Does Manifestation Really Work? What 20 Years of Practice Taught Me

I’ve been experimenting with manifestation and the Law of Attraction for almost 20 years now, starting when I was really young. During this period, I had very different experiences. There were moments when I achieved great results quickly—I was excited, shocked, thinking “Wow, that’s how it works!” But I also had periods of big disappointments when instead of getting what I wanted, things were just falling apart. It felt like everything was getting worse instead of better.

That’s why I decided to share what I learned about manifestation, the Law of Attraction, whether it really works, and how you can actually get results from it.

Table Of Contents

Does Manifestation Really Work?

The answer is simple: Yes, it does. Does it always work? No, it doesn’t. And it depends on many different things.

There’s something behind the practice of manifestation—the Law of Attraction—and that’s what really works. But not always in the way you expect or want it to work. We’re not always getting the exact image we had in mind, the one we were focusing on trying to manifest.

We attract things into our life in many different ways, and manifestation is one of them. But sometimes something can be stronger than your manifestation practice, and that’s why you may not get what you want. You’re getting something completely different.

How I Discovered the Law of Attraction

I first found out about the Law of Attraction when I was about 15 years old. I found a book about self-love that explained the connection between our thoughts, states, and what we actually have in our life.

When I read it, I was shocked because everything written in this book was opposite to how my mindset was working at the time. I was not a very happy person—a depressed teenager with lots of problems and extremely low self-esteem. I didn’t like myself. I criticized myself constantly. I kind of hated myself and wanted to be a completely different person.

The book’s main idea was to love yourself and accept yourself in order to feel better and get what you want. The concept that what you feel, you get—what you focus on, you get more of—was so weird for me. I was focusing on all the bad stuff, all the things I wished to change. I was hoping that by being harsh on myself, by seeing all my flaws, by criticizing and hating them, I would be more likely to change.

I think there are a lot of people with a similar mindset because that’s how we’re often raised. As children, we’re taught through criticism of what we’re doing wrong or what’s wrong about us and what needs to change.

Reading this book inspired me to try things differently. One practice recommended was affirmations—repeating statements in your mind as if you already have what you want. For example, if I hated myself and wanted to love myself, I was repeating “I love myself, I accept myself, I like myself.”

I was doing this a lot—spending almost three hours per day. And it was working. Maybe it’s difficult to believe, but some of my wishes came through very quickly. That’s why I thought, “Wow, I found it! That’s how things work!”

But it was too early to make that conclusion.

Why Things Got Worse Before They Got Better

Together with some wishes coming true, things were also getting worse for me. I was young and still believed that to become happy, I needed to get certain things from outside—achieve goals, make wishes come true, and then I would be happy.

I didn’t realize yet that it works in the opposite way: first we need to change our state, and then we can get what we want.

When we do it the opposite way, we feel really bad—we feel lack of something, loneliness, sadness, or some other negative feeling. When you try to manifest from this state, you may even succeed in getting what you want, but what you won’t succeed in is changing your state—the thing you hoped to change by getting this desire.

What the Law of Attraction Really Attracts

That’s where the Law of Attraction comes into play. We attract into our life what we believe in and what we feel—what states we’re experiencing. But there’s more to it.

We also attract things that we have in our subconscious:

Beliefs we’re not aware of
Suppressed emotions
Traumatic experiences from our past that we suppressed, that we didn’t handle well, that weren’t processed

These things are a big part of what controls our reality and our life.

For example, if you want to manifest a happy relationship but your predominant state is feeling lonely, rejected, not enough, unworthy, or unlovable—when you start manifesting, two things can happen:

You get a relationship, but it still triggers all these bad feelings you had before if you didn’t heal them
You don’t get anything and think, “I’ve been doing this for years and it still didn’t work”

The Main Question About Manifestation

The main question shouldn’t be whether manifestation works or not. It’s about why you want to do it and what you expect to get.

If you just want to get some specific thing, that’s one story. But if you really want to change your state, change how you feel, solve some inner issue—that’s a different story.

You can’t solve your inner issues by getting something from outside. Even if it looks like that at first, more often you did something before to work on that specific issue, and then you got the desire. Then it became a match because you don’t have this problem anymore inside you.

Why Manifesting from Lack Doesn’t Work

When you try to manifest something from a state of lack—”I really need it, I want it so much, if I don’t have it I will not be happy, I can’t relax without it”—that’s a very strong attachment to some specific thing. You’re putting all your hopes and expectations on it: “I need only this, nothing else matters, I’m missing only this one thing and then I’ll be happy.”

That’s where it doesn’t work. You want to get it from a strong state of lack. It means that most of the time when you think about your desire, you experience lack, you experience negative emotions. That’s not what you want to experience when you have it.

How to Get Better Results with Manifestation

If you want to get great results with manifestation, you can start looking at it differently.

1. Check What You’re Already Manifesting

Look at what you’re getting in your life right now. What is happening every day? Observe:

What thoughts you’re thinking most of the time
What emotions and states you’re experiencing
What repeated situations, feelings, and problems you have

By observing these things, you can find what you’re really manifesting and attracting now. These are very good clues. The negative emotions you’re experiencing often are close to something hidden in your subconscious—something that wants your attention, often negative experiences from the past, very often from childhood.

2. Focus on the Feelings Behind Your Desires

When you want something—a relationship, money, a trip, some specific experience—imagine yourself having it. What feelings do you want to have there?

This is another clue about what you really want. What feeling is there? What need is satisfied? What value is met? You can find and understand your deeper needs, deeper values, what’s really important for you and what you’re lacking now.

If it’s a strong need you can’t get for a long time, you should address it. Find what trauma, limiting belief, or experience is blocking you from having what you want. After finding and healing this underlying issue, you may even understand that’s not what you want anymore. Without this suffering, without this problem, you want something completely different.

3. Choose Desires from a Good State

A good way to find real desires is choosing from a state where you feel good. Ask yourself: “If I have everything I need, if all my needs are met, if I don’t have any real problems, if I’m not under stress—everything is okay, everything is calm—then what do I want to do? What do I want to have?”

When you’re not in lack, what do you still want?

Why Things Sometimes Get Worse When You Manifest

When you start manifesting something really big and important but it’s blocked by fears, past emotional pain, defense mechanisms, or limiting beliefs—if it’s blocked with several layers of all these things in your subconscious—then when you focus on this desire and bring your energy there, your whole system starts moving in that direction.

But while moving there, you need to go through all these layers that are stopping you from having it. And it’s not always a pleasant experience.

Life, other people, and situations will start attracting your attention to all the things that need to be solved. Situations will trigger the specific pain and negative emotions from the past. You’ll need to deal with them. You’ll feel how all your defense mechanisms work, and usually they work through aggression, anger, and pain. Fears will come up—everything that wants to protect you from certain experiences.

On one side, starting to manifest something you really want can be huge help to finally move, to finally solve these issues. But if you want to do it more gently and calmly, you can start by:

Bringing more self-awareness to what you’re currently attracting and why
Trying to change your state first
Working on the underlying issues before pushing toward the big desire

Practical Tips for Manifestation

Focus on What You Already Have

If you want more love in your life, start focusing on the love and relationships you already have. Notice them every time. Bring attention there to make it bigger in your life. The same with money, abundance, health, and other things.

When you put attention on certain things—even if they’re small—collect them. Do it for a few weeks or more, and you’ll start noticing how situations change. It becomes easier to find ways to get your real desire.

Collect Positive Moments

Look during the day for things you already have that you want more of. Find examples of:

Your successes and achievements
Your luck and happiness
Times when things were easy and went your way
Times when you really enjoyed something
Moments when you felt really happy
Times when you liked what you were doing and liked your life

You need to collect these moments. But not by denying and suppressing negative emotions. You always need to give space to and accept all emotions, including negative ones. That’s also how you sometimes heal past and suppressed emotions.

Don’t go the way where you’re just hiding, suppressing, and denying all your real feelings. You can feel all the feelings—just don’t feed them with negative self-talk and negative beliefs.

Understanding Your Beliefs

We have a lot of different beliefs in our subconscious mind. Some work for us:

“I can do it”
“This is easy”
“This is possible”
“I am lucky”
“I always get what I want”
“Life is full of opportunities”

Some work against us:

“I can’t do anything”
“I’m too lazy/weak/scared”
“I’m not confident/strong/smart enough”
“Life is very difficult”
“People are evil or want to control me”

All your beliefs about yourself, about life, about people—that’s what attracts situations into your life. And it works stronger than what you try to manifest for five minutes per day.

The Conclusion

Manifestation works, but not all the time. The Law of Attraction works all the time, but not always how you expect it to work.

We may want love and relationship, but we feel lonely, depressed, unworthy. We may want abundance and success, but we feel lack and believe we can’t do anything. If we’re feeding these feelings and states, how can we get something opposite? We attract what we already have.

So you need to change your state first, and then you get the results.

Meanwhile, don’t give up on manifestation, even if you see you have all this stuff. Manifestation will still keep your focus on your specific desire and keep your attention there. If you add to your desire the feelings and states you expect to have, if you look around for things you already have that you want more of, if you work on your beliefs and heal your past—then manifestation becomes a powerful tool for transformation.

It’s not just about getting things. It’s about becoming the person who naturally has those things in their life.

For more insights on personal transformation and manifestation, check out my other blog posts or learn about my approach to transformational coaching.