Google searches for “manifesting” went up 600% in 2020 and “Shut up, I’m manifesting” became a meme. Manifestation content on TikTok has over 15 billion views and the hashtags #manifestation and #manifest have over 15 million posts on Instagram. What started as a source of comfort during the pandemic has now become the nucleus of modern wellness—offering techniques to help you attract everything from a text message from your crush to an offer letter from your dream job. But a potent tool like this understandably tends to draw a divide. While some consider it too good to be true, others swear by it to produce life-changing results.
With 2.1M followers on TikTok, Sarah Perl aka Hot High Priestess is a pioneer of viral manifestation techniques like the whisper method and love letter method. We sat down with her to find some answers to our burning questions:
ELLE: Could you take me through some of the manifestation methods that you swear by?
Priestess: The most profound method that has brought extravagant changes in my life is self-concept. I don’t know if I’d call that a method per se, but it’s a very important concept within manifestation. Now, self-concept is the idea that the world is you pushed out and the world is a mirror of your mind. Meaning everyone in your reality is reflecting your own thoughts beliefs and assumptions about yourself and about the world, right back onto you. And so the belief here is the only way to change your external reality is by changing yourself. That is it, you only change your external reality through changing the self—changing your inner dialogue, mental diet, and things like that.
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The Whisper Method is my most popular manifestation method. The idea is to visualize yourself going up to your person—whether it’s a crush, a boss, or whoever—and whispering in their ear three times what it is you’d want them to do for you.
The Love Letter Method is a personal method, one that I created myself. The Love Letter method is a self-concept method because the idea there is that you change the beliefs of a person through writing a love letter to yourself. And in this love letter, you’re writing it from the POV of the person that you want to think differently about you.
Scripting is another big one. This is where you write as if it’s already happened. Write your goals and intentions as though you’ve already achieved them.
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ELLE: What are some important things to keep in mind when practising manifestation?
Priestess: Desperation doesn’t attract, in fact, it repels. That’s called The Law of Paradoxical Intent. So if you’re desperate for something, you’re not going to attract it. You don’t attract what you want, you attract what you believe you are.
If you believe that you are destined for fame or believe that you are a famous person and that you are a wealthy individual, then the universe will reflect that and make that your reality. It’s all about our internal and dominant beliefs. So some things to keep in mind when practising manifestation is don’t be desperate, don’t beg, rather assume. We practice the Law of Assumption here. So what you assumed to be true is what your reality will become. I would also say, to remember that if you cannot fulfil it within yourself you can’t expect someone else to fulfil it.
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ELLE: What are some common mistakes that you see people making while practising manifestation?
Priestess: I would say the Law of Paradoxical Intent is a huge one—so desperation, begging, being needy. I see a lot of people coming from a place of deep desperation when it comes to love and relationships. They place the individual they’re trying to manifest on such a high pedestal. That way you’ll never attract them. You have to be on the same energetic frequency to attract each other, not one person on a pedestal and the other below them. Another thing I see is a lot of people rushing the process. Especially when you’re new to manifesting, you should be open-ended with the time periods and the time frames and know that things sometimes have to fall apart before they get better.
A lot of people look at things that are negative and use that as an affirmation that their manifestation is not coming when in reality, it’s quite the opposite. Sometimes you have to get fired from your current job to manifest extreme wealth. Because getting fired from that job may in turn inspire you to start your own business that becomes a multimillion-dollar business or it inspires you to apply to a new job that pays you double the income. So look at everything that’s negative as a positive.
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ELLE: How do you let go of the ‘how’?
Priestess: I always say, f*** the how. I talk about that in my workshop as well. What it essentially means is that your job is to set forth the command, not to show the universe how it will be done. In fact, focusing too much on the ‘how’ can actually limit you and drive you further away from the manifestation. The reason is that you might not be able to conceptualise the ‘how’ at this current point in time. The universe will show you how. It’s not your job to see how. So keep the intention, but live in the end state. I always say this, live in the end, live as though you are already here, in the manifestation today. Not that you will be, but that it’s already here. Even if the evidence of your senses denies it. You have to be open-ended with the how. I didn’t know that wealth for me would come from TikTok. When I was manifesting wealth, TikTok as an app didn’t even exist. So there was no how. A how needed to be presented to me, created for me.
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ELLE: Manifestation methods often get called out for encouraging the idea of ‘trying to get what you want without actually working for it’. What do you have to say about that?
Priestess: Honestly, sometimes you really don’t have to work that hard for it (laughs). People think they have to work super hard to make a lot of money, or that they have to chase in order to get the man. No. In fact, sometimes the path of least resistance brings it in the fastest. And when you detach from the thing you’re trying to manifest, that’s when you manifest it the fastest.
See, I could have placed a ‘how’ and told myself that I’ll become wealthy by working extra hours every week. But instead, I said show me the path that allows me to not have to work hard and still make the money. That’s how I got grants and support. And that’s when I started making thousands of dollars in my sleep. I say this affirmation and I recommend my clients say it too—’I get paid to exist’. The whole point of manifestation is to show you the route with the easiest approach. I have a lot of clients that manifest money just out of thin air, through inheritance, marriage etc. So release the how and know that it doesn’t always have to be hard.
