For junior music business major Jordan Blair, working in a creative field taught her to handle criticism.

“In a creative field, you’re going to hear ‘no’ so often that you can’t get hurt,” Blair said. “You just have to be like, ‘Okay, this is what I did wrong’ or ‘I didn’t do anything wrong, this just isn’t for me, and there’s something else waiting for me and that’s perfectly okay.'”

But it was incorporating spirituality into her lifestyle that led her to working with manifesting—the practice of thinking aspirational thoughts and then turning those ideas into a reality—to overcome negativity, understand the world around her and help her reach her goals.

Blair said she began the practice of manifesting because her friend Tandrea Hawkins formed a book club discussing “Baby Girl Manifest the Life You Want” by B. Simone. The group consists of six friends and they schedule weekly calls on Fridays.

Simone discontinued sales of the book in response to accusations of her plagiarizing from various blogs, according to an article in TheGrio. But by that time Hawkins had already purchased it. Hawkins said she thought Simone’s execution could have been more thought out, but it did not change her feelings toward the book. For Blair, the book was more about understanding and practicing the art, so the news of Simone’s plagiarism did not change her perspective of it either.

The internet’s most recent wellness craze, manifesting, asserts that by controlling thoughts and clearing one’s mind of negativity, a person can achieve their goals without doubts or pessimism.

Hawkins, a senior music business major, said as a believer she has always been familiar with speaking her desires into the universe to receive them.

“I didn’t really start knowing the power of it for myself until I got into sixth or seventh grade,” Hawkins said. “One of my teachers introduced me to a documentary called ‘The Secret’ and through that documentary it made more sense to me why we speak life over ourselves and why we put positive things into the universe.”

Hawkins said she manifested her current apartment, car, winning the 2021 Manifest Song Competition and a $10,000 Live Nation Scholarship from Music Forward. Hawkins said she tries approaching her affirmations with as much confidence as possible.

“I have always been a person [who believes that] what you think and what you speak comes to life, whether it’s good, bad, ugly, et cetera.” said Lauren Elise, senior acting major. “[Hawkins] and I were on the phone one day and we saw that B. Simone was releasing a manifest book called “[Baby Girl] Manifest the Life You Want” and this was the treasure for me. B. Simone was someone that I gravitated to heavily when it came to manifesting and being conscious of the life that you want and how do you go about bringing that life to reality.”

Elise said she starts her days with positive affirmations and that saying them with the group was something she especially looked forward to doing. Saying uplifting sentences like “I am an actor,” “I am an artist” and “I am confident,” Elise said her main goal for now is to get an internship during her time in the Semester in LA program.

Dajah Molden, a senior vocal performance major, said there was a marketing job available that she had been wanting and that after manifesting it, she got both the interview and position in the same day.

“I wanted the job and I said that I was gonna have the job — and there were other people who were interested in the position as well,” Molden said. “I didn’t believe that I would get it. I didn’t really know how or what was all required, but I kept thinking about it [and] talking about it so it was in my daily conversations and it was in my mind and it was in my prayers. Eventually, I was at work and the boss called me in and he was like, ‘Hey, I heard that you wanted this job, let’s interview for it right now.’ So I interviewed for it and the same day he gave me the job.”

Hawkins said her advice to anyone just starting out on their spiritual journey is to make sure they are in a safe, positive environment where they are open to receiving the change they ask for.

“Definitely make sure that you’re in a positive space where you want [change] to happen. You have to almost have unrealistic faith to constantly speak over to yourself, that this could happen; it’s really taking yourself out of the equation and putting the impossible into the scenario,” Hawkins said. “And then being like ‘okay, this may seem impossibly sound, but it’s not impossible to me, and I’m going to do it, and it’s going to be mine,’ just affirming yourself or affirming the situation. The more you speak it, the more you live it.”