In 2015, my ex-partner began collecting images of the life she wanted to manifest. The vision was familiar: the dream home, financial abundance, and the self-actualised life that coaching and spirituality so often promise.
The frustrating part is that by the time those images were placed on her computer in a folder called “desires” she already had what many would call the dream. She had a home. She had a husband who loved her, and who she loved. She had a family, a dog, and she had worked her way back into a decent pay packet after leaving behind the big salary of her corporate days. In short, she had stability, comfort, and love.
Yet it was framed as not enough. The coaching-spirituality mindset taught her to look at what she had as merely a stepping stone, a baseline from which to demand more.
Now, contrast that with families in Ukraine today. Wives watch their husbands leave to fight. Jobs are scarce and pay is low. Families live in poverty. Air raid sirens scream through the night. People go to bed not knowing if they will wake. They are not manifesting wealth or alignment. They just want to live, to wake up, to have food, to keep their families together.
The contrast exposes something rotten at the core of modern coaching spirituality. It is a belief system that convinces people who already have more than enough that they are entitled to more, while entire populations only wish for safety and survival.
The Coaching-Spirituality Mix
Spirituality, in its traditional form, was about humility, acceptance, and seeking meaning beyond the material. Coaching, in its modern form, has been about setting goals, optimising performance, and pushing people to reach higher.
On their own, both can have merit. But when they mix, the result is toxic. Spiritual ideas get hijacked by the coaching industry and turned into pseudo-babble about abundance, alignment, and breakthroughs. Coaching borrows spiritual language to give its sales pitch an aura of depth.
Instead of gratitude for what already exists, the coaching-spirituality cocktail reframes everything as a stepping stone. You are told you are “playing small” if you stop at security, family, or love. The house you live in is never quite enough. The job you have is only a placeholder. The partner who has supported you is holding you back from your “true potential.”
What begins as harmless visualisation morphs into chronic dissatisfaction. A tool meant for reflection becomes a reason to discard the life you have in search of something shinier.
The Privilege of Wanting More
Manifesting assumes a position of privilege. To even play the game, you need enough safety, food, income, and time to dream about something bigger. It is an activity of abundance societies, not survival societies.
In places like Australia, the United States, or Western Europe, the belief that you can create reality with your thoughts thrives because people already have their basic needs met. Manifestation workshops don’t sell in basements where families are hiding from bombs. Vision boards don’t appear in the homes of people wondering how to survive the winter.
This is the heart of the absurdity. In wealthy societies, people convince themselves that the universe owes them more than love, family, food, and security. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, families would trade almost anything for just those basics.
The gap is grotesque. To sit in a comfortable home and complain that it is not aligned with your higher vision is only possible when you are blind to what suffering really looks like. Coaching spirituality, rather than opening people’s eyes, actively trains them to ignore reality in favour of the fantasy of “more.”
The Ukraine Reality Check
Consider the daily life of families in Ukraine.
Air raid sirens rip through the night, and families scurry into shelters. Husbands leave to fight, wives are left to raise children alone. Jobs disappear as industries collapse. Poverty grows. The simple act of keeping warm through winter becomes a battle.
What do these people manifest? Peace. Safety. The ability to put food on the table. A return to ordinary life, where waking up tomorrow is not a miracle.
Contrast this with the spiritual-coaching world, where “manifesting” means walking away from a marriage because it feels too small, or demanding more money not because you lack, but because you believe you deserve abundance. In one context, manifesting is survival. Being disappointed those $1m cheques you send yourself, are still not real. In the other, it is entitlement dressed as enlightenment. Leaving decisions up to the UNIVERSE, with statements like “Whether I made the right choice, or the wrong choice, the UNIVERSE will have my back”. The universe didn’t have the back of the 12 yr old girl recently killed in a bombing attack on Kyiv recently. Or the injured and destroyed buildings. But sure, the UNIVERSE will protect someone on $145k a year from making a major change in their life, upending family.
How Coaching Justifies Entitlement
The mechanism is clever. Coaching spirituality tells people that wanting more is not selfish but sacred. It is not greed but growth. It is not abandonment but authenticity.
This is how betrayal gets reframed. Leaving a long-term relationship is not about dissatisfaction, it is about “living your truth.” Walking away from commitments is not seen as irresponsibility, it is “no longer aligning with my higher self.”
The industry is full of slogans that justify entitlement.
- “Don’t settle.”
- “Your comfort zone is your prison.”
- “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.”
Each of these turns ordinary contentment into a kind of failure. A steady job is reframed as stagnation. A long-term marriage becomes a trap. Gratitude is replaced with restlessness.
The worst part is the spiritual veneer. People who already have love, family, and stability can convince themselves that throwing it all away is not only justified but enlightened. Coaching becomes the supplier of a moral hall pass for selfishness.
The Moral Blind Spot
This is where the system shows its ugliest side. It has no perspective outside its own bubble of privilege.
When coaches tell clients to “manifest abundance,” they are blind to the millions living in fear and scarcity. When they talk about “breaking free” from limiting beliefs, they ignore the fact that for many, the limit is not belief but the brutal reality of war, hunger, or political oppression.
The blind spot is not accidental. It is necessary. If you allowed the suffering of the world to enter the conversation, the whole coaching-spirituality enterprise would collapse under its own absurdity. How can you talk about manifesting wealth when people are huddled in basements hoping to survive the night? How can you preach about leaving relationships in search of alignment when millions would give anything to keep their families whole?
Coaching spirituality survives only by cutting itself off from global reality. It functions in a bubble where ordinary comfort is called mediocre and where entitlement is called wisdom.
My ex had everything she once dreamed of: a home, family, love, and stability. Coaching spirituality taught her it was not enough. It reframed contentment as complacency and loyalty as limitation.
Meanwhile, families in Ukraine ask only to live another day. They manifest survival while the privileged manifest abundance. The comparison is not just stark, it is grotesque.
Spirituality without humility and coaching without responsibility create entitlement, not growth. They encourage people who already have enough to walk away in search of more, while ignoring those who only wish for food, safety, and peace.
The real question is not what else the universe owes us, but what we owe to each other. Instead of manifesting more, perhaps the privileged should focus on helping those who just want to live.