How to Manifest Your Vision with Entrepreneur and Blogger Serenity Lesley

Tune in or read the blog version below!

My loves, welcome back to The Wanderlover Podcast. Serenity Lesley is a travel blogger, coach and creator of ‘It’s Time To Manifest Your Vision’ as 2024 is right around the corner.

I’m so excited to dive into how you can set it up for success with our guest expert. Welcome to the show, Serenity.

Introduction

Serenity: Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you having me here and just for announcing me in such a beautiful way. That was amazing. Thank you.

Danielle: Of course. And just so we can set the scene here, where in the world are you right now?

Serenity: I am actually in Cusco, Peru right now. I’ve been in Peru for a couple of months. I absolutely love it here. Hiked Machu Picchu, the middle of November, and now I’m just really soaking up the Spanish and going to the markets and just really soaking up the culture and loving the colors and everything here. It’s, it’s beautiful. I love it.

Danielle: That sounds so beautiful. And just so the audience has a bit of background, what brought you to Peru and how has your life kind of led you to this point in time?

Serenity: Oh my gosh. How do I shorten that? So, let’s see, in 2017, I had actually gotten married. I went on a honeymoon and I’ll kind, I’ll kind of make this brief. I went on a honeymoon to Hawaii and my life changed, absolutely changed.

And I went on a family vacation to Port Deval, to Mexico. I had never traveled before that I thought I was gonna be the girl with the white picket fence, the three story house, the four kids, the husband, like the, the American Dream, right?

After going on those travel trips, I realized that like that wasn’t actually what I wanted. And that was very societal. And ever since then, I’ve been trying to squeeze in as many vacation travel trips as possible.

And I had done a road trip down the coast with my sister, you know, right after she was finished weaning off my nephew. I’ve just been traveling ever since and I’m so addicted to it. I’ve been to Costa Rica. I lived in Costa Rica for almost three months. I went to Tulum, I taught yoga at a hostel. I celebrated the Day of the Dead in Oaxaca.

And just, I had just had such a love for travel. I love new experiences. I love trying new food. I love meeting new people. I love seeing the cultures, the celebrations. They’re all so different. And it’s so, it’s so amazing. And I realized that like I can’t, I can’t, in the societal monotony of the same rotation every single day I get really depressed.

I also get seasonal depression. And so, like, I just realized that like that lifestyle that I had wanted previously was I think an idea. And I realized that realistically it wasn’t me. Yeah. And so that’s why I’m here in Cusco, Peru. That’s why I love to travel. And it’s, I guess that’s what brought me here.

Danielle: That’s incredibly powerful. I love hearing how you had the faith and determination in admitting to yourself that what you had wanted for so long was not right for you.

Allowing Change For Your Own Happiness

Danielle: I think that’s a beautiful segue into what we will talk about today, manifesting your vision, because it does take that confidence in yourself. Right. So my question for you is, how did you first find the courage to admit to yourself: Wait, I think I might want something different?

Serenity: It took me many years. It took me, it took me so many years. I, I think I just realized that, you know, when I would come back home and when I was living that quote unquote, you know, societal dream and that American dream, I just realized that I was so unhappy.

And every single time I would go and travel, I was so exuberant and I was smiling and I was dancing and laughing, and my taste buds were bursting when I’d try new flavors. Like it was just so amazing. And I, I, it became too hard to deny every time I came back home. And so it slowly became something that was undeniable. Like it was something that, it was like, it was way too obvious to deny and it couldn’t be pushed back anymore.

After a year of actually being in my marriage, we had just kind of gotten to the point of where we realized we wanted different things. Like he wanted to live in a trailer, not move off of his family’s property. And I wanted to, you know, I wanted to travel and he wouldn’t go hiking, he wouldn’t go camping, he didn’t want any of that.

So I was like, okay, well I need to do what’s making me happy and you want what makes you happy. And I think that we both deserve happiness and it’s obviously no longer with each other. And so we moved on. And so that, I think, like for me, going through divorce, like once you do that, a lot of other things become easier. I, I kind of just had to realize like my happiness was essential.

And I was slowly, like, I had this psychologist, she actually made this analogy. She said, it’s like going down like Titanic. She’s like, you can either choose to slowly lose your happiness or you can choose to kind of pull yourself out with a raft and like survive and like move on to better things. So she’s like, what do you choose?

And having that analogy, I really realized like, you know, I actually do want my happiness and like going down with the ship, like what do I win? What do I get? Like what’s, what’s actually gonna happen from going the opposite direction? And so yeah, I started to have to really figure out what my happiness was and moving into the vision board aspect and moving into like actually figuring out what that was.

I needed to really get clarity. And so in order to have that clarity, I had to really sit with myself. I had to journal, I had to answer really difficult questions. I had to really reflect on where I was going and to like, it’s essential for us to also do that vision, answer those vision questions and find that clarity every so often because our paths change, right? Yeah. They could change six months, they could change years. Like it, it, it’s something where we’ll revisit it regularly, or at least I do, I revisit it every six months, right? Because we have new things that ended up happening, right? So like maybe a family member has a baby, we wanna stay home occasionally for a couple months, a year, right? We have a partner now what does that look like together?

Like there are certain aspects of our lives that change. And for me, in that moment, I really had to sit down with myself, okay, I’m moving out of a marriage, right? That was my life before. What do I want my life to look like now? Right? Like, yeah, what, what do I, what do I want my morning to look like? What does my ideal job look like it? How is that gonna support where I wanna go and where I wanna be and the dream that I have in order to support that? How much money do I need to be making? Right? I mean, it could be as simple as like what do I wear to really help with that vision, right? Like, do I wanna wear whites and brights and like re be really earthy and bohemian? Do I want to have more of the red and blue flannel that I’m wearing right now?

Which is very classic Seattle. So as we get into that is like for me, I just really had to get clarity. Okay, I obviously see that this is not what I want, so what do I want?

Danielle: Yeah and I love that analogy of do you want to continue sinking or do you do something about it? Do you take action and pursue a different path?

How To Journal Your Vision

Danielle: So for our listeners, if they are consciously making the choice, I want to pursue something different, I don’t wanna continue sinking, what would you say are the next few action items, maybe journal prompts that they can start thinking about right now?

Serenity: Yeah, for sure. So actually in Manifest Your Vision, I have an actionable workbook that has multiple different journal prompts in it. So they’re able to answer all of those. So I don’t wanna give those all away just ’cause they’re like gold nuggets. But I will give a couple.

I would say one is start to kind of make a list of what it is that you envision yourself doing on a day-to-day basis. Like what is your day look like? That could be work, that could be breakfast, that could be lunch. Like what are you eating are, and I could get into extreme detail on this to really help that vision. Like if we were to close our eyes right now, so if the reader were to close their eyes and you wake up, right?

What time are you waking up? What time are you getting out of bed? Do you wanna sleep in? Do you want a job in a lifestyle that like accommodates that? Or are you an early riser, you wanna go get it, you wanna go to the gym? Like what does that look like for you?

For me, I wanna be able to sleep in, I don’t wanna send an alarm. I wanna be able to hop into the shower. I want a really nice hot steaming shower. I want to be able to have a beautiful skincare routine and really massage my face and meditate at the same time. I wanna be able to have a nice luxurious breakfast that’s fully vegan, organic and satiating. I want the flavors to be bursting and popping. Like once you get into envisioning your future, you can get these things down to a tea. Am I right? Danielle?

Danielle: Yes. I love that. And I think it’s just so important to realize too, you don’t have to be limited by your current reality, right? So even I can see some listeners maybe If, you go into this journal, prompt If, you start journaling, you might catch yourself being like, I can’t do that. How will I sustain myself? Or how can I wake up without an alarm when I have work? I think it’s really important to think outside the box because you had the bravery to be like, you know what, this is what I want. It might not be my current reality, but I am calling it in. I am going to Manifest this.

Serenity: Yeah, absolutely. And two, like we sometimes we don’t understand that our reality is still set to the way that our previous life was. And so until we start to actually visualize something else, we’re only gonna see what we previously, previously were in. Like we’re not gonna be able to see the new. And so as we go into moving into manifesting and visioning that we’re not gonna be able to see anything else.

What Exactly Is Manifestation?

Danielle: And talking about manifestation, I know many people have heard about this, many people want to call it in. Do you have more or less a definition of what manifestation is and how exactly it works?

Serenity: Yeah, definitely. So there’s actually a quote that I came up with on my own. I kind of simplify it because most of the manifestation definitions that I’ve seen have been like paragraphs and paragraphs long. And to be honest, like I can never remember that. I’m gonna be honest that’s not gonna remember that. So I simplified it to kind of communicate it easier to myself as well as to others.

So manifesting it is thinking it, seeing it, saying it, and achieving it. Hmm. As simple as that. As simple as that. So when you’re thinking it, like you’re thinking, you are transforming your mind into thinking of a new reality.

So kind of like we’re talking about envisionment, what happens when we’re envisioning first we have to think of it, right? I have to think of what’s gonna make me happy. I have to think of, you know, like obviously we still have to work, we’re a part of a big beehive. We’re all little bees making it all work together. So what, what kind of, what kind of thinking aspect do I want? And then it moves into envisioning it and seeing it. ’cause you have to first think it, otherwise you won’t be able to see it, right? Yeah. So each and every single step is important. So think it, see it, say it, believe it, achieve it.

Danielle: And it all starts with thinking like your thoughts shape your reality.

Serenity: Definitely. And then it moves into vision because we can think it all day long, but if we’re not actually seeing it, what are we gonna, how are we gonna actually know what we’re looking for? And then to move into saying it, like we have to start saying it out loud, right? Like, so moving into the, and affirmations and manifestations are a little bit different. Like affirmations are a little bit more like emotional, soft, flu and like supportive, right? So like I will achieve. And then manifestation is I am achieving. Like there’s no question about it. It’s not I am going to or I will be. It is, I already am.

Danielle: Yeah.

Serenity: In that it’s thinking, seeing, saying like, I am an author, I am a blogger, I am a speaker, right? I’m not yet a public speaker. I will be, but I’m manifesting it. So I am a speaker now on my email signature. It’s now, you know, on my blog, I’m manifesting it, it’s gonna come because I’m thinking it, seeing it, saying it, and I’m achieving it.

Danielle: Yeah. And by saying it, it brings it into your present reality instead of just a distant one day in the future, right? I’m going to maybe change something about myself to get me there. Embodying who you want to be in the present until it’s inevitable.

Serenity: Exactly. Exactly. And two, like the more we say it could happen, or I will be or I might be, the more our brains are like, well that doesn’t necessarily have to mean right now. I can push it off a little bit longer. I can push it off a little bit longer. And then you allow fear to really, or we allow fear, excuse me, to really kind of like step into that gap and continuously push into that. And so when we remove that, we also remove the fear and we step into it and it’s like, no, no worries. I got this.

Danielle: And do you cover all of this in your class and workbook?

Serenity: I cover a lot of it. There’s a section in the class where I specifically talk about, you know, different ways of previous thought patterns and kind of transforming it into new thought patterns of actually supporting our manifestations, supporting our beliefs, right? So like moving away from the, you know, like we’re talking about, I could do it one day and moving into the, I’m doing it now, right? And so there is a, there is a section in the class and a little bit in the Workbook as well that goes into that and like transforming that way of thinking. Yeah. And then I also do in the Workbook, and I talk a little bit about it in the class, but it’s also mainly in the Workbook, is I have a whole section dedicated to manifestations, a whole section dedicated to affirmations.

And then I also have topic words as well. And I go into describing what they are and I give some examples so people don’t feel so lost because I know getting right into it from the beginning, it can be kind of like, okay, well what’s the difference? How do I know like what, which one is which, how do I go about this? So I wanted to make sure that everybody had the resources as much as possible for success.

Danielle: Yeah, it’s so helpful, especially as we are calling in 2024 and all the changes to come. So this is a perfect time of year to really reflect on this past year, but then also call in what you want, what changes you wanna make and who you want to become. I love seeing this play out in your own life as well. Just hearing about your story since 2017 for thinking and then envisioning and then saying it and then doing it.

Acting On Your Vision

Danielle: So Serenity is a member of the Business Academy. She is a successful blogger and you have made travel your reality. And I know other members, they look at your business and they’re like, oh my gosh, how is she doing this? Like how is she living the life I want to live? And it’s humbling in a sense because you didn’t start off here, right? You started off just like anyone else as a beginner a few years ago and doing the first step of thinking of an alternate reality for yourself, even though it wasn’t in front of you, you were thinking different thoughts and now it is.

Serenity: Yeah, it’s actually funny, like when you say how humbling it is and when you say that people you know are like, how is she doing this? How is it so big? And I gotta say it’s a lot of hours. It’s a lot of dedication. It is dedication to the life that I desire. It’s dedication to the person I am becoming. It’s dedication to that person. I was envisioning, like I always had visions of myself speaking on stage and I could even get emotional about it. I’ve always had visions of myself and like I’m somebody that’s also spiritual. So like for me, visions mean something. Visions mean like I’m on the right path. Like I’ve had visions of me doing book signings, I’ve had visions of me speaking, you know, at schools I’ve had visions of me just like speaking on stage.

Serenity: I’ve had visions of me having so many books. And I’ve also had other beautiful visions, like personal life visions. Like I have a nephew who’s five, like I have visions of taking him backpacking. And so having a business that allows for me to have a personal life as well is also essential for me because I have that family that’s really important to me. There’s so much that comes from that. And two, I also wanna share like I was just like everybody else, I’m actually gonna share it. I was a hairdresser for eight years. I was a hairdresser for eight years. I loved people, I loved people, but I thought the work was so exhausting. And I came to a realization that my money was capped and that I couldn’t make any more money in that. And so I realized like if I wanted to do more, if I wanted to achieve more, not even if, excuse me, I’m achieving more, I’m going to do more.

Serenity: So I need to make more, right? Yeah. Because it takes money to run a company. It takes more money to t achieve traveling the world. Like it costs money, it’s realistic, right? It was like a flight can be anywhere from $500 to a thousand dollars. Like it’s just what it is. So I needed to change my life. Yeah. And I realized that, you know, I had the opportunity of working in a hair salon where I did have the flexibility with one of the owners. He was like, yeah, you can be gone for, you know, maybe a month or so, but we still need you to work here for like six months. So it was like, okay, it was more than, you know, the average person having two weeks, like it’d be three months to six months of work and a month of travel, which was still really nice.

Serenity: And I felt very grateful. But for me, I get, I get really bored sitting in one place for three months. So I realized I needed a different life and I, I don’t know, I just reached my maximum. It wasn’t what I wanted to do anymore. There’s a lot of really harsh chemicals and what did I wanna do? I realized I loved writing. I was the super organized girl that always had tons and tons of lists in my Google docs and I realized looking at people’s Blog articles, hey, I could do that. Yeah, I’m already super organized. I love making lists for myself anyway, like packing lists and you know, best places to go here. Because people were always asking me like, Hey, you just went to, you know, you went on a road trip to California and Oregon, what did you do?

Serenity: And tell me everything and where should I go? And it’s like, okay. But having that same conversation over and over again with so many people became a little too much. It became overwhelming. So it was like, here, here’s this blog post, here’s this, you know, podcast or something like that and you just send it over to somebody and then it’s easier because then it’s like here you have all the information, you have everything. I wrote it up once, I don’t have to say it all over again. So things just slowly became to come into place for me.

Danielle: Yeah. And it’s okay to want more. Right? You know, you had more flexibility than the average individual, you know, like your life wasn’t where you wanted it to be, but it wasn’t bad. But that desire of wanting more freedom and honoring that, taking that leap, starting the business, reaching out to individuals who you wouldn’t have connected with before. It’s built your business to a point where you’re attracting your soul community. You are creating a brand that is just incredibly aligned. You don’t have to say yes to everything that comes your way because you have the freedom in designing your offers in designing your business. So it’s turning out better than you could have imagined.

Realities of Burnout

Serenity: Yeah, definitely. I didn’t imagine myself being in it this long. Like I knew I wanted it and I knew I wanted it with all my heart and soul, but I was so focused on the present moment of making it like just amazing and putting my heart and soul into it that I didn’t really foresee like, you know, lasting for so long. And now it’s like I can’t imagine myself doing anything else. Like I’ll, I’ll share something personal too. Like last year I ended up hitting burnout and I really sat and I really reflected and I was in so much pain and you know, having headaches from the lights and everything like that. But I had realized that there was nothing else I could imagine myself doing. Like I had thought about it, I was like, I could work this job, I could do this instead like this, I could do this.

Serenity: I just realized I hit burnout because I wasn’t taking care of myself because I was so passionate. Yeah. I was so in love with everything that I was doing and I was pouring so much of my heart and soul into it. I was pouring a little too much heart and soul into it. And so I needed to just kind of sit back and be like, wow, you know, I should do more yoga, get better about my vitamins, like take more naps. Like, and I was kind of moving into the like pushing too far into it because I loved it so much and I would cry because I’m like, I love it so much. I didn’t know you could hit burnout when you love something. Because previously when people talk about burnout, it’s like, oh I hate this so much. It’s so stressful. That’s why I’m hitting burnout. And I ran into the complete opposite problem and I’ve never heard of somebody talking about burnout, but they actually liked what they were doing.

Danielle: Yeah. Burnout from staying up until 5:00 AM trying to work on your business or fix your website. Right? That’s choosing your hard, choosing the challenges in this new direction. I am currently in New York right now and every time I come back here, this is where I worked in finance, this is where I started my journey. And it’s just so humbling seeing how how much your life changes without you even planning for it. So with the exercise of manifesting your vision, you decide your path, but it ends up growing to bigger than you could have ever imagined. You hit burnouts in ways you can’t foresee because you don’t know what it feels like, right?

Danielle: So all of these new experiences, all the good and bad, it’s incredibly aligned because no path is perfect. Yeah. But when you do find the path you are meant to be on, it’s all learning lessons and you wouldn’t essentially trade it for anything else.

Serenity: Absolutely. And two, like the other aspect that I wanna mention too is like for me, anytime that there was a difficult moment in my life or a difficult time of when I started to feel like I was say losing that vision or when I was starting to feel like that vision wasn’t as clear, all I would do was I would simply revisit the Workbook. I would simply revisit the class and I would restart and recreate my vision board to repark that. Yeah. So I did it right when I was coming back from burnout and I was like, you know what, what do I want now that I have that clear clarity of like, okay, this is too much in this area. I need to add a little bit more of my personal life. What is that going to look like for me? Or even when there was the economic crash, you know, when there was the pandemic, everything like that, I would pick myself back up and I’d say like, this is only temporary.

Serenity: This is only temporary. And we remind ourselves of that. Like we can always come back up again and what do I want that to look like? What do I want my coming back up to look like? What do I want my recovery from burnout to look like? What do I want it to look like, you know, with all of this and coming back from all of it. Hmm. And so I ended up creating my vision board and I put my ebook on there and I put my class on there and I am, I have prints on there, I’m gonna start doing photography prints. Like I have, you know, a camera pointed at me speaking so I can be on camera more. I have an image of like me being on a television show or a podcast, like these are things that were on my vision board and they’re already coming true.

Serenity: Because I can look at, so in the vision board class, I show people how to have it as a desktop wallpaper. And so I literally log onto my laptop and I look at my vision board every single time I come on. And so it, it is difficult to not see it. It’s difficult to not see myself in it because I literally look at it every single workday and it’s just like, well I know exactly where I’m headed. Well how do I make that happen? Perfect. Yeah. I’m making it happen.

Danielle: Yeah, programming your subconscious. And I think the most important takeaway is this is a tool that you can reuse year after year or month after month. It’s not necessary to say you have to decide everything that’s happening in your life in the next month. That’s not how it works. It’s having the tools to program your subconscious and call in everything you desire. Maybe in a year’s time it changes and that’s okay. But you have the power to shift into what is most aligned for you, what is best for you, and having that power to change what isn’t working and then also call in what’s working. That’s truly how you design a better and better life year after year.

Upgrade Your Vision Board

Serenity: Yeah, absolutely. And I also talk about in the class as well as the ebook, different ways to actually upgrade the vision board over and over again. So I actually have different templates. I think I have three to four different templates that are in there. And then I move into descriptors as far as like how to make it more advanced. So it’s not like it’s like okay cool, I created my vision board, I won’t do this again. It’s like, no, let’s do this every six months, let’s refresh. Like things are changing and then here’s also some different ways that you can advance it. Here’s different manifestations, here’s different affirmations, here’s different word focuses. So there are a lot of really key components in there to where people continuously can keep building.

It’s not something that’s like exactly one and done and it is building people’s power. It is people stepping into things like I do kind of talk about in the class, like if you’re intimidated or like if you’re really, you know, new to this, it’s okay to start with this more beginner based vision board. And then over time, as you grow, here’s what this could look like. And I show the unveiling and I actually brought in the templates from when I started very first making my vision board and then kind of moved into the growth of it, right? There’s more, there’s more affirmations, there’s more manifestations, there’s more photos, there’s more focus. Like there’s more to be able to grow into. And ’cause in the beginning some people it can be a little intimidated like, well I only wanna set the goals that I can achieve.

But over time as you kind of grow into it, it’s like I don’t have to achieve everything, but this is what I desire. And there’s also knowing that it’s okay to like repeat an image or two like from the, for the next vision board. Like it’s not like we have to put that intense pressure on ourselves. Like I have to achieve everything. It’s like, no, this is what I desire to achieve and will it what I will achieve? I would like to do this in the next six months if possible. That’s gonna be fantastic. Yeah. You know, kind of like having that grace within ourselves. And that’s been a very important learning lesson over the last couple of years is grace. That one’s amazing.

Danielle: Very important and very necessary for growth. I love the part about deciding the what and trusting that the how will reveal itself. I think that is the biggest lesson I’ve learned with manifestation and vision boarding. It’s really trusting the universe in providing the resources, the connections, the people, and keeping an eye out, right? Because you know what the what is and the how will reveal itself in time.

Serenity: Yes, definitely. And to another important aspect of like the envisionment and saying it is, you know, before we actually move into envisioning it and we’re thinking of it and we’re transforming that thought pattern before, like remember how I was saying we were only gonna be able to see that we were only gonna be able to think of it and like believe it. But as we’re transforming, once we are kind of keeping a lookout for it, like you’re saying, then we can start to feel that it’s gonna feel right. ’cause before when we were on our different path, it would feel wrong because we weren’t looking that direction. There’s this really beautiful analogy that I’ll sometimes actually make with my own coaching clients as well as I’ll say like, ’cause I love Scooby-Doo, so I’ll say this little Scooby-Doo flashlight, I’ll get into it, I’ll get it, I’ll make sense of it.

Serenity: So, or even just like anybody that I’m talking to when I make an analogy is I’ll say like, we have one flashlight, right? So we have the energy to be able to direct it which way we would like. So when we direct it a specific path, so say if I’m directing it the path of being a hairdresser, that’s what I’m gonna see, that’s what I’m gonna Manifest. If I’m directing it, the path of being a speaker, author, class creator, Blogger, Entrepreneur, traveler, that is the direction in which I can shine my Scooby do flashlight. That’s where my energy is gonna go. That’s where my thinking, that’s where my vision, that’s where my belief, that’s where my manifestation, that’s where things are gonna start to feel good. Yeah. Right. ’cause it’s putting that energy, that direction. And that’s the same with manifestation. So when we are manifesting things that are not right for us, it won’t feel good.

Serenity: It won’t feel like the path that’s aligned for us. So moving into that clarity aspect and moving into that manifestation on that right path, it’ll feel a lot better.

Danielle: I love that analogy. That’s so cute.

Serenity: You know, that’s my quirk I guess.

Danielle: I love it. So I will include your class and Workbook link in the episode description. Thank you so much for being on this show today, Serenity. This was such a powerful episode. Especially, you know, given this time of year, such a great time to call in changes and massive, massive life wins.

Serenity: Yeah. New Year, new you, like call it in. Manifest it. I know I am. Let’s all do it. I feel

Danielle: That energy.

Serenity: I got goosebumps a little bit.

Danielle: If you guys have any questions about this? I’m sure you can reach Serenity via DM via her website. It’s all linked. Thank you so, so much for being on the show today.

Serenity: Thank you so much for having me. It was such a pleasure and I really love how organic everything flowed and how we just kind of mesh really well in this. And I appreciate you having me on here. Thank you.

Danielle: Sending you so much love. See you guys next week.

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