Queen of manifesting Roxie Nafousi: “I’m not really here to try and convince the cynics”
You probably saw the little orange book all over your Instagram feed. Adorning shelves and coffee tables, tucked into handbags and proudly clasped by influencers and celebrities including Bella Hadid, Roxie Nafousi’s book Manifest: 7 Steps to Living Your Best Life was the must-have self-development bible of 2022. It promised to teach us how to reach our goals, generate success and generally live our #BestLives – and it came at a time when we needed it most. No surprises then, that it became an instant bestseller.
What is unexpected, is that Nafousi initially thought “it was shit” and “couldn’t even read it”. The queen of manifesting wrote the book in just eight weeks. “There was so much that I didn’t have time to put in, so when it first came out and before people got their hands on it, I worried that it was too simple and that I didn’t go deep enough into it. But, in the end, that’s what I think made it so successful, it made it accessible and easy to understand for everyone,” she tells Cosmopolitan.
A year on, Nafousi is working day and night to align with transatlantic working hours, hosting workshops, seminars, doing one-to-one coaching, launching projects and promoting her follow-up book: Manifest: Dive Deeper. “It surpassed my hopes beyond. I could never have expected it to be as big as it has been.”
For the uninitiated (sorry, do you not live on TikTok?) manifesting is a practice that encourages people to harness positive thinking to achieve their wildest dreams. Essentially, manifesting says that if you think positively, you will operate on a high vibrational plane, which will encourage positive things to come your way. Yes, it sounds totally woo-woo, but boiled down, using mantras, channelling positive thinking, and developing gratitude are also methods that form part of some more traditional therapies.
The term manifesting was first coined by William Walker Atkinson in his 1906 book, Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World, and was later popularised in the 2006 book by television producer Rhonda Byrne, The Secret, which sold over 30m copies and was praised by celebrities from Oprah Winfrey to – of course – Gwyneth Paltrow.
In the last couple of years, amid a renaissance of astrology, tarot, self-improvement, and journaling, manifesting has returned to the fore. On Tik Tok, #Manifestation has a staggering 24.8 billion views, with people claiming to have visualised all manner of things from life partners to jobs to holidays, houses, pets and even bank balances into existence. But, says Nafousi, this isn’t the intention of the practice. She makes no secret of her irritation at how the practice has been warped by social media messaging that prioritises an ever-materialistic capitalist view.
“I think manifesting has a bad rep because of Tik Tok. It’s become such a trend and people really don’t understand it. I sometimes feel I’m the PR for manifesting trying to do damage control! People on Tik Tok say they manifested their Chanel bag. Well, that’s not really manifesting is about. Manifesting is a practice of self-belief that everybody can benefit from. It’s about bringing things into your life that will give you fulfilment and contentment and joy and peace. It’s also a misconception that it’s just about visualising. It’s about hard work”.
Rather than wishing material items into our lives, manifesting, Nafousi says, is about re-training our brains, reflecting and refocussing. For her, this looks like regular journaling, and visualisations, but also “the way I show up, how I overcome tests, the boundaries I set in my life with other people.”
Where Nafousi’s first book was an entry into the manifesting practice, Dive Deeper focuses more closely on helping the reader with their self-belief. It follows the same seven-steps as Manifest, but approaches them from a more introspective angle, and provides more exercises, advice, and personal anecdotes from Nafousi’s own manifesting journey.
Scrolling through Nafousi’s beautifully curated Instagram feed of inspirational quotes, stylish interiors and wholesome family life, it’s easy to see how her 186k followers would want to cling onto her every word if it might mean getting their own slice of her glossy, aspirational life. But it hasn’t always been this way. Nafousi has been open about her own journey from drug and alcohol addiction to life coach – both in her workshops and in her books. It is this refreshingly raw approach that makes the methods she is teaching feel so accessible.
And, she explains, the process is ongoing, with 2022 being pivotal in her own journey. “I used to think manifesting was all about forward momentum, doing the work, doing the routines. And then I realised we cannot free ourselves until we look back, we cannot really thrive until we accept that there are parts of our past that are always going to hold us back until we look at them and heal them.”
Dive Deeper reflects on Nafousi’s struggles with vulnerability in her personal relationships. “I had this fear that if I got too close with someone, they would leave me. The person I am now is totally different to who I was at the beginning of the year. I’m more grounded, I’m more present, I’m so much more aware of my triggers, I’m so much more confident,” she says.
For the rest of us, while 2022 saw many of us emerge from our pandemic chrysalis, open to change, self-development, and positivity, it’s hard to deny those feelings have dissipated, replaced with a cost-of-living crisis and rolling public sector strikes. Will people be so willing to embrace the idea of vision boarding their way to overcoming adversity this year?
“I think it’s especially important when life is so uncertain that we can control the things we can. There are plenty of things in our life we really cannot control and things that are unfair and shit, but there are things that we can do in other areas of our life that can make us feel better, and this is just about feeling better, it’s about making the most of the life we have because we only have one,” Nafousi says.
Naturally, there are cynics – and a backlash to a way of thinking that some suggest verges on toxic positivity and the idea that we can vision board our way out of any crisis. But Nafousi is undeterred. “I’m not really here to try and convince anyone of anything and to convince the cynics. If people don’t want to believe in something, then they don’t have to. But I would encourage everybody to try something that might make them feel better,” Nafousi says. “Honestly, I just fucking love it.”
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