#248 'What I learned about power this year (that no one ever teaches Manifestors)' with Holly

You are listening to Hunting for Purpose, the podcast by manifestors, for manifestors. If you are a manifestor in human design, or if you know, love, teach or coach a manifestor in human design, this podcast is absolutely the place for you. But, this podcast is not a standard podcast listening experience. This podcast is the voice of the manifestor community. Throughout the episodes, you will be hearing from multiple different manifestors who are sharing their insights, wisdom and teaching from the lived experience of being the manifestor energy type. These voices span members of our community right up to the staff that run the community itself. We hope that through the episodes you listen to, you will receive insight, you will feel accepted and you will be able to build a toolbox that will allow yourself or the manifestors in your life to become healed, powerful initiators into the world. Now, it's time to dive into the episode. Hello beautiful manifestors, beautiful listeners. Welcome to the very final podcast episode for 2025. This was the year that felt like about 45 years in one, this was such a wild year, so it even feels a little bit strange to be sitting here in December in my living room recording this podcast episode because my children are on school break and they're everywhere else throughout the house, so I no longer have free reign to use whichever room I like. And to feel like, oh my gosh, I can't even remember what it was like recording the very first podcast episode this year, like this year has been so much and so transformational and so intense, you know, it's just felt like we have done a lot of time in a 12-month period. And typically, when I get to the end of the year, I like to record a recap episode. I feel like it's so kind of nice and fun as a community for us to be able to look back at what did we do this year? You know, as manifestors, we just move through things with lightning speed. We are endlessly changing. We are always moving from one thing to the next and so we don't often stop to reflect. We don't often stop to look back and say, whoa, there was my impact there. My gosh, look what I actually did because we're so forward facing. And I feel like doing a yearly recap is a nice way for us to, as a community, say, what did we do as manifestors this year? And I was going to record this podcast episode last week. I've had it on the agenda. I'm like, yep, end of the year recap. I think I've been doing that for three years now, so good. And I sat down last week to record it and I was like, no, spline says no, spline says this is not what we want to talk about. So I took an extra week, I informed my team, you know, this final podcast episode for the year is going to be a little bit later, getting to you then usual. I just need to let my system process what it is that I actually want to talk about before I record it. And I mean, this is a little proactive about being a manifestor is that even when we feel like we should be having forward momentum, when we feel like we should be initiating something or we should be taking action on something, often the most healthy thing that we can do if we don't have clarity on exactly what we want to say or what we want to initiate is to just give it time. And the fear for most of us is that if we don't do it, if we don't kind of take the momentum of energy while it's there, then it will be lost and then we won't have the opportunity to do it at all. And that's been, I mean, that's been something that I've worked on for years and years. And I think for me, that is a journey that is quite in the rear view mirror, you know, I understood a couple of years back now that that's actually just an illusion. It's really not true, right? We can pause, we can take time, we can allow our system to catch up, we can allow things to percolate and form and move into what it is that they want to be before we initiate them. And the momentum is not lost and the energy does not disappear. So that's a little, I wasn't even planning to talk about that, but that is a helpful little tip for all of us as manifestors. And I do want to talk about today, I guess it's still a bit of a yearly recap, but it's through a very specific lens. I want to talk to you all about what I learned about power this year. And it's what I learned about power that no one ever teaches manifestors, that nobody out there is ever speaking to about manifestors. I feel like we get so much just like almost ambiguous like language and rhetoric and this narrative, it's almost like a fairytale narrative. I've spoken about it lots before in the human design space where manifestors get spoken about as though we are these all powerful, all impacting, you know, wildly initiating beings and that that is just always a wonderful thing that it's something that we're born with, that we walk into every room with, that everybody is totally accepting of and celebratory of and we are tapped into our power all the time even when we're doing nothing. And I have just, I've always struggled with the lack of truth in that way of representing manifestors because I think that it grossly minimizes the reality of our experience. It grossly minimizes the truth that manifestors are in fact taught from birth to not be connected to our power, to be very, very disconnected from our power, to minimize our expression of power, to see our power as something unsafe as threatening as something that makes other people uncomfortable and that we need to, we need to manage it, right? And then we find out we're manifestors and we come into this human design space and everyone's like, oh my gosh, you all powerful being gosh, what is it like to be so powerful and so magnetic everywhere you go? And for us as manifestors, we're like, what are you talking about? I know I have a sense that I'm powerful, I can feel that in myself, but I can't seem to attach to it. And what that leaves us with is this almost debilitating, paralyzing belief that, oh, I must be doing something wrong then. Like I'm kind of broken as a manifestor then because I'm not that powerful person. And even if I wanted to be, when I try, it doesn't seem to work, all it seems to do is make me feel unsafe, make me feel more unsure and make other people around me uncomfortable. And so there's this, there's this truth that needs to be acknowledged when we talk about manifest power and our expression of it, that the world really is not actually designed. As it stands right now, the world is not a place that is designed to be accepting of and create space for manifestor expression of power. And so there is a friction point there and it is natural and normal for us to have significant wounding around that and to have difficulty connecting with our power. Or it's like, you know, let's say you are a German, but you were adopted into an English speaking family and you were raised speaking English your entire life just because you find out when you're 30 that you are, in fact, German doesn't mean that you start speaking German. You still need to learn through that. You still need to understand that context, learn that language, learn how to express in that way. So we need to give ourselves a whole lot more grace in this area, but I think that we also need to be honest in calling out the truth of how things actually operate, right? This is kind of the, it's like the system beyond the system, right? We have a narrative that we paint about the system and about how things are supposedly working. And then we have the reality of what's the actual system here that we're living in. What's the actual system where we've, you know, got bitter projectors who are not feeling successful. We've got generators who are caught in systems where they don't feel satisfied. They're giving their energy to obligation. We've got manifesting generators who are being debilitated by inflammatory illnesses. And you know, diagnoses because they are seen as chaotic and wrong and problematic and they're told to cage themselves in. We've got reflectors who are just literally disappearing from society because they can't process every, every level of toxicity that we've got going on. So right, there is, there's an experience for that for us as manifestors and that covers so many different topics and so many different areas. But the one that I want to talk about today is power. And the reason that I want to talk about this and kind of use this as a yearly recap is because I have just finished, I'm coming up on the end of my numerology year eight. I've been in a personal year eight. For those of you that don't know numerology or maybe you've heard about it in a little part and you're not really sure what all of the numbers mean, a, an eight in numerology is all about power, money, ambition and achievement, right? So whenever we're experiencing an eight, that's, that's the journey that we're going to be going through. We have personal years. our numerology moves in personal years, but we also have collective numerology through our years. So 2024 was a collective year eight. We saw the most dramatic lessons about power and money. We had huge economic collapse. We had an enormous shift in power amongst kind of the global politics and even the way that different countries were working together. We saw people grabbing for power in really unethical ways. We also saw the rise of the power of the people in 2024. So these are the kind of things that we move through and we're always experiencing the duality of we've got a collective year going on and then we've got a personal year going on. Right now in 2025 it's a collective year nine. This has been the year of death endings transformation. It's also been the year of the snake, right? So this has been about shedding skin. It's been about transformation. It's been about the endings. It's been about the the finishing of of circles and cycles. We saw the same themes represented amongst astrology as well through the planetary movements, which has just been really cool to to observe. But for me, this has been a personal year eight. I follow my numerology. I've been following it for many many years. I use it as a framework to really help me identify what I'm moving through and why I'm moving through it so that I can dig further into it and sort of just feeling kind of lost in the chaos. And so I knew what my previous year eights had looked like. And I knew the theme that I was probably going to come into this year tackling. My previous year eights had been very, very significant, which is kind of no surprise to me as a manifesto, right? I'm like, okay, I have this kind of deep relationship with power and the expression of power as a manifesto. And so historically that has been those times in my timeline in my lifespan as it's moved moved over through my lifespan. My year eights have been the years of extreme damage to my power. So from my childhood, the year eights were the years that I experienced the most significant abuse. It's the years when my abuse started. It's also the years when I was diagnosed with a very, very serious autoimmune disease. I was a massive dampener on my power. And it was as a result of the abuse that I had been experiencing later as I moved through life, my later year eights. So my last year eight that I had prior to this, we run in nine years cycles. So the last time that I had a year eight was an enormous business collapse for me, which was because I was in this kind of horrible power relationship. I was in this dynamic where I had purchased a business from people who previously owned the business. And then there were people who were investors into the business who were also part of the previous breakdown of the business. And so I was in this kind of like three way power triangle where I very, very quickly began to understand that I was not a person who had power that I had made agreements with others where I had given away all of my power. And these people were were very, very willing and intentional about exploiting that for their own gain. And so I had this kind of strange experience throughout that year where I was constantly fighting this power battle, constantly fighting people who were trying to take every element of power that I had my ambition, my sense of achievement was being eroded in this very kind of toxic, harmful, highly abusive way. And at the same time, the business was really, really successful. It was really financially succeeding. And so I learned so much about success and money and power through that year that success is not necessarily an expression of power. That success is not necessarily something that we always feel successful in that, especially for us as manifestors, power is really what our expression is about. And when we are in situations where that power is being abused, it's incredibly harmful to us. It really creates trauma for us in a lot of situations at the very least it creates wounding for us. So given that that was my last experience of my year eight. And it had this history behind it of always being these years that were categorized by major illness, body breakdown, you know, abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, financial abuse, medical abuse. I knew coming into this year that I was like, this is going to be a big year, one way or the other. This is either going to be a year that is a continuation of those stories. Or it's going to be a massive year where I rewrite those stories. Thankfully, this year was about rewriting. Thankfully, I think because I was so conscious of those themes coming in that I knew that this was going to be about hopefully rewriting my relationship to personal power, about rewriting those stories around safety and about expression of power and using my influence and my money story, my relationship to achievement. I was so, so conscious of all of that. And that doesn't mean that this year didn't batter me. I mean, it did. This has been exhausting. This has been emotionally just a wipeout for me this year. But I know that it's been like that for a lot of people, right? And so I wanted to take the opportunity now coming to the end of this year, acknowledging that I haven't really spoken in depth about all of this. I'm a six line. I want to be in my process while I'm doing it. And then share the wisdom about it when I feel like I have objectivity. And as we are coming to the end of this year, I finally feel like I have objectivity around this now. I have that kind of the wisdom of distance around this now. And I am able to bring the truth and the lessons and the learnings about this story around power to the forefront hopefully in a way that is beneficial for other people because, of course, I have experienced all of this through the lens of being a manifesto, through the lens of being a manifesto in leadership, and through the lens of being a manifesto who is in a position where I do have a lot of financial gain, right? Where I do have a business that generates a lot of money and support to a lot of people. And so that has all been part of this picture. So I want to share five things that I've learned this year. I want to share five things that I really, really hope I can distill down into a way that feels applicable to your life, whether you have been in an eight year yourself, whether you're journeying through your relationship to power as a manifesto or not, even if that's just something that's kind of on the horizon for you. I want to bring these truths into the space where we can see them, where we can contemplate them, where we can move with them so that they kind of settle in our systems and settle in our conversation. So the first thing, very first thing that I learned about manifesto power that I really feel like I hadn't learned before and certainly I don't see anybody else teaching it, was that the more you express your power, the less people are going to like it. The more you express your power, the less people are actually going to like it. It is the great dichotomy of being a manifesto. This is what I have observed about the manifesto expression of power that does not translate to other energy types. It doesn't. When other energy types really move in an expression of their power, it's the way that it is received is completely different. I'm not saying that there's no friction and that there's no tension and that there's no poor reactivity to it, but it's not threatening the way that a manifesto are expressing their power is threatening. The reason for that is because the manifesto, when we express our power because we do it from that dense, heavy aura where it comes with the messaging of, you cannot control me. You cannot predict me. It doesn't matter what you do, you are not going to be able to control me. When I express and I exert my power, it shows you that with enormous illumination. That's why it feels so threatening to people, but I want to talk about the kind of, I guess the energy mechanics of that that are underneath that a little bit. When a manifesto is expressing power, what that does for other people is that it catalyzes. It turns a spotlight on all of their own beliefs and limitations about their power. It shows other people the truth of what their self-relationship with their personal power actually is. When a manifesto is moving freely, when a manifesto is expressing powerfully and a manifesto is saying, I now understand that no matter how you respond to me, you can't control me. You can't make me do anything. I'm going to express as I choose to express because it comes with complete sovereignty, autonomy, and freedom. It is untethered. What that illuminates to other people is, whoa, this is the biggest possible expression of power that there is. This is the most untapped expression of power. What does that show me about where I'm sitting with? my own expression of power. How much power do I feel like I can express? And is it safe for me to do that? And do I give myself permission to do that? This is not necessarily a conscious exchange. This is just the way that the manifestant energy moves through the world. Our aura is like a bowling ball. It is pushing into people's spaces. It is turning light switches on. And then we are walking away. Being like, whoop, see what you're going to see people. I'm not hanging around to necessarily help you with that. So this, this, of course, creates problems. The initial instinct from most people is to then attempt to reduce your expression of power so that it feels more comfortable for them. Instead of self-reflecting on why that person expressing themselves really made me feel uncomfortable, why is that? Because that takes a great amount of emotional maturity. It takes a dedication and discipline to self-reflection. It takes consciousness and awareness. It takes the ability to cultivate safety in your own self-reflection journey. And unfortunately, most people are not in that place. And so by vast majority, the response that we get from people is to say, I feel uncomfortable. You're the reason for that. You're the problem. If I minimize you, if I reduce you down, if I pull you back to a place that I feel comfortable with, then this discomfort that I'm experiencing will go away. It's a human response. But as a manifesto, when we are experiencing that in this huge wave, right, whenever we take this expression of power, it's not like there's one or two people in our lives who are getting reactive about it. There's a lot of people who get reactive about it. And the more visible we are, the more reactivity we see. As I've gone throughout the course of this year, of course, because I'm a four six, so I'm super relational. I have seen a pretty significant relational breakdown. I have had to remove three staff. I've ended two major friendships in my life. I even had to fire my accountant, right, and get a new accountant. I have changed my entire business model and brought in basically a whole new team to support that. I have seen hugely volatile reactivity from our community online. I have blocked more people this year than I think that I have ever blocked ever before. This is the reality for manifestors when we express power. Less and less people are going to like that. And I even saw this, this commentary amongst the comments on post the other day, you know, Instagram community, where somebody was saying like, oh, Holly, I don't know why you keep bothering. Like, why do you keep trying? You know, why don't you just stop because people keep reacting? And I was like, here's that wound, right? This is the manifestor reaction that says, when power gets expressed, it's not safe. Not everybody likes it. And so the only solution is to not express it. And I think that there is a necessary part of our journey as manifestors where we acknowledge that that's not the solution either that trying to stay small and stay quiet to keep others comfortable actually does not keep others comfortable at all. What it does is that it takes all of that damage and it places it on us. It limits us from our authentic movement through life. It limits us from being able to embody the role and the journey that we came here to embody. And we do that in the hope that it will make other people comfortable, but it doesn't. There is no size that you can crush yourself into that makes people comfortable enough with you as a manifestor. Your very existence as a manifestor is an expression of power even when you are trying to ensure that it is not. And so I think there were several points for me along this year where I was like, gosh, well, I tried to be really small there and it still made people uncomfortable. And I tried to be even smaller over there and it still made people uncomfortable. And I recognize really early on in the year like, I've done this journey over and over again. And I now know that there is no size small enough to keep everybody around me happy. And so I may as well actually do what I want to do and express in the way that I want to express because then I feel good and I feel fulfilled and I feel like I am having great impact and I feel like I am meeting my purpose here in life. And you know what, it's still just the same people being uncomfortable about that. And we need to start disconnecting from any narrative about, you know, our responsibility for how other people are receiving our power. And that is not to say that that gives us a free reign to go out and be destructive and to do whatever we want and say whatever we want and be damned how that lands on people. We're not going to extrapolate it out to that point because that is really dangerous and that is really harmful and that is not maturity and that is not expression of power. That's just exerting control over others. What I'm talking about is this is my authentic expression of my power and my impact on the world. And I know that anytime I do that, there are going to be people who are uncomfortable about it. There are going to be people who are unhappy about it. There are going to be people that don't like it. And that is not a reflection on whether or not I should have this power. That is not a reflection on whether or not I should express this power. What it is is a reflection on their personal relationship to their own sense of power. The discomfort that they're expressing, the dislike that they're expressing, the reactivity that they're expressing is actually about them trying to just dramatically and desperately get away from what they're seeing in their own relationship to power. Anybody else who is moving through their own journey around power, who is really beautifully connected to their own power, they're not going to hate you for it. They're going to encourage you for it. They're going to celebrate you for it. They're going to stand beside you and cheer for you. They're going to be inspired by it. And I think that we need to stop moving through life as a manifester saying, I can only do the things that other people are comfortable with. Part of our essence is that we're here to make people uncomfortable in the most loving way. That is part of our role, that is part of what we do. And if we can't get away from that, then we need to stop trying. Okay, lesson number two, power as a manifester is experienced and expressed through influence. And others often see influence as their possibility for opportunity. Let me just, let me say that again. Our power as manifesters is expressed as influence. That is what our, our form of power is. It's the ability to influence not only other people, but to influence systems, to influence communities, to influence the very world. We hold so much influence that we are literally able to change the world. We are able to change the direction. When we express, which is through our words, right, our power comes from our expression of words from the utilization of our throat. Our throats are the things that make new worlds. When a manifester expresses our words make worlds. We don't need to look any further than just the history of manifesters in order to understand this and see how it plays out. On a very, I think clarifying, but also alarming front, we really see how we have these significant markers through history from manifesters who have exerted their power as influence. Hitler is one of the greatest examples. Hitler was incredibly influential, incredibly influential. And as a result, he, I mean, Hitler, he didn't operate alone. The mass genocide that he created was not his alone. He was certainly one of the architects. He was the visionary. He was the voice that called people in, but there were thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who were influenced by Hitler and followed what he did. By the same token, we can see that in really, really positive ways. We can see through the lens of, like, free to Carlo, incredibly influential. We can see that through the lens of Jane Austen, incredibly influential. These people literally changed industries. These people have had an enormous impact on the future, through times in which they don't even live. They express their power as influence. And that's what manifesters do. But one of the flip sides of influence is that it's a bit of a beacon. Influence is kind of like a flame that I think that draws people in. Because people see influence as a potential for their own opportunity. They go, "Whoa, you're influential. I want to sidle up to that. I want to be part of that. Because maybe I can piggyback on your influence." We have an obsession about this in our society. In our current social framework, we are obsessed with people who can wield influence. We have companies that pay influences. We don't have an entire subcategory of workers called influences. Literally, just people who share their opinions to influence the opinions and purchasing patterns of other people. Companies pay these people to piggyback onto their influence. Oh, you have influence, we could either try to create our own influence or we can just kind of hijack yours and use your influence. This is unfortunately even the way that we experience politics. Politics is a big game of influence. It's all about what words you use and how you craft the narrative and how you influence people to either believe what you're saying or not believe what you're saying, right? So influence is a huge mode of power in our current society and manifestors really are actually the arbiters of influence because we are the only ones who are effortlessly influential. And so I think that we have a bit of a, I don't know, we kind of have this cloudiness, right? This misinterpretation around our power, we think that as manifestors being powerful, what that means is that we're loud and we're bold and we're so big and, you know, we take up all of this space when actually we're talking about manifesting generators. When we say that, the manifestor expression of power is often quiet and it's incredibly influential. The manifestor expressing their power is the person who's like, I could, I could influence the entire room before you even noticed. I could influence an entire system and then you will see what happens when that system gets influenced. Manifestors are, I guess you could say that we are the original influences, whether OG influences and we continue to hold that place. And that is something that I think that we should be proud of and a journey that we need to take as manifestors to move through what is our relationship with influence. Do you trust your own influence? What I have learned through this, though, through really noticing and observing and healing through a lot of the, you know, my belief systems around being an influential person this year, is that, of course, that's the way through which we impact. That's how we impact others by influencing them. That's how we impact, you know, places and things, it's by influencing them. And when we succeed in doing that, it looks really extreme to other people. It does, it looks really extreme to other people because we didn't do it in a way that everybody else does it. We do it without force. We do it with this kind of quietness. We almost do it with subtlety, except that the impact is not subtle. And manifestors is just going about doing their thing and it's influencing everybody around them. And there's a jealousy, I think, that comes along with doing that because other people want to have that ability and they don't, it's not natural and it's not effortless for them. It has to be really conscientious for them. The way that I noticed that in my world this year was that, you know, I put a lot of time and space and effort into collaborations throughout 2023 and 2024, especially I collaborated on, I think it was like over a hundred projects, whether that was, you know, collaborating with people to create resources for the manifesto community, whether it was, you know, collaborating on creating content series, whether it was, you know, speaking on panels, whatever that may be, I was really dedicated to collaboration and to creating collaborative voice. When I got to 2025, I was like, I need a break from having so much collaboration. It's stretched my muscles in a really great way. I learned so much about working with other people, about sharing space, about honoring people's creative processes, about, you know, sharing resources, financial agreements, those things. But when I got to 2025, I was like, we're doing this really big kind of overhaul of the business model here and I need to approach collaboration in a bit of a different way because now collaboration is woven into the very fabric of every single thing that I do and I'm still a manifesto, right, I'm still independent and so collaboration can feel sometimes fatiguing for me. Ironically though, I think because I stepped into a greater expression of my influence and I owned more of my influence this year, I received more requests for collaboration and sometimes even demands for collaboration from people this year than I have ever before. So almost like in all of these years combined, I have never experienced this volume. We have been having people email, DM, comment like repeatedly, repeatedly about things because they want to, they want to collaborate. What that felt like to me over time, at first I was like, oh gosh, look at all of these opportunities and then I was like, wait, why does this not feel like opportunity? You know what, I think that a lot of people are doing it very earnestly and very beautifully and there's great intent in it and I was like, what's the story that keeps showing up here? And to me that story that kept showing up was that there was this desire to use my influence and use my resources that come as part of that influence to make success happen for other people because they felt like they couldn't do it themselves. The story that I was receiving over and over and over again was I created this thing. This was a lot of this was coming from other manifestors, right? Like I created this thing, I created this product, I created this concept and I want you to collaborate so that you market it, so that you sell it, so that you make it successful. Right and on one level that told me people see my ability to market and sell us something really influential, which it is, right, because I put a lot of effort and a lot of growth and a lot of intention into that. But on another measure what that also told me was that they feel like they couldn't do that themselves and that's definitely not how it came out, right? How it came out and this haven't, I'm talking about dozens of occasions where I saw almost this like word for word scripting from people, which was I'm a manifestor so I don't have to do that. You know, my only job is to like create the thing. I don't then have to market and sell the thing. But the irony of it was that they were then pushing it into my space as a manifestor with a whole team of manifestors over here and saying, so therefore it's your responsibility. So I was like this is really interesting. This is a really interesting reflection around our ownership of influence and our dedication and our willingness to learn the skills in how to wield that influence in a business space. That's a whole other topic, right? The point that I want to make here is that what I saw playing out from this story is that when I would say no, because I had to say no to probably 97% of these requests. We've been fielding a lot of nose this year. We've been using a lot of boundaries this year and trying to understand the best way to use our resources because we cannot say yes to everybody. I made a couple of, I think, poor calls in terms of resource using usage so early in the year where I said yes to some collaborations that were in this storyline and were in this tone and used a lot of the resources to benefit other people and did not benefit the business. And so the business suffered as a part of that. But what I started to notice was when I started saying no to people and when I started saying I really believe in what you've created and you need to be able to market it yourself. You need to be able to connect to your own influence and your own expression of power and bring that out into the world and it will succeed. Is that many of those people then got really upset? There were a handful of them that even then left the community because I had turned down their collaboration pitch. There were people who responded with, you know, you're wrong. That's fine. That's fine, right? Like people who are allowed to disagree with your opinion. There were people who responded with, well, if it's not this, we just need to collaborate on something that's come up with another idea. There was this kind of desperation around like, I just need to have access to your influence. And then everything will be fine for me. And I was like, ah, this is, say I'm seeing this story play out. I'm seeing how influence as a manifesto is something that other people really view as an opportunity and as something that they feel they need to get themselves connected to in order to express their own influence when in truth as manifestors we are our own influences. Throughout this, I mean, just as a little aside, I think that when we really understand the scope and the capacity of our own influence, boundaries get really important because boundaries really, really get tested when you have influence because you get a lot more people requesting. You get a lot more people demanding to be part of that influence and it forces you to acknowledge your needs. What are your needs and are your resources being used to meet your needs as the priority because if you don't do that, you're going to get used and other people will benefit while you suffer and that is not a harmonious relationship. That is not collaboration as collaboration should be. Collaboration should be something where both parties benefit, not where one party is getting all of the benefit and the other party is taking all of the risk. So boundaries became a really clear part of this picture but it was boundaries in their truest form which is derived from what are my needs in this and how are my needs being met, what boundaries do I need to place here to ensure that my needs are met, which leads me to my third lesson, little segue into the third lesson. Is that as a manifestor you cannot express your power if you're not meeting your needs. But that I didn't say if your needs aren't being met, I said if you are not meeting your needs, you. are not meeting your own needs. Self-abandonment is huge for manifestors. It's like neon red lights shining in the sky. Huge, massive self-abandonment is an enormous wound for manifestors because many of us, if not all of us, arguably have learned self-abandonment as a form of self-protection. We've learned self-abandonment as a way of protecting ourselves from other's reactions to our energy. I'll abandon my own needs, no worries. I won't take up more space. I won't do anything that will make you uncomfortable. I'm submissive. I don't, I'm here. I don't, I don't have any needs. I will just use my ability to help you feel better. This is how, as manifestors, we get caught in these arrangements where we are using all of our initiating ability for other people. We're using our ability to initiate and to create for other people's businesses, for people that we're in friendship with, people that we're in romantic relationship with, for members of our family. We are using all of our initiating ability for others. They, they enormously benefit from it, and we're self-abandoning the entire time, and then we're wondering why we're resentful, and we're wondering why we're burnt out, and we're wondering why, you know, I have these creative urges, but I feel like I never have time to initiate them, or I don't even feel any creative urges. Right? Self-abandonment is a really kind of distorted, horrible, wounded way that we move through the world. And what it signifies is, at some point, my needs were too much for, for someone else. And so I learned to abandon them. We need to come home to our needs. We need to come home to firstly, recognising what our needs are. And then secondly, prioritising our needs as something that we, we need to meet for ourselves, that it is not, in fact, the responsibility of others to meet our needs. It's our responsibility to meet our needs for ourselves. And the reason that this is so integral to the journey around power and the relationship around power is that if our needs aren't met, we aren't safe. And if we aren't safe, no other power can be expressed. Nothing can be expressed from a place where we don't feel safe. We need to cultivate this kind of that of safety, this huge ability to stay in connection to our sense of safety if we are expressing our power. And in order to feel safe, we need to have our needs met. So many manifestors are like pushing to connect more to their power, right? This, like, we all feel that sense of, like, I'm here for something big. I'm worried that my life is just going to be mediocre, that it's not amounting to anything, because I came here for something significant and to have this really significant impact. So I feel that sense of power, but I'm struggling to connect to it. And I'm struggling to express it. I'm struggling to identify myself as somebody who has that power. And how do I use it? And how do I wield it? What does that look like? And how do I even feel it? So so many manifestors are like pushing to connect to that power and to express that power without seeing that the reason that they're not connected to their power, the reason that they are struggling to express their power is because they don't feel safe. And the reason that they don't feel safe is because they're not meeting their own needs. Your needs are the priority. Your needs don't have to be justified. Your needs don't have to be explained. Your needs are your needs. They are your basic minimum human requirement. You get to have your needs met and you are the one that meets all of your needs. And if you are in an environment where that is being challenged, with you are in an environment where you are meeting your own needs and somebody is trying to take that away from you, you are in the wrong environment. You are around the wrong people. The truth is that you are actually in control of your own safety. Because you're in control of meeting your own needs. And that's the key here. That's the key. So if power and expression of it has been something that you're like I can I can feel that I just kind of can't quite get to it. You need to look at your relationship to safety and you need to look at your relationship to needs. Are you meeting your own needs? Do you even know what your needs are? Are you utilizing boundaries to uphold those needs? Are you meeting those needs for yourself even when it upsets other people for you to meet those needs? Okay this segues again beautifully into my fourth lesson is that it actually is safe to be misunderstood as a manifested. This has been a bit of a like a surprise curveball for me this year. I think that you know we are we're so experienced in being misunderstood as manifestors. And it becomes a bit of a I don't know it becomes a bit of like the backbone of our suffering. I think that we're like oh I'm always going to be misunderstood. People always misunderstand me. I try to do things perfectly and they still misunderstand and they still get upset. And it's because we have this relationship to taking responsibility for other people's reaction to us, right? That's actually what this is about. It's not that there is an issue with being misunderstood. It's that when people have misunderstood us that has caused reactivity from them that has hurt us. And then we have said well I'm responsible for ensuring that that doesn't happen. This is on its lightest level people pleasing. On its deepest level this is a forning response in trauma. For me I think it's definitely been both of those things. It's also been because I have an undefined emotional center. And so I get overwhelmed by other people's discomfort. I also have a triple definition of gate 50 and the shadow of gate 50 is taking too much responsibility for other people and for the collective as a whole. So for me this has been a thing, right? For me this has been like a multi-layered journey and it didn't matter how much I heard or read Instagram posts or blogs or podcasts or whatever about like it's okay for people to misunderstand you like it's totally fine. I was like no but the truth is that when people misunderstand me I get really harmed. So it's not safe for people to misunderstand me. I need to make sure that they do understand me. I feel like I really in my own personal movement through this. I feel like I was not able to tackle this and how it was showing up for me until I realized that I had to stop making a comfortable space for people around me to continue in their wounded patterns. That's how this was manifesting for me. That's how it was presenting was that you know people whether they were my friends, my family, in my team, people that I was collaborating with, even people in their community, in the audience, amongst the comments and stuff, is that when I saw their wounded patterns coming up, when I saw their conditioning, when I saw you know their patterns playing out. So my response was to say okay I have to make a really really comfortable space for them to move through that. I have to make it really comfortable and really easy for them to be able to to feel that and to move through it because I don't want to make them feel more hurt. I don't want to make them feel more comfortable which is in part being very you know overly self-sacrificial to serve others but it's it's also about self-protection because if other people are comfortable than I, I remain most of the comfortable as well. Except I was like taking all of their discomfort, I was like you know cushioning all of that like I'll feel all of your discomfort for you. I'll soften all of these corners where you would normally have consequences from your wounded patterns playing out, from your conditioning playing out. I will take all of that for you so that you've remained comfortable in the hope that if you're comfortable then you will address this. It's almost actually a little bit alarming I think to realize like how long that pattern was at play for me and how much I didn't see it until this year when I went through that several times over with with people in my team and I like it was me that was suffering all of the consequences. I was like but my bottom line financially speaking is being hit and the operations of the business are being hit and my capacity for expression is being hit and my emotional capacity is being hit like I'm the one who's kind of absorbing all of the impact of all of this while others don't even appear to be moving they don't even know I'm making all this comfortable space for them. They aren't healing their wounds they aren't stopping their conditioning because there was no reason for them to. It was a bit of a bumpy ride I'll be honest it was a bumpy ride for me to undo this for me to start stepping out of it and and it was very confronting for a number of people that I was doing this in real time with for me to kind of suddenly shift gears and I did inform and I think that that's softened it quite a bit but you know it's shifting gears from like well I've previously been this almost like this therapist here for you for you to just continue doing what you're doing and now I'm moving to his here's what I'm seeing of your wound and you can agree with that or disagree with that right it's not not about whether I'm right or wrong in what I'm seeing it's just about this is how I'm being impacted by your expression right now and so I'm going to place boundaries around that and I'm not going to be present for that and the discomfort that comes from that the awkwardness that comes from that is going to yours and it's going to sit in your camp. I saw some really beautiful experiences of that where people really took that and said, "Wow, now that I feel the discomfort, like now that I feel the consequences, yeah, I've really got to do something about this." And I saw some really challenging results of that where people got really upset about that and people were really accusatory to me about, you know, being, like, not holding space for them, right? And as a four, six, like, that's always the way these things are going to come through for me, it's always going to be relational. I even just saw this recently when we, it was a couple of weeks ago or a week or so ago at the time of recording, when I had, I wrote a post about, like, a disagreement that I had with a friend and I was actually talking about shame for manifestors. I was talking about how we need to grow through our ability to hold shame on an interpersonal level as manifestors that we tend to try to initiate others to feel the shame that we don't want to feel for ourselves and the post just was one of those ones that got kind of taken in a completely different lens. There was an aspect of race in the story as well. That was very, I think, hard for people. That was very hard for people and I'm not just talking about people of color. That was also really hard for white people too and it became, of course, a conversation about race instead of a conversation about shame, which ironically people were using shame as a tactic to make me stop what I was talking about. What I learned through that, it was something that I already knew when I think I solidified through that experience and having those exchanges was that the way that I wanted to meet that, even though it's not what I was receiving, I wanted to meet that with openness, with integrity and with kindness, right? I wanted to meet the commentary with curiosity and without feeling the need to defend myself, without absorbing the shame that other people were trying to push back onto me. There was a lot of conversation that happened around that. I spoke to a lot of people. I will say disappointingly I think out of about 50 comments, there was only one that actually that felt to me like it was open and that it was kind. Everything else was just people looking at things through their own lens. Whether they were being supportive of me or not supportive of me, it was people looking at things through their own interpretation and their own lens as to whether what I was saying felt good to them or what I was saying, felt triggering to them. There was a lot of projecting on me about what my character was, about what my values were, and I thought this is a really beautiful opportunity for me to express from what I know my values are. My core value is integrity. Do I live the way that I say that I live? Am I the person that I tell myself that I am? Am I the person that I want to be in this world? That is a person that meets things with curiosity, that meets things with openness, that meets things with kindness, that is not accepting of abuse, but is understanding that other people can speak with unprocessed emotion, and that's not actually about me. It can be an invitation to have further conversation. What I was really, really proud of as a result of that was that there were a number of connections that got formed out of that. There were a number of like initiations that happened for new things to be brought forward. It created a great space eventually for conversation about inclusion of the variety of experiences that manifestors have, that manifestors who are also people of color have a unique experience, that manifestors who are either male or female have a particular experience that manifestors who have different sexual identity or gender identity have a particular experience. We have all of these different lenses through which we experience being a manifestor, and now there is space for more resources to be initiated in a really almost more individualized way for that. And I not met that conversation, had I not met that experience with curiosity and with openness and with integrity, then that would not have been the result of that. What that really solidified for me is that, do you know what I just got really misunderstood by a whole lot of people? I just got a lot of stuff thrown at me, a lot of emotions, a lot of criticism, a lot of accusation. I did have some people who were unfortunately abusive, they were warned, they did not stop, they were removed from the community as a result. What I really learned was, it is actually safe to be misunderstood because I'm all right. Like I'm safe because I understood myself, I understood what I was speaking about, I understood, you know, what I was moving through and I don't feel that I need to be perfect or fully formed or stuck to some pathway of only speaking about certain things, I had people who were like, how do you speak about this and not just stick to manifesto things and I was like, well, I'm a manifesto and I'm experiencing this, so they're for it's a manifesto thing. You know, like this was a really, really valuable lesson for me in the overall picture of power because being misunderstood is not the damage that we think it is. Being misunderstood is not the life-destructing, the life-destroying experience that we think that it is. What is destructive to us, what is harmful for us is when we take responsibility for how other people are feeling and behaving about misunderstanding us. When we really come to terms with the way that they're misunderstanding me is just an expression of how they're viewing themselves, it's just an expression of the filters through which they have received what I'm doing and this is an opportunity for something new to be initiated that perhaps I didn't expect. Maybe this was the thing that was being initiated all along but that was, I just didn't see it before I went into it. That is how we change the gears around being misunderstood. They say, I don't care if you misunderstand me because your misunderstanding is an expression of how you're filtering things through your lens. So the way that you feel about it is not actually my responsibility. I can choose to meet this through a lens of curiosity that says, why? What's the purpose of this? What good things can we create out of this? How can I use my influence in this space through my integrity to create something wonderful here? Okay, fifth and final lesson about, I just had a little brain moment, I was like, what's the lesson about? This is what I learned about power this year, right? And I think that this is definitely a huge one that is not being taught at all. This is not being discussed at all for manifestors and it's blown my mind all year long that people are not teaching about this as part of manifestors and power. If that is manifestors, we have to reconcile with being people who create from the feminine and use the masculine to execute that creation. This is, I would say, honestly, the biggest area of untapped, unspoken to unaddressed distortion for manifestors. We either initiate from the masculine for a sense of safety and so we try to be overly controlled, we try to be overly engineered, we try to like shove everything into this kind of like suffocated basket of it has to fit into this map, this timeline, this strategy, this way. We're doing that to feel secure. And then what happens is that our creations and our initiations don't land because they've lost their life force, they've lost, they've lost the energy of them because we've literally taken all of the oxygen out of them. Or the other thing that we do as manifestors is that we initiate from the feminine. So we initiate from that place where we've received the download, we've received the urge, we hand ourselves over to it, we run rhythmically, we create and then we rest. But we don't use masculine to execute it. We don't use masculine to execute it. And so therefore it never reaches others, it never impacts them. It's not accessible to others. The masculine is this bridge, right? We initiate from the feminine for sure we create from the feminine as manifestors. We actually have a really good masterclass about this, it's called initiating from feminine energy. It's on our website, you can just head to our shop. It's just really, really good. It's a really good kind of like retake on how we initiate as manifestors. But this is what we do, we do initiate naturally from the feminine. But the masculine is the bridge that takes that creation from our space into the world where other people can receive it. The feminine is the journey around creative self-expression. It's around accepting that we can be imperfect, around transparency, around honesty, around truth, around self-connection, around love, authenticity, it's expression for the sake of expression. It's expression as a form of life, creativity as a form of life. This is the thing that anchors us to who we are as manifestors. We are divinely feminine beings. But the masculine is a journey around using structure, using strategy and using routine with discipline to express those things into the world in a way that people can actually access them. we need to do that in a way that is supportive rather than suffocating. So there is this relationship in the feminine and masculine that I think that we are screwed up in. I really think that as everything that I've observed in Manifestas as a whole, like this is a big thing for almost every single one of us, unless we've really journeyed through it. I went through this several years ago, kind of in the early days of my business, and I spent about two years just working really, really hard on this, and I created this beautiful business ecosystem around it, and then I kind of forgot, you know, it got super commonplace. I leaned too far into the masculine, right? I was like not creating from the feminine. I had these safety wounds around the feminine. I was using the masculine for security. And so when I hit this year, I was like, oh my gosh, I have to come home to this lesson. And I think that I understood this through the lens of being a manifesto in a way that I did not understand it five years ago when I first went through it six years ago, right? Because I was viewing it through the lens of what does this mean about my manifesto expression of power? And it means that I need to utilize the feminine and the masculine. And when I started to tap back into doing that again, things expanded exponentially, right? Things grew exponentially. I retained a sense of safety throughout all of this. My capacity to do more and to be more, to receive more, to give more to, I just hold more, is beyond anything that I ever thought was even possible. And we've had that reflection from the audience, right? We've had that reflection from the community with people being like, how, you know, as a manifesto, like how do you do so much? How do you create so much? I'm like, it's this relationship with the masculine and the feminine working together. I create from the space of the feminine and I use the masculine to execute it. So every energy is in its right place. Every vehicle for using that energy is in its right place. And that's a lesson that if we're going through our power as manifestors, we have to use as our baseline. Right, we have to use this as our foundation. Because of these lessons really, I think, you know, going through this year eight with all of these lessons, what that means for me is that I go into next year, which is going to be my personal year nine death endings, you know, dark night of the soul, but it's also a collective year one, it's the year of the horse as well. So next year, collectively is about new beginnings, new opportunities, new pathways, fresh starts, newness, it's the year of the horse. So we've come from the snake, which is like shedding and death and transformation and this cyclical movement through death. And we're going into the year of the horse, which is about forward momentum and push and speed and endurance. This is a big change of energy going into 2026. And the way that we experience that as manifestors is going to be unique. And for me, I go into next year because of everything that I've journeyed through this year around power. I go into next year with an incredibly strong foundation. I go into next year consciously, knowingly, intentionally, with no wounds remaining around visibility, with a capacity to experience safety in expressing my power. And in receiving more as a result of that power, I go in with a deeply loving relationship with my own ability to influence and using even more of the masculine to amplify that and to amplify the impact that it has. Because the amount that you are able to be visible in your impact, the amount that you are able to use your expression of power is directly, directly correlated to your capacity to connect to safety. Anywhere that you are feeling unsafe, whether it's in the masculine, feminine, balance, whether it's feeling unsafe to be misunderstood, whether it's feeling unsafe in your needs being met, whether it's feeling unsafe in using your influence and how others receive that, whether it's feeling unsafe in how people respond to you expressing your power. Anywhere that you are feeling unsafe is going to show up in how visible you feel you can be in your expression of power. This is like this, this is kind of the, I guess like the big, the big shiny, golden, diamondy covered like sparkling stepping stone that steps you out of being in a healing journey as a manifesto, steps you out of being in this journey where I'm like, oh, I'm just constantly like looping through the same things, healing the same things over and over and I never quite get to expression of power. The movement from that place of healing into the place of leading, which is where power comes in as a manifesto when you are able to lead and influence from your place of power. This, this is that step. It's safety and it's, I mean, these are just five of the lenses, five of the listens that can come up during that journey. There are so many more that can come to the forefront, but these are five that you can start with. And as a manifesto, this is like the mountain top for you. And we are able to step into leadership with our expression of power. And I'm not talking about traditional roles of leadership. I'm talking about leadership of influence that we are willing and safe to influence others in a really beautiful, positive world altering way through the expression of our power. That's the mountain top for us as a manifesto. Like that's the peak of who we are and what we do as manifestos. This is like, I guess, like the upper levels, I was going to say, this is like, I think the highest embodiment for our manifesto operating system. This is what we actually came here to do. This is how we came to operate. This is the final stage in that system. Right? There is a system. There is a journey. There is like a set of steps for us to take to doing it. And that's what we're going to be focusing on in 2026. We're going to be focusing on the way of the new manifesto. How do we do that? What is our manifesto operating system? What are the steps that we take to get there, acknowledging that there is no shame in any of those steps that we are allowed to be wherever we are in any of those steps, and that we are also allowed to to move ourselves into a place where we can be fully safe and fully embodied in that expression of power. This has been a lot of talking. I've been interrupted about seven times. No joke. I've had to pause recording seven times throughout this. Trying to not let my manifesto anger just have like, you know, it's moment in the sun for all of the interruptions. But I've made it to the end. And I just, I hope that this lands for you in a way that's really inspiring. I hope that this lands for you in a way that is catalytic and that you, it activates you into, to a new movement of yourself in 2026 because wolf, the energy is giving us a forward momentum and we ought to jump on that wave and we've got to ride it and this is going to be a beautiful year to be a manifesto. It's going to be a beautiful year to be part of the manifesto community. Thank you so much for being part of this year with me. I know we've made a lot of changes this year and I am really grateful for how many of you have trusted that and have been willing to like ride along with it. Even though some of you were like, oh, I don't know if I like all of it, but you stuck around. And 2026 is, it's going to be another adventure together. It's going to be another journey together and I'm, I'm just so privileged. I'm so privileged to be a leader in this space to be an influencer and a facilitator in this space. So have a beautiful holiday season manifesto. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not. I send you all of the love for this season ahead and I will be catching up with you in 2026 in the new year where we're going to start diving into the way of the new manifesto, but as always, beloveds until then, keep hunting for purpose. That's a wrap on another episode of the hunting for purpose podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in and letting us speak into your life. We hope that you found everything that you needed by listening to this podcast episode and please remember we have many, many more episodes that you can tune into as well. The best compliment that we can receive is to be informed of our impact. So if you desire, please do share this podcast or another one publicly on your social media and tag us at the manifesto community. Sharing your thoughts on how these words have impacted you today. That brings such joy to our hearts. Thank you once again for being here and we will see you in another episode of hunting for purpose.