none of my 2024 manifestations came true

here's the reality

The date is December 31, 2023. I am sitting at the bar at The Parker Hotel in Palm Springs, drinking a glass of crisp and chilled prosecco, writing down a list of manifestations for 2024 on the back of a coaster.

I remember that version of myself; one year ago, taking herself on a solo date where she dressed up, desperately striving to feel like a different version of herself, still freshly postpartum, wanting life to look different, feeling the defeat of getting her ass kicked in 2023 between new motherhood and business, yearning and needing and trying to embody her highest self because she needed her to arrive in 2024.

I really, really needed her in 2024.

And yet, as I revisit that coaster filled with my small, almost cursive-like handwriting, I realize, in the pit of my stomach, she didn’t exactly arrive.

I sit here on the last day of 2024 reading through each bullet point written exactly one year ago - specific, concise, numerically measurable - and I stare at the truth that I knew was waiting for me in this year’s reflection.

Not one of the items on my manifestation list for 2024 came true.

For just a moment, they haunt me as little failures; little docks on my ego; little nips at my confidence. But only for just a moment.

You see, this week our Substack and our Instagram feeds are filled with recaps of the year; the thought leaders and expanders we look up to divulging their manifestation practices; the highlight reels of highlight reels contrasting against our own lives; the numerous women we admire (and slightly envy) showing us how good life can get.

What happens when, in the wake of women succeeding and manifesting left and right with ease and abundance, ours don’t come to fruition?

This is the pill I am currently swallowing. For it is not just this past year: 2024. You see, my manifestations did not come true in 2023 as well.

It has been one train wreck after another, to put it lightly. A survival mode that has lasted so long it has felt permanently etched into my psyche. A deep crushing of my soul’s confidence; of my ability to create the life of my dreams that I was oh so good at just years prior. A pressure mounting on my shoulders that I was convinced would shatter my bones to pieces. A grief like I had never felt for it was I who lost myself. A reconfiguring of an identity as I went from the fulfilled and successful entrepreneur to a new mother that was breadwinning while her business hit her first economic winter. A pain and an anger at the universe for, as I thought, not having my back.

I was writing down everything I wanted. Writing them down, writing them down, writing them down. I was visualizing everything I wanted. Visualizing them daily, visualizing them daily, visualizing daily. I was reading all of the manifestation books. Looking for the cure, looking for the cure, looking for the cure.

I was looking outside of myself for a savior. And, perhaps, that savior was manifestation. And, like a scornful ex-lover, it did me dirty every step of the way.

But here’s where it gets good…

As I reflect back on the last two years, going line by line on each item that did not come true, I have realized a couple of things about manifestation.

1. The thing we forget about manifestation is that it is a co-creation. We are weaving a life in tandem with the universe. This means the universe has a say.

2. We are mortals, not Gods. If everything we thought about and wrote down effortlessly came into our lives, we would not be human beings.

3. We have so much control over our lives and at the same time, none at all.

4. Sometimes the universe knows better than you. It will always deliver you what you need - not always what you want.

It’s as if The Rolling Stones have been preparing me for this since the age of 16 where I discovered Mick Jagger and became completely and utterly in love with every word that came out of his mouth.

“You can’t always get what you want but if you try sometimes, you’ll find, you get what you need.”

And if I am being so brutally honest with myself, I truly did get what I need.

If there is anything that I have learned from the hardest two years of my life it is this: I am not a victim to my circumstances. I do create my reality.

Does this sound like I am contradicting myself?

Allow me to explain.

Every manifestation bullet point I wrote down did not come true because I actually failed to implement the systems to hit that goal.

Why did I fail to implement the systems?

Because I didn’t actually want the manifestation - or, I subconsciously was self-sabotaging, not taking them seriously, not getting up and doing the damn thing to make them come to fruition because they weren’t meant for me or because I just wasn’t energetically ready.

HEART FLUTTER.

That is difficult to admit. For example, the reason that I didn’t hit some of my financial goals is that I didn’t even have a system in place to fucking hit them.

The reason I didn’t attend NYFW this year is because I consciously chose not to; overwhelmed by the rest of my life’s pursuits. (Still a choice!)

The reason I didn’t get pregnant this year is because I didn’t want to.

The reason one of my business offerings isn’t reaping in passive income is because I lost the passion for it and therefore put it on pause.

Which gets me to my next point about manifestations: If you write down bullet points of things you think you “should” have or that “sound nice” or that “will get you to your end goal” but don’t have the true, passionate, inner alignment, your manifestations will not come true.

Manifestation is about choosing the goals that require the action that you naturally want to act on.

The manifestations I chose were not the things I wanted to act on.

Simply put. End of story.

It’s not that manifestation doesn’t work for me. It’s that I was manifesting a life path that was out of alignment - and so in turn, I got more misalignment.

2023 and 2024 have been a long, arduous process of the universe asking me to stop controlling, stop ideating, stop trying so damn hard. Every step of the way, it did not bring me what I wrote down on my manifestation lists because it knew - oh thank god that it knew! - that there was a better, bigger, and higher path for me.

2023 and 2024 have been a lesson in surrender, a lesson in giving up control, a lesson in actually realizing what I truly want and desire vs. what I think I can “get” out of the pre-existing income streams in my life.

You cannot manifest what is not meant for you - and if you didn’t manifest it, is it perhaps because it is not the actual mission of your soul? Perhaps because it felt like a “should"? Perhaps because it was on the surface level the thing that, sure, sounded nice but at the end of the day wasn’t your specific expression of this big, beautiful life?

It is funny because everything that I did not manifest had to do with a past version of myself that I was deeply trying to revive; deeply trying to shrink back into; deeply trying to resonate with.

Everything that has to do with my new, future, and highest version of myself - REVUE; a newsletter that serves as the muse for the modern woman (not on Substack so subscribe here!) - came in ways that I could never have imagined.

I manifested a business partner and co-founder that was literally a divine orchestration that I could not have seen coming (thank you universe!). We created the most insane launch campaign (coming soon). I have profiled some of my role models and biggest names in the game for launch. I found my creativity again and it has been a beautiful love affair that has led me to this Substack. Our newsletter has a 70% open rate before we have even launched with new sign-ups coming in daily. My DMs are filled with people resonating and loving and craving what we are doing. I feel alive, fulfilled, in love, and creative every moment of building out the REVUE world.

None of those things were on my 2024 manifestation list.

But the universe knew where I needed to go. It knew how I wanted to feel and it delivered a world in which I could not only feel like the creative, wealthy, and fulfilled woman that I am but also gave me a path in which the physical and numerically oriented goals I have for myself can actually come to fruition.

The outer manifestations have not yet come true but internally, it’s all here.

I sit here, the day before 2025, grateful that none of the bullet points on the drink coaster came true.

Instead of those goals coming true - financial goals, business goals, personal family goals - I found myself again. I surrendered. I trusted. I regained my confidence. I pursued my creativity. I realized who I was meant to be.

It took two years and an abundance of brutal nudges from the universe but finally, I am here. Ready. In love with myself again. Surrendered. Not controlling. Doing what feels good. Dating my creativity. Becoming my dream self.

And as for my 2025 manifestation list…I won’t be writing one this year.

The universe knows how I want to feel, how I want to live - and I am going to let it guide me towards that.

For the first time, I don’t want to control the details or the timeline.

For the first time, I am going to take the co in co-creating as sacred.

For the first time, I am going to let the universe give me what I need - gladly, gratefully, and with a delightful anticipation.

I only ask for one thing from 2025 in return: Show me how good it can get.

Some photos that summed up the beautiful parts of the 2024 that had nothing to do with my manifestation list:

Happy New Years everyone! May your true self come to life in 2025.

xx

Gabrielle Scout