Lacy Phillips encourages you to make a list and check it twice. The gifts that you give will be to yourself.

The Echo Park-based manifestation guide and editor of holistic lifestyle site, Free + Native, grew up surrounded by the healing arts. Still, it wasn’t until a bit later in life, after gobbling up all the existing material she could find and trying out many of the strategies, that she realized she had her own method for manifesting the life she wanted. The onetime holistic chef and herbalist set to work debunking the superstition attached to realizing one’s dreams and goals, relying instead on boosting self-worth, breaking old negative patterns and making simple lists to layout clear desires. Now, she guides other people all they work to manifest everything from relationships to jobs to living spaces.

Here, Phillips discusses the importance of setting clear goals and trusting your intuition:

Live The Process: When did you first become aware of the concept of “manifesting”?

Lacy Phillips: I was introduced to the concept of being a creator, which we all are, when I was young. I was raised around a grandmother who was very into wellness and the healing arts. Her standard refrain was: “You can be anything you want to be.” She used language like “energy” and so forth. But it wasn’t until I was 17 that I dove into the world of manifestation on my own account. My mother always had a family intuitive who she would consult on behalf of herself, my brothers and me. It was that intuitive who encouraged me to read The Game Of Life And How To Play it. That was my gateway literature. Then I read all of the books. And watched the movie.

LTP: How did you come to discover manifestation in its current incarnation? How is your practice different than others?

LP: At around age 25, after following all of those methods and approaches to manifestation, I realized that they didn’t quite work. I’m the type of personality that is more linear and formulaic. I’ve always been that way. My brain needs to compartmentalize everything. I noticed that when very specific intentions would manifest, it was never as a result of “thinking positively,” “visualizing,” “being in the vortex,” “proclaiming deadlines,” “buying the expensive thing in order to feel yada yada,” “writing the check that I wanted to cash in x amount of years” etc. These are the surface level messages in those methods. And when I wasn’t doing any of those practices, I would manifest really specific, hard to believe subjects.

It was after I manifested a $325 apartment in the Echo Park hills and a partner down to “long blond surfer hair and a European family (Parisian mother)” that I realized I was onto something different. I had developed a method that always worked for me, without fail, and resulted in exactly what I wanted. And I learned that my thoughts or visualization didn’t have much to do with it at all.

My process varies exponentially from the other literature that exists. However, here are some of the more important aspects:

- Thoughts do not dictate what you manifest; beliefs do. You can think and feel what you want until you’re blue in the face, but if you haven’t expanded your belief system to include the fact that you are fully deserving and capable of the subject you are calling in, nothing is going to happen.

- When other literature states, “get into the vortex or align vibrationally to what you are manifesting,” what they actually mean is grow your self-worth and discard limiting beliefs. For this, one needs to work on oneself to heal wounds, reprogram old programming, expand beliefs and the list goes on. It also varies from person to person, and I have a pretty keen sense of what blocks, cycles or programs are inhibiting my clients from the subject they are manifesting.

- No superstitions are needed: No crystals, no moon-specific dates, no vision boards—nothing but a pen and a piece of paper to write a list. Those elements are beautiful tools and rituals that serve a purpose spiritually, but nothing of the sort is required to manifest. A huge portion of the work I do is demystifying all the superstitions and bad habits picked up through reading and following misguiding literature (like I did for years).

- Another very crucial aspect of my process that has never been touched on is that the Universe sends you tests and lessons once you’ve called in a subject. It tests if your self-worth is high enough to refuse anything less and it also tests to see if you trust in the Universe explicitly. When you pass those tests, you are connected with your subject. If you don’t, they simply keep showing up over and over again. A perfect example is the age old tale of a person who has been calling in a serious commitment and a partner, but keeps meeting emotionally unavailable people instead. The same might go for a job or anything else that person might want in her life. 1. They don’t believe that they deserve this relationship, or their subconscious mind has never seen this relationship before. 2. They keep accepting less. 3. They haven’t done the work to raise their self-worth, deprogram or expand their beliefs.

LTP: How do you know if you've successfully manifested something? Can you offer personal examples?

LP: You always know once you’ve manifested what you called in because it’s exactly what you asked for—or better.

Oh man, I legitimately use manifestation for everything in my life. I have since sI was a kid. I live by it. So my entire reality is a manifested subject I called in. My partner, my clients, my blog, my home, my car, my health, my financial means—everything.

I started a new series on Free + Native called, “A Completed List,” because I instruct people to call in subjects by way of lists. This series is where I share lists of mine from the past three years that have been fully realized and manifested.  It was such a vulnerable decision to show my own personal lists, but it has been so important for my community—especially the community I haven’t had a chance to work with yet.

I’ve also been sharing my current journey in my personal manifestation process, and that’s been exposing the openness of how bizarre it is to have literally received every single subject that I began manifesting three years ago. And how it has opened this beautiful portal for me to simmer on and ask the Universe to show me what’s next, rather than forcing what that will be. I’m awed that I’m finally in a place in my own process where rather than asking the Universe for more tangible items, I’m simply writing on my list: “Show me how to be of greater service in this world and for this planet as a whole.”

LTP: Do you have any wellness rituals or practices that help you stay balanced and healthy in your daily life?

LP: Well, I’m such a wellness nut, so I try it all! Then I scale back and see what actually benefits my body, mind and spirit. So, my rituals are always in flux. But the absolutes at this time are: Bone broth daily, Vedic meditation twice a day, Breathwork as often as needed (but always once a week with Lauren Spencer King), HIIT three days a week and cardio on the other days. I also have my own personal work that I have to do for shifting old programming and limiting beliefs. I come from a lot.

LTP: What does happiness look like to you? 

LP: Balance and love! So simple and so cheesy. But it’s true. As someone that has had a lot of endocrine issues, balance means the world to me. And every day, I’m learning how love is really the most beautiful thing on the planet. I never thought I’d be the person to say and mean this.

LTP: What does it mean to you to “Live The Process” and how can we all do that more each day?

LP: Listen to your intuition and your body. Let other people inspire you, but all the answers are already inside you. Tap in and ask for guidance, then listen. Your body is also always communicating with you as to what it needs. It can’t speak, so it has to communicate in other ways. What have you not been expressing and communicating? What is down there that needs to come out?