Episode 7: The Missing Layer of Manifestation: Why Vision Boards Fail & How to Actually Get What You Want

Okay, so welcome to another unpunishable woman podcast episode and today what I'm going to be talking about with you is manifestation, okay, why it doesn't work in its current form, what it actually means, and why you will probably find it difficult to manifest whatever you want to manifest in 2020 is 2026 unless you understand your nervous system and invisible contracts, okay? I'm seeing a lot of posts and content on the internet about setting goals for 2026, about, you know, locking in, becoming who you want to become, changing and transforming your life next year, and also, yes, manifestation. And I always, every time I see this kind of content, I sit there and I just think, my goodness, there are some key missing pieces that women in particular don't understand about manifestation. And this is often the reason why women feel like failures, they feel like nothing works, they feel like they're stuck, maybe you even think you're a procrastinator, you're lazy, you're undisciplined, and it's actually usually never any of those things. So look, manifestation is everywhere, it's now become a big topic in the mainstream, on social media, and you're going to see a lot more of it, particularly as any, you know, it's December and probably nearly all of January, let's be honest, and then you'll have people doing content at the beginning of February and talking about how they've basically not followed through on any of their new years, where solutions is yet, right? And it doesn't really matter, the time of year is also irrelevant, by the way, you can choose to change your life, transform your life at any point in the year, in a month, in a week, in a day, any minutes, right? You can decide to yourself today, I am going to do something different, I'm going to be someone different, and that decision within itself is completely valid. You do not have to wait for any particular calendar or period of time to decide to live the life that you actually want to live, okay? Now, of course, traditionally vision board exercises, affirmations, goal setting workshops, you know, there's so many things that we often are recommended or encouraged to do in order to identify our desires, think about what it is that we want, set the intentions for what it is that we want to have be or experience, but these things alone are not enough, okay? And what you'll find is you will make incremental marginal progress, but it will never feel like it can stick and stay. If manifestation were the way it's currently taught, far more women would already be living the lives that they envision, all right? And as somebody who has, I suppose, I don't even use the word manifest in my own life very often, but that's the term that everyone uses. If I have personally manifested so many things in my life, whether it was money, a car that I wanted, an apartment, living in New York, the body I'm in now, all of these things I've been able to realize, actualize in reality, in the 3D, because of the things that I've done that I'm about to share with you. Let's just take a moment, though, because let's talk about how manifestation is commonly taught right now, like I say, affirmations, visualisation, okay? Vision boards acting as if, so you'll see content where people are saying you need to act as if you're, you are who you want to be, you need to think like her, you need to do the things that she would do, all right? So that's kind of very much about embodiment and embodying that future person, goal setting, planning rituals. Now, these things by themselves are not wrong. They are just insufficient. It's basically like when you think about like a nutritious meal on a plate, there are some things missing. Basically, there are some key food groups missing from the plate when we talk about manifestation, or when manifestation at the moment is taught and discussed, there are some key food groups missing from the plate. Because what happens is, or what is happening is, the tools that are often presented to you and shared are, they assume that your nervous system is neutral. It assumes that your nervous system is regulated, and it's not. For so many people, their nervous system is not regulated. And so, as you can imagine, doing any of these things, whether it's visualisation, vision board work, on top of a dysregulated nervous system, isn't going to help you. And like I say, even if you see incremental marginal change, you'll find one you oscillate, and you don't feel like it's consistent. You don't feel like you've actually moved or stepped forward into a new reality that you can actually maintain. And so, here's the missing layer. And you've heard me talk about this probably so many times, but the missing layer is identifying, well, let's take a step back. You need to be aware that everyone's nervous system, particularly your women, is obeying invisible contracts. In case you need to be aware of the invisible contracts, you need to identify what invisible contracts are at playing your life, and then you need to break those invisible contracts. And that allows you to regulate your nervous system so that you can manifest what you want out of life. This is really key. The sequence is important here. Now, what are invisible contracts? Now, I've done a whole episode that I deep dive into invisible contracts. So please go and listen to that episode. I've also written in long form on the substack account about invisible contracts, but invisible contracts are unspoken, inherited agreements that our nervous system has made with power and systems of power, specifically, with safety, belonging and survival. And these contracts are often conditioned and socialized into our bodies as women by systems of power, like family, culture, religion, my patriarchy. And this conditioning has been happening since we were born. And what happens is these contracts and agreements, okay, basically train us to believe, train the body to believe that unless, unless you do XYZ, and I'm going to go into some examples of what some of these contracts look like for women, unless you do XYZ, you will be punished. There will be a cost to pay. And often those punishments, consequences and costs are accompanied by rejection, okay, criticism, exposure, aggression, anger, being ostracized, being shunned, being perceived as difficult, being perceived as thinking too much of yourself, demanding, masculine. So some examples look like, if I succeed, I will be punished. This is literally what your body believes. This is the invisible contract at play. If I rest, I am unsafe. If I outgrow my family, my friends, my, my partner, my mother, I will be rejected. If I am visible, I will be criticized. I will be exposed. I will be vulnerable. If I want more, I am selfish. Okay, these contracts, as I say, are formed through your family systems, religion, patriarchy, culture, race, class conditioning. So you cannot affirm or vision board or visualize your way out of a contract that lives inside your body, inside your nervous system, especially if it still believes that contract to be true and right. So remember, when we're talking about this nervous system, we're talking about that system within your body, the communication system that has classified things as either safe or as a threat. And so when you try to do something new, different or uncertain, like set a goal for maybe more money, changing your job, living a healthier lifestyle, having more rest, having more peace in your life. When you try to do any of the things that might be new, different or uncertain, your nervous system has been trained and conditioned to obey the invisible contracts that play in your life that have told you as a woman that you will be safer, accepted, more approved. If you stay where you are right now, if you don't get too big, don't get too visible, don't speak too much, don't speak at all, don't speak out, don't acknowledge your desires, but nevertheless, don't acknowledge your desires or indeed feed them, meet them, realize them. And this is the real important piece for you to understand here. Yeah, manifestation, any kind of manifestation or goal setting fails, not because you don't have the right idea, you don't have the right intentions, but it's because of your capacity level, the capacity level right now within your nervous system. Yeah, because your nervous system is the date keeper of safety, expansion, visibility, pleasure, rest and receiving. That's literally the key to understand here. Everything you want in life, the your capacity to hold and receive and experience those things sits inside your nervous system. But if your nervous system, like most women, like me, all of us, all of us experience this has been conditioned to obey certain invisible contracts that are designed to keep you safe, because the body is intelligent, it believes it's keeping you safe, then you will not be able to take the aligned action, even after you've identified your desire, you can't take the aligned action consistently enough because your body does not have the capacity to receive the things that you want. So some examples might be maybe money shows up, and by the way, money can show up in your life in a various ways. It could be a refund, someone paying you back, a free gift. It can be a tax rebate that does happen to people believe it or not. It can be that you get a better job, you get a promotion, you get a salary increase, or if you're in business, you make more sales, right? But what can happen is your body contracts, and then maybe you sell sabotage, you know, something that used to happen to me a lot is I used to make sales, and then I would delay issuing invoices. And so what would happen is I'd get to a deadlam where I needed to pay bills, needed to pay staff, and I had an issued invoices. That was my nervous system. That was entirely nervous system work, because I had not built the capacity to feel safe in receiving money, especially more money than I had ever received before, right? Some people freeze or delay when it comes to opportunities. I used to get emails from corporate organisations saying we want to work with you, and I'd have like an inbox with three or four emails that I hadn't opened in night 48 hours, which is absurd. Or maybe love is coming into your life through various ways, whether it's friendship, platonic or even relational, romantic love, and you disassociate, you withdraw. That's most that's all nervous system. Or maybe ease starts emerging in your life. Maybe you've been resting more. You have the opportunity to rest more, or you are receiving more help and support. So many women struggle with getting a cleaner, getting mill prep, having a personal assistant. Because what happens is they start to feel guilty. They start to panic because they're receiving support. So it's really important to realise nine times I tend if not all of the time your nervous system, understanding that your nervous system is what in many ways dictates whether or not you are able to have and do an experience to things you want, whether or not you can manifest whatever it is you want to manifest. The key sits inside the nervous system at capacity level. But you have to be aware that there are invisible contracts that are governing almost what your system has said is safe and what is not safe. And it's trying to keep you safe. It's trying to prevent you from having to endure consequences or punishment. But you have to remember those invisible contracts are conditions. Yeah, they are conditioning. Not all of it is real. Now some of it you'll hear. I've talked in many episodes about how real consequences and punishment can actually be for women. So I'm not saying you're imagining it. What I am saying is that it is possible there is a way for you to identify the invisible contract, break the contract and start regulating your nervous system so that you are able to feel anxiety, feel fear, maybe even identify okay, I am going to have to go through a consequence here. Maybe a friendship might change in terms of dynamic. Maybe I'm going to be labeled as selfish and still do the thing that you need to do in order to manifest what it is that you want. And I have to say at this point, remember nervous system regulation is not about being calm. It's about being able to stay present in your body, commit to who you want to be. Be sure about your right to have what you want while breaking the contract. I've said this before, breaking invisible contracts is gory work. It is not easy. It's not in a place of calm that you learn how to regulate your nervous system. No, no, no, no, no. You have to know that when you're experiencing resistance and push back and criticism from people in your life, when things seem like they're falling apart, that is the work. That is the regulation. That challenge is the way. It's not in the way it is the way. And this is one of the reasons when people often ask me like, how do I have that conversation with my mother, with my partner, with a sibling, with a friend? You can't avoid it because you are not in control of how other people react. The only thing you can do is be certain within yourself that you have a right to liberate yourself. You have the right to break these invisible contracts that are basically shrinking you in your own life. You have the right to learn how to regulate your nervous system so that yes, you might feel scared. I'm sure nervous and you're still going to know, I deserve this thing. And you're going to take the aligned action. You're going to go through that consequence. It is not about feeling nothing or feeling calm all of the time, or it always being easy. No, it's about being able to stay present and committed to yourself, even when it's challenging. And with time, your nervous system starts relabeling, reclassifying things as safe. So for example, rest, maybe you want to have more rest. With time, as you stick with it, your nervous system will begin to start relabeling, reclassifying, you resting for example, I don't know what I'm Monday morning, as safe. It will not perceive that to be a threat any longer. Now at this point, I do want to talk about something because you may or may not have seen one of the most popular masterclasses I was running back in, or I think it was November, early November 2025. And one of my most popular digital products is to create your future self product. And essentially in January of this year, I knew that I wanted to transform my life radically. And one of the things that I've always wanted to do was speak to my future self. Now the backstory to this is I've been in a trained coach for many, many years. And one of the more popular coaching frameworks out there that you get taught when you get trained properly in how to be a good coach is what they call the B do have model. And essentially it was popularized by Stephen Covey. And essentially what it teaches you is that in order for you to do and have the things you want, you have to be the person who does and has those things, right? And the B part is about your identity, who you think you are, what you think you deserve, etc. Now the challenge with that though is that that model is often taught as if it is possible for you to automatically lock into who you need to be. Now my theory and thought as you know is that especially for women who you are right now is often dictated, influenced and governed by who you've been told you should be as a woman. Who you've been told you are allowed to be, okay? That is often dictated by these invisible contracts that require you and your body to obey social conditioning that comes from systems of power like patriarchy, like religion, like culture, like family, etc, etc. And so most often women don't actually know who they are right now because actually who they are is made up of invisible contracts primarily. And so you have to return to who you are or who you were before the conditioning, before the socialization, before those invisible contracts of obedience were ruling your body. And so what I did initially in January 2025 is I am a big artificial intelligence user, have been for a good couple of years now. So I created my future self using AI and I ran a whole masterclass on this. I started selling this digital product which people love, by the way, but over the last three months in particular, since I've really been talking about invisible contracts and writing about invisible contracts, I realized something. It is very difficult to create your future self unless you are aware of the invisible contracts that play in your body, unless you identify them and you break them. Now I have done that subconsciously and consciously over the course of this year, except for the fact that when I built that digital products and started selling it, I didn't talk about invisible contracts in that product. And so what I have done recently is really involve my thinking and articulation around future self. How you become the person you want to become, it's not just about this writing a list of what you want and who you want to be, your ethics and values and how you want your life to feel with the future, you have to, before that, you have to figure out what invisible contracts are at play in your body. What is your nervous system's existing capacity to receive? Because remember, receiving is everything, right? So it's money, joy, all of the things you might want to receive. You may even have, I don't know, a car on your list, an engagement on your list. It can be any of those things. That is all receiving. It requires you to be able to receive. It requires your body, your nervous system to be able to receive. So that means that you have to identify and break invisible contracts that you are obeying that had told your body that you are safer, staying just the same, number one, or and or not having those things. Okay, so when I used to ask myself, what would my future self do? That felt quite abstract and vague and unreachable? Why? Because in between me, as I am today, and my future self were these invisible contracts, these invisible contracts that were, you're telling me, my body, you are going to be punished as shanti. You are going to have to face consequences or a cost that you can't pay if you become that person. So I had to remove those invisible contracts. I had to create new contracts that were unpunishable. And so for me, the shift happened when I realized I cannot become my future self. I cannot become who I want to be so I can have how I can do and have all the things I want, unless I shed the contracts of my past self and my existing self. So that meant I didn't need to become someone new in a way, right? I needed to stop obeying what I was never meant to believe and carry in the first place. And I guess where am I thinking as really evolved on this? Okay, as a writer and a kind of cultural critic is that it isn't about becoming someone new necessarily, even though it can feel new to us. It is about removing who we never were. I'm being aware of these invisible contracts, identifying the ones that apply to us and then removing them and replacing them with new contracts that are unpunishable. That is the work. And I wanted to share that in this particular episode because I will be updating now that create your future self product with this kind of updated realization. And of course, you know, this is why manifestation can feel very abstract and challenging for so many people. This is the unsaid part because you can sit down and do a Pinterest board with all of the visual imagery and portrayal in depiction of the life you want to live in a year's time, two years time. But unless you are aware of the fact that you will have to shed and break these invisible contracts that are really kind of almost, you know, camouflaging. Okay, who you really are. That's what's in between you today and who you want to be next year or in a month's time or next week, it is the invisible contracts at play. And those, that's what needs to be shared. It's not about adding in affirmations. It's not about adding in visualisation. You can do that, but your body knows what's true and what isn't in many ways. Okay, and so you can visualise yourself on a yacht in Greece, in MikaNos or you like. But if you've still got invisible contracts that are governing how you see yourself right now and what feels safe and what your body can allow you to receive, you're not going to be on that yacht in MikaNos. And one thing you need to be aware of for people who say that they have manifested things in their life, like I can honestly say, yeah, actually I have manifested things in my life subconsciously and or consciously though I have broken invisible contracts to get there. Right? I had to break the contract that was in my life that said I needed to be a helper, a saver, a rescuer and a fixer to my family and friends, which meant that I didn't move to New York. I wanted to move to New York over a decade ago. I always knew energetically I wanted experience living in New York and there were many opportunities, particularly in my 20s when I was child free. I'm still child free now, but I was younger. I was healthy. I was child free. I could have moved to New York. Why didn't I? I can tell you instance after instance after instance where I stayed because of the fact that my identity was that of being present and supported and helping family and helping people I thought were family. High runically as you will know how it goes, people will let you know real quick with their actions, behaviors that actually you have misunderstood your significance in their lives. Okay? So time and time and time again every time I said like, this is the year I'm going to move to New York and travel the world, I would stay. I broke that invisible contract. November, 2024, I was sitting in my flat at my desk and I said, you know what? I am leaving and I booked the flight to New York because I recognize there's no reason for me to be sitting in the UK. No, that's not my role. Break that invisible contract. And I can tell you so many other things that I've manifested in my life as it were. And it's because I broke the invisible contract. On a basic level, I know I've spoken about this before because you might, as I say, some people want a car or a holiday, right? I've got a dream holiday in mind. You know, I wanted a Range Rover. I used to live in Kent and I used to kind of drive into London and I needed a car that was sturdy. But I also wanted a car that when I looked out at the drive, I actually loved the car. I liked looking at it. I liked being in it. And so I remember when I was looking for cars and in the back of my head it kept coming up. People would say things, I relic the around that time. Why do you need that car? You're single in your childhood. Why do you need a Range Rover? Right. Why would you get a car that gets noticed? I remember when the car arrived, they brought it on one of those big lorry things in the back of the lorry. And I lived on a close, okay? I lived in a close and like a little kind of one of those new developments. But it was quite, you know, compacted the parts of the clothes that I lived in. So this big lorry comes down and is winding down the little closed streets. People were looking outside the windows. And then of course the guy has to maneuver the lorry to park it in a certain way to get the car out the back of the lorry and then put it on my drive. Honestly, I could have died inside. And the comments I used to get, even the guy, very sweet guy to be fair, he was just like, oh, this is your car. I was a young black woman, you know, in my headscarf, mind you and my house clothes coming outside to collect my car and take the keys from him. Like an offer I had that car for the whole year I had it because I had it, I run it actually, I had it for like a year and a half before I moved to New York. People would make comments, it got to the point where sometimes I'd park down the road and around the corner. Again, invisible contract at play, right? You need to stay small, be humble, be modest, don't let people think that you think too much of yourself. Yeah? Bring them out of pay for that car in cash outright myself. This is what I mean, I manifested the money, I bought the car in cash, the car was there within, I think it was like three weeks, it wasn't very long at all. And then I was driving my car, right? I had manifested so many things, but at every point subconsciously and or consciously it was required me to break invisible contracts, stop obeying these rules that I was conditioned by systems of power to believe would keep me safe and protect me. That would enable me to avoid punishment or consequence. No, no, no, sometimes I just had to live and I must say, you know, a lot of people think that this is about materialism and is not. Having that car taught me to be visible, I'm not hide or shrink because it was my car, I bought the car, it belonged to me. Why should I hide it? All right, so this is really key, really, really key. Often we don't need to become someone new, we need to stop obeying what the rules, we need to stop obeying and adhering to these invisible contracts that told us who we were in the first place. The last thing I do want to cover in this episode about manifestation is a lot of these psychometric and personality tests. So you'll find a lot of people again, they enjoy any a gram, human design, strength finder, Colby, there's so many of them, right? Out there, Myers-Briggs, etc. That measure different things about you, how you think, how you take action, what your strengths are, all of that kind of stuff. And they build up a kind of profile that people start using as gospel almost to guide their life. I see a lot of people who are very into human design. For example, the other thing is horoscopes, right? An astrology. Now, we have to remember that these things are somewhat limited. We can acknowledge that for some people they do indeed find them useful, and I would know there's a lot of controversy, particularly around enneagram, human design, I think those two in particular, because if you're from a faith or religion, these things are seen to be demonic or not of God, especially because unfortunately, or a lot of the kind of thought-needers, founders who created these concepts will often speak to the fact that they believe that they were given a vision, that they have this supernatural experience that enable them to come up with the concept in the first place. So, notwithstanding the fact that I appreciate the fact that lots of people who have faith backgrounds, religious backgrounds are very dubious and suspicious anyway of a lot of these kind of profiling tools. My point here is, is that many of these tools are assessing adaptations, because when you fill out those forms, when you complete those assessments, often we are completing them according to who we've been told, we are, who we think we are, and it's almost impossible for you to divorce yourself, unless you do it consciously and via nervous system work, from the conditioning and socialisation that you have had as a woman. So, quite often when people take these tests, they are nearly showing how they've adapted, okay? Speak less if you are neurodivergent, for example, right? Because that's a big topic now over the last five years, in an outside of the workplace, where people are being diagnosed as neurodivergent, and of course, being neurodivergent as a whole spectrum, it's an umbrella tan. My point is, often when we are often responding to these kind of psychometric profiling testing tools and tests, we are still only responding from the place of adaptation and the place of what we understand about ourselves at that time, and often that is largely informed and impacted and influenced by social conditioning, by invisible contracts, okay, that are often imposed upon us by systems of power. And so, the question is, would you still test the same way without the conditioning that shaped your nervous system from birth? Without the conditioning that shaped your subconscious beliefs and ideas about yourself from birth, would you still be testing in the same way? I just think that's an interesting thing to consider. So, in summary, okay, what actually creates change transformation when it comes to manifesting what you really want in life, or you have to be aware that who you are right now is often governed and dictated by invisible contracts. You need to identify the invisible contracts at playing your life right now in connection with whatever it is you want. You have to interrupt the obedience, because right now your body is obeying those contracts, and then you need to regulate your nervous system while staying present, even throughout the discomfort, even throughout some of these consequences, even throughout perceived, imagined, and real punishment. And then you have to give it time. You've got to let your identity emerge, your identity reorganize itself until receiving becomes natural, not forced. And that way, one day, and it can happen as quickly or as as as slowly as you allow it to here. But one day, yeah, you are on that yacht in Mika Noss. One day, yeah, you're in that house that you've always wanted to be in. One day, you're in the job with the working pattern that makes you feel alive. One day, you are somebody who is healthier in your body. You are able to eat in a certain way. You're able to exercise regularly. Like it's nothing, it becomes neutral to you, because receiving becomes natural. Your body has relabeled that experience, that thing as safe, because you know who you are, and you believe you deserve it, and you are choosing to become unpunishable. So manifestation isn't about wanting harder or even working harder. It's about removing what your body learned to obey, what your body has learned to fear. So I hope this is really helpful to start thinking about manifestations slightly differently, but also, look, if you want to do more of this work, so exciting, feel free to join us. There's two options for you. There's the unpunishable circle, which is our monthly meetup full of women from all over the world. You can find the details to that in the show notes, or you can join us in the unpunishable path. That is my six month coaching program, and what we do is we are working on breaking these invisible contracts, and so that you could go on to live an unpunishable life. But until next time, stay unpunishable.