Valentine’s Day can be difficult and challenging for many of us. So, in this week’s podcast episode, I’m sharing how I manifested love. How I manifested the incredible relationship I have with my husband.

Now, if you’re not looking to manifest love or maybe don’t even want to think about it right now, don’t leave! As I share this journey with you, I want you to know that you can replace “love” with whatever it is you are truly desiring and it will work for you. I can honestly tell you that because this journey not only brought me my husband, it taught me how to actually manifest incredible things into my life.

You’ll learn what I believed about love, what I had to learn about love, and what I had to do to invite love into my life. So, take this story and call it “How I manifested money,” or “How I manifested a new job.” Whatever it is that you find difficult to bring into your life right now.

What we Believe about ourselves when it comes to Manifestation

To get started, we have to go where it all began: with little, chubby, cute, endearing Shirin. Growing up, i was an anomaly (and that’s a nice way of putting it).

My family immigrated to Canada when I was 4 years old and I was a handful of kids of color in my community. I felt really out of place. Not only was I an immigrant and someone who didn’t speak the language, I was chubby, frizzy haired, and so out of place.

Maybe you’re wondering, “Shirin, why the heck are you taking us so far back?” We have to understand what we believe about ourselves in order to truly manifest. Now, we don’t have to know the exact origins of our beliefs in order to manifest, but I’m sharing mine because I know that a lot of my beliefs around my worth, my value, and ultimately how lovable I was started when I was really young.

Those years really formed in my mind these beliefs:

• I have to work for my love.

• I’m not inherently lovable.

• I’m not someone who is desired or attractive.

As I went on to high school, I was still this frizzy-haired, chubby, brown-skinned girl. So, I threw myself into working really hard and since I wasn’t a desirable person, no one ever asked me out. I was never kissed. I wasn’t considered hot or beautiful or pretty. But, I was the really nice, funny, smart girl at school. Y’all, I didn’t have my first kiss until I was 21, ok?

The relationships that I saw were really hard. Communication wasn’t great. I saw people compromising and those “people” were usually women in those relationships. Things were always difficult and it seemed like the woman had to go through all these games to meet her person.

Looking back, I could truly understand how these core beliefs formed.

As you’re reading through this, how can you begin to reflect on your desire and what your beliefs around it are?

What are some of the beliefs you formed early on in your life around it?

This is a big part of manifestation because whatever you believe is what you see.

This is called Cognitive Consonance. The concept is that what you believe, what you think to be true is what you seek out in the world. This is how your mind supports you. When you believe something, it seeks out proof of this truth.

For example, in dating you don’t believe there are any good people out there. So, when someone ghosts you, your mind doesn’t think, “Oh, that person just wasn’t interested in me.” It instead believes, “Oh my gosh, of course they didn’t text back! That’s because there’s NO ONE GOOD OUT THERE! I’m never going to find someone.”

With more and more proof, the beliefs are reinforced and become even stronger.

I moved to New York to do my Masters. As you recall, I was this walking anomaly of undesirability back in my hometown, but here in New York? Y’all, I was freaking Jenny from the block!

All of a sudden, I’m surrounded by so many different types of people, different types of beauty, and I was one of them! I was garnering attention from all these men and actually feeling a bit desired.

But, even though my external circumstances had changed, my internal beliefs stayed the same.

I started getting asked out on dates, but I still believed that I was inherently unlovable, I wasn’t desirable, I had to work for love, relationships were hard… etc. etc. So, with those same beliefs, I found myself in really crappy relationships where I was doing all the work.

So, technically… I was manifesting! But, I was manifesting relationships and love that really reflected what I believed was actually possible for me.

So, I got into a relationship that lasted about 4 years. It was a healthy relationship, but it was one in which I was never really emotionally satisfied. Throughout the relationship, I believed I was in the wrong. That what I really desired in love just wasn’t feasible.

This was a great reflection of one of my core beliefs that I needed too much love. I believed that relationships were supposed to be hard, right? So, this is what a normal relationship is supposed to be like: you’ll feel constantly unfulfilled, like you’re compromising, like you have to really quiet down some of the parts of yourself that yearn for more.

In our eventual breakup, we realized that he couldn’t give me what I needed and that I didn’t want to keep making him feel bad for what he couldn’t give me. But, I did leave thinking, “Wow. You really just left this great guy because you want this thing that’s just not real…”

The One… that changed it all

After this relationship, I got into a series of not-so-great ones until I met “The One… that changed it all,” and not in a good way.

From our first date, this guy was so sweet, funny, and he adored me so much. Y’all, he thought I was the greatest thing in the world. So all of a sudden, he kicked all of these beliefs I’d held about myself to the curb.

We had this really sweet and amazing relationship, but from the start… something was off.

About 5 months into our relationship, I decide to visit him at his job. He worked at this bar (one I’d never been to) and when I went in and asked for him, the person working there says,

“There no so-and-so that works here. No one by that name has ever worked here.”

All of a sudden, all the red flags connected. I realized he had been lying to me from the very beginning about who he was and what he did.

So, when I confronted him, he told me the truth. Then, he promised that he would change. I decided I needed some time to think about this, but.. I went back to him.

In my mind, he loved me so much, right? The beliefs I had were telling me:

“You’re never going to find someone who cares about you and adores you the way that he does.”

“You wanna go back out into the dating world?? It’s terrible out there!”

So, I went back and I stayed with him for another month knowing that he lied to me in such a serious way. Why? Because of my beliefs and what I believed was actually possible for me.

Somewhere within that month, I had an epiphany.

If this is what you are saying is good enough… no. This is not the life you want. This is not the relationship that you want.

This epiphany showed all the beliefs I had for what they really were, for what they were creating in my life, and what they were manifesting into my life. Everything was a result of what I believed I deserved.

And instantly, I said, “No.” I broke it off with him.

That month that I stayed with him was the most pivotal moment of my life. I never judged myself for the relationship, but that month after finding out that he lied and I chose to stay showed me the person that I was showing up as in my life.

This is not the life I want. Things really need to change.

By divine intervention, I listened to a podcast that featured a relationship coach and EVERYTHING she said resonated so deeply with me. Now, at the time, this is 2013 and “coaching” was this thing that carried this stigma to it. But, I decided I was going to take this leap!

I booked a consultation call with her and decided to see what happened. I had absolutely no idea what I was signing up for, but something needed to change.

So, she positioned herself as a relationship coach and I thought:

I’m gonna do this coaching with her…

She’s gonna teach me how to create a cool Tinder profile…

She’s gonna teach me how to talk to people and go on dates!

Y’all… no. She was a manifestation coach and what she was actually teaching us was how to manifest. I did not know this at the time, but I worked with this coach for a year in a community of 10 women and we learned how to manifest.

And guess what? Learning how to manifest all started with our core beliefs. We started with our inner child and all of their thoughts and ideas. And I was not ready! “You want me to talk to who??”

But, that year-long program shifted everything for me. Looking inward opened up the process of healing and that is what manifestation actually is — it’s a sign of healing. We end up manifesting incredible things when we really start to look within, heal, and tend to the wounded parts of ourselves.

So, I began to work on all of those beliefs I’d carried and strengthened for years: I was unlovable, I wasn’t worthy, I was too much.

A Visualization with your Partner

One of the greatest exercises we did in this program was a visualization of ourselves with our dream partner.

In this visualization, we didn’t visualize the person. Sometimes we get this idea of who we think we’re supposed to be with and we can get really caught up there. Instead, we got really into the feelings. How did it feel being with our future partner? What does it feel like to be in their presence, to be next to them?

In the visualization, you’re also doing something that’s meaningful to both you and your partner. For me, we were on a beach vacation. We had surfboards in the corner, really delicious food, books, and we were just relaxing. So, this showed that i was manifesting someone really adventurous but also grounded and calm. Some people in the group visualized about family events and it showed how important family values were.

This visualization is so amazing because it allows you to understand what it actually feels like to be with your person. For me, it was all about the safeness, the groundedness, the calm, the peace, and the sense of love — things I’d never really felt before in a relationship.

We did this visualization for 30 days. Every morning, I would wake up and before I even opened my eyes, I would take maybe 10 seconds to just be in this space of feeling what it was like to be with my partner.

Shifting Your Cognitive Consonance

One of my favorite exercises we did allowed us to shift our Cognitive Consonance. (Remember, this is the concept that what you believe is what you see in your life.)

As a collective, one of the common beliefs we held in this program was that there aren’t any loving relationships out there. So, in order to shift this belief, we had to shift our focus. For one month, we had to look for 10 examples of loving relationships. We had to look at loving men, kind men, and overall good men in and around our lives.

At the beginning, it was like freaking Where’s Waldo? I would look around trying to find these acts of kindness, love, and trust and see… nothing.

Then, slowly, it started to shift. I began seeing things more and more. I’d see someone helping someone up the stairs. Someone helping another person with their groceries. Someone tenderly embracing their partner.

One time, I saw the sweetest thing. I was on the train next to this guy who looked so gruff and rough. I looked over and saw he was texting what was obviously his partner who he had named “La Reina” with a little crown and his message was filled with flower emojis.

I began seeing these 10 examples everywhere and all the time. So, I did the practice for longer than a month because I loved it so much. By doing this, I was really able to shift my belief.

In the mindset of manifestation, we truly believe what we desire is going to happen

After a year, I completed this coaching program in 2014. I wish I could tell you that I met my husband right then and there! But, I didn’t. I met him 3 years later in 2017.

But, those 3 years between finishing the program and meeting my husband were incredible. When we’re truly in the mindset of manifestation, we really believe that what we want is actually going to happen. This belief brings so much ease and joy to the process of manifesting.

During that time, I dated maybe most of New York and Brooklyn and had so much fun. With each date, I could tell I was getting closer and closer to my husband. Every guy felt incrementally closer. And when things didn’t work out, it was easier to accept it because I believed “If not this, then better.”

This mindset is so helpful because sometimes our journey towards our manifestation is a long and challenging one with lots of ups and downs.

Meeting my husband

A pretty kooky thing about meeting my husband is that I actually saw his picture in 2013 (before I finished the coaching program). At the time, I was a member at a gym and when I joined, I became Facebook friends with all the trainers at the gym. After friending one of the trainers, this guy’s picture popped up on my feed and I thought, “This is a hottie!”

After a Facebook spiral, I realized this guy lived in Boston. So, my little sassy self decided I would shoot him a message saying something like, “Hey, I think you’re cute. If you ever come to New York, you should hit me up.” Just as I was about to do so, I heard this voice inside say,

“Don’t do that now. You will date this man in the future.”

Well, I let it go and honestly forgot all about this guy. I went on with my coaching program. I went on dating all those people. And then, in 2017, this guy’s picture popped up on my Instagram page. All of a sudden, it all came back to me! The picture was from the gym I had joined back in 2013 and they were introducing this guy as their newest trainer.

I messaged someone that I knew at the gym asking, “Who is this guy? Give me all the details!” Eventually, we were going on our first date.

And I wish I could say it was instant! But, no. Y’all, this man showed up in jorts. You know, jean shorts. Yeah, with a tank top and a baseball cap with a unicorn on it (which was the mascot of the gym). He didn’t put a lot of effort into dressing for the date.

So, we went on our date and it was very sweet. He was very kind and very thoughtful. I was very interested but still pretty unsure. We went on a few more dates and then I was heading off to Europe for a month and a half long trip.

While I was there, he would check in with me and a couple weeks into the trip, he asked if he could take me on a date two days after I returned because he wanted to surprise me. I thought he was so thoughtful!

When I returned, we went on our fourth date. And the surprise? He took me to all of my favorite spots I’d told him about on our first three dates. I mean, the most thoughtful thing ever. It showed me how much he was listening to me, that he cared, and in the middle of our date I realized that I’d been here before. THIS was my visualization from years before! The way I felt next to my partner, so safe, grounded, peaceful — I felt all of that with him. I knew it then. I knew this was it.

Rog (my husband) loves me wholly. I have never felt like I am too much. In fact, he magnifies all the beautiful parts of me and allows them to exist. He makes me feel like I can do whatever I desire and that he will always be there for me. Our relationships isn’t difficult. It’s nothing of what I believe a relationships was supposed to be when I was younger. It is indeed above and beyond.

So, love, I share our story as a becaon of hope. Manifesting our love and this incredible relationship took time. It took healing. It took so much intention, patience, and kindness. And I wouldn’t change a thing.

I hope this offers some guidance and support to you for whatever it is you’re desiring to manifest into your life. I know you can manifest it, because I manifested a whole damn man!

If you enjoyed this, enjoy the rest of the Manifestation series:

144 | The #1 Manifestation Mistake

If you’ve found yourself already manifesting things into your life but find you’re not feeling that sense of ease and fulfillment, this 1 mistake may be standing in your way.

146 | Lucky Girl Syndrome

Let’s talk about the viral trend that’s taken over social media, what’s great about it, what it really is, and what you can do instead if its concept makes you feel a bit icky about manifestation.

147 | My 4 Manifestation Game-Changers

Learn the ideas and concepts that changed the game of manifestation for me and helped me to get out of my own way. This is for you if you feel stuck, confused, or want to understand manifestation in a better way.

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About your host, Shirin Eskandani