Can the power of positive thinking actually pay your rent?
Photography Sian O’Gorman
With her freelance work on hold indefinitely, lifelong cynic Sian O’Gorman takes on the 21 Days of Abundance – again
On day four of lockdown, I’m added to my sister’s WhatsApp group:
🧘🏼♀️✌🏻🦋21 Days of Abundance 🦋✌🏻🧘
“PERFECT!” I think. Just what I need now all my foreseeable freelance work has disappeared into a void of doom and uncertainty. I'll turn that frown upside down and manifest my way out of this looming financial hell hole, into a future of freedom, independence and positive vibes.
It's not the first time I've been invited to try spiritual guru Deepak Chopra’s 21-day meditation challenge. In fact, this is the sixth time I’ve been added to one of these groups. A kind of virtual chainmail meditation club, each person in a group is expected to create their own new group, add all their friends, and copy over Chopra’s daily contemplations: one 15-minute meditation mantra and one abundance-related task. (For example, listing your most successful friends and pondering on how they got so woke, or listing the peeps that suck the most energy out of you and sending them warm-hearted blessings for sucking so hard.)
Each time, I've started with a bang, making it to Day 7, Day 8, Day 5, before my lazy, cynical side wins out. I've slowly muttered my way out of each group of random spiritual seekers and abundance bounty hunters with a cover-up of, “Guys I need to do what's best for me right now and just like, pause for a while you know?” (“Ohhh thanks for your honesty girl, you do what's best for you!”); or I've turned off all alerts from the chat and ignored every update until my eyes no longer register the rainbow/heart/planet Earth emojis as anything other than screen noise.
But not this time. My day-four-of-lockdown self has entered an entirely new realm of being: Time Rich x Cash Poor. No more excuses. Nothing’s getting in the way of the new, improved, rolling-in-abundance me.
Whether we interpret “abundance” to mean material wealth or an overflowing spirit of blissful self-awareness, it's all the same here. In essence, these types of visualisation techniques are meant to clear away mental blocks that, ostensibly, prevent you from receiving what you desire, and then create a big open space for it to come rolling in. They function on the premise that, deep down, many of us don't feel we’re truly worthy of a rich, fulfilling life, and that is the fundamental aspect holding us back.
People have been manifesting abundant futures way before 25-year-old wellness junkies and Gen Z digital yogis living their best lives. A respected physician turned Hollywood guru, Chopra was actually one of the OG figures of the New Age movement, introducing Eastern spirituality and alternative medicine to the American mainstream in the ‘80s.
Since Oprah started banging on about his books and theories in 1993, Chopra’s been flying high as one of the most significant figures in mainstream alternative thinking. But his reign hasn’t been without his critics: He’s been in the scientific firing line on multiple occasions, with his philosophies of quantum healing pissing off the exact skeptics you'd expect to be throwing a hissy fit about re-appropriating scientific lingo and believing in a divine consciousness. He’s also called out countless times for speaking out against materialism while reportedly spending $14.5 million on a Manhattan apartment.
But despite all the haters, he’s made a huge mark – and a huge profit – on the ever-expanding Western spirituality movement, which is why I trust him enough to give it another go. Surely once you get yourself through to Day 21, money must literally start raining from the sky?
So here I go. Armed with a brand new notebook and 21 designated slots in my Google Calendar, I dive in, ready and willing to transform.
I'm actually blown away by how much of a kick I get from even deciding to do the 21 days. It's like every time I've joined a gym and got me some sassy new workout tights from Sports Direct, and scheduled in all the Dynamic Yoga, Bums, Tums and Thighs, and Body Pump classes the app will allow me to book at once without crashing. I feel invincible. I even start telling people about how great and transformational it is, and how they should think about doing it, too. And two months later, when my no-longer-new Nike tights are covered in banana bread batter and I owe the gym 40-plus pounds in cancellation fees, I just make some excuse about how the gym was that little bit too far away and I realised, like, why spend all that money on a gym when I could do similar workouts at home for free, you know?
This cycle of believing my own bullshit, regardless of how many times it has spun on its warped axis of delusion, is exactly why I find myself trying this meditation again, truly believing I'll make it through to the end, that this time will be genuinely different. Because the external situation has changed in my favour. There is now nothing to lose, and everything to gain.
Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 – nailed it. (Obviously. I mean, I've done them enough times by now.) I've written lists of people who inspire me, I’ve beheld the abundance that surrounds me, I’ve walked through the field of all possibilities, and I have sewn some serious seeds for success. My utter joy at being the first person to complete each manifesting task and post “Day Four - Complete'' with a little tick emoji into the group feeds that sad little eight-year-old-teacher’s-pet hole in my heart.
By Day 7, I’m waking up ready and open to receive. I can't even wait until after coffee to get stuck into my new WhatsApp challenge for the day.
But Day 8 comes and the challenge is a bit annoying and I have a call at 10 am anyway, so fuck it, I’ll do it later in the day. Later in the day comes around and I think, “Fuck it. I’ll just do two tomorrow.”
Tomorrow passes, as does the next day, and all of a sudden I'm three days behind. The WhatsApp thread is beginning to taste a little sour and curdled around the edges. I start to get annoyed at everyone still posting and I suspect they are all just making it up, those fuckers. As the days go by, a fluffy green mould begins to form and the stink intensifies through the far reaches of my app.
Even still, I imagine one day just getting up and doing 11 days worth of meditations in a row, just so I can jump back in and be like “Guys! Im back!! Day 8 - 19 COMPLETE 😉” and I get an actual kick thinking about how everyone in the group will be amazed at such a triumph at this late stage of the game.
And that's another delusion of these chainmail groups for those of us still stuck in the cycles of our own bullshit: You let yourself believe that other people actually give any fucks about how you’re getting through this process. I've gotten myself into a complete entanglement of thinking all these people are judging me for not posting, that I'm a complete failure for having given up on this yet again, and the only thing I've actually managed to manifest in 21 days is a stronger sense of cynicism towards my fellow humans and a blossoming abundance of pure disdain for Deepak Chopra.
So to go back to my original question: Can the powers of positive thinking actually pay your rent?
Well I don't bloody know because I'm stuck in a vortex of negativity and failure aren't I? From here, all I can see are my annoyances at people projecting their toxic positivity at me all over the internet. Look at all these impossibly hot people isolating in their canal-side, inheritance-funded apartments offering transcendental gong baths and Facebook Live qigong sessions from their palatial balconies.
All I can do is sneer with a vehemence that can only be fuelled by the hatred of those who have more than me.
The reason why abundance meditations will not make me rich in any sense of the word is because I just simply cannot let myself believe in them. My pessimism runs deep, and each day I fortify the armour of my own beliefs that the world is utterly fucked and I’m destined to remain a creatively thriving but financially incapacitated adult for the rest of my existence. Maybe people can't and shouldn’t have it all – that's just plain selfish.
It's going to take a shit load more than 21 days to crack this shell of contempt and self-deprecation, never mind getting to a point where I believe I can actually manifest real-life money into existence. Luckily, I've just signed up to an online course titled “Vision Board: Find Your True Purpose & Achieve Your Goals.”
Pretty sure this is the one that’ll do it.
