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Recently, manifesting is having its moment and is being touted as a powerful self-help tool. Manifestation refers to the practice of thinking powerfully or believing in things you want and willing them into existence.

A more sophisticated understanding of manifesting does involve taking action to achieve your goals. Still, unfortunately, many people just focus on the intention-setting part of the practice. Also, many believe you can manifest bad things: Negative thoughts can cause unwanted occurrences.

As a psychologist, I have observed some problems with these types of beliefs. Let me explain.

The Problems With Believing in Manifestation

• Your thoughts alone cannot impact outside events. As much as people want to believe that they can think something into existence, the fact is, you cannot. You cannot sit at home and think about meeting your soulmate and have it happen just because you are thinking intensely about it. We can’t manifest winning the lottery or having the weather do what we want. Nor can we stop wars or global warming with our thoughts. The flip side, and the good news, is that we can’t cause bad things to happen because of our thoughts.
• Manifesting can lead to self-blame. Suppose something good doesn’t happen like you don’t get a desired job. Or, suppose something terrible happens, such as a family member getting sick or dying. If you believe strongly in manifesting, there is a risk that you could inadvertently blame yourself for not doing enough to manifest your desired outcome.
• Those who believe in manifesting might give more weight to their negative thoughts. This concern can be a particular problem for people prone to obsessive thinking and those with excessive worry. The result might be a worsening of mental health problems. For example, there are some with obsessive-compulsive disorder who believe that their negative thoughts can cause something horrible to happen. Or, those with chronic worry might have superstitious thoughts about their worry, like it can ward off something awful from happening. Thus, a belief in manifesting can worsen mental health symptoms for certain vulnerable people.

How Manifesting Could Be Useful

Manifesting isn’t necessarily all bad, and reframing your understanding of it could be helpful. Maintaining the knowledge that your thoughts alone cannot make things happen is vital.

• Manifesting can help define your values and what is important to you. If you want to manifest specific positive outcomes, examine the content of your focus. Is it interpersonal? Career-oriented? World-related? Spiritual? Once you notice what types of things you are trying to manifest, you can ask yourself if these issues represent something about your core values. It might be helpful to see how much of a priority you give these core values. Often, unhappiness and dissatisfaction occur when what we spend our time doing doesn’t align with our values or when our values get neglected.
• Manifesting can help you take positive action. As long as you realize that your thoughts alone cannot create change, you can examine how to turn your manifesting thoughts into action. For example, suppose you find yourself trying to manifest a romantic partner but aren’t meeting people organically or through dating apps. It might be time to take steps to do things that could lead to meeting that person.
• Manifesting could help you develop a mindfulness practice. Some people use mindfulness practice to clarify what they want to manifest. Mindfulness has been associated with positive outcomes, including stress reduction and improvements in mood.

The psychologist in me winces a bit when someone tells me that they saw a social media video on manifesting and are now scared that their negative thoughts will cause something terrible to happen. I have a similar reaction when I hear of people believing they can think something positive into existence.

However, if people can use manifesting as a tool to clarify their values and then take positive steps to make things happen, I can definitely get behind that.