You’ve probably heard in Law of Attraction that feeling happy is how you manifest what you want. You might’ve been told “You can’t manifest if you feel sad.”

I used to believe this too.

10 years ago, I would have told you that I wasn’t manifesting what I wanted because I was feeling sad too much. That I wasn’t feeling happy enough. This was a time in my life when I was living in Manhattan, NYC auditioning in the professional theater world. I did a lot of forcing myself to be happy when I was actually feeling sad.

For example, there was a company I had auditioned for multiple times. Each time, they said “We love you, we just need to wait for our current actress’ contract to end, so keep coming back.” I’d come back every 4-6 months (it was a tour company, so they were required to hold auditions whether they needed them or not), and they’d gush over me and tell me how much they loved me and my work. My agent would call the next day telling me how he got an amazing email from their casting director about me.

Each time, I wouldn’t get the job. We were told this was because they already had an actress in the role on tour, and they were “just waiting” for her contract to end. I got relatively comfortable with this pattern over the 3 years it was happening.

One day, I got wind that her contract was up and she wasn’t renewing, so this amazing dream role of mine was available for hire!

Spoiler, I didn’t get the role.

About 3 days after that audition, I got an email from my agent telling me I hadn’t gotten the job. We talked on the phone about it for a while, and I remember actively taking deep breaths to literally push down the tears and sadness that was coming up.

This role was seriously what I had spent ALL of my manifesting energy focused on. I had journals full of scripts about this part, drawings, mantras, hypnosis recordings, everything you could think of. I even bought a piece of fabric that was similar to the costume on tour and would touch it every day, to act as if.

That overwhelming sadness was so visceral, I can almost feel it now. I was so convinced, though, that staying happy would manifest the things I wanted, that I refused to allow myself to feel that sadness. Any time I had any open space, the sad feeling would bubble up again. I became an absolute pro at denying myself that feeling.

Instead of feeling sad, when the feeling came up, I would pull out my list of things to be grateful for. Or I would look around and list the things that were beautiful. Or I would sit down and think of all the ways this not getting the job was a good thing. “A better role must be coming.” “It must mean that I’m going to meet my soul mate.” “Maybe it was actually a crappy job.” Things like this are what kept me out of the feelings, and forcing the happy.

What I wasn’t aware of at the time, was that by denying myself that feeling, I was sending a lot of energy to the sadness. I had to spend 5% of my every waking moment of brain power focused on keeping that sadness at bay. What that was doing was actually creating more sadness.

Obviously, forcing myself to be happy did not manifest what I wanted.

I know you came here to learn how to get happy so you can manifest, but I’m here to tell you that forcing yourself to feel happy is not going to manifest what you want.

When I learned how to feel sad, I started manifesting more of the things I wanted.

The better that I got at allowing myself to feel sad and know that it’s ok to feel sad, the better things got. I was manifesting more of the things that I wanted. People even started calling me to offer me roles without an audition! Through this process of feeling sadness, I manifested dream roles that I didn’t even know existed.

You can follow my manifesting journey here on our podcast. This episode is the beginning of my journey.

https://www.manifestingsuccessstories.com/ep-167-how-to-manifest-money-law-of-attraction/