You’ve been saying your affirmations. You’ve been doing your manifestation work. So where are the results? If you’re starting to think that manifestation is taking too long — or that it’s not working at all — you’re not alone. That’s a common question among people who are new to manifestation practice.
When you’re asking, “Why is manifestation taking so long?” it might be time to shift your approach. Effective manifestation work aligns your whole vibration — your thoughts, words and actions — with the experience that you desire.
Why Is Manifestation Taking So Long? Understanding Manifestation
If you feel like your manifestation work isn’t getting you anywhere, it might be time to touch base with your beliefs about manifestation. Once you’re aligned with an effective understanding of it, you may find that your practice gets you further.
What Manifestation Isn’t
Manifestation is not sitting in your room, closing your eyes, and thinking about what you want. It’s not wishing for something or continually fixing your mind on it. It’s not even tuning your thoughts to what it would be like to have that thing that you’re looking for.
Perhaps that’s how you’ve been thinking about manifestation up until now. In that case, it’s time to shift your understanding.
If you’re not doing manifestation in a useful way, then, yes, it’s going to take forever.
Your Current Manifestations
When it feels like manifestation is taking too long, it can be tempting to think that the practice just doesn’t work.
But that’s not the case. The principles of manifestation do work.
I can tell you that — and you can believe it — because you are already manifesting something.
The world and the people you have around you are things that you’ve already manifested for yourself. So, too, is the amount of money in your bank account. You’ve manifested your general health and physicality. Even your attitude and your skills are things you’ve manifested.
You’ve done all this through the foolproof approach to manifesting. Your thoughts were in alignment with all of those things, and you took action according to that alignment.
Why Is Manifestation Taking So Long? Thinking About a Vibrational Universe
Now that you’ve seen how manifestation has already worked in your life, you’re ready to take it to the next step.
Whenever you have aligned your thoughts and actions with the things that you’ve wanted, what exactly is it you were doing? You were setting yourself up to vibrate in alignment with the thing you were wanting to manifest.
When you engage in intentional manifestation work, the same idea is at play. The difference, though, is that you align your vibrations with your new desired future.
Ideas from The Law of Attraction
Let’s go over a little more about the principles of manifestation. These ideas come from the book The Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham by Esther and Jerry Hicks.
The book is a treatise on how manifestation works. (I think that there are neuroscientific ways to explain a lot of their manifestation ideas, but that doesn’t change the fact that their principles for attracting and manifesting are very useful.)
Here are the basics of how it works:
First of all, we live in a vibrational universe. Everything is vibrating — literally. Light happens in waves; sound happens in waves. The sun rises and sets; the earth is spinning. Atoms are vibrating, and everything is moving. All things are vibrating.
The principle of the Law of Attraction is that you want to tune your vibrational frequency to whatever it is that you want to see around you.
Everything exists. So you can tune your vibrational frequency with the vibrational frequency of anything that you would like to see.
Let’s go a little deeper:
We’re talking about manifestation to experience the things that you “want.” But we need to take a closer look at this idea of wanting.
The vibrational frequency of wanting something is different from the vibrational frequency of having something.
Wanting indicates a lack. So when your vibrational frequency is tuned to wanting, it’s tuned to a vibration of lack.
Imagine that the experience you’d like to have is Porsche ownership. The vibrational frequency of possessing a Porsche is different from the vibrational frequency of wanting a Porsche.
That’s because the wanting frequency necessitates that you don’t have a Porsche. If you already possessed it, you wouldn’t be longing for one!
When you own a Porsche, you’re not spending your days musing, “Oh, man, I really want a Porsche.” That’s just not on our minds when we already possess something.
Rather, when you have a Porsche, you might ask yourself, “Where am I going to go in this Porsche today? What am I going to do with it?” Or you might think, “How fun is it to drive this Porsche!?”
Those kinds of thoughts are along a different vibrational frequency. It’s the frequency of already possessing the thing rather than the frequency of longing for it.
There are three steps:
The Law of Attraction puts forth a three-step process for manifestation.
Step 1: You ask for something. The Hicks would say to do this with a “rocket ship of desire.” Basically, you tune your vibrational frequency to that desire. This step is your job.
Step 2: The universe answers. The nature of the universe is that it’s set up to deliver what you’re looking for — what you’re tuning yourself into vibrationally. This step is not your job.
Step 3: You get out of the way. You stop resisting, and you receive what you’ve been looking for. That thing that the universe is granting you? You allow it into your reality and your experience.
Why Is Manifestation Taking So Long? Committing to Effective Manifestation
For effective manifestation, you’ll want to be tuning your vibrational frequency to whatever experience it is that you want to have rather than turning it toward the experience of not having it.
Emotion
First, that means tuning your emotion. The key to Law of Attraction work is finding the emotional frequency of the thing you want to experience.
That calls for a clear understanding of the concept of emotion. Most people tend to think of emotions as things like happiness, sadness, frustration, and so on.
Let me challenge you with a different view. Think of “emotion” as a stand-in word for the actual experience of having what it is that you want, whether it’s the perfect partner, a certain food, a fancy car, a vacation, or greater confidence.
Action
Let’s run with this idea of wanting more confidence. That’s a great one to use as an example because confidence comes from inside us.
Finding the vibration of confidence means imagining all that goes into the actual experience of having confidence.
What happens when you are experiencing confidence and tuned to that vibrational frequency?
Your body stands taller.
You are self-oriented — centered in yourself.
You are trusting and believing in yourself.
You go out in the world and engage with other people.
When you are manifesting confidence, you are tuning the entirety of your vibrational frequency in this direction. It’s not limited only to how you feel on the inside.
This might be why manifestation doesn’t seem to be happening for you. Perhaps your manifestation work has simply been eyes closed on a cushion in your room.
That’s not where confidence shows up. Confidence doesn’t hide in its room on a cushion. Confidence engages with the world at large.
When you tune yourself to the vibrational frequency of confidence, you are doing all of the things that confidence involves. You can’t do manifestation without action.
Experience
The actual frequency of manifesting something is the frequency of all the parts of it being alive in the world. You are trying to create the experience of whatever it is that you’re seeking.
So if you are having a slow time manifesting, try this:
Identify what the experience that you are manifesting is like — not what the lack of that experience is. Get as close as you can to it. Spend time with it.
Do things that are in vibrational alignment with that experience. Don’t just let it happen in your mind. We live in a physical universe, so the physical actions you do are a key part of manifestation work.
Look for the opportunities that will bring you closer and closer to what it is you’re desiring. It’s the universe’s job to bring you those opportunities, but it’s your job to be exploring your world for them. That is what somebody who is stepping into the reality that you’re manifesting would be doing.
A confident person is on the lookout for opportunities to be confident. The way that they’re vibrating in the world is confidence.
The same goes for Porsche ownership. It’s not just imagining it in your mind; that’s not enough to create Porsche ownership. There are actions to be taken.
Your role is to align your whole vibration with the desire that you have. That includes your actions, your words, the people you’re meeting, and the places you’re going. That is the power of manifestation. This is a tricky topic, so if you have any questions, feel free to reach out. You can hit me up on Instagram at lucid_shift_coaching.
Benjamin Easter is the Founder and Head Coach at Lucid Shift Coaching. He helps people connect with their authentic selves and grow in wisdom and freedom. Ben has undergraduate degrees in philosophy and religion and a master's degree in traditional Chinese medicine. He has studied kung fu, tai chi, dance, social dynamics, learning, and uses these and many more disciplines to help people unlock their potential.
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