How To Determine If You’re a Specific or a Nonspecific Manifester

For a long time, I thought manifestation was bullshit.

It felt like the harder I tried, the less it worked.

Here’s what I was missing: an accurate understanding of how manifestation works for me.

We each have our own unique manifestation style, guided in large part by whether we’re a Specific or Nonspecific Manifester.

I was trying to manifest specific goals. But when I started getting obsessed with Human Design and learned that I’m a Nonspecific Manifester, my creation process began to make more sense.

If manifestation never seems to work for you, this may be why:

You’re a nonspecific manifester in a world built for specific manifesters. 

You thrive on vibes not logic.

You’re meant to zigzag toward joy instead of chaining yourself to your to-do list.

The more you focus on the outcome, the more frustrated you become.

The more you lean into how you want to feel, moment by moment, day by day, the more the universe rearranges reality in your favor.

Most of the manifestation information out there is geared toward specific manifesters. So if it feels like it never works, it’s not your fault. You’re just built differently.

Here’s How to Find out if You’re a specific or Nonspecific Manifester:

According to Human Design, we all have our own unique manifestation style. Knowing if you’re a Specific or a Nonspecific Manifester shows you how to best set goals and use your unique energy in manifestation. Your designation is based on your manifestation arrow, the bottom right arrow on your Human Design chart.

Step 1: Get Your Human Design Chart

You’ll need your exact birth date, time, and place.

You can generate a free chart here.

Step 2: Find the Bottom Right Arrow

Look for the four arrows around your head in the chart. They correspond to different aspects of awareness and manifestation. The bottom right arrow indicates your manifestation style.

Step 3: Check the Direction of the Bottom Right Arrow

If it points left, you’re a Specific Manifester.

Meaning, you manifest best when you’re clear and detailed about what you want. Focusing on details will help you receive and create what you want.

If it points right, you’re a Nonspecific Manifester.

Meaning, you manifest best when you focus on the feeling, essence, or vibe of what you want. Stay open to how it comes - and the universe fills in the details.

an easy way to remember the manifestation types:

Specific manifestation is a golden retriever.

You can train it to obey you. You still want to provide a healthy environment, but in general, the golden retriever will go where you tell it to go. 

Nonspecific manifestation is a slightly feral cat.

If you’ve ever met a cat, you know you can’t force it to do anything. All you can do is provide a safe environment and let the cat go where it wants, when it wants. The more you try to herd the cat, the more frustrated you’ll become. 

Most of the manifestation advice floating around on social media and bookshelves is designed for Specific Manifesters, the people who can slam their wizard staff to the ground and proclaim “I will create $10,000 this week.” And then they do it and get to feel smug. 

But for Nonspecific Manifesters, the more we aim for outcome, the more we cling to the end goal, the more aggressively we fail. As a Nonspecific Manifester, you’re meant to focus on how you want to feel. 

If you’ve ever tried to follow someone else’s plan to get something, and it feels like that never works…you’re probably a Nonspecific Manifester. You’re meant to skip steps. Where a Specific Manifester can follow a designated path from point A to Z, you probably need to zig zag. Veer off course because it feels fun. Go rollerskating instead of sticking to your to-do list for the day, because that’s how you stay in the frequency of the result you’re calling in. 

Specific manifesters get to feel super smug when they set and strategically reach that one million dollar goal. 

Nonspecific manifesters also get to feel smug, but they can’t cling to the end result. They have to bask in the vibes of how they want to feel and trust the universe to rearrange things in their favor, and not get discouraged when it comes in a different way before it shows up in the way they hoped for. 

Nonspecific bonus: roller skating instead of to do lists. Zigzagging toward joy instead of sticking to a plan. 

Love, Amber

P.S. If you want to go even deeper and learn about how you can apply these principles more powerfully in your own life, we talk about Specific and Nonspecific Manifestation in more depth in Magic Money Potion, so if you’re interested in more, join Cash Activator to get access. For more support, come to one of the group coaching sessions and I’d be happy to help you out with applying this in your own life.

Why You're So Tired Right Now

Today the answer is actually not because the world is a trash fire of existential despair.

Today’s answer is: Blame the moon.

That’s right, it’s the balsamic moon again!

I shout about the balsamic moon from the rooftops because if you’ve been pushing too hard or overdoing it in any way, the balsamic moon is when you’ll feel it.

You’ll be exhausted and have no idea why. The siren call of the nap will become impossible to ignore. You’ll trigger more easily. You will want to do zero things. You will politely request the entire world to come to a halt so you can climb into bed for three days.

If you haven’t been overdoing it over the past month, you might not feel it. Or just decide your bedtime is half an hour earlier than usual and call it a moon cycle.

But for those of us recovering perfectionists who are healing the hustle mentality and trying to exorcise the demon capitalism from our bodies?

We gonna wanna nap.

For years, I would crash face first into my couch for about three days every month and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with what was happening in my life or my own cycle. But when I started paying attention to the moon, I received my witch bonus: Getting to schedule the balsamic moon into my calendar so I wouldn’t accidentally plan anything that requires leaving the house.

So if you’ve been pushing yourself over the last month, you’re burning out (or already on fire), or have extra stresses in your life right now, this might be the moment when you crash. So give yourself the space and grace to take the rest as it comes.

If you’re doing fine, thanks, just take this as a moment to bank a bit of extra sleep.

Are you feeling it this month? Or are you good?

Tell me!

💛 Amber

P.S. I’m okay so far. I took a brief lunchtime nap and felt like the grocery store might do me in, but I’m not catatonic. 👍🏻

P.P.S. The balsamic moon is the three to four days before the new moon. It’s a time to rest, release, and open up to new visions. But mostly rest.

The Most Important Thing To Know About Gratitude

Or, perhaps more accurately, the most important thing I’ve learned about gratitude after years of being annoyed by those Instagram posts urging me to “Be grateful!” when everything felt like it was collapsing, and then I had to feel terrible about not being able to feel grateful for my objectively lovely life.

Here’s the Secret:

You can’t spackle gratitude over pain that needs to be acknowledged. You can’t paste appreciation over feelings that need to be felt.

I mean, you CAN. You can do anything. I believe in you.

But here’s a piece that’s often missing when people talk about gratitude and appreciation practices. Which are wonderful and life-changing - appreciation is an energy that can shift your perspective and experience in a hot second - but you can’t skip over the feelings to get there.

If the very thought of a gratitude practice annoys the ever-loving snit out of you? (Been there. Fist bump, friend.) It’s time to dredge up the feelings. Check in with yourself to see what needs to be felt, acknowledged, loved, listened to, met as a friend. When we do that, when we let ourselves rant, yell, vent, complain, or otherwise yank up whatever goop we’ve been trying to stuff into our spleen, that’s when gratitude and appreciation begins to rise up naturally.

We won’t have to grasp for it or force it. It will just float to the top. Because all the heavier feelings sitting on top of the true appreciation have lifted.

My experience with gratitude - even for my objectively very lovely life - has shown me over and over that if I try to jump to gratitude without honoring my upset or frustration just doesn’t work.

As a champion feelings suppresser born of world-class repressers, I had to learn how to do this. (My whole family has done a lot of work here, except for my Dad who died first. One could argue he died to get out of it. Feel your feels! It will keep you alive!) I had to learn how to feel first. Say my piece. Vent a bit. Get out whatever’s festering.

If I could say one thing to the world, it would be this:

If you’re feeling blocked - creatively, financially, or anywhere else - there may be some feelings to acknowledge. Listen to them. Feel them as sensation in your body without writing a whole Broadway musical about them. (I mean, DO write a whole Broadway musical about them. But if you’re trying to write that musical and can’t, it’s probably because your feelings will be divas until you say “hi” and “how can I help” and “you’re pretty.”)

Once you feel the things, you won’t have to force the appreciation, creativity, or love. It will be a part of you. You won’t have to feel bad about not being able to muster up gratitude for your objectively lovely life. You can just bask. Until the feelings return.

Blogging Like It's 2006

When your partner looks at you across the breakfast table and says, “You aren’t being authentic” while you’re eating pancakes, it feels like a knife in the heart.

First of all, my soul is made of pancakes so I was as authentic as I could possibly be in that moment.

Second of all, since my authentic self has a wildly unhinged sense of humor and a lot of feelings - and I’ve been trying to keep a lid on a lot of that lately - I guess it’s true.

I’ve definitely fallen prey to some of those misguided “I am an adult and thus must be a perfect reflection of society’s construct of a responsible human” beliefs. Pro tip: Don’t do that. I’d much rather be a free range weirdo.

Our conversation about authenticity was actually in reference to my work and my writing. Since my job for the past number of years has basically been “help people get their shit together” (albeit in an unconventional way), I’ve felt like I need to have my shit together. Since I don’t have my shit together - at least not in the socially acceptable way - I haven’t wanted to talk about it, which has hamstrung my ability to communicate and share in the way I used to and really enjoyed.

I haven’t wanted to write about my real experience, because my real experiences don’t feel like something you can have if you’re also attempting to help other people. Yes, I hear all the things wrong with that sentence.

While I did have it together in the culturally-conditioned way - good job, paying rent on a house, etc - in my twenties, my older self has her shit together in a more real way. Less social currency, but more ability to function in a way that works for me and my brand of peculiarities. My older self is more, one might even say, authentic.

Maybe I also stopped because I thought I had to outgrow my weird, unhinged self the way I once thought I had to abandon cartoon t-shirts on the altar of being a mature adult.

Since I still wear t-shirts with llamas riding bicycles, maybe I get to reclaim my unhinged writing style. While I’ve become (arguably) more authentic to myself and who I am and what I want and need, my writing has become less so.

Really, I just want to return to the wildly unhinged blogging days of yore, when it was 2006 and we weren’t worried about branding or selling or SEO or anything much beyond LET ME TELL YOU WHAT MY DOG JUST DID. NOW I’M WRITING A RESUME FOR MY DOG. HERE’S MY DOG IN HIS BEST WORK ATTIRE, NOW FIELDING OFFERS and then posting a picture of your dog in a tie?

Remember those halcyon blogging days? I want those back. Because that style of writing was fun and endorphinizing and helped me write myself to answers, answers my current self could really use. It felt really true to me, in a way the current style - at least the style I’ve adopted - doesn’t.

I just want to write about my nonexistent dog in a nonexistent tie.

Whatever happened, most of my writing over the past few years has been sadly hinged, rather than gleefully unhinged.

Yesterday’s solar eclipse was smack dab over my midheaven - meaning, big changes are coming in my career. I’ve been feeling this for weeks - the chaos is real, my friends - and thusfar it seems to mean returning to the way I used to write.

Do we have to share all the messy parts of our lives in order to be authentic? That gong you hear is a resounding no from the universe. Do we have to be sanitized versions of ourselves to help other people? That’s another big no gong.

But here’s the thing: For whatever reason, I can’t get there. I don’t seem able to write the way I want to without sharing the mess in a way that I won’t do if I’m doing my current work.

Honestly, I feel a little betrayed by the fact that I’m not going to know what yesterday’s eclipse did to my career and writing for quite awhile yet. I want to know now. I want to know if the only way I can go back to being Unhinged Amber is to shut down my business. I want to know if I just need to scale way back so I have the time and energy and don’t feel the need to present myself in any particular way, but can still do the work I do love doing in many respects.

Or do I just need to find a job and focus on unhinged blogging and writing my books in my off hours?

I don’t know. But maybe if I keep writing whatever I want to write, those answers will come.

How To Get Writing

Your book is ready for you. The question is, Are you ready for your book?

If you aren’t ready to write, if you’re not feeling it, if you’re procrastinating, if you’d rather be doing other things, here’s how to dive into that novel draft (or any other writing):

Give yourself the time you need.

Feeling behind, feeling like there's not enough time, is a recording your brain made by listening to someone else. Your soul knows there’s plenty of time.

Unless you’re dying and you really want to finish the novel. In that case, just get to work.

Otherwise, give yourself some space. Don’t chain yourself to the desk. Let writing be a joy, rather than a task.

Let yourself feel your feels.

Whenever I experience writer’s block, it’s usually because there’s an emotion that’s clogging up the pipeline. Once I let myself feel it, the words start to flow.

Move your body.

Inspiration flows through the physical body, not just the mind. Do some stretches. Get on yoga YouTube. Go for a walk. Do any kind of physical activity that sounds good right now and see what appears.

Take a shower.

Showers always work for me. I step out clean and with either the next place to go in my writing or the understanding that now is not the time and I get to either rest or do something else. So helpful, that bathroom.

ASK FOR inspiration.

This blog post almost didn’t happen. I aim for both structure and inspiration in my business writing. (My current structure is an email to my list every Monday, a blog post right here every Wednesday, and a personal story on Patreon every Friday.) But I don’t like to force myself to write when I’m not feeling it. Writing is a joy to me and I don’t ever want it to become something else if I can possibly avoid it. Plus, forced writing rarely seems to do well or feel good to anyone.

However, no blog post was showing up for today. Hence, a pickle.

So I set the intention that the perfect blog post arrive in my brain with enough time for me to write it. I literally just thought, “I set the intention …”, and started doing something else with a big, fat “WE’LL SEE” rumbling through my uninspired brain.

Lo and behold, twenty minutes later, here I am. Typing up a post that arrived easily in my brain, and I have just enough time to press publish before I need to leave the house.

Thank you, requested inspiration, for un-pickleing me today!

—

Want some help un-pickleing your writing?

I help writers bust through blocks and get their books onto the page!