How Desperation Fuels Manifestation! Will You Burn The Ships Like Hernán Cortés?

Katie McManus: 00:00:00

When he arrived at the New World, Cortes burned his ships. As a result, his men were well motivated. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And welcome to the Weeniecast.

If you guessed correctly, that was my Sean Connery imitation of his rendition of Captain Raineas from the Hunt for Red October. When he reached the New World, Cortes burned his ships. As a result, his men were well motivated.

And if you're wondering why I'm bringing this up in the Weeniecast, I do have a point. And before I get into the point of this, yes, the Hunt for Red October is my favorite movie.

I do watch it every single time on an airplane, and I do fall asleep to it. But I also really appreciate the storyline. The point is, is that we're really powerful manifesters when we're desperate.

The point that Captain Rainius was making about Cortes, who is, let's admit it, like a genocidal maniac, not a good man, but the metaphor exists. When he arrived in the New World, he told his people, burn the ships. Why? Why would he tell them to do this when they are in unknown territory?

They have no idea where they are. They're up against people that they don't know will attack them, but will likely attack them.

The reason he did it is because he knew when they were backed into a corner, they would be more open to possibilities coming to them to make it work, to be able to get home. In the business building world, there's often this, like, very broseph kind of talk around burn your ships. Like, burn every bridge back to the past.

Don't let yourself have a backup plan. Right? And on one hand, like, this seems like really big gambling. On the other hand, like, it works for some people. I know. It certainly worked for me.

Was it enjoyable? Absolutely not. It was terrifying. There was a lot of crying and a lot of snot and a lot of panic attacks. A lot of, like, emergency calls to my.

My coach at the time. But let's talk about how desperation plays into manifesting. Because when you're desperate, what happens? You're. You're not intent on this.

One thing has to work when you're so desperate. Like, you're about to lose where you're gonna live. You've lost a job. You need to find income now.

You're not intent on that one application to that one job working out. No. You are open to any possibility of money coming your way of things working out.

And for a lot of people, it's the only time they're open to any possibility of things working out. Most people are too attached to the plan that they've created for themselves about how things are going to work out.

And I don't know about you, but for me, nothing good that I've ever brought into my life ever came because of a plan I made, right? I couldn't have planned how I met my best friend. I couldn't have planned how I got a lot of the jobs. I couldn't have planned how I became a coach.

I couldn't have planned how I ended up getting a lot of my clients and building my business. Like, all that stuff came from me just kind of being open to possibilities.

A lot of people think that manifestation is about making a list, making like a Christmas list of all the things that you want and then asking the universe to deliver them to you.

Those people who believe that are also the people who are really frustrated that they haven't won the lottery yet, you know, even though they haven't bought a ticket. That's not how manifestation works. Manifestation is not, you know, universe, God, enter the divine entity of your choice, Please bring me the thing.

And then you just sit there and wait for it silently. Manifestation is. Hey, whoever's listening, this is what I would really love to have in my life. Tell me how to get there. What's the road?

What's the next action I should take? And trusting whatever action your intuition picks up on.

And oftentimes this is where people get stalled out because their intuition tells them to do something that seems completely besides the point. And they think, well, that doesn't make sense. So I won't do that. Give me something that makes sense for me to get clients.

Give me something that makes sense for me to be able to make $60,000 a month. And then they don't get anything. They don't get a hit.

So then they try to work harder and they try to force it, and it doesn't work because they're not trusting the intuitive hit that they had about what they need to do to get there. I want to share a couple examples of how this works in the world, and I'll share some personal examples as well.

One of my favorite examples of this is actually from the author, Elizabeth Gilbert. She wrote Eat, Pray, Love. She also wrote Big Magic and a bunch of other novels that I honestly haven't read.

In Big Magic, she talks about how she got this idea for a book, she started working on it, and then hell broke loose in her life. I think her Husband at the time, lost residence status in the country they were living in. So then they had to move.

The salient details have escaped me, but in all of this, the book that she had started working on, she kind of had to put it into storage and not work on it for a while.

And when everything worked out, she came back to it and she started trying to work on it and kept trying to push it, but the inspiration had moved on and she no longer felt the passion for it. The story just wasn't there anymore. And funnily enough, this is another side conversation.

Ann Patchett, who is a contemporary of hers and a friend of hers, without hearing Elizabeth's idea for this book, also got the same idea and also wrote that book, but did it successfully because she didn't drop it in the middle. So Elizabeth Gilbert talks about how this idea died on her, and she just didn't know what to do next. She didn't have an idea for her next novel.

And so she's sitting there and she's wondering, well, what should I focus on? And she got this intuitive hit that she should just go and start a garden. And she'd never been a gardener before. It's not like she had a green thumb.

But I think she said that her grandmother had always gardened. She always thought, oh, well, that would be nice to do.

And here she was, she had a lot of free time, and she just figured, okay, well, I'll go and start a garden. And so she did.

Gardening led to her researching plants, which led her to going to, like, a plant seed library somewhere in New England, doing more research on different kinds of heirloom plants, which all led to an idea for her next book, which she wrote and got published and made money from. The Next Action is not always the thing that logically makes sense for you reaching your goals.

I've experienced this when I was living in California in my 20s. I really, really, really wanted to be a coach, but I was like, oh, I'm too young for that.

And so I kept settling for these sales jobs that felt like I was making a difference, felt like I was doing something that I enjoyed, but they weren't everything I wanted. And so I remember I worked for this solar company, and they were not doing well. I was not happy.

And I remember talking to my manager at one point and, you know, it was very, very clear that they were going to have to make layoffs soon. And I remember saying to him, hey, listen, I don't want to work here anymore. I'm not happy. I know you have to lay people off.

If you want to lay me off, I volunteer as tribute.

And he was really grateful because, you know, he was looking at a bunch of people who did not want to be laid off and he was trying to figure out who to cut. And me volunteering for this, you know, just made sense.

And I remember sitting in a parking garage in my car thinking, what am I going to do for money? I didn't have any savings at the time because the company wasn't doing well, so they weren't paying us that much.

And I remember getting an email from the woman who owned the yarn shop that I worked like one Saturday a month and taught knitting classes at for some extra cash and for a discount on yarn because I was a big knitter at the time.

And getting this email saying that Linda, the store manager, was retiring and it wasn't a great time for her to retire because it was, I think, October and the holiday season was upon us and it was an incredibly busy time for the shop. It's when a lot of people come in and buy presents and you really need someone who's knowledgeable to run the shop and be able to help customers.

And I remember seeing this and being like, I could, I can manage the yarn shop for a bit. I could be an interim manager. So I called Linda and I asked her, hey, listen, I just agreed to quit my job.

Do you think the owner of the shop would let me manage the shop in the interim? And Linda was like, absolutely, let me call her. I know she'll be super interested in this.

As I was managing the yarn shop, I was also applying to other jobs. And I want to zoom in on that moment where I was sitting in my car and complete silence, just wondering, what should I do? I don't know what to do.

Here's what I need. I need income. I need to be able to pay my rent. I need to be able to do this. And the universe didn't give me a job opportunity that was long term.

The universe, like, here's the path, here's the next thing you should do. Didn't make it obvious. It wasn't an email from the owner saying, hey, do you want to manage the yarn shop for a bit? It was, here's an option.

And if I hadn't been kind of in dire straits in that moment, I wouldn't have made the connection of, wow, Linda's retiring. I should take that job. I wouldn't have made that ask.

Now, fast forward four and a half months later, they'd be able to find a long term manager for the yarn shop. I was rearranging the furniture in my room.

I can't remember why because I think that I just do that every few months to, you know, refresh the energy. And I get a text message from Linda. And I remember it because it was Easter weekend. It was like Easter Sunday.

And she lived about 10 blocks from my apartment. And I remember getting this text saying, do you want a sales job? And I was like, yeah, I would love a sales job. What's the company?

And she said, you know, my son manages a team for Cisco, Cisco Systems.

And he's here and he's saying that they're having a really hard time filling this role that I think you would be amazing at because some HR thing is going on. Do you want to come over in a couple hours when we're having dessert?

And so it was the funniest experience because, like, I'm, you know, rearranging my room and then I'm like, oh, God, I'm going to my friend Linda's house for a job interview. And I remember like walking over there and walking up the steps to knock on their front door. And I hear, and I hear Linda.

She's been watching from me through the window. And I remember hearing her say, everyone shut up. Katie's here.

And I get there and like, everyone in this house has had a fair amount of wine and Linda's screaming at everyone. Let Andrew and Katie have their meeting in the living room. Everyone to the kitchen.

So she basically set me up in the living room with her son Andrew, who's a loving human being. And they hid in the kitchen while I had an interview with him and he gave me the job.

The things that worked out serendipitously to make this happen, for one, Cisco Systems, they were switching over their HR hiring software. So literally the whole company was on a hiring freeze because there was no way for applicants to actually apply for jobs.

So of course, Andrew, who really needed another person to backfill someone he just promoted, was desperate for someone. He was bringing it up at Easter breakfast with his family.

And Linda, who, you know, I had already opened myself up to because I was desperate for a job, so desperate for a job that I was going to manage the yarn shop was like, I know someone. She's worked in sales. She's done this throughout me managing the shop.

She got to see like, my game and my responsibility and all these things about me, and she was able to recommend me for that role. Now, little did I know if we're doing the stranger than fiction kind of setup here. That that job would actually be the cushion I needed.

When I'd get into a really serious car accident about seven months later. Later, I'd be able to be on disability while I recovered from the concussion, slash mild brain injury that I had.

Which would be the doorway for me thinking, well, if life is this short, that I almost died and I've wanted to be a coach this long, maybe while I'm recovering from this concussion, maybe I should just get trained and certified as a coach. And all that led me here.

But if I hadn't been desperate in that moment in that parking garage, sitting in my car, thinking, I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do. I'm open to absolutely anything, none of this would have happened.

For manifestation to work, actually work, to actually bring you what you want, you have to a know what you want. You have to have extreme clarity on what that is. But you also need silence.

You need the quiet moments where you're sitting with that deep desire where you can ask the universe whatever power you believe in, hey, I really, really want and need this. Show me the way.

But then it also takes trust that whatever instinct you have about the next action you need to take is the right action, even if it doesn't make sense. And when you get that intuitive hit about what the next action is, you just have to do it.

During the pandemic, when we were all, like, trying to make ourselves feel better.

About being isolated and alone and sad and being away from everyone and the world as we knew it ending, basically, I remember reading something about how Newton discovered gravity. And it was basically, he was in a pandemic. There was plague for a few years, and cities just emptied out.

And people went and lived in rural locations and didn't have the hustle and bustle of their regular life. They had silence.

And, you know, there's a story that he was walking, you know, through a field and, you know, amongst apple trees, and he saw an apple fall. You know, one of the keys to manifestation is silence, is having moments of isolation. Where you are not only thinking about the thing you want.

And kind of pondering problems of the universe and of your life. But you're able to observe the things around you. You're able to notice things as they pop up.

You know, who knows if that realization, if that discovery would have happened if he had stayed in a city, if there hadn't been plague. I think this is one of the reasons why, when terrible things happen to us, that is when we kind of have our revelation, right?

One coach I had called it breakdown to break through. Right? Because what happens when you have a complete and utter breakdown when things go terribly, terribly wrong? We tend to isolate.

We tend to go home and sulk and. And be by ourselves and eat junk and be in our own space with our own thoughts just so we can process. I'll point to Oprah, right?

Oprah got fired from a job. She got told that she was no good. Like, think of the desperation that was her dream.

The desperation that would follow being told that she'll never have a career being on tv. And from that desperation, where did she end up? She couldn't have planned for that.

Newton couldn't have planned for watching an apple fall and having that aha moment. Elizabeth Gilbert couldn't have thought, oh, I'll garden and then I'll come up with an idea about a book and gardening.

That couldn't have been planned. I couldn't have planned on taking a job that I'd be miserable in.

And another person deciding to retire from managing a yarn shop and me being able to take over that. And then that person having a drunken Easter celebration where her son just so happened to say he needed to hire for a role.

And her texting me and blah, blah, blah, blah. That was never something I could have planned on. But my intuition knew it.

Whatever voice speaks to us, whatever universal intelligence that's driving us towards what we want, knew that that was the right path for me to take. After college, I got dumped pretty badly by a girlfriend. She and I were best friends. We were roommates.

And when I moved to California, we stayed in touch for a little bit. And I even came back and visited her after I had gone through this training program that I was in in California.

Here's an example of how this can work out. And it can work out in really weird ways. So when I was in university, one of my best friends was also my roommate.

And when I left university to move to California to study to be a sommelier, which is a whole other chapter of my life that I don't talk about much. Cause I don' really enjoy talking about wine anymore. You know, we stayed in touch for a little bit, right?

When I came back to visit my parents, I saw her and then went back out there.

And I remember calling her and realizing that she hadn't called me back in a while and then leaving a message and then realizing several weeks had passed and I still hadn't heard back from her. And I remember thinking, oh, My God, I think she's dumping me. I think we're no longer friends.

And so I remember leaving a voicemail for her, just saying, hey, listen, I.

Speaker B: 00:17:48

Don'T know what I did. I haven't heard back from you. I hope you're okay.

I hope whatever I did, if you're open to telling me, please do, because I would like to make it right. But otherwise, like, I love you, and I hope you're doing well, and I hope we get to catch up soon.

But I won't be calling again if I don't hear back from you.

Katie McManus: 00:18:06

And I think all of us know the pain that goes along with being dumped by a friend. It's a different kind of hurt than being dumped by a romantic partner, because this is someone who's, like, always on your side.

And for years, I just. I wondered. I wondered, you know, what happened. And occasionally I would look her up and just see what was going on with her.

And, you know, I wouldn't message her or anything. But that's the beauty of social media. We can stalk whoever we want.

And I remember a couple years ago, I was, you know, just kind of hanging out on a Saturday. I was staying with my parents. It was the summer on Cape Cod. It was really, really just a lazy day. And I got this intuitive hit.

And it sounds so weird that my sister and I had bought all these Pokemon cards when I was a kid, and we had them all in a binder.

And I got this intuitive hit that I should go and pull them out and see if there are any cards that were valuable, because otherwise they're just sitting around collecting dust. Like, my sister and I are playing Pokemon in our 30s, right? We never even learned how to play Pokemon.

We just collected the cards because we thought the little animals were cute. I pulled out the binder and I started going through.

And then I realized how miserable it would be to go through the 700 plus Pokemon cards and try to identify which ones were valuable and which ones weren't. I pulled out my phone and I looked up a comic store shop that, you know, bought and sold Pokemon cards.

And then there happened to be one in New Bedford, where I had lived when I went to this university. And I called them and they were open, and they said, yeah, just bring them by. We'll take a look and see if there's anything valuable.

So I just figured, okay, well, this is an hour and a half away, but I have nothing better to do. And my intuition's telling me I just need to do this. So I drove an hour and a half away with a stupid binder full of Pokemon cards.

I show up at the shop. There is nothing valuable in here.

My sister and I did not understand how to hold on to valuable stuff when we were kids, and so they paid me 20 bucks for it. But because I was in this city that I had been in when I was, you know, in college, there's some nostalgia there.

So I started walking around, and I noticed down the street there was an event happening. There was music, and there were food trucks, and there were people dancing, and it was just a couple blocks away.

So I figured, okay, well, I'll walk down there and just see what's going on. And it was the theater that my best friend from university had worked at. And I kind of remembered that she worked there into her 20s.

And so I took a chance, and I went into one of the little spaces where people were working, and I said, hey, does so and so still work here by chance? And they said, oh, yeah, this is actually her event. She's our lead fundraiser now, and this is her event to remodel this whole theater.

And I was like, oh, my God. So she's here? And they're like, yeah. And so one of the women went and tried to call her to the stage. She didn't show up.

And so I just decided to walk around, and she was doing a demonstration of the remodel that they wanted to do in the theater up on the stage. And I went over and I said hi, and she just bowled over to see me, and we gave each other a big hug.

And she messaged me later that day and said, it was so great to see you. I'd love to go to dinner if you're around. And so we arranged to go to dinner a couple weeks later.

And we're sitting there, and she said, you know, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for what I did. And I realized, like, I didn't need to know why I didn't need to know what happened.

It was one of the most healing moments because I got to say, you know, people let people go, you know, for whatever reason it was, you know, it's okay. It happens. For whatever reason. That friendship didn't serve her back then.

But what was so wild is that my intuition was like, you should go sell Pokemon cards, and that'll be the weird pathway to you having closure on this really big hurt that your heart experienced. I want to just highlight that it wasn't something that I was currently really adamant about manifesting. It was Something that I had held.

I want an answer to this. For a really long time. And the universe just happened to know that on this day, we should tell her to go and sell some Pokemon cards.

Because the only place for her to sell the Pokemon cards is a place that's going to be right next door to this event that's going to be hosted by this person who caused the big heart. And that's how Wild Manifestation can work sometimes. And if you think I could have planned that, you're nuts.

Here's the decision I invite you to make in this moment is you can wait until desperation strikes. You can plan and you can hustle, and you can try to force it and work longer and make the plan that you have created for yourself work.

And when it doesn't, because it won't, because things never go to plan. Things go terribly awry, and you're backed into a corner and your ships are burnt and you are desperate, then you can get what you want.

Or you can just choose to be open to opportunities. Now, you can tell the universe, here's what I want. Show me the path to get it. You can give yourself the silence and isolation.

Time to be able to receive whatever intelligence is coming your way on that. And whatever it is, even if it doesn't make sense, you can go for it. So the choice is yours. Oh, my God.

I have such a great idea of how to start this episode, but I don't know if I can do it. You have to mute yourself, because if I hear you laugh, I'm not going to be able to finish this. Okay. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel.