Manifesting by Surrender: The Unexpected Path to My Dream Life
It was March 2020, and I found myself sitting on my couch, staring at the ceiling, grappling with the unsettling thought that I was about to lose it all—my car, my independence, the future I had worked so hard to manifest. I had poured myself into creating my "perfect life," crafting my dream job. Yet here I was, wondering if everything I’d believed about manifesting was just a cruel joke. Rent was due, and I had no idea how to pay it. For the first time, I thought, Maybe it’s just not going to work out. And then, just as I let go of my expectations and stopped struggling against the tide, something remarkable happened. Out of the blue, I received an email saying that my car loan was deferred for a month due to COVID. Just like that, a small door opened, and a shift began.
This was the first time I truly understood that manifesting isn’t just about aligning with desires, setting intentions, or saying affirmations. Yes, those things matter. But here’s the secret no one talks about: you have to let it go. Sometimes, the only way to get what you want is to be at peace with not having it. It sounds backward, but that’s the magic. I was about to learn it in the most surprising way.
Back in 2016, after a year-long fellowship with Veterans Affairs, I looked my dad in the eye and told him, “I’m going to Europe alone for a month and never working a 9-to-5 again.” He probably thought I was kidding. I wasn’t. I had a background in mental health, having worked for over 10 years in the field with a master’s degree in counseling. I fully expected to continue on that path, helping others as I had always envisioned. But life had other plans. Over the next four years, I did my month-long solo Europe trip and worked odd jobs upon my return—anything I could find. I joined a meal prep company where I did everything from deliveries to marketing, piecing together work just to keep the bills paid. And yet, I kept writing down my goals, no matter how outlandish they seemed: “Make $250,000 a year, working no more than 20 hours a week.” Did I know how I’d get there? Not even close.
Then, in 2019, things took a turn. My meal prep job went sideways due to an unreliable boss, and my coworker and I looked at each other and thought, Why don’t we just do this ourselves? We sketched out our own business ideas, built a website, and launched Plant Based Meals, making our first delivery in February 2020. Then lockdown hit. Suddenly, people needed healthy meals delivered to their doorsteps, and demand spiked. Within a month, we had outgrown my coworker’s kitchen.
One night, I ran into my upstairs neighbor, who happened to manage a large commercial kitchen. He offered us the space for the “two weeks” of lockdown. Those two weeks turned into five years. It was the boost we needed to grow our company and reach more people across San Diego. And, as if the universe were keeping track, our first-year revenue? $249,000—just shy of my $250,000 goal. It wasn’t my personal income, but that number was still tied to my name. Even more surprisingly, I was working the 20-hour weeks I had envisioned, earning more than any full-time job had ever paid me!
I never would have planned to end up in the food industry. My background in mental health made that route seem so clear to me, and working with food seemed like an odd detour. But these “coincidences” led me somewhere extraordinary. Each small event was like a nudge, guiding me toward a reality I couldn’t have imagined. Manifesting, I realized, isn’t about obsessively chasing what you want. It’s about letting go, opening up, and allowing life to unfold in ways we may not control but are often better than we could have planned.
And that’s the beauty of it: when I released my grip on what had to happen, everything I needed found its way to me. Letting go doesn’t mean giving up; it means trusting that if we put our intentions out there, life has a way of filling in the details. So, when we make peace with the unknown, that’s when we’re free to receive what we’ve been waiting for all along.
