Most manifestation advice starts in the wrong place. It asks you to imagine what you desire. A beautiful home, significant wealth, good health, a promotion at work, a happy marriage, and so forth. We are often told to make a vision board, visualize the desired outcomes, write them down, or recite affirmations aloud a dozen times. These are generally the kinds of techniques suggested. But Neville Goddard, whose lectures have seen a surge of renewed interest, makes a completely different claim. The thing desired was never the aim. It's the identity instead.
His central idea, often called the Law of Assumption, is simple to understand yet harder to put into practice: you don't attract what you want. You experience what you consistently assume to be true.
Desire will keep the thing at a distance, a future outcome you are deprived of and wishing for. Assuming collapses the distance between waiting and the present. While utilizing the Law of Assumption, you are no longer a person unfulfilled who hopes to achieve the desired outcome at some point in the future. You are already acting, thinking, and making choices as your future self with the desired circumstances would now.
This parallels what psychology has been conveying for decades, though using a less poetic term: self-concept. Self-concept is the mental picture that you have of yourself, and it subtly influences almost all of your actions. Individuals will act in ways consistent with their self-image, even if a more "logical" choice would lead them elsewhere. For instance, if your internal sense of identity is that of someone who is always "a bit behind," you will find ways to remain behind, not because the universe is treating you unfairly, but because your behavior may repeatedly reinforce beliefs about yourself that you've never consciously examined.
If we wish for situations in our lives to change, the practical thing to do isn't to "visualize more" or "affirm it more." Rather, select one area of your life in which you're currently waiting for something and consider what that version of yourself would be doing right now. Not in the future. Today. So if the kind of person you'd like to become isn't afraid to look at their bank account, then stop avoiding it. And if the version of you who is respected in their field doesn't undervalue their work, stop undervaluing yours. The assumption isn't a feeling you can fake or a circumstance you can automatically sway in your favor. You start living inside the standards of your future self before the evidence ever arrives to justify them.
One caution: it's human nature to view life through a self-centric lens, as the "main character," so it's tempting to take the Law of Assumption literally and expect circumstances to bend the moment an identity is assumed. Since we're all implicated in a wide network of causes and effects, it's wiser not to expect your desired outcomes to appear immediately or literally.
Instead of spending your last $300 on a lavish dinner because "a wealthy you wouldn't worry about it," try backward engineering instead. Assume that "wealthy you" exists and can comfortably afford fine dining. By what means are they able to do so? What patterns, habits, and choices got them there? Those are the details to clarify and the patterns to begin embodying.
Remember, it's not the what; it's not the thing; it's the identity.
Chen Zhi left school as a teenager in Fujian, China, and moved to Cambodia around 2011. Within roughly a decade he became one of the country's most prominent billionaire tycoons. After founding Prince Holding Group in 2015, he built a multinational conglomerate spanning banking, real estate, casinos, aviation, and telecommunications. He received Cambodia's highest honorary business title, personally advised three generations of the country's ruling family, and cultivated the public image of a respected investor and philanthropist.
According to a U.S. federal indictment unsealed on October 14, 2025, that legitimate business empire concealed one of the world's largest forced-labor cyberfraud operations. Prosecutors allege Chen controlled at least ten fortified compounds in Cambodia where trafficked workers were confined, beaten, and forced to run "pig butchering" crypto scams against victims worldwide. It was enormously profitable: an alleged $30 million a day at its 2018 peak, and Americans alone lost an estimated $10 billion in 2024.
The empire began to collapse publicly in October 2025, when the U.S. and U.K. imposed coordinated sanctions, federal prosecutors charged Chen with wire fraud and money-laundering conspiracies, and the U.S. sought forfeiture of approximately 127,271 bitcoin, valued at roughly $15 billion at the time. Cambodian authorities arrested Chen in January 2026, revoked his citizenship, and extradited him to China rather than the United States.
The ending remains unresolved. Chen is now in Chinese custody facing a prosecution that differs substantially from the U.S. case, while his attorneys contest the American bitcoin forfeiture. Lawyers representing alleged scam victims are fighting for access to the seized assets, and human rights organizations report that many scam compounds continue to operate. The story is an exploration of how modern-day slavery, online fraud, political access, and global finance combine to create an underworld empire powerful enough to operate in plain sight.
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2009-2011 | Chen Zhi relocates to Cambodia and begins investing in real estate, borrowing $2 million from his uncle to start his first firm. |
| 2015 | Formally founds Prince Holding Group. Within a year it is offering microfinance banking services and receives a full commercial bank license. |
| By 2018 | A co-conspirator later claims, in a 2022 conversation, that Prince Group was earning more than $30 million a day from its scam schemes. |
| Feb. 2024 | Radio Free Asia publishes a three-part investigation documenting torture and forced labor at Prince Group-linked compounds, identifying $1.5B+ in Prince Group-linked assets across 31 countries. |
| Oct. 14, 2025 | U.S. Treasury and the U.K. announce coordinated sanctions. DOJ unseals an indictment and moves to seize approximately 127,271 bitcoin, the largest crypto forfeiture in DOJ history. |
| Jan. 6-7, 2026 | Cambodian authorities arrest Chen Zhi, revoke his citizenship, and extradite him to China. |
| Present | Chen remains in Chinese custody facing charges centered on assault and copyright infringement rather than fraud or trafficking, with potential death-penalty exposure. Three legal and enforcement tracks continue in parallel: China's criminal case, the U.S. civil forfeiture fight, and an expanding U.S./EU sanctions net. |
School dropout, ran internet cafes as a teenager, emigrated to Cambodia, built a 30+ country conglomerate, received the Neak Oknha honorific, advised current and former Cambodian prime ministers. Publicly a philanthropist and COVID-relief donor. Per U.S. and Chinese authorities, simultaneously the architect of a trafficking-and-fraud empire. Now in Chinese custody.
On-record interviews and survivor reports describe 12-hour shifts, sale between compounds every 6 to 12 months, beatings and electric shock for underperformance, and escapees hunted down for a $50 bounty.
A real, court-documented money mule who spent one day working for the operation and is still, per the court record, out her bank cards. The most human-scale, ordinary-person entry point into how the machine pulled people in.
Investigative journalist, Radio Free Asia. Led RFA's three-year, three-part investigation into Prince Group, the reporting that first documented the torture and trafficking allegations later cited in the U.S. indictment.
Excerpt from a full production-ready research dossier prepared for The Connect's Criminal Histories series: executive summary, timeline, character profiles, sourcing, visual and interview opportunities, open questions, and editorial recommendation.
Ghostwriting disclosure: This work was written on assignment, to a client’s brief and for that client’s audience. It is commissioned political and civic communications work, not personal advocacy: the views and arguments below belong to the client, not to me.
Practice campaign video script
Your grocery receipt is a political document.
I know, I know. You went in there for some chicken, cereal, maybe some fruit, and somehow you came out eighty dollars poorer with three little bags.
And they’ll tell you, “Well, you just need to budget better.”
Budget WHAT better? Grocery prices nationally are about 30% higher than they were at the beginning of 2020.
Cut
Your rent went up. Your power bill went up. Your prescriptions went up.
Did your paycheck keep up?
No? Okay.
Then the question is: who is this economy actually working for?
Cut
A KFF survey found that 56% of Black adults owed money for a medical or dental bill, compared with 37% of white adults.
You’re rationing prescriptions. You’re putting groceries back at the register. You’re afraid to touch the thermostat because you already know what that bill is gonna look like.
Meanwhile, regular people keep getting told to sacrifice more while billionaires and corporations get special treatment.
Do you hear what I’m saying?
Cut
The economy is not broken for everybody.
For some people, it is working exactly the way they want it to work.
And this is why the midterms matter.
The people on your ballot? They may help decide whether there’s a ceiling on what patients can be charged for prescriptions. Whether everybody gets the choice to buy an affordable public health plan. Whether your paycheck actually keeps up with the cost of living. Whether these massive data centers have to pay their fair share of the infrastructure costs they create.
Those decisions get made based on who shows up.
Cut
Not who complains online. Not who watches the debate. Not who knows the most political vocabulary.
Who. Shows. Up.
Cut
Black political power cannot just mean getting somebody in the room.
It has to mean better work. Better wages. A real chance to build wealth.
So before Election Day, check your registration. Check on your people. Make a plan.
Because your prescriptions, your paycheck, your groceries, your power bill?
They are already political.
The only question is whether you’re gonna vote like it.
A six-panel social carousel and caption explaining Spokane’s one-year moratorium on qualifying new data center projects.
Spokane just hit pause on new data centers.
City Council passed a one-year moratorium (Ordinance C36887) on qualifying new data center projects, giving us time to study the impact on our water, power grid, infrastructure, and utility bills before permanent rules are set.
The amendment closed a loophole so data center activity can't dodge review just because it's part of a bigger project. The Plan Commission and Climate Resilience Board will now build a full impact-review framework going forward.
Spokane should understand what these projects cost us before we approve them, and that's what this pause is for.
Short-form civic social video developed around belonging, participation, and an inclusive Spokane.
A city is at its best when people feel they belong.
Strong communities are built by neighbors showing up for one another, celebrating what makes us unique, and recognizing that our differences make Spokane stronger.
Everyone deserves the opportunity to live, work, and participate in a community where they feel welcomed, respected, and safe.
Because when everyone belongs, Spokane thrives.