Making dreams come true: inside the new age world of manifesting

Can hopes become reality just through the power of positive thinking? Yes, say the latest new age gurus and their - suggestible - audiences

The problem, it turns out, when writing a story about manifesting - the noughties new-age trend now making a pandemic-inspired Gen Z comeback - is that everyone you meet will proclaim they've manifested you. It's a feature, I suppose, rather than a bug: when you believe that desires can be made real by concentration alone, as those in the manifesting game do, and when that desire is for a journalist to cover the manifesting company you recently set up, then, well, who I am to say that they didn't?

The practice of manifesting is hardly new - it dates back to both the New Thought movement of the 19th century and, more recently, a resurgence in the noughties thanks to the 2006 self-help book The Secret, which sold 30m copies, and Oprah Winfrey, who is a fan.