Scroll through TikTok or Instagram long enough and someone will tell you that the life you want already belongs to you. The beautiful apartment, the perfect relationship, the financial freedom, even the face you wish you had. All you need to do is believe, visualise and behave as though your future has already happened. Some recommend writing affirmations repeatedly, others suggest creating vision boards, listening to subliminal messages or simply telling the universe what you expect from it. If nothing happens, perhaps your energy is wrong. If something does, congratulations, you manifested it. What makes this peculiar form of modern spirituality so fascinating is its timing. We are living through geopolitical instability, economic insecurity and growing anxiety about the future, yet social media offers an extraordinary proposition: reality might be negotiable if you learn to think correctly. Manifestation became particularly visible during the Covid pandemic. According to research published in 2025 by Kristen Balzer, searches for the term increased by 600% in 2020, and videos associated with the practice had accumulated more than 62 billion views on TikTok by mid-2024. Millions of people were discovering a comforting possibility just as the world demonstrated how little control they actually possessed.
The attraction is understandable. When you cannot afford a home, finding a decent job feels increasingly difficult and the news delivers another international crisis before breakfast, being told that you possess an invisible power over your future can feel liberating. But manifestation rests on a scientific misunderstanding. Our thoughts influence our behaviour, not the fundamental laws governing external events. Confidence might encourage you to apply for a job, approach somebody you like or recognise an opportunity you would otherwise overlook. None of this demonstrates that the universe responds to human intention. References to quantum physics, vibrations and energy do not provide evidence that thoughts can attract money or relationships. More surprisingly, psychology suggests that excessive positive fantasising can sometimes undermine achievement. Research by Gabriele Oettingen and Doris Mayer found that imagining a desirable future was associated with less effort and poorer outcomes, whereas realistic expectations were associated with greater effort and success. The distinction matters. Imagining yourself succeeding can be pleasurable. Recognising what stands between you and that success is considerably less exciting, but potentially more useful. The universe cannot submit your application, improve your working conditions or persuade somebody to love you. And yet manifestation offers a particularly convenient escape from this uncomfortable distinction between what we can influence and what remains beyond our control.
History suggests that our fascination with invisible forces is hardly new. In Germany, during the decades preceding the First World War, astrology, spiritualism, theosophy and other esoteric practices attracted an extensive following. Historian Corinna Treitel, in A Science for the Soul, documents how the occult revival developed alongside rapid industrialisation, scientific progress and enormous social transformation. Far from disappearing as modern society became more technologically advanced, supernatural beliefs offered alternative ways of understanding a world whose familiar structures were changing. Interest in such practices continued through the upheavals of the Weimar Republic. This does not mean mystical beliefs predicted the approaching catastrophes, nor that every period of instability produces an occult revival. It suggests something more human: uncertainty can make systems promising hidden order particularly attractive. Psychologists have investigated precisely this tendency. Research on compensatory control, published in 2009, found that people whose sense of personal control is threatened can become more receptive to supernatural explanations, perceived patterns and other sources of reassuring order. A century separates Germany's occult revival from the manifestation videos circulating today, and their historical circumstances are very different. But the psychological appeal is recognisable. When reality becomes frightening, the possibility that another reality exists beneath it, one that might be understood or influenced through special knowledge, offers relief from the unbearable randomness of events.
What distinguishes contemporary manifestation is how effectively that longing has been integrated into consumer culture. Earlier forms of divination often promised to interpret fate. Manifestation increasingly promises that individuals can direct it, particularly towards wealth, beauty and personal advancement. The spiritual adviser has become a content creator, the ritual a downloadable guide, enlightenment a coaching programme. In a March 2026 Guardian investigation, manifestation influencer Sarah Perl, known online as HotHighPriestess, reported earning more than $1.5m from her work. The commercial possibilities are obvious. There is nothing inherently wrong with encouraging optimism, and not everyone who makes a vision board believes in supernatural intervention. But once the promise becomes that thoughts attract external circumstances, success acquires a troubling moral significance. Wealth can appear to reflect the correct mindset, while poverty becomes evidence of insufficient belief. A person struggling financially might be encouraged to examine their relationship with abundance rather than the economic conditions restricting their opportunities. The consequences are not merely theoretical. A study involving 1,023 participants found that stronger manifestation beliefs were associated with greater attraction to risky investments and a higher likelihood of having experienced bankruptcy. The research did not establish causation, but it raises questions about what happens when optimism becomes disconnected from evidence. More importantly, it exposes an ideology in which almost every failure can be returned to the individual. The system does not need to change. You need to change your thoughts.
Perhaps this is why manifestation deserves more scrutiny than the occasional scientific debunking. Its popularity raises questions about what happens when collective anxieties are repeatedly translated into private responsibilities. Housing shortages, precarious employment, inequality and environmental threats are not failures of individual imagination. They are material circumstances shaped by institutions, political decisions and competing interests. Yet the logic of manifestation encourages people to look inward precisely when looking outward might reveal who holds power over their lives. We should be careful not to confuse a young person finding comfort in affirmations with someone selling the idea that suffering results from negative energy. Hope is not the problem. The problem is the suggestion that hope itself constitutes a method of changing external reality, and that failure to achieve the desired result reflects something defective in the person hoping. The more uncertain the world becomes, the more attractive that promise may appear. And the more people are encouraged to interpret their circumstances as the products of their own minds, the less attention might be paid to the people and institutions responsible for shaping those circumstances. Somewhere tonight, somebody will be encouraged to close their eyes, imagine the keys to their dream home and trust that the universe is preparing to deliver them. Tomorrow morning, somebody else will still decide how much that home costs.