Can You Manifest New Friends? I Tried The Viral 369 Method To Find Out

One thing about me: I’m always down to try a technique that promises to help you bring your desires to fruition. Vision boards? Love them. Affirmations? I say them daily. Candle magic? Sign me up. The TikTok-viral 369 manifestation method is another technique that many people swear by, so in an effort to make new friends, I decided to put it to the test as an experiment.

For the uninitiated, the viral 369 manifestation method has 12.2 million views on TikTok, and people have used it to manifest all sorts of things in their lives including money, reconnecting with an ex, and new cars. The instructions for the 369 manifestation method are pretty simple. Write down your goal three times in the morning, six times in the afternoon, and nine times before bed. As for how long you keep up the ritual, it’s entirely up to you. For the sake of this experiment, 21 days felt like a good enough window of time to see some momentum, though some folks recommend doing it for 33 days to harness the power of numerology (because 3 x 3 = 9 and 3 + 3 = 6).

The first step: Choose a goal to focus on. Back-to-school season is synonymous with reinvention, being social, and establishing new connections, so it felt very fitting. Plus, making new friends as an adult is no easy feat, so I’ll take all the juicy universal support I can get.

I’m big on journaling regularly, so writing my goal down every day, three times a day, was relatively easy to incorporate into my schedule. The tricky part? Figuring out the exact phrase to write down.

When it comes to manifesting, specificity is key, and IMO, so is being realistic for the time frame of the experiment. In other words, I didn’t expect to make a BFF in three weeks because developing genuine friendships takes time. Instead, I intended to plant seeds for new friendships and deepen existing connections. So, the phrase that I felt captured that goal was: “I am so grateful for the friendships and connections I am forming.”

Week 1

I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly I started to see glimmers of results in the friendship department. The day I started the experiment, I had a party to attend. As someone who struggles with social anxiety (that’s a topic for a whole other article), social gatherings, as you can imagine, make me nervous. I don’t know if writing down my goal helped prime my mind and open me up energetically to connect with others, but I felt excited instead of anxious to socialize this time.

Although I didn’t meet anyone new to befriend at the party, I did have some great conversations with a couple of people I already knew but hadn’t had an opportunity to connect with deeper. So, as I wrote down in my journal, I left the party feeling grateful for the friendships and connections I was forming. For that reason, I’d say Week 1 was a success.

Week 2

In all my years of studying the concept of manifestation (10+ years to be exact), there’s one thing I know for sure: Manifesting requires some action. While we can think it, wish it, and write it down until our hands hurt, bringing a goal to life will require us to take action. This is the part I feel those viral videos leave out. So, this week I took it up a notch and challenged myself to take tiny steps toward deepening the friendships and connections in my life. And when I say tiny step, I mean sending a text message or DM tiny. It required almost no time but a good dose of putting myself out there.

That looked like posting a genuine and thoughtful comment on an acquaintance’s Instagram photo and responding to an old high school friend’s post who I haven’t talked to in years. That kind of thing. The result? Those tiny friendship seeds I planted started to sprout. For example, with my high school friend, one DM I sent became a dayslong catchup session of exchanging messages and reminiscing about old times. Since then, we’ve randomly sent funny Reels that made us think of each other, dug up old photos of us as teenagers, and made plans to hang out IRL in the coming weeks.

Week 3

This week was out of the norm as I shared some pretty big personal news on social media (spoiler alert: My husband and I are expecting our first baby!). The result was an outpouring of love and congratulations from friends, family members, colleagues, and acquaintances. My thumbs were sore from replying to everyone with thank yous. Although that didn’t lead to new friendships per se, it did make me feel a bit closer to each person who reached out and was genuinely thrilled for me upon hearing the news. With this experiment, my primary intention was to work on creating fulfilling bonds, so I consider this week a step in the right direction.

The Results

Overall, I’d say the experiment was a hit. Again, I didn’t go into it expecting to make a bunch of new best friends. I wanted to challenge myself to focus on a goal, in this case, developing deeper friendships and connections, that often gets put on the back burner because life is busy, and doing this experiment helped me do just that.

So, do I recommend trying it? Absolutely. From a logical perspective, it makes sense. If you focus on a goal consistently over time, results are inevitable. Just remember that it will require some action because it’s not just writing down your goal that magically brings your dreams to life. In my experience, the 369 method is more so a tool that helps keep your intention at the top of your mind so you can focus on channeling your energy and actions toward achieving it.