The Art of Manifesting Joy: Practical Steps for Real Change

Joy is not a finish line you cross, it is the way you walk. When you walk in joy, the road itself becomes kinder.

A close friend of mine used to live on “someday.” Someday when work calms down. Someday when money feels safer. Someday when the heartache is less loud. Then she found Lisa McCourt’s Free Your Joy and tried something new. She did tiny, steady practices right in the middle of the same job, the same bills, the same mess. She did not chase joy; she practiced it. Week by week, she found herself softer, steadier, and oddly luckier. The outside world did not become perfect, but her days became brighter. That is what this piece is here to help you do.

If you want a companion read that dives into visualization and self-discovery, you might also enjoy: Manifest Your Joyful Future: Master Visualization & Self-Discovery at https://inkflare.ai/profile/lisa-mccourt/blog/manifest-your-joyful-future-master-visualization-self-discovery/.

What Free Your Joy Is Really Teaching You

Under the kind tone and the friendly “homeplay,” Lisa McCourt is sharing a brave truth. Joy is not something you go out and grab. Joy is your nature when you clear what has been obstructing it. She says it simply. “Joy is your birthright,” and “Happiness is 100 percent an inside job.” She is not asking you to fake happy smiles. She is offering gentle ways to release what covers your natural aliveness. She also reminds us that our feelings are not the problem. It is our resistance to them that hurts.

This is not theory. The book is a year of simple practices that raise your “Joy Setpoint,” the level you return to after the ups and downs. The shift comes from small actions done often. Her message is clear. You learn joy by doing it, not by reading about it.

The Hidden Shift That Changes Everything

Here is the big shift many people miss. Free Your Joy invites you to walk two paths at the same time. One, build your inner steadiness. Two, create the outer experiences you want, not because they make you worthy, but because creating is fun. You do not aim for better circumstances to “finally be okay.” You play with life because that is what humans came here to do. And both paths, inner and outer, flow forward when you clear the inner blocks.

This turns manifestation from a stressful chase into a practice of alignment. The inner work is not a detour. It is the highway.

A Real Story, A Real Pivot

Meet Maya, a community health worker with a big heart and a thin battery. Problems met her at every turn, and they were not imaginary. Then she came across a simple visual in Free Your Joy. Imagine a train with an engine at each end. One engine pulls toward the problem. The other pulls toward the solution. Whichever engine you fuel with your attention is the one that moves the train.

Maya set three daily reminders on her phone. When they buzzed, she asked, Which engine am I fueling right now? Am I focused on the problem, or is my attention on potential solutions? Her job did not change overnight. The systems did not fix themselves. But her mind shifted from bracing and complaining to creating. She noticed small doors opening, and she walked through them. On the outside it looked like better boundaries and fresh ideas. Inside, it felt like freedom and ease. That is how joy begins to manifest in real life. Not by magic tricks. By steady attention that raises your Joy Setpoint and allows better choices, kinder timing, and surprising help to find you.

The Core Ideas That Make Manifesting Joy Work

1) Raise Your Joy Setpoint with Simple Daily “Homeplay”

Free Your Joy is built around weekly practices. They are short, friendly, and meant to be done in the middle of your real life. Repetition is the secret here. Small, loving actions, done often, train your nervous system to rest at a brighter baseline. Lisa calls this your "Joy Setpoint." You raise it by doing, then doing again.

2) Meet Your Two Selves; Choose Who Leads

Lisa uses clear language for the inner life. The Vertical Self is the wise part of you that is steady, timeless, and loving. The Horizontal Self is the part of you that carries your labels and habits. Both are you. The practice is to let your Vertical Self take the wheel more often, and let your Horizontal Self rest a little. Even small shifts here can change everything.

3) Feelings Are Messengers, Not Enemies

Pain swells when you fight what you feel. Your emotions are not problems. They are signals. When you allow them to move through you, without hooking into them or resisting them, the channel clears. On the other side is the quiet peace you were looking for.

4) Create from a Clear Heart, Not Fear

Having desires is not a problem. But having desires that compensate for our perceived inadequacies can be. Lisa invites you to discern between your “run-to” desires and your “run-from” desires. A run-to desire feels like moving toward something alive and nourishing. When the want itself lifts your energy, it is aligned. Those are the desires that tend to unfold with more ease and ultimately bring you more happiness.

5) Choose the Vibe That Writes Your Future Pages

Imagine your life as a book. Past chapters are on the left. Future chapters are on the right, blank and waiting. The energy you hold today is the ink that writes them. When you choose a brighter tone now, you set the stage for experiences that match it later. One of Lisa’s students once saw an image of heavy armor scales falling away to reveal a tender, limitless human underneath. As the old scales fall, new pages write themselves in a different color.

Five Practices You Can Start Today

These are short, sweet, and powerful. Pick one. Keep it for seven days. Then add another.

1) The Observer’s Bell

• What to do: Set three daily alarms. When each goes off, pause. Notice your body, your breath, your thoughts. Ask, What am I believing right now and is it lifting or lowering my energy?
• Why it works: Change starts with seeing. Lisa compares it to switching hand dominance. If you needed to do that, you’d first need to notice all the times you routinely use your dominant hand. Then you’d gently practice replacing it with the other hand. You are training your mind the same way, with kindness and repetition.
• Here’s one way to do it: With each round of self-inquiry, ask: What am I feeling? What do I need? What would I love? Take small steps to nurture yourself based on the answers to these questions.

2) The Two‑Engine Check

• What to do: In a challenging moment, picture the train with an engine on both ends. If you are fueling the problem with worry, anxiety, and complaints, shift to the feeling of the solution. You do not need the plan yet. Just feel what relief or clarity will be like when it arrives.
• Why it works: Your attention is what fuels the engine. Whichever engine you fuel is the one that will pull the train in that direction.
• Here’s one way to do it: Breathe in for four counts, out for six. Put a hand on your chest. Name how you want to feel, like clear, safe, or open. Repeat that word in your mind and imagine the feeling state until it’s anchored.

3) The Book of Your Life Visualization

• What to do: Close your eyes. See your life as a book. Sense the overall energetic tone of the past pages on the left. Now choose a brighter tone for the future pages on the right. Let your body feel that new tone now.
• Why it works: Your inner world responds to pictures and feelings. This simple image helps your system expect good and welcome it.
• Here’s one way to do it: After you open your eyes, do one small thing that matches your new tone. Send a kind note. Step outside for two minutes of sun. Clear one small surface. Make the tone real.

4) Curate Your Desires, Run‑To Only

• What to do: List ten things you want. Feel into whether each is a run‑to or a run‑from and label them. Rewrite any run‑from as a run‑to that feels exciting and inspiring. For instance, if you wrote, “I want more money," drop into what’s beneath that desire. Is it to avoid feeling anxious, overworked, and exhausted? If so, it’s a run-from. See if you can reframe it in a way that feels liberating and joyful like: “I want an abundant flow of money from enjoyable work that’s aligned with my passions.”
• Why it works: Your desires can only draw in that which is a vibrational match to them. Turn up the vibration on your desiring for better results.
• Here’s one way to do it: Notice whether thinking about your desire feels good or bad. If bad, it means you’re more focused on not having it, which will keep you in a position of not having it. Turning it into a desire that feels good means you’ve shifted your expectation and you’re fueling the right engine.

5) Joy Setpoint Boosters

• What to do: Pick one tiny practice and commit to it for seven days. Examples: a daily gratitude list, schedule time in nature each day without headphones, take one minute each hour to place a hand on your heart and check in with yourself.
• Why it works: The body learns by repetition. This is how the new way becomes your new normal.
• Here’s one way to do it: Treat it like homeplay. Make it so easy and self-nurturing that you want to keep it up.

Aligning Your Desires with Care for Others

Lisa offers a beautiful reminder. Caring for your joy is not selfish. When you find your happiness inside, you stop placing that weight on the people you love. Your warmth then spills into every space you enter, from your home to the coffee line. That is the heart of real manifestation. When you are naturally filled with gratitude and joy, you effortlessly attract more good into your life. You become a fountain of overflowing love that benefits everyone around you everywhere you go.

When your love for yourself and your life is genuine, it’s impossible to have desires that don’t benefit others as well. Here’s a simple test. When you picture getting what you want, do you feel softer and more generous or tight and defensive? If your desire softens you, it is likely a run‑to desire that will bless both you and the people around you.

When Joy Feels Far Away

There will be days when it feels hard to reach for anything bright. Lisa does not deny this. She shares parts of her story that would test anyone’s heart and demonstrates how our toughest challenges can become our greatest catalysts for growth. She often repeats that the path is a spiral. You rise, you dip, you apply your tools, and you rise with more wisdom to the next-higher lap around the spiral.

On the heavy days:

• Shrink the goal. Do not try to be joyful. Try to be one degree kinder to yourself.
• Feel, do not fight. Let the emotion move through without judging it. In the long run, the resistance hurts us far more than the feeling itself.
• Make a micro‑pivot. One slow breath. One glass of water. One sincere text. One minute with your face in the sun.
• Keep a “Proof of Magic” note in your phone. Jot down small good things. A warm look from a stranger. A penny on the sidewalk. A laugh you did not expect. You are teaching your brain to notice grace.

Some Words You May Want to Keep

Sometimes one line can reset your whole day. Here are three inspiring sentences to write where you will see them.

• “Happiness is 100 percent an inside job.”
• “Joy is your birthright.”
• “Deep and lasting change is as simple as changing your vibrational address.”

Let them be joyful reminders, not pressure. The power is yours, and you are sovereign over how you direct your attention and what you ultimately create.

Why This Work Lasts

Free Your Joy respects how humans actually change. It is not a weekend makeover. It is a gentle, well paced workshop for your life. Each chapter offers a key, then four simple weeks of homeplay. The magic lies in the doing, again and again, until the new way becomes your natural way. As your inner world softens and steadies, your outer world starts to meet you there. Not because you forced it, because you matched it.

This work is also joyful. Lisa makes it clear. Evolving your consciousness and mastering manifestation is not about fixing yourself to earn good things. It is about playing with the stuff of your life and letting it be more alive. She uses these same tools in her own world, creating love, meaningful work, and service, while protecting and nurturing the inner peace that keeps the good coming.

One Small Promise for Today

You do not need a perfect routine or a long retreat. Pick one simple practice. Set your bell. Ask, Which engine am I fueling? Rewrite one run‑from desire into a run‑to desire and anchor the feeling of it into your heart. Picture the future pages in the book of your life and choose the color you will write with today.

If you want simple help with visualization and self‑discovery to go with this, visit Manifest Your Joyful Future: Master Visualization & Self-Discovery at https://inkflare.ai/profile/lisa-mccourt/blog/manifest-your-joyful-future-master-visualization-self-discovery/. Then come back to these small suggestions and keep going.

A Closing Thought for Your Heart

Lisa wrote this book because she knows that a life of peace and joy is possible despite it all, and that joy is the clear truth of who you are. Even if that truth feels far away right now, let it be a soft star that guides you gently in the direction of a new way of relating to yourself and the world.

Ask yourself this as you step into the rest of your day: If joy is already here, quiet under the noise, what one loving action would let a little more of it show up now? Then take that step.