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The talk about manifestation is everywhere.
At least one out of every five people I meet is trying to manifest something. They’re either manifesting their next big project, their dream life, the perfect relationship, a major move, a flawless body, or something in between.
Ever since Rhonda Byrne’s book and film “The Secret” were released back in 2006, our collective obsession with the Law of Attraction has only grown. I used to be one of those people—until I discovered my own path when it comes to manifestation.
It might seem like I disagree with the concept, but I’m fully onboard. In fact, I believe in it deeply. I have manifested many things in my own life, including my career, my birth experience, my home, and even my pets. So, yes, the underlying principle is real. We can absolutely manifest what we want. While there are many facets to this topic that I won’t cover completely in this single piece, I want to address the one crucial element most of us overlook when trying to manifest our next big thing.
Based on what has consistently worked in my personal experience, I have never tried to manifest something massive—like winning the lottery—and expected it to happen within a week or a few months. Instead, I did something that might sound counterintuitive to conventional manifestation advice:
I focused on building small, consistent habits over the years.
You see, popular manifestation culture lied to us. It tricked us into believing we can leap straight to the top of the ladder. Perhaps some of us have done that, and if you are one of them, that’s wonderful. But for those of us still working our way up, I invite you to look closely at the step where you’re currently standing.
The problem is that we spend all our energy staring at the top of the ladder. In doing so, we fail to develop the necessary skills required to climb it. We become so fixated on the concept of manifestation and so obsessed with the summit that we ignore the massive gap between where we stand and where we want to be.
Sadly, we have also grown too impatient to do the actual climbing. We want the summit immediately without putting in real effort, expecting simple visualization to do all the heavy lifting. Consider a simple example like someone spending decades trying to manifest winning lottery numbers. They’re so fixated on that peak that they miss a crucial truth: in the years spent obsessing over those numbers, they could have built a business or project that generated the exact same wealth (or even more).
Focusing solely on the summit keeps us frozen on the lower step. If that same person had chosen to climb step by step, they would have reached the summit eventually—just through a different path than the one they originally envisioned. They would have accumulated that wealth…just not through a lottery ticket. Ultimately, it all comes down to how tightly we cling to our goals and how rigid we are about how they must manifest.
This is precisely where manifestation begins to work against us rather than for us. If we want to manifest a meaningful goal, we must start small by cultivating daily micro-habits aligned with that vision while remaining open-minded. This means accepting that we might not manifest the exact scenario we pictured; instead, we might manifest something entirely different that serves the exact same purpose.
Adopting this mindset keeps us adaptable and actively engaged in creating our lives. If we misuse it, manifestation can easily make us passive and lower our creative drive. So, before trying to “become” your ultimate goal, learn to commit to the small, daily steps right in front of you. As the weeks and months unfold, you will naturally evolve into the person capable of living the reality you desire.
Forget about the distant outcome for a moment and focus on enjoying those daily micro-steps. That’s where genuine growth happens, even if the progress feels slow. That’s how manifestation becomes the natural, inevitable result of our actions rather than a “miracle.”
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author: Elyane Youssef
Image: Tiana/Pexels
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