Are you planning a raise or promotion in 2026?
You’re not alone. TikTok has over 9 million posts endorsing the use of manifesting and visualization techniques to achieve your goals. And experts say it might actually help, but not because it’s magic.
Take, for example, the famous story of A-list actor and comedian Jim Carrey. In the early 1990s, he wrote himself checks because he couldn’t yet afford to cash them.
In 2015, during an appearance on the Graham Norton show, Carrey said, “At Jim Carrey’s behest, I made myself a $10 million check and put it in my wallet as payment for my acting career, retroactively dated Thanksgiving 1995.”
“And six months before that deadline, I had made $10 million for the movie.”
Carey revealed on the Oprah Show in 1997 that she received $10 million for her role in Dumb and Dumber. But his visualization practice began even before he wrote himself a desire check.
“I would go to Mulholland Drive every night and sit on the side of the road and look at the streetlights and say, ‘I’m a popular actor. Every director wants to work with me,'” Carrey said in a 1995 interview with Barbara Walters.
“It was a way of coping with completely losing my job. I stayed there until I actually believed I had all this.”
The science behind the phenomenon
Psychotherapist Chamin Ajan says it can actually lead to results. Manifestation is “an intentional process that involves adjusting your values, intentions, and behaviors to move toward the life you want,” she wrote in an article for CNBC Make It earlier this month.
The neuroscience behind why symptom manifestation is effective stems from the brain rewiring that can occur when addressing symptom expression. Neuroscientist Dr. James R. Doty told SELF Magazine last year that it can “stimulate your brain to unconsciously seek out what you want or the steps you need to take to reach a particular goal.”
By practicing visualization, Carey was able to feel joy when thinking about the goals he wanted to achieve in the future, even before the dreams came true, he said.
He remained consistent with the Mulholland Drive ritual even after performing at comedy clubs for about four years, becoming one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actors, according to Forbes magazine, he said during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show in 2014.
“I’m very much a visualizer and manifester,” Carey told Graham Norton.
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