How to Create Your Dream Life in 2026 (Part 1/2): 7 Steps That Actually Work

If you’ve been here a while, you know I don’t believe in cookie-cutter manifestation advice. Journaling, meditating, vision boards—love it all. 100% part of it. But if that’s all it took? We’d all be millionaires living in NYC penthouses with dream husbands by now. Right?

There’s more to it. So much more.

And today I want to give you the real breakdown of what’s actually helped me manifest everything from my New York dream apartment, to my life with Hal, to buying our multi-million dollar home in Atlanta, to my dream homebirth and easeful postpartum, and more.

Here’s what I’ve lived, and what you can start doing right now to create your dream life.

(For the voice note version of this topic, here's the full podcast episode. ↓)

Step 1: Get Crystal Clear on What You Actually Want

Let’s start here because it’s one of the biggest blocks. People say they want their dream life, but they don’t even know what that looks like. Or they’re afraid to get clear because “what if it changes?”

And, honestly, it will change. Your dream life will evolve as you evolve. Mine has too, sometimes mid-year, even. I’ve lived, like, five lives already. And I still have *at least* five more I want to live.

But here’s the tough pill to swallow... If you don’t have clarity, you have no direction. You just end up going in circles. And then you wonder why nothing’s happening.

So, get specific:

• Make Pinterest boards for inspiration

• Figure out what your dream costs

• Reverse engineer the actions you’d need to take

That clarity will anchor everything else.

Step 2: Don’t Just “Think Positive,” Embody the Version of You Who Already Has It

We’ve all heard the advice (in fact, it's very likely you've caught on to me saying it all of the time!): Be HER now. Dress like HER, speak like HER, eat like HER. But that’s just the surface-level embodiment. You need to take it deeper.
 

The version of you who has your dream life—how does she handle being disrespected? What boundaries does she set? What decisions does she make when no one’s watching?

I call it embodied manifestation. It’s the energetic shift that makes things happen fast. Like “how the f*ck did she do that?” kind of fast.
 

Because your words become your spells when you're truly living from alignment.

Step 3: Heal Your Sh*t (No, You Can’t Skip This One)

If you’ve heard me talk about my H.E.R. Framework® (HEAL, EMBODY, RADIATE), you know healing is the foundation. Because if your soil is dead, your peonies aren’t growing. It doesn’t matter how many seeds (aka manifestations) you plant—nothing’s going to bloom.

So what kills your soil?

• Your unprocessed trauma

• Your people-pleasing

• Your fawn response

• Your dysregulated nervous system

• Your negative programming and limiting beliefs
  
  

But listen, please don’t turn this into another excuse for self-sabotage and procrastination. I’m not saying you have to “heal everything perfectly first.” That’s actually a way some of you avoid disappointment. You’re scared it won’t work, so you tell yourself, “I’m not ready yet.”

Healing and embodiment can happen at the same time. Start where you are. Do the damn thing. (Hot tip: I recently recorded a whole podcast episode on how to know if you've healed ENOUGH to move forward, and it's seriously powerful. 11/10 recommend listening to it ASAP.)

Step 4: Do the Hard Thing (That’s Where the Quantum Leap Lives)

Let me tell you something that’s changed my entire life: Whenever I feel resistance, that “I don’t wanna do it” energy, that’s my sign to go and do it.

Because very often, your quantum leap is literally inside the thing you’re most scared of. The universe rewards those who move quickly. The universe rewards those who act.

You want to condense time? You’ve got to stretch yourself. Quantum leaps are not comfortable. They are not logical. They don’t make sense. And yet… they work.

Step 5: Expand Your Energy (AKA Get in the F*cking Room)

This one is big.
 

Post-COVID, so many people are like, “I can just change my whole life online.” And, sure, to a point you absolutely can. But nothing shifts your energy like being in the room. Nothing upgrades you like real community. Nothing rewires you like in-person connection.

I’ve been to a few events lately, and every time, I leave with so much clarity, so many ideas, and the full clarity around what’s next. Because being in that environment unlocks something that just doesn’t come through when you’re alone behind a screen.

If you want to expand… get around people who are already living what you want. Borrow their energy until you believe it's normal for you to claim it too.

Step 6: Set Boundaries and Respect Yourself

Boundaries and self-respect are massive for manifestation.

When you stop people-pleasing, when you say no, when you cut out the bitterness and resentment:

• Your nervous system chills

• You stop living in constant survival

• Your energy becomes clean

• Your vibration goes up

• You see more possibilities

And your RAS (reticular activating system) starts filtering in new opportunities because now your body is available to receive them.

Step 7: Don’t Wait for Logic, Let it Be Wild

Some of the craziest things I’ve manifested make absolutely zero sense on paper. Like buying our house in Atlanta with no credit history, no SSN, and no citizenship. Hal was like, “That’s not a reasonable manifestation, babe.” And I was like, “I’m not available for your reasonableness.”

Guess what? We later bought our dream house in less than a month.

Let the desire be enough. Let the energy be the reason. Stop waiting for logic to give you permission.

Alright, I’m wrapping this here for Part 1, but in Part 2, I’m going to walk you through the eight things that could sabotage your dream year, and how to bust through them. DO NOT MISS THESE.

So, sit with this. Re-read it. Take one of the steps and do it today. We’re not waiting for our dream life to show up. We’re building it—one bold, embodied, illogical decision at a time.