How to Manifest What You Want When It's Important

 There are many instructions on how to manifest the things you want. Thanks to the "The Secret," there are more resources on the law of attraction than one knows what to do with. And, quite frankly, many of them are ungrounded and unrealistic.

Is positive thinking and acting as if something is already true by itself really enough to draw that very thing into your life? To me, this sounds like the epitome of wishful thinking.

So how does manifestation look like in real life? Well, have you ever waited for something (for instance, meeting a new partner or finding a new job) for a long time? And has it ever happened to you that you finally got what you desperately wanted just after you gave up on it?

In these situations, one might think that the excess importance you gave to your wish repelled the very thing you wanted to receive. But how can that be remedied? After all, it's not exactly helpful to learn how to manifest if that only works for stuff that you don't really care about that much, is it?

For starters, it can be helpful to remember a quote which is (somewhat inaccurately ) attributed to Oscar Wilde: “Life is too important to be taken seriously.”

The challenge with taking something overly serious is that it often creates a cycle of negative feedback. And negative feedback cycles are notoriously hard to break.

That said, here are 3 keys for moving beyond them so that you can get what you most want---even when it's important:

The first step to changing anything is awareness.

If you don’t know that something is happening, how could you even dream of changing it? Let’s assume you were walking down a road, fell down a huge manhole and found yourself alive and well in a dark hole. Most likely, you would immediately start looking for a way out of the situation.

However, in real life, people sometimes find themselves in a metaphorical “dark hole” that is a lot sneakier. Because their descent into this place doesn’t involve obvious falls or accidents, it can be difficult for them to realize what is happening. This lack of realization then prolongs the time spent in an uncomfortable situation.

The key to moving beyond stuckness quickly is to become aware of when it is happening. In other words, one needs to strengthen one's “awareness muscle,” for instance through practicing mindfulness.

Because it’s always easier to see other people’s blind spots than our own, it can also be helpful to have someone that holds you accountable, such as a coach or a mastermind group.

It's also helpful to learn the art of polarity management.

Polarities are mutually dependent and seem like exact opposites (for instance freedom and commitment, or ambition and relaxation).

With polarities, if we lean too far in one direction, we tend to run into challenges. For instance, taking something overly seriously can make us tense up, which can lead to more mistakes. On the other hand, being too playful and relaxed can also lead to errors because you might pay less attention to what you are doing.

The key is to find the right dosage at any given time.

When I once experienced a short bout of writer's block (because I pressured myself too much to be creative), the solution was found in becoming more relaxed and playful. This included remembering what I had learned about the creative process through the years. For instance, about the benefits of giving oneself permission to write a “sh* tty first draft” and to withhold one’s own criticism until the editing stage of said draft.

However, a playful approach is not always the solution. If you’ve been overdoing the relaxation in an area of your life, maybe the way forward lies in taking things more seriously.

As Henri Matisse said, “Creativity takes courage.”

The same is true for many other things in our lives that we care about. Often, the more we care about something, the more courage we need to go for it. The problem is that you can’t will yourself to have courage through pressure.

You may have noticed that trying to suppress fear doesn’t work very well. In fact, attempting to squash fear often increases it. This increase can then cause one to try even harder to fight one’s fear, with dismal results. In short, an attempt to suppress fear can create a cycle of negativity.

The way out of that loop is to change your relationship to your fear. Our society typically sees fear as an enemy that needs to be fought (and, of course, fear fights back). The better choice is to see fear as an adviser and make an effort to befriend it.

Strengthening your awareness muscle, managing polarities, and befriending your fear all help you to avoid affording excess importance to something in life.

After all, as Elbert Hubbard so helpfully pointed out: “Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.”

A version of this article was first published on elephant journal here.