Jae, Lizzie, and me in a happy place.
Have you ever played the manifest game? It’s takes you back to those imaginative years as a child when you dream about your life partner, future, your happiness…well, the imagination doesn’t have to end—EVER!
To begin, I have to tell you how the manifest game began for me. I met SheJumps co-founder and my best friend, Lynsey Dyer six years ago in Jackson Hole. She’s a Pisces, head in the clouds, full of color, character, and magic—something between a pixy and unicorn. It might sound odd, but she is oozing with good energy that is addicting. As a Cancer, aka crab, I had always been a dreamer but very grounded, sometimes crabby, and didn’t quite compete with her on the imagination scale. One afternoon in June, she says: “Vanessa, let’s drive to Whistler tomorrow, and go skiing on the glacier.” I couldn’t resist…
On our way, Dyer made me play the game. “Imagine your future, but as you have accomplished or attracted everything you ever wanted,” she says. At first, I was skeptical, especially as a journalist “crab,” but I dove in. That was the day we envisioned SheJumps (which turned into a 501c3 nonprofit and has grown immensely over the last few years). We spent hours imagining our future, describing our partners, our ambitions, our dreams—but in the past or present tense as if we had done it and felt that we had done it. It was empowering, magical, and a little woo woo, but ever since when Dyer and I get together, it’s a given—we play the game.
Getting excited!
Recently while I was visiting her in Jackson (I since moved to Salt Lake City), we played again. I honestly hadn’t played the game with her in about two years since I didn’t seen her too often—she was traveling the world as a pro skier and I was in flight school to become a pilot. Since our last meeting, I had a revised manifest: to fly seaplanes in Norway (just one element of my whole manifest but a big one). I’ve always had a love for Norway ever since my mother (Norwegian) would tell me about her family and my great great great uncle who was the prime minister of Norway in the 1800s (Ole Richter). She introduced me to the culture by making me wear a “bunad” (or traditional Norwegian costume) for annual photos with Santa, and tell me Norwegian fairy tales full of forests and trolls. Since then, I’ve been to Norway twice—once to see the entire country with a friend who was born in Norway and another to attend the Nordic World Championships and visit my own relatives.
The Tomten sisters enjoying the dream!
So during this round of playing the game, Dyer says: “Vanessa, you can’t just do this once a year, you have to do it daily whether it means writing it down and reading it or repeating your manifest daily in your head or out loud. You HAVE to believe it has happened.”
Full of newfound inspiration, I come back from Jackson full of excitement for the future. And this is where the magic happened! I start making my friends play—some skeptical at first but they start feeling how verbalizing their dreams to people creates energy and how all of us become invested in being champions for our friends’ dreams. My friend, Jae, and I play all of the time because we are both reinventing ourselves and know how hard that is, especially when you are older.
Just the other night, a bunch of friends decided to meet at Jae’s before heading to a bluegrass festival downtown. We started to play the manifest game with new friends, then more people decided to come over (some that I hardly knew)—it was like all sorts of people could feel the energy of the space and wanted to join. (On a side note, the other day I went golfing and saw a metallic golf ball in the shop that looked magic. It was the only orange one in the bowl, so I bought it. I put it in my pocket as a good luc charm while playing and ended up beating three other friends (and I hadn’t played golf in two years). Since then I’ve called it my magic golf ball. I told Dyer about it, and she says: “You made it magic, Vanessa!”)
So back to our manifest gathering, I decided to use the golf ball like a spirit stick—we passed it around as we told each other our dreams. After that, we wrote our dreams on wish papers, and went outside to burn them. As the papers flew up into the air, fireworks went off (it happened to be Pioneer Day weekend in Salt Lake). It was added magic! We never made it to the bluegrass festival, but everyone was overwhelmed with inspiration. A friend of a friend who came over, Jen, says: “It was a meeting of the minds, it’s like we now have added our energy to other’s goals and aspirations so it’s extra powerful.” Agreed.
Burning my wish paper!
So after a couple weeks of playing this game daily, the power has manifested for me. Here’s how: After the recent horrible attacks in Norway where nearly 100 people were killed by a bomb and/or gunned down by a 32-year-old right-wing extremist, I have reached out to some relatives to send my thoughts, prayers, and love via Facebook. My mother’s first cousin, Rhonda, was also doing the same with a relative I didn’t know. She connected us via Facebook…I told her a little about me and my dream to move to Norway in the near future to be a pilot. She writes back telling me: “My husband went to flight school in Tennessee, and is now working in Wideroe… Learn some Norwegian, and he will help you out 
”
Wowsers, I had no idea I had a relative whose husband is a pilot in Norway. Proof that this game works—I manifested that this connection would come into my life by sending out love, gratitude, and intent. I sincerely reached out to my Norwegian friends and relatives with thoughts and prayers (not at all to find a pilot connection), and I got hope in return. It may sound woo woo, but it’s nothing different than what religion teaches us. Be kind, show love, create intentions and action, and God will provide. Whether you talk to the God, the moon, or golf balls—there something exciting there.
Let’s create some magic!
