How to Giggle: A Guide to Taking Life Less Seriously

Berner and DeSorbo argue that realizing one’s dreams starts with believing in oneself. Like happiness, becoming the person one wants to be begins with looking inward. The authors offer examples from their own lives to illustrate how self-confidence can make dreams come true. This kind of manifestation routinely features in self-help works—most famously in Rhonda Byrnes’s The Secret. However, where many books on manifestation make pseudoscientific claims about the mind’s power to alter reality, Berner and DeSorbo focus on practical action as an extension of belief in oneself.

Berner and DeSorbo have both manifested their dreams by maintaining a positive outlook and by staying in tune with themselves. For Berner, breaking her journey to success into a series of smaller, achievable goals has been a useful method for self-realization. She uses the imagined goal of achieving an Oscar as an example. To do so, the individual would first have to take acting classes, post videos, get an acting coach, and audition for roles. For Paige, writing a list of seemingly unrealistic goals has been a successful method of manifesting her dreams. She encourages the reader to do the same, providing a workbook-like section where the reader can list goals and imagine the associated action steps.