In today’s GRACED episode, we have guest Laura Chung, podcast host and author of “How to Manifest: Make Your Dream a Reality in 40 Days” where we talk about the manifestation process and how to remove subconscious blocks that can be stopping you from manifesting what you desire. We also talk about the energy behind desire and wants and how to involve the collective conscious when putting your manifestation powers to the test!

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00:00 Intro

02:05 What is manifestation and blocks to manifesting? Interview begins with Laura Chung

04:41 How scarcity can be embedded in your origin story

10:17 What is shadow work?

15:59 Integrating Eastern and Western philosophies

19:59 AD – book your tickets to this two series Tarot workshop! ⁠tarot-training.mysticmondays.com⁠

20:30 The difference between want and desire

24:13 How to tap into your feelings

28:03 Learning through experience

31:54 Using your emotions to manifest

37:10 Laura’s favorite manifestation techniques

40:21 Laura’s Big Three – Sun, Moon, and Rising Signs

42:52 Grace gives Laura a Tarot Reading

45:11 End of episode – remember to leave a podcast review on Apple podcasts!

💖 Introduction

Hello hello! Welcome to the GRACED podcast where we talk about how we can infuse more everyday magic into your everyday life through rituals, wellness, tarot, creativity, and more.

Today’s guest is Laura Chung, podcast host, reiki master, and author of How to Manifest: Make Your Dreams a Reality in 40 days, which btw we are doing a giveaway of the book AND the How to Manifest Journal to a winner who leaves a podcast review on Apple Podcasts! Winner will be chosen next Wednesday from today’s air date so check us out on social media and follow us there for more updates!

Laura and I talk about manifestation, but also what could be blocking you from truly manifesting what you desire. This can come up as blocks like beliefs with scarcity, sabotaging opportunities, and beliefs that could have been passed down through generational trauma. We also talk about harnessing the power of your emotions, and how emotions can be the missing ingredient to how we manifest.

I also wanted to update you all on an upcoming 2 series workshop that I’m hosting on July 1 and July 8! An Intro to Tarot for week 1 and Train to be a Tarot Reader for week 2. If you buy both, there is a discount, so come to both workshops or come to just one – I’d love to see you there! You can get your tickets at tarot-training.mysticmondays.com

Now let’s get into the episode!

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✨ What is manifestation and blocks to manifesting? Interview begins with Laura Chung

Grace Duong: Hi Laura. Thanks for being on the podcast.

Laura Chung: Thanks for having me, Grace.

Grace Duong: Yeah, definitely. So I know that you’ve written a book called How to Manifest, and I just wanted to talk more about that and how you would define the manifestation process.

Laura Chung: Sure. So manifestation is when a physical desire comes into your reality, when you can actually perceive it, hold it, and see it. And I consider the process of manifesting something that’s innate to us as humans. And I like to start at the manifestation itself, which is the thing that you want or the thing that you desire, and work our way backwards. So I like to ask people, what is it that you’re desiring? What is it that you’re manifesting? And try to tune into the feeling that you believe this thing, this person, this job, this situation will give you in that process. And for me, really, it’s all about the feeling and removing the layers and the limiting beliefs and the programming that blocks you from experiencing that state.

Grace Duong: What would you describe as a block that someone might experience?

Laura Chung: So many things. It’s the way we were raised. Maybe some limiting beliefs that we carried on from our parents and the ways in which they saw life. And a very simple example of this is money. A lot of people wanna manifest money and some limiting beliefs that we carry with money is what we see modeled by our parents and how they perceive money. Did they think of it as something that was hard to attain? Did they believe that you had to work really hard to get it, or it was something that was seen as evil? And then obviously culturally, our society sees money in a certain way. And then in your own experience, how your experience with receiving and earning money. So there’s a whole bunch of different reasons and factors into what creates a limiting belief.

Grace Duong: Yeah, I think money is such a huge one in society because we tend to place other meanings behind money, whether it’s a meaning of our own worth in the world or status, or how we value oneself to another and where we place ourselves. And coming from a background of first generation immigrant parents and also growing up my dad had a gambling addiction, so there was a lot of scarcity in my family. And so I’m wondering for you, if someone is healing from scarcity, how would you approach that?

✨ How scarcity can be embedded in your origin story

Laura Chung: First of all, scarcity is something that’s embedded into our consciousness. So when we talk about money, it’s not just understanding money at a fiscal, intellectual level, but it’s literally how we see this world. And if you are a first generation daughter of immigrant parents who were refugees, I think that was your story, right?

Grace Duong: I think it’s a lot of people’s stories. But, yes. That is my story too.

Laura Chung: And like your parents struggled to come to the United States and then when they came here they experienced a lot of racism and poverty. So if that’s their worldview and you grew up with that worldview, then that kind of informs you of how life is, right? So similarly, I’m a daughter of immigrant parents and it’s interesting because I experienced two very different experiences because in Korea, my. My mom grew up in a very wealthy family. Her family was, they had like maids and people around the house where my dad grew up really poor. So coming to the United States, they both almost like trauma bonded over the fact that they were both poor and they had to make it here in New York City as like 20 somethings. And so for them, like the American dream is seeped in struggle and sacrifice and working hard. So growing up, my sister and I were always. Taught to work hard, put your head down. Don’t like to make a ruckus. Don’t create trouble. Just put in the work. And so my mindset around money was always like you had to sacrifice something. You had to work really hard. Both my parents had two jobs, one job and then a side hustle just to make ends meet. And so I, as an adult, didn’t understand. The concept of money is energy. You know how everyone says that? Like I was like, but how could it be? Because you have to put in a lot of work to make money and it took a lot of deprogramming and unlearning these things, not only up here in my mind intellectually, but in my body, physically having faith and physically allowing my body to rest. It was a whole like healing process of what I was taught.

Grace Duong: So I relate to a lot of that. Having grown up with immigrant parents and their own experiences coming to America. I find that through going through my own story of healing money stories and that a lot of it. It resides in the body, that money tends to be an amplifier for whatever it is you’re feeling inside. And I’m wondering how you have dealt with, or have you experienced either lack of money or abundance of money and what that fluctuation was like in your life?

Laura Chung: Thank you for asking that because if you are tuned to astrology and like the astrological transits, I was going through a very significant Pluto transit in my 2nd House of my resources of how I make money, and it happened at the same time I quit my corporate job. And I was used to getting a steady paycheck from “the man” and just having that safety and security. So the thing that people don’t tell you about entrepreneurship, which I wish I had learned before I quit my job is, Entrepreneurship is all about self-worth work. It’s all about belief in yourself, having that trust in yourself and value in yourself. Because what I, what took me a long time to understand was that I had everything that I needed within me. And I know everybody has heard that, but what does that actually mean? So throughout these last, I would say six years of entrepreneurship, I went through big fluctuations. Like I would make so much money and then no money, and then I would have no money and where I would like literally be in the red. And what that taught me is that. Your biggest fear sometimes is the very thing that you need to move to, like you need to lean into. So my biggest underlying fear was never having enough money, like that scarcity mentality, that poverty consciousness, and I was so afraid of it that I was almost amplifying it more by overcompensating through other things. And meanwhile, when I actually got there, when I had no money, I was still alive. I just needed to ask for help. I just needed to be honest with myself that this was a fear. And then once I actually looked at that fear, which is what we call shadow work, I wasn’t afraid anymore because I had everything that I needed and I’m so privileged to have parents who let me live with them, and I had a really, really supportive community that when even when I was like at my lowest, they would never let me believe that I was not worthy. Also, society will tell you if you’re an adult living at home, you’re not worthy. If you’re not making money, you’re not worthy. If you don’t have a high net worth, you’re not worthy. So all of these things, I had to learn the hard way that, wow, I am still worthy, even though I have no money. I also have a lack of mentality when I have a lot of money.

So it’s like, then it really taught me like, what is money? Money is like, A fake thing that people made up. It’s just paper and I’m above that. I have more power than that. So I would say that the biggest lesson I learned from all of this is that I know this sounds really like myopic, but that money isn’t real and it is real too, because you need it to survive. But what it taught me is that I just needed to face my deepest fear. And once I did that, then money started coming in and it wasn’t like this shadow over me.

✨ What is shadow work?

Grace Duong: Yeah. Beautifully said. I feel and have felt that entrepreneurship is a great vehicle for soul evolution because you are confronted with your own fears and your own limitations of what you think you’re capable of. And you mentioned shadow work, and I do find that in my experience, I have also come across my own shadow work, whether it’s from intergenerational trauma, whether it’s passed down, or even limiting beliefs that have developed in my own lifetime. I would like to know what you would define as shadow work. And how would someone identify what that fear is and what practices they could do in their lives to implement shadow work?

Laura Chung: So actually I have a whole chapter around shadow work in my book. It was a term coined by the psychologist Carl Jung, and it’s really those things that we repress in our unconscious mind and how you can know very quickly what it is, what content is there lurking is what you’re triggered by. Because what you’re triggered by is just your shadow trying to come up to be like, “Hey, I’m here”. So anytime somebody would talk about money, Or they would try to, I don’t have these examples now cuz I feel like I’ve healed them so the triggers don’t come up as fiery anymore. But whenever somebody would talk about money, I would get triggered and I mean, like body triggered, my body would start to get hot and sweat. The hairs on the back of my neck would come up and I would just get fight or flight. Your body wants to protect itself. So how you could know what your shadows are, is what you’re triggered by. And then instead of reacting right away, you take a moment. A pause, and this all happens in like very few seconds, but you take a pause and you say, “oh, that’s my trigger”. And the fastest way to know what your shadows are is to spend a weekend with your family. Because they made those buttons.

Grace Duong: That is so true. So what were some of your triggers and how did you heal them?

Laura Chung: My biggest triggers were being a certain age and not getting married. It was usually also depended on the person that said it, usually my parents or like family members, because the underlying feeling was, oh, I’m not good enough. Like you’re not accepting me for who I am. So the actual thing that they would say is, oh, you’re still not married or you don’t have a real job. And so those would be the things that they would say, and my trigger points were, oh gosh, I’m not good enough, or there is something wrong with me. Because if you’re not triggered by them, then you don’t care.

But because you care, you get triggered by them. Because it’s an underlying insecurity that you have that you’re just trying to raise up. So what I started to do with doing shadow work is if I’m really confident in myself, then why does this bother me? Oh, there still must be a lingering feeling like I’m not good enough.

So what is that? So I had to really look at myself and say, If I really love myself, then this wouldn’t matter to me. So there’s still some healing I need to do there. And now when they say these kinds of things, it doesn’t bother me at all. I’m just like, okay. And that’s how you know you’ve soothed that electric wire, if you will.

Grace Duong: Yeah. Yeah. So in your book, you mentioned manifestation as a co-creation process. And I’d love for you to talk more about what that means.

Laura Chung: Thank you for asking. This is so important to me because manifesting is something that everybody does all the time. We’re manifesting right now. But sometimes because we’re humans with egos and our own agenda, we manifest or have an intention that is not in the right relation with others and with the land. So, for example: “bad people” or “bad intention people” manifest too and sometimes we manifest because we’re so siloed in our thinking. So when I say co-creation, I’m meaning you are in a partnership with a divine. Source energy that has the best intentions for all involved, meaning the land, other people, and our planet. Because I’m telling you, people have manifested things that should never have been manifested because it was out of their own void, out of their own shadow, out of their own need versus the need of all involved.

So I implore people to put your own wants aside and wants are different than desires because want comes from a place of lack. I really want people to tap into their desire. And then also, this is where surrender comes in because maybe the thing that you desire or want isn’t actually what’s best for you because we’re so blinded by what we can see and what we know that we don’t see the whole big picture.

Grace Duong: I love that. I love that you’re pulling in different energies because it’s not just what you want solely for yourself, like what you want is also affecting the people around you. And so having that intention for whatever outcome to benefit everyone involved or everyone around you, or for the highest good of everyone involved. I think that’s a really great practice to call in when manifesting and also might manifest faster because you’re combining that desire with perhaps the other energies that wanna manifest the same thing.

Laura Chung: I always say, I am surrendering this to the highest good of all involved, and if not this, then something better.

✨ Integrating Eastern and Western philosophies

Grace Duong: Yeah. I love that. So, something I love about your perspective in the How to Manifest book is that you combine your Eastern and Western philosophies, because obviously you are of Korean descent. I don’t know if that’s obvious, but of Asian descent. To anyone that’s watching and I just wanna understand and hear about your perspective in manifesting in. I think it’s such a unique approach because we do hear about manifesting and how thought takes form, but I think your perspective helps shape it into integrating different modalities into manifestation. So I’d love to hear about how you integrate the Eastern and Western philosophies together.

Laura Chung: Thank you. So I love Eastern philosophy and I love Asian cultures because we have a very multidimensional way of seeing life, like even the yin yang symbol that is prevalent in all of our cultures. And just the fact that if you study any kind of eastern religion or philosophy, the focus is so much on duality and not just holding one thought, and if I find Western modern culture, I’m American, and so are you that it’s so all or nothing, it’s this or that thinking. It’s like a binary way of thinking and I just don’t believe in that at all. I think multiple things can be true at the same time. So for me, I have to incorporate my eastern mind, you know, I don’t know if you saw the show Beef, but the main character says that “Western therapies don’t work on Eastern minds”. And it’s so true because I got my degree, I got my master’s in psychology, and I totally respect that lineage. And I’m so grateful that I got to have that education. But it’s really just one way of seeing things, whereas like spirit and nature is so, It’s like neuro-divergent. It’s like multi-dimensional, and we are multidimensional beings. So I just felt that manifestation is, again, co-creation. There’s not just one way of doing it, there’s just not one pathway of doing it. And for me, that’s why I try to put the onus on the person to figure it out on their own. Like I give tips and practices, but how you manifest might be completely different than how I manifest. And so it’s a journey of learning about yourself. And I think that’s why a lot of people like this practice, because it’s ultimately about you cultivating that practice within yourself, so then you could go on and manifest forever. Forever. Like it’s not just a one time thing.

Grace Duong: Absolutely. And I find that there’s different ways of manifesting and I feel like the more aligned that you are with yourself, it tends to happen. Instantly.

Laura Chung: Yes.

Grace Duong: You know, you could get that email or you could walk around the corner and someone offers you whatever you were looking for. So you mentioned 40 days in your book, and I was wondering why 40 days and if you could break down that 40 day process.

Laura Chung: 40 days is something that I learned in my training in Kundalini yoga. There’s books about 28 days, 30 days, but 40 days is the time to break down a habit and create new ones. And so what we’re trying to do here is manifest something differently than what you’re currently experiencing. We’re breaking a pattern, we’re breaking a cycle, we’re interrupting something to create something new, right? That’s manifestation because we’re creating all the time. And so you need a specific amount of time to cultivate a habit. So 40 days to me seemed like enough time where it wasn’t like three months, cuz I know people are impatient and they want results fast, but it seemed like enough time where we could create some new neural pathways where we can start to create a habit. And so that’s where the 40 days comes from.

A short interruption to remind you of an upcoming 2 series workshop that I’m hosting on July 1 and July 8! An Intro to Tarot for week 1 and Train to be a Tarot Reader for week 2. If you buy both, there is a discount, so come to both workshops or come to just one – I’d love to see you there! You can get your tickets at tarot-training.mysticmondays.com

✨ The difference between want and desire

Grace Duong: Yeah, and I love that you mentioned that sometimes there is an impatience and that going back to what you said before of that difference between want and desire, and even when you say those words, they have a different energetic vibration. The wanting with the lack and the desire with your passion and inspiration and going after the things that you truly want to manifest in your life.

Laura Chung: It’s funny cuz when Pluto moved into Aquarius in my personal Natal 3rd House, I started getting really interested in the etymology of words. And even writing this book, I define what manifestation means because we throw these words around and we don’t even know what they mean anymore. And so, When I looked up desire, the Latin word of desire means from the stars, and the root word of want means to lack. So when you want something, you notice something’s not there. And so it’s already inherently coming from a place of lack, whereas desire is you’re inspired by something that’s brought down from the heavens. And so you’re like receiving some kind of inspiration and download, like it’s kind of like the Star card in tarot, you know? So I would really ask people, if you’re listening to this or watching this, no judgment, but just ask yourself with curiosity. Is this a want? Is this coming from a place of lack? Because people will ask me all the time, I wanna manifest my soulmate. It’s like the number one question. And how do I get my soulmate really fast, right? And I say, okay, like I know, I totally understand. But ask yourself, is this coming from a place of lack or a desire, like an inspiration, like you’re ready to receive love in all of its forms, you’re ready to open up and have unconditional love. Do you have love for yourself? Do you desire to spread that love to other people? Like these are just some questions to ask yourself.

Grace Duong: Yeah, and so with that wanting, I think combined with that impatience of wanting something to manifest really fast, I feel like there’s something in divine timing and the unfolding of that desire to be natural and organic. Manifest in the way that’s for your highest good because sometimes if you get that thing right away, you might not be ready for it.

Laura Chung: So true. Oh my God. Which is why I believe that the time it takes is the time you need to prepare for the thing. So I really, I trust the divine timing so much because there were times in my life where there were these big opportunities or. The love of my life showed up and I just wasn’t ready for them. And I self-sabotage that so badly because I wasn’t ready. And if I had done a little bit more reflection and introspection of what it really was that I desired, it might not have even been that thing. But again, that’s why I start with what it is that you desire first, and what is the feeling. What is the emotion you’re trying to manifest?

So when people say, I want a soulmate, really what they want is validation from somebody else. That they’re worthy and that they’re valuable and that they’re wanted, and that they wanna be loved. So instead of trying to project that out to the other person, can you give that to yourself now? And that’s the work, because something that I always hear in the manifestation community is, you don’t manifest what you want, you manifest who you are. So you need to just love yourself first, because then you will be a vibrational match to the person who is aligned to you. I know some of this sounds very fluffy, but it’s true.

✨ How to tap into your feelings

Grace Duong: Yeah. So what if someone doesn’t know how it feels to have what they want? How do they tap into that feeling?

Laura Chung: Oh, so when I’ve been healing my scarcity and poverty consciousness, this was a very simple exercise that I would practice, and now it’s like tourist season here in the Northeast, which is like such good energy to do this. I would sit outside under a big tree and I would ground myself and I would ask Mother Earth to help me feel what it’s like to feel abundant in my body. And I would just sit there until I felt it. And what abundance feels like for me personally in my body is peace, groundedness, a foundation. My roots firmly planted into the earth. And just like this, like calm. That everything is always working out for me, even when it doesn’t seem like it is. That’s what abundance feels like to me in my body. So now when I feel abundant, I know it already in me. So if you want to maybe invoke some of these elements or ask your spirit guides or ancestors to help you, or just remember a time in your past when you felt that emotion.

If you’ve never felt rich, try to cultivate that. When do you, in your experience, feel rich? Do you feel rich when you get to rest? Do you feel rich when you get to take a bath or drink a glass of champagne or laugh with your friends? Like there’s different ways to cultivate it without the physical presence of it right now, because you can tune into the energy, the emotion of it now.

Grace Duong: Yeah. Ooh, that’s such a great practice to try. If anyone tries it, definitely let us know how that goes. You know, what I’m hearing from you also is that there is an innate sense of trust when you are coming from a place of desire, whereas I feel like with a place of wanting and a place of lack, there is that impatience in that it has to happen right now. And so it feels very conditional when you’re calling in whatever you wanna manifest. And so with that sense of divine timing, patience, trust in that it’s going to happen. There’s this sort of unconditional love that is emanating from your body to bring it through into fruition.

Laura Chung: Yes. And there’s no, there’s nothing wrong with wanting, because we all want, right? We always notice lack, we’re humans, but it’s just to tune your awareness into what that’s telling you. So I only know this because I used to work in private equity. I used to work in finance in New York City and I used to make a lot of money by my standards, and I had a really nice apartment. I had really nice things, but I always felt lacking. I always felt like there was never enough. There was never enough money, there was never enough anything. So I know what it’s like to have and. Have really nice physical things. So what was that void? What was missing? What was that lack I was feeling? And why wasn’t any amount of money making me feel rich and making me feel good? And that was my internal journey, and what I realized was not living a fulfilling life. A life where I felt I was living my purpose, that there was something deeper and enriching and nourishing about my life at the time. So really, I think wanting is just information for you to work with. What is that lack? What are you missing?

Grace Duong: Yeah. And what was that journey like having all of these material things and yet still feeling that sense of lack? I imagine you quit your job. Is that what happened? And then when you quit your job, what was that journey like when you were looking for that sense of fulfillment?

✨ Learning through experience

Laura Chung: There’s a Jim Carey quote where he says, I wish everybody could be rich and famous to realize that’s not the answer.

But I think for some people they really need to go down that journey to see it themselves like me. Cause I think the biggest thing is, when I realized, oh, I did everything that my parents wanted me to and what society wants me to. I was like a filial daughter and I found my millionaire, fiance, husband, kind of type. And we had the mansion in the Hamptons and the apartment in Manhattan and the cars and everything like that. And I had never been so alone in my life. I’ve never felt so depressed in my life. And that was kind of also the beginning of my addictions. My addiction phase because I was again, just trying to fill a void.

And so when I finally decided that I needed to change my life, I was just relieved that I didn’t have to work so much and that I didn’t have to be attached to anything. So I got rid of my apartment and decided to be nomadic. I was traveling around Asia at the time and I was just so grateful that I got to learn things that I had always dreamt of learning like yoga, reiki, and astrology. And it just started making sense to me, and I started feeling better and I felt more connected to myself and to the world and to nature.

Meanwhile, I definitely wasn’t making money. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I think that in itself was an initiation in order for me to just, again, trust that I was being taken care of along the way. Little did I know at the time that I would end up doing this for a living. I had no idea, but I definitely followed the little breadcrumbs and trusted the signs and brought me here today.

Grace Duong: Yeah. And you’ve imparted so much wisdom that I’m sure a lot of people will appreciate and invoke into their own lives.

Laura Chung: I hope so. I’m not telling anybody to quit their jobs by the way.

Grace Duong: Hey, everyone is on their own journey.

Laura Chung: Yes.

Grace Duong: And taking responsibility for their journey.

Laura Chung: Yes. Disclaimer.

Grace Duong: So in your book, you mentioned thoughts versus feelings, and I was wondering how you identify which is which?

Laura Chung: So thoughts versus feelings. Our minds are wired for survival, and I think our minds and what we know from the past can be the biggest hindrance to our manifestations because we oftentimes, manifest from a place of what we’ve known and what we’ve experienced versus trusting in the unknown, versus trusting in our feelings and our intuition. And this is where we kind of have to like circuit breaks sometimes, because our minds again, want to be safe. And so we’ll default to situations where it’s like the devil that you know, like the situation that you know, the job that you hate, or the partner that you know. This relationship isn’t going anywhere, so you stay because it’s safe and it’s something that you know, versus taking a risk into not knowing, not having a plan, but you feel deep in your gut. This is what you need to do, and that’s all you have is that trust in your gut and your intuition and the rest will kind of unfold. So I would say you definitely need both because we definitely need our minds to help us. Stay safe, and we have wisdom from our past and our past experiences, but I definitely think that some of our thoughts hinder us from moving forward. And also our thoughts can be susceptible to our programming and our culture and the ways in which we were raised. So yeah, I guess I’ll just leave it at that.

✨ Using your emotions to manifest

Grace Duong: Yeah, definitely. There’s so much external things that can affect our thought process and also how we feel. And I think a lesson that I am learning more and more is just how important my feelings are because my feelings MATTER. And I think a lot of times in my upbringing, the conditioning was about how my feelings don’t matter or that’s what I perceived. But I feel like when we’re feeling that feeling, because you mentioned that in the manifestation process, that you can actually use your feelings as fuel for you to then manifest what you want.

Laura Chung: We manifest based on our emotions, which is kind of messed up because like you said, a lot of us were taught not to be emotional people. And it’s interesting because it took me such a long time to fully embrace the spectrum of emotions and none of them are good and none of them are bad. They just are like, when I feel incredible rage and I just wanna punch something or someone and I just wanna tear everything down and burn everything down, that’s seen as like I’m bad or I’m a rage machine. But why is that any worse than being happy? Happy’s also an ephemeral emotion. It’s not forever, it’s just temporary, right? But these emotions are like energy that moves through your body. They say energy is, emotions are energy in motion. Like you have to feel them to move them through. And I think the reason why we repress them is we’re afraid that we’re afraid of them. We’re afraid of what they’ll mean, what they mean to us. And we have to be honest with our feelings. Because they will give you the information that you need.

Grace Duong: I agree with that. I think feelings are just another way your body’s communicating with you and also it does help to think of feelings as impermanent states. So it’s okay to feel angry if you’re feeling angry. And how would, what is that expressing to you at the moment? What is your anger trying to tell you and how are you shifting? That anger into something else. Not that everything has to be productive necessarily. If I do find anger as an emotion does tend to be fuel to change something.

Laura Chung: I find anger to be the most powerful motivator of change. Because if you’re not angry about something, then you would just be complacent. You would just accept everything and you would just sit down and. Whatever, but anger is you noticing something’s wrong. Something’s like injust. So you have to create change in order for you to make it better.

Grace Duong: Exactly. And I feel like anger is very tied into action because you can feel dissatisfaction with something, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to take action to create that change. But when people are really feeling anger and that fire in their body, they’re ready to take action in that direction.

Laura Chung: It’s like the fire element. You need the fire element to move things forward. If we were just like sitting around all day, then nothing would change and nothing would get better. And I think anger is super powerful. I think also feeling sadness and grief is really important. Allowing ourselves to grieve and release, and regenerate and transform and all emotions have a place in our experience.

Grace Duong: I’m so glad you mentioned the elements because I noticed in your book you mentioned the elements in how you can use that to manifest. But I also wanna briefly touch upon grief because I feel like grief is really powerful in the release stage when we’re ready to transition from one stage of life to the next. And I don’t feel like as a society we celebrate grief enough or allow ourselves to grieve and even the things that we choose to grieve, whether it’s the end of a job, or the end of a relationship, or a friendship or whatever it is that you’d like to grieve. It doesn’t always have to be death in that sense, but maybe it’s a metaphorical death.

Laura Chung: Yes. And just to touch upon this, I speak about in my book how there are seasons and there are different stages of a manifesting process. So there is like the co-creation process, but part of manifesting is also the death part. The part of us that needs to die in order for us to become the more aligned version of ourselves.

So I love that line and Taylor Swift song where she’s like: “Oh, the old Taylor is dead now” because that whole album was about her rebirth. She’s a Scorpio Rising, Scorpio Moon. And that, I feel we need more of that energy. We need to be able to allow parts of us to die and grieve. Because the Laura 10 years ago, the grace three years ago is hopefully not the same today. Like that, you’ve shed parts of yourself and you need to do that in order to co-create something differently. And there’s nothing wrong with being sad about my twenties and my thirties and things that I’ll never be able to do again. That’s all part of the. Transformation process. So we need to have that step in order for us to rework something new because again, you don’t wanna keep manifesting the same things.

✨ Laura’s favorite manifestation techniques

Grace Duong: Yeah. So since your book is all about manifestation, what are some of your favorite manifestation techniques?

Laura Chung: Ooh, my favorite manifestation techniques. That’s a good question. Well, I believe the most powerful manifestation technique is through meditation and visualization. Literally just taking time throughout your day, even if it’s like just five minutes, just to sit with your own breath and allow your mind to visualize and be in an imaginative state. Because what our society is severely lacking is imagination because now we have movies, we have like AI art, we have things that conjure up images for us. But I remember a time when there was no social media, and I would say I was faster at my manifestations because I was able to visualize it. And live it in my body. So we need time to daydream. We need time to imagine we need time to live in these altered states of consciousness or other dimensions and realms where, I mean, you’re Pisces Moon so you’re like not the person to talk to about this. For those of us who aren’t as inclined to step into those dream states, I feel like that’s the most powerful way to manifest because once your mind sees it, it’s already real. That’s how our subconscious mind works. It’s very easy to suggestion.

Grace Duong: Yeah. Yeah. I tend to be very visual, but I do wanna mention there have been times where I would visualize something and that tends to manifest. But there have been times where I felt, and I know that you have a section in this, in your book where you’re, you’ve just trusted that the job you wanted to manifest was gonna happen. And that actually happened to me too. Like I manifested a job in LA, had never been to LA, but that was the first job that I got out of college and actually ended up birthing Mystic Mondays over there.

Laura Chung: Yeah. I think the things that you desire, that you have the least resistance to or attachment to end up being the things that you manifest easily. It’s always the thing that bedabbles you or the things that you want so badly and you have so much attachment to them, that’s the hardest to manifest. Cuz you’ve put on all of these projections and ideas about what it should look like and how it should come in, and you’re so attached to the outcome. But like stuff like that, like I manifest food so easily because it’s so little resistance. Like I’ll literally think about potatoes and then I’ll come home and my mom made potatoes or something like that. Like it’s just so easy cause there’s no resistance, you know?

Grace Duong: Yeah. You know, funny enough, I have been manifesting free food too, like within the past couple weeks. I’m like, oh my god, I wanted this thing and now it’s here. It’s pretty cool.

Laura Chung: Yeah. So you just have to adopt the same mentality to the things that you actually really desire. Because it’s kinda a trick on the universe where the things that we desire the most are actually the things that take the longest time. Cause again, it’s something that alludes us and we have so much attachment and resistance to.

✨ Laura’s Big Three  – Sun, Moon, and Rising Signs

Grace Duong: Yeah. So what’s your big three?

Laura Chung: My Sun is Aries, Moon Aquarius, and I’m a Sagittarius Rising.

Grace Duong: How does that resonate for you?

Laura Chung: It did actually, I don’t know if you know the story, but up until I was like 36, I thought I was a Pisces because I’m March 20th. But when I got my natal chart read and the astrologer was like, you’re actually an Aries, it completely changed my life. That’s when I really got into astrology and it makes sense that I’m an Aries, but it really resonates with me, especially since learning about the moon sign. And I feel like we had a discussion about our moon signs. I really feel like my moon describes me to a T.

Grace Duong: You know, I do get Aquarius energy from you. And when we first met a few years ago, I do remember you telling me that you thought you were a Pisces for a while until an astrologer had revealed you’re actually Aries, but I feel a lot of fiery energy from you as well.

Laura Chung: Yeah, I have a nice little stellium of outer planets and Sagittarius in my 1st House. Yeah, so my Sun is in Aries and Sagittarius, and then I have a stellium in Libra, in my 11th House. So fire and air with a little bit of water.

Grace Duong: Cool. So if you had any advice for your younger self, what would you say?

Laura Chung: I think we also talked about this, right? We asked each other this the last time we saw each other. Honestly, just keep going because honestly, I was always that rebellious person. I really did live out my teens, twenties and thirties to the fullest. Like I can say that I. Did everything that I’ve ever wanted.

I manifested big things. I got my heart broken, fell in love, traveled the world, lived abroad, and I would just say to myself, don’t listen to anybody but your instincts. Like don’t listen to anybody but your intuition. Because anytime I would listen to somebody else, including my parents, it would make me so miserable because I wasn’t being authentic to myself. So if that’s not Aquarian, I don’t know what is. It’s like you really have to listen to your authentic voice.

Grace Duong: Yeah. And I feel like the Aquarius Moon is also about feeding into your individuality and how that nourishes you to be your unique eccentric self.

Laura Chung: Yes. The weirdo within.

Grace Duong: Love it. So would you like to do a Tarot reading?

Laura Chung: Yes. Would love one.

✨ Grace gives Laura a Tarot Reading

Grace Duong: Okay. So I’m gonna pull one card for you and see what comes up. Okay. You’ve got the Eight of Wands.

Laura Chung: Yay.

Grace Duong: So I know Laura also knows Tarot, so she knows exactly what this means for her, but Eight of Wands is all about that forward momentum and I feel like also breaking ground. So if there was any stagnancy that you were feeling, this is definitely the go ahead to charge along.

Laura Chung: Yeah. This is one of my favorite cards in Tarot. It’s like a Sagittarius card, so I’m like, yeah.

Grace Duong: Yeah, you know what’s unique? So Laura and I hung out like a month ago and she did a Tarot reading for me with my own deck, which was a really unique experience because not a lot of people have done that for me before. And something that was really cool about how Laura reads is she reads the Tarot cards with their astrology sign. So I was wondering if you could speak to that and your way of reading.

Laura Chung: So I learned tarot actually through the Golden Dawn tradition. So Pamela Colman Smith, who’s the artist of the original Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot Deck, and I think his name was Robert Waite, was that his first name? The two creators of the original tarot deck that everybody knows. They were in the tradition of the Golden Dawn and they made the Tarot cards based on the astrological symbols. So every Tarot card has significance with astrology. Like the Eight of Wands is, I believe it’s Mercury and Sagittarius, which means swiftness. So it’s just another lineage. It’s just a way of reading Tarot cards that gives more information about the card.

Grace Duong: That’s amazing and super cool.

Laura Chung: Yeah, it’s super cool.

Grace Duong: So thank you so much for your time, Laura. This was such a great, insightful conversation and I feel like you’re so full of wisdom and I just so appreciate you being here.

Laura Chung: Thank you so much, Grace. Thank you for creating this platform and sharing your wisdom with us.

Grace Duong: Amazing. Bye!

Laura Chung: Bye.

ENDTRO

Thanks so much for tuning into today’s episode with Laura Chung! I’m so grateful for Laura’s direct and authentic way of sharing her guidance, insights from her own life, and how she distilled her life experiences in a tangible way for us to grasp – in 40 days even!

As a reminder, you can win both Laura’s book and journal How to Manifest by leaving a podcast review on Apple Podcasts and following us on social media! Links will be in the show notes.

As always, sending you so much Grace, today and everyday.

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