity journal

This is my favourite journaling practice and one that I developed for myself last year.

At the end of each day, write down every single good thing that happened to you that day, from the moment you woke up to the moment you got into bed. I really mean everything: if the sun was shining, if a stranger smiled at you, if a friend sent you a thoughtful message, or if you saw a meme on social media that made you laugh. Write it all down in chronological order.

So often, the day can pass us by and we forget how many beautiful moments we have experienced. They can go totally unnoticed and unappreciated. We can even assume that a whole day was ‘bad’ just because of one bad moment within it. But when we sit down to recollect all the good that we experienced we soon see that each and every day is filled with so much to be thankful for.

After committing to completing your positivity journaling daily, your mind will begin to automatically look out for all the beautiful moments and opportunities that each day brings. After a couple of weeks, you might suddenly find yourself walking along the street saying to yourself, ‘Wow, what a stunning building,’ having finally noticed the incredible architecture that you have walked past mindlessly every day up until then. Or you might have a new-found appreciation for the cup of tea your partner brings you in bed every morning, or for the kind smile the receptionist at your office gives you when you walk in each morning. You will simply begin to notice more of the good around you, and in turn you will raise your vibe throughout the day, every day.

I created this practice for myself when I found myself in a career rut last year. I was suffering from a bout of imposter syndrome and I was feeling really stuck with some of my desired manifestations. I had been given a notebook as a gift and on the front of it was written ‘Positivity’ so I decided to turn it into my ‘positivity journal’ to shift me out of the funk I was in. I wrote in it every night for two weeks. At the end of the two weeks, I had a breakthrough and one of my visions came to life: to write about manifesting for British Vogue. I was in the middle of doing an online workout (when all my best ideas seem come to me) and I heard an inner voice saying, ‘If you really want to contribute to Vogue, you need to take action. Step outside your comfort zone and send the email. The worst that will happen is that they say no.’ So, with my high-vibrational state of gratitude driving me forward, I paused my Pilates class and wrote an email to the digital editor, Kerry McDermott, and asked her if there was any chance that I could write about manifesting for the online magazine. She replied a couple of hours later, saying, ‘As it happens, I commissioned an article to be written about manifesting last week and it’s being submitted tomorrow. I’ll put you in touch with the writer, Giselle La Pompe-Moore, and you can be involved too.’ I had emailed her just in time. If I had not taken action when the inspiration came to me, I would have missed the opportunity. It was a brilliant demonstration of manifesting in action: I’d had the vision of writing for Vogue, I used gratitude to pull me out of my self-doubt, then I released any fear or limiting beliefs that I wasn’t worthy of being in Vogue by aligning my behaviour and taking action. I cannot tell you how immensely proud I felt when I saw the article: my younger self was screaming inside!

REEL OFF THE GOOD

Whenever you find yourself in a low-vibe funk like the one I describe above, allow gratitude to raise you back up by using this simple technique which you can do anywhere. Simply take a moment to pause and then, without stopping to think about it, reel off everything you feel grateful for until you feel something within yourself shift. You can do this by writing things down on the notes app on your phone, saying them out loud to yourself or to a friend, or writing them in your journal.

I use this technique any time I feel myself getting upset or annoyed, or if I wake up feeling a bit ‘off’. It only takes a couple of minutes, which makes it a simple yet effective gratitude practice. Just reel off all the good.

SWITCH ‘I HAVE TO DO IT’ FOR ‘I GET TO DO IT’

I remember going to one of my first spin classes in London, at a studio aptly called Psycle. The session was reaching its climax: I was sweating, my breath was short, my legs were getting tired and heavy and all I could think about was how much I wanted the experience to be over. Then, as if he was reading my mind, the trainer shouted to the class through his microphone, ‘Remember: you don’t have to be here, you get to be here!’ It was a lightbulb moment for me. I had chosen to be there – no one had forced me on to the bike. In fact, every single person who was in that class got to be there because they were fortunate enough to have a healthy body that allowed them to pedal with their legs, they were lucky enough to live somewhere that offered the class, and they were in a privileged enough position to be able to afford to book themselves a spot. In that moment of physical exhaustion, there was so much to be grateful for when I stopped to consider it, so why was I now wishing the experience away? That trainer totally shifted my perspective: he instantly brought me back to the present moment and I felt immense gratitude fill me up.

This perspective shift became a powerful gratitude tool that I now encourage people to use every day. How many times have you said, ‘I have to work out today,’ or ‘I have to go to work,’ or ‘I have to go see my parents,’ or ‘I have to study,’ or ‘I have to cook dinner for the kids again’? Using this language implies that you have no choice and that you are being forced into something. It takes away the opportunity for us to feel grateful and it implies that we don’t have the power to choose. When you make the simple language switch and instead say, ‘I get to exercise today,’ or ‘I get to go to work today,’ or ‘I get to see my parents,’ or ‘I get to study,’ or ‘I get to cook dinner for the kids,’ you automatically shift yourself into a state of appreciation. This is because when we say ‘I get to’ we remind ourselves that some do not: we remind ourselves, consciously and subconsciously, how fortunate we are that we are able to move our bodies, to see our loved ones and to live the life that we do.

PRACTISE MINDFULNESS

How many times a day do you say, ‘I can’t wait for …’ or ‘I will be so happy when …’? It’s something that most of us do automatically, me included. I regularly catch myself sitting at lunch thinking about what I am going to have for dinner, or spending hours thinking about how excited I am for a manifestation to come through: ‘It’s going to feel so incredible when …’ We say these things with good intentions: it feels good to be excited about something and it is fun to daydream about what we want to manifest. In fact, I regularly advise people to have something in mind to look forward to and, of course, knowing what you want and where you want to be in the future is the first step of manifesting. The problems begin when we start to focus on the future at the expense of living in a mindful way. Looking to the future too often (regardless of whether it is a positive or a negative future we’re imagining) prevents us from living in the present moment, and when we are not present we cannot fully embrace gratitude. This is one of the reasons that I advise people to put their vision boards away after they’ve made them.

To cultivate gratitude, we must practise training ourselves to be more mindful. Whatever you are doing, make a conscious effort to be 100 per cent there. For example, when you are in the office, be 100 per cent there; when you are with your family, be 100 per cent with them; when you are in the gym, be 100 per cent in it. Doing this will not only enrich all your experiences and reduce the stress that accompanies split-focus, it will also help you to train your mind to live more mindfully. Every time you catch yourself losing focus and find that your mind is distracting you from where you currently are, pull yourself back to the moment. Focus your attention on how you currently feel and what you can see and hear and focus your attention on the people you are with.

Another way to practise more mindful living is to incorporate meditation into your daily routine. Meditation is a practice of stillness and presence and, just in the same way you train your abdominal muscles to be strong, you can train your mind to be more mindful. If you’re new to meditation, I suggest beginning by following guided meditations, starting with just five minutes then working your way up to a longer meditation practice when you feel ready. When entering the world of meditation, which is filled with incredible physical, mental and spiritual benefits, be careful not to judge your practice or to expect to find stillness straight away. The idea that when we meditate we should be void of all thoughts is a meditation myth! The aim is not to empty our minds entirely but to learn to observe our thoughts without attaching to them. Meditation is the practice of mindful awareness, using stillness and breath to quieten our minds.

I highly recommend incorporating some form of meditation into your daily routine, making it one of your high-vibe, self-love practices. For me, daily meditation practice is non-negotiable; it helps me to slow down my mind, opens up space for creativity and ideas to come to me and allows me to increase my capacity for gratitude by strengthening my ability to live mindfully. It is an integral part of my own manifesting processes and I always make time for it: some days I simply breathe mindfully for five minutes and other days I delve into a thirty-minute meditative manifesting visualization before bed.

A selection of guided meditations, including a manifesting meditation, is available on my website: www.roxienafousi.com

NOTICE THE LITTLE THINGS

As we begin to live more mindfully, we give ourselves more opportunity to notice all the little things in our lives that can evoke those powerful high-vibe feelings of appreciation.

Things that might have previously gone unnoticed can now become an anchor for that contented, joyful feeling. These little things are otherwise known as life’s small pleasures. Start to really pay attention to them, sit with them, feel them and experience them fully. In doing so, you keep bringing yourself back to gratitude, constantly strengthening your manifesting power.

LIFE’S SMALL PLEASURES

Examples: the smell of freshly brewed coffee, getting into a bed with newly laundered sheets, the sound of birds in the morning, the feeling of warm wind on your face, quenching your thirst with ice-cold water, the sound of the ocean, morning sunlight, tidying up, lighting a candle, flowers, the smell of just-cut grass, a smile from a passer-by …

Write down ten of your favourite small pleasures.

On the road to manifesting your dreams, don’t forget to enjoy the journey that takes you there. Pay attention to the small, simple joys of life and be present in each day. Remember: a grateful heart is a magnet for miracles.