How to manifest your perfect 2024, according to an expert

Ever heard of the old phrase “speak it into existence”? Well, that’s what’s essentially at the core of manifestation, which is all about using positive thinking to attract good things your way – be it new opportunities, rewarding relationships, successful ventures, or whatever else your heart may desire.

As the year draws to an end, it’s natural for us to start thinking about the goals we aim to achieve next year, the things we want to cross off our bucket lists, or the kind of person we may wish to become. And yes, making New Year’s resolutions can be a great step towards these aspirations, but what if you could boost your chances of making 2024 the best year yet by actively manifesting your dreams?

Ahead, we speak to Swedish wellness expert, author and certified yoga teacher Josefin Dahlberg to find out what exactly manifestation is and how you can use it to make the upcoming year a one for the books.

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“What we really need to understand is that we actually manifest every single day with how we speak to ourselves and what kind of beliefs we have,” Dahlberg says. “Those beliefs can be from our childhood by how we saw our parents feel and take care of themselves, how our friends behaved, or how society told us to be.” These inner thoughts are something that we carry with us throughout our lives, affecting how we view the world. In fact, according to Dahlberg, most of us aren’t even aware that these beliefs exist, as they have become our truth.

When it comes to making a change and manifesting those positive things in your life, that’s when active manifestation comes into play. “Active manifestation is about starting to understand how your beliefs look, how you talk to yourself, and through that you can shift and change,” Dahlberg says. Once you start to grasp your inner workings, you can get rid of any unfavourable thoughts or patterns and turn them into beliefs that will serve you.

As per Dahlberg, active manifestation can be done using various methods, from good old vision boards and journaling to daily affirmations and the law of attraction (positive thoughts attract positive results). The bottom line is that you must actively and consistently focus your thoughts on whatever you want to bring into your life until you receive it.

Before you get your vision boards going, Dahlberg reminds us that clearing negativity entirely from your beliefs is essential, as it could block the process. When beginning to manifest, one ought to start from “inner soul work”, as Dahlberg calls it. “For example, if you want to manifest a healthy relationship but don’t feel worthy of being loved as you are, it will be hard to manifest that relationship,” she says. In this case, you should first concentrate on reconnecting with loving yourself and cultivating that feeling of deserving a healthy, loving and respectful relationship. “Often we want to skip that part of working on ourselves, but that’s not how manifestation works,” Dahlberg says.

We all have different things on our wishlist for the new year, and while some of our aspirations may be broader and deeper, others might be more specific and superficial. There aren’t any limits to manifesting; however, Dahlberg notes that you need to check in with yourself to see whether it’s your soul or your ego longing for your manifestation’s object. “For instance, if you’re thinking ‘I want this money so I can get this car and look cool for others’, the universe might not support that,” she says.

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Writing down everything you want your 2024 to entail is a good idea, and being clear about it is recommended. “Then it’s up to you to start doing your soul work so that your inner beliefs can match what you want,” Dahlberg says. Whether it’s a smaller or big goal, it doesn’t matter – the key is getting your innermost notions to truly align with your desires. “We have around 60,000 thoughts every day, 90 per cent of them are repetitive, and around 80 per cent have a somewhat negative tone,” Dahlberg says. “So if 90 per cent of our thoughts are the same that we had yesterday, by choosing to create new thoughts today, like ‘I want to support myself’ or ‘I believe in myself’, we can start to create new patterns in our thoughts.” And this, per Dahlberg, will lead to those changes you're looking for in your outer world.