This is how you actually manifest the life that you want
Why self-expression is the foundation of fulfillment
The bible describes in genesis 1 that God created the world in 6 days by saying “Let there be light” and there was light, “Let the land produce living creatures” and there was living creatures, and so on.. until “Let us make mankind in our image”.
I’m not a religious person, but growing up in a catholic family and having gone through biblical studies as a kid made two or three of those stories to stick with me. This was one of them.
After having studied at little bit of multiple religions along the years: catholicism, hinduism, buddhism, spiritism… and being skilled at pattern recognition, I formed the opinion that in essence they all converge to the same thing through different stories or metaphors that fit better each specific culture where it was originated.
What interests me in these stories isn’t whether they’re literally true. It’s the metaphor beneath them: creation starts with expression.
So, when the bible says we are like God, and when God speaks he/she creates, it also means that when you speak you create your reality.
There is so much advice out there around manifesting the life you want: writing down on a paper, in your journal, making rituals, setting intentions.
I started manifesting the life I wanted not when I was in a room in silence, but when I started speaking what I wanted and acting in coherence with my message. It’s incredible the things that happen when you position yourself. Life literally responds to it.
People who speak for themselves suffer less
When you don’t speak for yourself, you’re not just misunderstood. You block the very process that shapes your life.
I saw this quote the other day in a book by the psychiatrist Hermano Castro:
People who communicate better suffer less. This is not an opinion, this is a fact. They suffer less because they can make themselves better understood. Because they can solve better their own problems. Because they can through communication, make allies, ask for help, require direction, give instructions to others to do what they need to be done, express their will, and communicate their intention and plans.
The moment you reduce that friction, life has room to respond to who you really are.
When we don’t express ourselves with clarity and intention, we will consciously or unconsciously use different strategies to express or compensate for our needs and wants. Most of these strategies fail.
We will try to be “the good person”, we will burnout ourselves at work, we will become passive aggressive, we will dramatize, we will attack others, and at the end of the day, we will feel that life is unfair to us because we didn’t get what we wanted.
When you don’t speak for yourself and communicate, you struggle in every area of your life:
You feel invisible in your own relationships because no one knows what you actually need.
At work, you never negotiate your compensation or let others get credit for your ideas, then feel bitter watching others advance.
You don’t build your brand, and your business struggle.
You choose careers or life paths based on what sounds impressive to others, not what you actually want.
And the list goes on…
These aren’t random frustrations. They’re the outcomes of a life you didn’t choose, because silence lets other people choose for you.
I know this in my skin because although I’ve worked in communications for my whole life, I used to not speak my voice. I used to feel invisible, catering to everyone’s need but feeling behind. I resented other people who did similar work and had visibility. I remember thinking to myself that I could do better than them, that it wasn’t fair that they were seen but I wasn’t.
I’m going to confess something… deep down I wanted to be “discovered”, like if someone from the outside would come and notice how amazing I treated people around me, how nice I was, how great was my work (have you heard of “I’m going to let my work speak for itself?”).
Waiting to be discovered is the opposite of manifesting. It’s outsourcing your voice to chance.
Communication is agency, and there’s no manifesting without agency.
What happens when you start manifesting your life
When I started speaking my voice, it was like I entered a new reality: my relationships improved. My friendships became more solid. I started working with brands I admired. I tried new projects. Some worked, some failed. I learned from all of them, which gave me a whole new set of skills and experience.
I started publishing and showing up online to build the community I always dreamed of. My clients trust me more because I say no more often. I’m honest when I think something is shitty or won’t work. I bet on bold ideas more often.
I can’t think of a part of my life that hasn’t improved since I started intentionally speaking for myself.
This is what I mean when I say speaking creates your reality. When you stay silent, life happens to you. When you speak, you shape it.
Speaking didn’t just fix my relationships. It shifted my entire trajectory because it made my inner world visible to the outer one.
I remember one moment when I stopped to reflect for a second.. and I thought “oh shit.. I’m manifesting this”. Yes, because I was vocal and specific about what I wanted to others. Not because I wrote on a piece of paper, and hoped it would come true.
You only get what you want in life when you express yourself.
But more importantly: when you don’t speak for yourself, you’re being dishonest with others. But especially with yourself. Let me explain:
When you don’t say what you think, other people misunderstand you. Worse, you start confusing yourself. You wear a mask so long you forget your real face.
When you stop hearing your own voice, it gets harder to trust what’s going on inside you.
And the question left is how can you manifest the life you want if you’re not honest with yourself?
What’s stopping you to speak for yourself
Before I understood this in my bones, life showed me what silence cost. Only a few years ago, multiple parts of my life collapsed. Work, relationships, community. Like when all the planets align but in the opposite way you’d expect.
That was a moment when I thought I had lost everything… and what followed next was that I finally started speaking my voice. After all, what is left to loose? I wasn’t scared anymore.
This was not overnight, it was a long process but I committed to it. My nervous system was not used to having me speaking for myself, so every single time I did.. it felt too much, it felt scary, it felt as if I was doing something wrong.. but now I was not interested in being perceived as the ”nice” person anymore. And at every chance I had to say my truth it got a little easier and a little easier.. until it became the default.
The point is: up to that moment I had never integrated or embodied the fact that I could be true to myself and still have everything I wished for.
But the whole point is that you can only get everything you wish for when you’re true to yourself.
And what seemed crazy at the time is that piece by piece all the parts of my life started to get back in place: work started flourishing, people I though I had lost got even more closer, friendships became more solid, others drifted apart, new people came in.
And when I reflect back there was one thing that stopped me from speaking my voice: FEAR OF WHAT OTHER PEOPLE WOULD THINK OF ME.
Which is a direct result of not trusting yourself.
We tend to operate under the logic: if “others” (insert the names in your head here) think of us as “good”, “perfect”, etc = we will get what we want.
My question is: how that has been working for you?
If it hasn’t been working so well, maybe it’s time to change the strategy.
But another common thing that stands on the way is: Most people think they know themselves, but when you ask them what they want, they freeze. Or they repeat what everyone else says they should want.
When you spend so much time adjusting to what others want, you loose touch with your own voice. You learn early to prioritize others. To be agreeable. To not rock the boat. You get rewarded for it. You become easy-going, flexible, low-maintenance… but in truth, you’re not low-maintenance. You’re just nullifying yourself.
When you mold yourself to fit whatever the situation requires, you lose access to what you actually think, feel, and want.
You can’t speak your truth if you don’t know what your truth is.
Silence is not a communication issue, it’s a creative one.
It stops life from responding.
How to discover your truth, start speaking for yourself, & Manifesting your life
If you want to reconnect with your truth and speak for yourself, there’s a process I’ve used over and over in my own life. It starts with your story, moves into your body, and ends with the patterns that shape what you believe.
The practice that was most helpful for me was to own my story. All the parts of it. The ugly, the boring, the failures, the wins, the big moves, the small moves, my roots. Rooting everything I say in my own experience. Our your lived experience isn’t a matter of opinion. It’s how our identity is formed.
If you’ve been reading Dear Self for a while, you’ve probably noticed that this is exactly what I do in every post: I write my story, then I explore a subject, an insight, a point of view rooted in what that experience taught me.
And that’s the point: your story is the raw material of your truth.
Once you write it honestly, without polishing or performing, you start seeing yourself differently.
From there, don’t stay in your head. Pay attention to how each part of your story feels in your body. Some parts feel light. Others feel tight, heavy, or strangely distant.
Your body will tell you which parts you’ve accepted and owned, and which ones you’re still processing, and which parts you’re ashamed of (here’s where your work lies). Owning the parts you reject means integrating your identity instead of fragmenting it.
Those sensations matter, because your story isn’t just what happened. It’s the meaning you gave each moment. Meaning is what shapes the way you speak, what you ask for, and what you believe you’re allowed to want.
And once you understand the meaning, your patterns start to reveal themselves: the loops you’ve lived through, the challenges that keep repeating, the situations where you shrink, the ones where you rise without effort. Patterns are just repeated meanings. When you see them clearly, you will stop confusing them for fate.
When you know your roots, your story, your body’s truth, your meaning, and your patterns, your voice stops wobbling. You stop performing and start expressing. And that’s when life finally responds to you, not the version of you you’ve edited for everyone else.
A tree only grows strong once its roots go deep.
Go deep and own your roots, so you can grow rooted in yourself.
Maybe this can help too
I recently launched a workbook, on my other Newsletter, Diary of a Brand Therapist, to help people who want to express themselves and build their brand online but are stuck in the “I don’t know what to talk about” or “I don’t want to sound like everybody else”.
But the feedback I’ve been getting has been unexpected in a positive way.
One person said “this helped me at the perfect time, when I needed clarity and connection to my purpose“.
Other said “I have discovered really deep things about myself that i haven’t realized until now. It’s like being on a therapy session. I already started noticing patterns and ideas that come up often”.
And another said: “I feel a deeper connection with myself and what I find important right now and I feel I can articulate that better now.”
It’s a process that guides you through exercises to dig into your story to reconnect with your voice.
So, I thought that maybe this can also help people who want to discover more about themselves, and not only those who want to build a brand.
If this is you, you can get the workbook here:
Warmly,
Nat
What’s one moment in your life when speaking your truth changed something for you?
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If you want to find your voice and build a brand that reflects who you are, check out my other newsletter: Diary of a Brand Therapist.
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Manifestation is a concept to sell shortcuts. till we understand that we are universal mirrors and what we are is what we get back.
We stop using the genie lamp aka manifestation, and we take responsibility creating coherence in > out. This is my personal take about creating our dream life, which is the same you share, but you are also giving something else, and it is putting that together with self-awareness of our capacity to stand up for who we are. Love this!! Im taking that with me.
I’m also on this journey, relate a lot to your story, and definitely feel excited on continuing doing the work after reading this. We are on the right track! Thank you, Nathalia 🙏
Felt called out but I needed it. Thinking that not speaking up makes you a better person or helps the people around is a delusion. Thanks for reminding me to let my voice be heard so I can be more aligned in life.