America’s top celebrities are often asked about the secret to their success, and many have honestly claimed that the practice of ‘manifestation’ turned their wildest dreams into reality.
A-listers including Oprah Winfrey, Ariana Grande, Will Smith and Arnold Schwarzenegger have all said they essentially imagined what they desired most and were able to achieve it solely through positive thinking and focused goal-setting.
For comedian Jim Carrey, this meant carrying a check he wrote to himself for millions of dollars that the once-struggling actor wasn’t able to cash until finally breaking through as a top Hollywood star.
Dr Michelle Maidenberg, a licensed social worker and college professor in New York, tells the Daily Mail that manifestation starts with being very specific with what you want and then creating a vivid picture of it in your mind.
‘You want to be specific with very specific details. You want to visualize. There has to be a visualization, actually seeing it,’ she said.
‘I literally manifested the person I’m dating right now. It’s almost eerie. He’s literally exactly what I asked for.’
Maidenberg added that whatever the big goal is, you need to make sure you’re taking feasible, bite-sized steps to reach it, as dwelling on the final result can be overwhelming and makes the brain fearful of pursuing it.
Psychotherapist Michelle Maidenberg (pictured) told the Daily Mail the first two steps people need to take to manifest their dreams are form specific goals and vividly visualize them
Maidenberg explained that manifestation is a practice where you focus your thoughts, feelings and actions on what you want to achieve, believing it will come true and then rewiring the brain to take steps toward making it happen.
‘I always say that the brain is kind of like a PC. It likes specificity, and it likes goals,’ the latter of which she said provides the vital organ with something to focus on,’ she said.
Along with being very specific and creating a vivid vision of what you’re looking to achieve, Maidenberg said it is important to write down the goal repeatedly because it activates different areas of the brain connected to touch and creativity.
‘When we do more executive functioning [like writing], we’re using our left hemisphere, which is our prefrontal cortex,’ she told the Daily Mail.
‘And then we also bring in the right side of our brain, which is our creativity. All of that will help to gel whatever it is that we’re trying to accomplish.’
Carrey revealed in the 1990s that he wrote himself a $10million check for his own acting services before he rose to fame, keeping it in his wallet to visualize success daily.
Carrey also repeated verbal affirmations like ‘I’m a successful actor’ and ‘Directors want to work with me’ until he said he actually tricked himself into believing it was true – a form of deep visualization and emotional rehearsal.
In an interview with Oprah, he said the check and the constant affirmations convinced him that major directors were looking to hire him, ultimately manifesting that life-changing salary for his role in director Peter Farrelly’s hit movie Dumb and Dumber.
Jim Carrey (pictured) said he finally earned the millions he wrote on a check to himself years earlier after starring in the comedy Dumb and Dumber in 1994
Maidenberg said Carrey’s affirmations are something anyone can do to help the mind emotionally ‘feel future success’ before it arrives, creating a neurocognitive shift.
The brain rehearses the scenario, making it familiar, and then the prefrontal cortex treats it like practice for real decisions, pushing the body to crave that positive feeling.
This drives the person to take real-world actions toward making it happen in real life, as their brain wants to experience that reward again. It’s not just saying words, it’s emotionally charging them until belief builds naturally through repetition.
Grammy winner Lady Gaga, meanwhile, has long said that daily affirmations are a part of her routine, repeating phrases like ‘music is my life’ to manifest her highly successful career.
Oprah herself has practiced manifestation through vision boards and the law of attraction, visualizing her role in The Color Purple so vividly that she got a call from director Steven Spielberg offering her the part.
A vision board is a collage made up of pictures, words and images that represent your dreams, goals and desires – creating a visual map of what you want in life.
The law of attraction is the idea that ‘like attracts like,’ meaning your positive thoughts, feelings and energy can draw similar positive experiences, opportunities and outcomes into your reality.
Oprah Winfrey (pictured) has said manifestation techniques helped her land a role in Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple
Thinking of the brain like a computer, Maidenberg said the mind registers what you repeatedly ‘feed it’ and prefers order over chaos.
It naturally avoids danger and discomfort – which can lead to avoidance behaviors, such as procrastination or distracting yourself – when chasing big goals.
Through practices like visualization and mindfulness (the art of paying full attention to the present moment), people can activate the planning, focus and complex learning centers of the brain.
All of this builds new neural pathways, meaning the brain gets better at pursuing its goals, Maidenberg said.
The one thing many of these celebrities had in common that made them successful at manifestation, according to Maidenberg, was repetition.
They formed positive habits through consistent daily practice of setting clear intentions, being detail-oriented and aligning their actions with their goals and personal values.
Before becoming a music icon, Lady Gaga (pictured) used daily affirmations to convince herself that she could make a living as a singer
Maidenberg noted that mindfulness studies have shown that focusing the brain on an organized goal even increases the amount of gray matter in the prefrontal cortex.
Moreover, she added that the emphasis on celebrating each small step in the journey toward manifesting a goal sets off a dopamine release in the brain, the ‘feel-good’ chemical linked to motivation and reward.
‘When we break down the goal into smaller tasks, we’re able to get that dopamine hit, which will compel us to want to do more and more,’ she said.
Oprah has often explained these tools as ways to actively shape your future by staying clear about what you want and aligning your mindset with it.
Maidenberg added that what someone manifests needs to align with their core values, meaning that a goal of losing weight isn’t going to be successful if the person manifesting doesn’t value health and wellness.
‘It’s not good enough to say, “I want whatever.” But if it really connects to a core value of yours, you will be more likely to take action on behalf of it.’
