So, you’re trying to manifest your desires, but it’s not quite going the way you expected, right? Believe me; I’ve been there too. Just like you, I’ve sat wondering why nothing is happening.
The truth is, manifestation isn’t just about thinking and wishing – it goes deeper than that. But don’t worry, that’s why we’re here today. In this article, I’m going to break down some common challenges when trying to manifest and, most importantly, how to overcome them. It’s basically just a list of things I wish I had known earlier, but I hope you can find some value in them too.
Reason 1: Not Doing the “Mental Work”
While knowledge and information gathering is great and all, it is actually not what is going to determine your success. One person can read all the books but still be stuck, whereas another simply just does the ”mental work” without really knowing that much until they succeed.
Just because manifesting is happening in the mind doesn’t mean it’s intellect that does the work. In fact, it’s about working with a part of your mind – the subconscious. Impressing new ideas on the subconscious (regardless of the method) is what I mean when I say ”mental work.”
Mistakingly, people end up spending too much time reading about manifestation, watching countless videos, or perhaps even buying coaching, but they’re failing to put the presented concepts into practice. They never take the time to sit down every day, meditate, visualize, affirm, etc., or whatever it may be, and thus never truly learn, never make any changes, and never get any results.
Think about manifestation as learning to play a musical instrument. You could read books about playing the piano, study sheet music, and even watch professional musicians play. Sure, you would definitely learn something from this, but until you sit down at the piano and begin to press the keys yourself, you will never truly learn to play.
So, if you’re struggling with manifesting, check yourself if you are actually doing the ”mental work” or if you’re just consuming information.
Also, just because you constantly fail doesn’t mean you aren’t progressing. More on this later.
Reason 2: Not Understanding the Subconscious
If you feel that your manifesting attempts always are frustrating, exhausting, tedious, or like you are fighting the whole world, then it’s probably because you are trying to ”will” things into being.
At first impression, it can feel a bit like you are trying to bend the universe with your own mind. Doing this will not only exhaust you but will produce little to no results or even the opposite results that you wanted.
Think about yourself as being constituted of the conscious and the subconscious. For all practical purposes, the conscious mind is the ”little you,” and the subconscious is the deeper power within you, the true self, or the ”deeper you.” The subconscious is the power within you. It controls your external world, as well as your mind, thoughts, behaviors, actions, and so on.
For manifesting new experiences, it is therefore essential that you hand over new ideas to the ”deeper you.” Once the subconscious has assimilated and accepted a new idea, it will almost automatically, without your aid, externalize that idea in your world, whether it’s directly in the circumstances or whether it’s by causing you to act and think differently. Conveying ideas to the subconscious in this manner is a very different thing from feeling like you have to force things into being (I talk more about this in my article on ”The Law of Reversed Effort.”)
So, you do not want to ”learn how to manifest;” you want to learn how to impress new ideas on your subconscious. The results in your life are already a product of your subconscious mind. You might hold ideas that are so deeply ingrained that you don’t even realize they’re there. For example, a person who has always been lonely may not realize that it doesn’t have to be that way.
The magic comes when you learn to impress new ideas on the subconscious. No matter how strong-willed you think you are, it really is your own subconscious that is the operant power of your life.
Reason 3: Lack of Motivation
Motivation is the driving force that propels us toward our goals. When it comes to manifestation, motivation will allow you to make those inner changes within yourself, make you stick with the ”mental work” sessions, and keep you going when you’re met with adverse circumstances or other obstacles. However, a lack of motivation is a common barrier that many individuals face on their manifestation journey.
One possible reason for this lack of motivation could be shallow or short-term goals. If the object of your manifestation feels hollow, superficial, or lacks personal significance, it could be challenging to muster up the motivation to see it through, and thus you end up not really doing that much about it. For instance, manifesting a luxury car or a large sum of money might sound appealing, but are they really things that you are motivated toward? It’s unlikely they will sustain your interest and commitment long enough for successful manifestation.
Here’s how you get more motivation: align your goals with your values. Rather than focusing solely on materialistic gains, try to identify what truly matters to you at a deeper level. Maybe it’s freedom, love, accomplishment, success, peace, or joy. It’s often helpful not to tie it down to this or that condition but rather focus on a general state, such as general ”peace,” for example. Align your manifestation goals with these underlying values. This way, you’ll be pursuing something that genuinely resonates with you, which is likely to keep your motivation high. If you have some purpose that really means something to you, you are going to have strong reasons not to fall into laziness and just drifting through life.
Reason 4: Lack of Belief
Belief is the cornerstone of the manifestation process. If you do not truly believe that you can manifest your desires into your reality, it becomes nearly impossible to do so. A lack of belief, or doubt, acts as a roadblock. It effectively impresses ”I can’t” ideas on your mind.
You may understand the concept of manifestation intellectually, but if deep down you harbor doubts, your manifestation efforts are unlikely to succeed. This disbelief may stem from past failures, negative experiences, or deeply ingrained limiting beliefs about yourself and your capabilities.
First of all, it’s important to understand that failure is okay. While some learn it really quickly, most people will find that manifesting is pretty hard to learn, at least to the point of attaining big results, and it will take a lot of practice and dedication.
Here are some other methods for instilling new beliefs or at least opening yourself up to the possibility of manifesting:
- Affirmations: Daily affirmations can help to reprogram your subconscious mind. I recommend you check out my article explaining how to do affirmations effectively.
- Attitude shift: Recognize that doubt is a natural part of the process, but don’t allow it to dominate your thoughts. What you need is to be open-minded. You need to challenge your skeptical ideas and ask yourself how true they actually are.
- Success stories: Reading or hearing about others’ successful manifestation experiences can help to strengthen your belief in the process. Remember, if others can do it, so can you.
- Working with a coach or mentor: This is not something I have ever done (and I also don’t really think it’s necessary), but some people have reported that having a mentor is really helpful. I would, however, stay away from expensive coaching programs. The main benefit of mentorship is support and reassurance from someone who can manifest. Alternatively, simply just reading books by particular authors within the sphere of manifestation can provide the same ingredient of reassurance that will help you on your way.
Belief is not just a minor aspect of the manifestation. Your subconscious beliefs dictate what you experience. You cannot, however, just flip a switch and, at a moment’s notice, completely alter a belief that has been ingrained since childhood. The key is to cut the root of the old belief and open yourself up to the possibility that things might be different than you initially thought.
I talk more about this in my article on finding and getting rid of limiting beliefs. I also recommend you read my article on how to build faith in manifesting, explaining why you need faith in the first place.
Reason 5: Fear, Doubt, and Worry
Fear, doubt, and worry – if they are deeply rooted in the subconscious mind, these emotions can significantly impact your thoughts, actions, perspectives, and, ultimately, the circumstances that manifest themselves in front of you.
From a psychological perspective, fear is our body’s response to perceived immediate danger, doubt is a state of indecision or feeling unsure, and worry is an excessive concern about a potential undesirable outcome. All these keep you stuck. They control you and neutralize any attempts on your part to move ahead or pursue a goal.
When you consciously manifest, you are intentionally choosing what ideas you to implant in the subconscious. The reason fear, doubt, and worry are bad is because it plants negative ideas. If you try and manifest ”success,” for example, but you at the same time think that ”it can’t happen,” then you end up impressing the ”it can’t happen” idea on the subconscious, which correspondingly manifests as nothing happening. You want ”success,” but you hold the idea that ”it can’t happen.”
So, how to Overcome Fear, Doubt, and Worry? It’s important to remember that you cannot just rid yourself of Fear, Doubt, and Worry. Rather, it’s better to learn how to overcome them by acting and thinking despite these being present. In manifesting, it means learning to impress the idea of ”success” (if that’s your goal) on your subconscious without letting the idea be poisoned by fear, doubt, and worry.
- Introspection: Introspection will help you to challenge and alter negative beliefs or fears. By locating and understanding your thought patterns, you can reduce fear, doubt, and worry.
- Observation: By observing your fears, doubts, and worries as ”things” within your mind, you automatically gain distance from them. There becomes a separation between you and your thoughts.
- Meditation: In meditation, your critical mind gets lulled to sleep. This means that you can more easily impress your desire in the subconscious without fear, doubt, and worry getting in the way.
- Positive Affirmations and Visualization: You can use things such as affirmations or visualization to rid yourself of or implant a new belief. If you are socially anxious, you can actually build confidence by imagining yourself as confident. This is especially potent if you are deep in meditation.
Reason 6: Fear of Failure
Fear of failure is more than just a reluctance to take risks. It’s a paralyzing emotion that keeps you in inaction. The fear of failure tells you that “If I don’t try, I won’t fail.”
Manifestation requires (mental) action. When you don’t try and manifest something because you are scared that it won’t work, then you obviously won’t go anywhere. For example, if you’re trying to get a new job but you fear that you will be rejected, you might avoid applying altogether. Your fear, in this case, is blocking you from doing what you really should do.
Also, the fear of “manifestation not working” or being “unable to manifest” can also lead to self-defeating thoughts and actions. If you constantly doubt your ability to manifest and fear that your efforts will lead to nothing, your will also stay stuck. This is a weird state where you’re scared to really try because if you fail, then maybe manifestation doesn’t work at all.
So, how do you overcome this?
- Failure as Part of the Process: In my experience, this was a very important revelation. Personally, I had fallen into the trap of thinking of failure as final when in reality, it’s a necessary part of the process. For that reason, I was too scared to even try. So, every time you ”fail,” think of it as a learning experience. Even if you fail 90% of the time, the 10% can still be really impactful. When you think of failure as a stepping stone rather than an end, then you will be able to keep trying and keep doing the inner work, which is what you need to learn this.
- Attitude: Instead of viewing failure as something bad, view it as part of the process. This enables you to do what you need to because you know that failure doesn’t mean that you’re screwed.
- Self-Compassion: Be gentle with yourself when you experience failure. If you fail, tell pick yourself up and go again.
Reason 7: Living in the Past or Future
You can really only act, whether it’s mental action or outer action, in the present. Manifestation is not about changing the world with your will but by impressing new ideas in the subconscious. No matter how much you daydream of a hopeful future, it will not come unless the subconscious has been transformed. Too often, we daydream as a coping mechanism without ever really doing any inner changes. By daydreaming, we take are no longer in the present, and we’re unable to really act.
I recommend you stop focusing so much on the outcomes and focus more on doing your part of the work. The subconscious is the power that creates your reality, and your job is, therefore, to hand to it new ideas. This is something you do by having your focus on the here and now. As neville goddard said:
”Perpetual construction of future states without the consciousness of already being them, that is, picturing your desire without actually assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled, is the fallacy and mirage of mankind.”
Neville Goddard, The Power of Awareness
Conclusion
I want you to remember something important – it’s okay to struggle. Even the best of us stumble. Maybe I have come across as a ”know-it-all” in this article, but in truth, these are just the things I wish I knew before I actually learned to manifest, and it’s still things I need reminding of today.
Let’s not forget that manifestation is a deeply personal journey. It requires you to look inward, observe your mind, and for you to be willing to change a lot of internal things. There may be times when you feel discouraged, but that’s okay. Just remember that if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it. You have the power within you to shape your reality, and each hurdle you overcome brings you one step closer, whether you realize it or not. In the end, just remember that if your job is to suggest ideas to the subconscious. Once you’re subconscious holds new ideas, new manifestations must appear. It really is about changing your inner “self.”
I hope you found this article helpful. Thanks for reading!
