2021: The Year of Manifestations
2020. A year filled with chaos and uncertainty. What seemed like a momentary pause in education transformed into a year-long period of isolation. Social distancing, wired masks, and take-out orders became the new normal. For most of us, the year produced anxiety and loneliness. In my life, I found myself worried about the future and nostalgic about the past. I lost long-lasting friends, experienced painful heartbreak, and dealt with serious family health issues that put life into a harsh but realistic perspective. And yet, with all of this, I still look back at 2020 and consider it to have been the most rewarding year of my life.
The year began with me celebrating my best friend's birthday on January 1st, 2020. It was a casual affair yet a strange memory in hindsight. I remember speaking with my friend about how much I wanted to be grateful in every moment, which was very polarizing to my past attitudes. The prior year, 2019, had been a difficult one for me. Looking back on it, it was mostly because of my negative mindset. I was very anxious about the future as I anticipated the worst and internalized my past failures into an incessant choir that made me feel stagnant in an inferiority complex. Towards the ending of 2019, my mental health improved, but it wasn't due to my external environment changing rapidly. It was due to a shift in my mindset that led to a practice of manifestation.
In 2020, I lost friends that I had for years. I’ve attached myself to my friends, to a degree where I intertwined my worth into my value to these friends. I surrounded myself with an overbearing friend who controlled my actions and punished any sort of pushback. I also let
friends that were unhappy with my success stay in my life because I empathized with their issues instead of realizing that my excuses were enabling harmful behavior. When these friendships were cut off, I found it to be a painful experience, but also one that was rewarding. I learned the power of my mind. As much as my past self would want to dwell on the loss, my self in 2020 decided to accept the reality of the present and focus on the quality friends I did have. When the friends around me that were negative were removed, I grew standards and was much more appreciative of what I had. These standards helped me attract compatible and genuine people in my current life, which continues to highlight the value of taking every day one day at a time.
It's natural to face daily worries in a pessimistic manner. In 2020, we all faced the ramifications of isolation. Everyday meshed together. It's challenging to look forward to an uncertain future. However, even though 2020 was a year that highlighted this uncertainty, the year also emphasized how uncertain the future always tends to be. Due to the pandemic, we all understood that we were in this troublesome scenario together. In a normal year, many of us feel like we are missing out on events or are behind the path we are supposed to be on. 2020 revealed the truth of how similar we are all as human beings lost in a world where we feel that we should have every meticulous detail planned out.
With our similarities for the negatives come our similarities with our positives. This means that every individual, no matter how high of a pedestal billboards place them on, is the same as everyone, connected with our abilities. We are all equally capable of manifesting a positive future, and more importantly, a positive present.
In manifestation, human beings are taught to focus on the present reality. This means that any desire one wants to come into fruition needs to be channeled into the present. For example, if one wishes to find inner peace, they would direct that desire into a statement like, "I have inner
peace. I am in a tranquil state". This shift to the present isn't meant to be a delusional facade. Rather, it is meant to emphasize human nature.
As much as we wish it were true, there isn't a set destination that will make us feel extraordinarily different from what we are currently experiencing.
Society pushes this notion of pertinent passions and dream jobs. Of course, these are valuable pursuits. But when one is always reaching for a future reality, one enters into a state of anxiety, and eventually unhappiness. Your desires become insatiable. One goal gets replaced with another in packaging that seems purposefully ambitious when the truth is that maybe one is running away from the only reality that matters-the present.
2020 to me, was a year where I lived in the present. This mentality had begun at the ending of 2019 when I realized I was burning myself into a never-ending fuse. In 2020, I woke up every day, shifted my mind into as positive of a mindset as possible, and narrowed on what I could do that day. I didn't resent what I could have done in the past or dream about what the future could be. I took the small steps, which lead to the sustainment of a multitude of my goals. I landed a job, received a hospital internship, and got into UCLA. These are all accomplishments that I am proud of, but they don't fill me up with the self-esteem and satisfaction I had wished for. Instead, they served as a vital example of how much I need to spend cherishing every moment, working towards helping others, and letting go of what holds me into a chain of wants and needs.
If you have a dream or several dreams, you can achieve every single one of them. You are capable and gifted, even if you feel ordinary, or believe you need a list of awards and accolades to prove this sentiment. You are capable of manifesting 2021 into a year of present joy. You just have to accept the power that is and has always already been inside of you.