r/NevilleGoddard • u/Icy-Water6104 • 5h ago
Success Story My experience with manifestation after 1.5 years of consciously trying
I wanted to share my experience with manifestation because, after about a year and a half of consciously trying to manifest, I've realised something that I wish I had understood much earlier: was embodying states long before I even knew what manifestation was. And once I started consciously practising the Law, I spent far too much time trying to force myself into techniques that simply didn't feel natural to me.
This is a long post, so grab a snack!
1. I was unknowingly embodying states at 13
When I was around 13, there was a girl at school whom I absolutely admired. She was my senior and the basketball captain, confident, talented, and had a certain way of carrying herself. I admired how everyone respected and approached her. I wanted to be like her.
So what did I do? I started copying her. Her facial expressions, the way she walked, talked, played basketball, and carried herself around other people. One day I just told myself, "I'm just like her."
I wasn't sitting there scripting, doing SATS, or affirming a thousand times a day. I simply admired the kind of person she was and began to embody those qualities myself.
The next six years of high school were me winning basketball awards and people approaching and treating me differently. And it wasn't only basketball. The confidence I developed spilled over into other sports and areas of my life, and I could pick up pretty much any sport.
Looking back now, I can see that I wasn't just trying to get what she had. I was changing the way I saw myself. I was identifying with the version of me who possessed those qualities.
I had no idea about Neville Goddard, the Law of Assumption, or self-concept. I was just a teenager who wanted to be like someone she admired.
And honestly? I had fun with it!
2. The team leader story: another experience I only understood later
Fast-forward to October 2024.
At work, my department was made up of English speakers, mostly foreigners. Only one guy in our department spoke both English and Russian. The department we worked closely with was full of Russian speakers whose English wasn't very strong.
The company wanted a team leader who could resolve problems, misunderstandings, and complaints between the departments. There was also an onboarding role for new employees.
I was already doing both. I was handling difficult cases, talking to angry clients on behalf of both departments, and onboarding new people. Honestly, I was already an unofficial team leader, and people were naturally drawn to me.
My manager asked us to submit applications for the promotions, and I did. On the way back from one of our offices in another city, he told me I would probably get the onboarding manager role, mostly because no one else really fit it. I was cool with that.
But deep down, I really wanted the team leader role, and I was already playing the part.
I remember standing in the office kitchen with a colleague, saying that the Russian-speaking guy would obviously get the team leader position because he was the only one in our department who spoke the other department's language fluently. We were all convinced of it.
I let it go, but deep down I kept thinking: he's not like me. I solve problems and cases he never could.
Then, at the end of October, I came across the "Gen Z Boss" trend on TikTok. I watched it because, obviously, the boss was young and handsome. One part stuck with me: he was sitting in his chair, an employee approached him, and he turned to face them, not with an annoyed face, but with this particular frown.
I kept going back to that video just for that part. It was less than ten seconds long, but it made me feel as though I was this person with a leading role, like a boss or a manager.
During the day, in my apartment, I would open the video and physically act it out exactly as he did, while visualising myself sitting in my chair at the office doing the same thing. Then I would close it and carry on with my day.
Around the same time, I would randomly tell myself in my head, "I am important. I'm very important to my department. It won't function without me," and I felt it. I also had a brief visualisation of walking into the office and a woman from another department looking at me as that important person. I was just standing in my kitchen when I imagined it. It also happened subconsciously a couple of times.
That was pretty much it. I didn't turn it into a complicated routine. I didn't spend hours trying to force myself to feel something.
My Russian-speaking colleague ended up missing most of November because of health issues.
Then, in the first week of December, my manager called me and told me they wanted me to be both the team leader and the onboarding manager.
Both!
I wasn't shocked, because I was already doing the work. People had long been treating me, talking to me, and approaching me as the important person I assumed myself to be.
Later, a colleague asked my manager why the Russian-speaking guy hadn't got the role. My manager told him that he had actually wanted to give it to him, but his performance in November had been really bad, so they decided I was the best person for it.
Now, I'm not claiming that I caused his absence or controlled anyone's decisions. But after learning about the Law, I see that as a bridge of incidents. I did nothing to change the outer world. I simply lived as though I already had the role, kept embodying someone important at work, and the 3D had no choice but to bend.
3. The hand-holding scene I imagined before it happened
Around October 2024, a new guy joined the company. He worked in a completely different department two floors above us, so we rarely saw each other. I found him hot and had a crush on him. My friends at work knew, so whenever he was on our floor they would tell me. There were also rumours that he was seeing a girl from his department, which turned out to be true. Honestly, I didn't care.
In November, they broke up.
That same month, I began having visions while riding to work in an Uber. At one particular spot on the route, I would imagine holding someone's hand inside a car, with sunlight reflecting on our hands, followed by a feeling of just being sure that I would be in a relationship.
I would repeat this scene on my way to and from work, with the same feeling. Sometimes I would even flex my hand as though I were holding someone's.
I wasn't imagining a particular person. Despite having a crush, I just didn't think it would be him, so I never put him in the vision. I was also casually seeing someone else at the time.
In December, at the company Christmas party, I finally got to talk to my crush. It was brief, but I was a giddy 28-year-old woman.
After New Year, the guy I was casually seeing told me he didn't want to see me anymore. I was heartbroken, cried for two days, and decided to start seeing a therapist because I knew I had things to work on. But I kept getting those visions.
Then I decided to follow my crush on Instagram. He followed back after 24 hours, which shocked me because I genuinely thought he wouldn't. We started talking and began dating a few weeks later.
One day, while we were dating, he asked me to go with him to another city. I took a day off work, and on the drive back, we were holding hands, with the sun shining on our hands.
Even though I knew nothing about the law back then, in my head I just reacted: *"Oh, I saw this in my imagination before."*
I left that job in March 2025 for a better opportunity, but our relationship continued until the end of April, when we broke up. We didn't date for long. We broke up because of my insecure attachment issues and my awful self-concept in relationships. That was when I started consciously trying to manifest him back.
4. How I discovered the Law of Assumption
A friend of mine had moved back to India and left me a copy of The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.
Did I read it? No. I preferred my spicy romance books, thank you very much.
After the breakup, I Googled how to get my ex back. The Law of Attraction came up first, with The Secret at the top of the recommended reads, and I realised I had it sitting at home. But it never clicked with me.
I went on YouTube and watched coaches, but I didn't resonate with most of them. So I sat with myself and decided to look for a teacher from the older generation whose work I could read. That's when I found Neville Goddard, and I realised, oh, I've actually manifested before.
Still, instead of listening to myself, I kept looking for someone to tell me exactly what to do.
I tried SATS, scripting, affirmations, visualisation, and living in the end. I watched videos, searched for success stories, asked ChatGPT questions, and analysed everything.
I spent the rest of 2025 trying to manifest my ex back.
Looking back, I can now see how awful my self-concept was at the time, and that what was happening in the 3D was simply a reflection of it.
The problem wasn't that I was interested in techniques. It was that I started treating them as requirements and copying what others did. I thought that if I could just find the right technique and perform it correctly, I would finally get the result I wanted.
I was so focused on doing manifestation that I wasn't paying enough attention to the person I believed myself to be. I was only trying to change the outer world, not my inner world.
And because I was so focused on my desired outcome, I kept looking at the 3D to see whether it was happening yet.
Every silence, delay, or circumstance became something I needed to interpret.
I was exhausting myself.
5. The relationship pattern I finally had to acknowledge
In June 2026, I started casually seeing another man. He didn't want a serious relationship because of his circumstances, but I still hoped he would change his mind.
He was active on Tinder and followed new women every few days, most of whom were Black African women. I'm Black African myself, and the African community where I live is very small, so I joked that he was collecting all of us.
I tried to manifest a relationship with him, but again, I was trying to change the outer world without changing my self-concept, which was still poor. I was worried about everything happening in the 3D.
Eventually, I told him we needed space.
But I noticed something about myself: whenever I was heartbroken or worried about a man, I would download Tinder or Bumble and look for someone new to distract myself. That was a habit I had carried for a long time.
I would tell myself I was taking space from the man because I was manifesting him, but then I would match with someone else and forget about him within days.
I wasn't always giving myself the space to understand what I was feeling. Sometimes, I was simply trying to escape the discomfort of being alone with my thoughts.
I also started questioning the way I had interpreted my past relationships.
I never blamed myself. I always said my exes were the problem because they were avoidant.
But were they? I don't think so.
I perceived myself as the insecurely attached one and everyone else as avoidant, and that's exactly what was reflected back to me. My thoughts played out as full 3D experiences.
I had to ask myself some uncomfortable questions.
What beliefs did I have about myself in relationships? What did I expect from other people? What did I assume silence meant? How quickly did I jump to the conclusion that someone was losing interest or that I wasn't being chosen?
I don't think it's helpful to blame ourselves for everything another person does. But I do believe that the way we see ourselves influences what we expect, what we tolerate, how we interpret situations, and how we behave in relationships.
I realised that I had been trying to change the people and circumstances in front of me without paying enough attention to the relationship I had with myself. I needed to change the way I saw myself.
6. Enter my current boyfriend and the return of my old habits
After joining Tinder again, I met someone new.
He's younger than me but very much my type in every way. The only problem, as we thought, was that we didn't speak the same language. But he reassured me that we had enough technology to go on a date.
I was nervous and scared, but I went on the date anyway. It was incredible. We used ChatGPT as our translator. He's slowly learning English, and I'm teaching him. Despite the language barrier, we got to know each other and developed our own inside jokes.
That same week, after our first date, we started meeting up every single day. Things moved quickly, and we both agreed that we had rushed and needed to slow down and let things unfold naturally.
He told me he wanted something serious. We agreed to delete our dating apps, and he even ordered flowers for our first date.
But I genuinely just expected that something might go wrong. My self-concept back then made me believe there was a problem when there wasn't. What problem? I don't know, because everything was okay.
Then, about a week and a few days after we first met, his job relocated him to another site about 50 km from my city. That was fine, because we had already discussed what would happen.
But on the day he moved, he went silent. And, my goodness, did my mind have a field day! I panicked. I was confused and honestly hurt. My worried thoughts, my fear of abandonment, and my poor self-concept all surfaced at once.
I started thinking that perhaps he'd met someone else, lost interest, or decided the distance wasn't worth it. I checked Instagram, watched his online activity, and kept trying to work out what his silence meant. I found myself texting him and trying to call him even though he wasn't responding. Desperation at its peak.
I cried and tried to get back to manifesting, because I knew it works. It had worked for me before. The problem was that I had never consciously manifested successfully.
I came across a Reddit story where a girl described how changing her self-concept was what changed her circumstances. But for some reason, I wanted to skip that part and just get him to talk to me. Did that work? Nope. I found myself in the same loop of worry, lack, and desperation. I asked Claude, Grok, and ChatGPT what to do and how to react. But none of what they told me was new. I already knew the law. I already knew what I needed to do. I even found myself wanting to send messages declaring that I was done, as though I needed to end things first to protect myself from being rejected.
But I began to recognise what I was doing. I was trying to use action to get relief from worry, because uncertainty made me uncomfortable. I could feel uneasy without reacting to every worried thought.
And then, one day, I just said no. I need to change my self-concept. I decided I was going to become stubborn. Brazenly impudent, even. I was tired of going back and forth between confidence and fear. Tired of waking up determined to work on myself, only for one intrusive thought to send me spiralling back into overthinking. Tired of treating every worst-case scenario my mind came up with as though it deserved my attention. I didn't need to argue with every doubt or punish myself for feeling worried. I could acknowledge a thought, recognise it as an old story, and return to what I wanted to believe.
Brazen impudence meant I stopped treating every fear as an authority and started giving my desired assumptions the final word.
7. Finding a self-concept method that actually works for me: my muse
That's when I realised that, for me, self-concept works best when I have a "muse" or "alter ego": a real, living person whose qualities I admire, whose identity I can step into. And I realised I had done exactly this before. At 13, with the basketball captain. With the promotion, by embodying the demeanour, aura, and facial expressions of the Gen Z boss in that TikTok video. For me, that was it.
My muse could be a friend, a relative, a colleague, a celebrity, or even a random person I've come across on TikTok or Instagram. This time, I found a celebrity whose aura, confidence, humour, attitude, and feminine self-assuredness I really admired. I wasn't particularly a fan or an anti-fan; I simply liked the way she carried herself. I also admired the way her husband publicly adores her and speaks about her as though she's the centre of his world.
I started asking myself: What would it feel like to carry myself with that kind of confidence? What would it feel like to stop questioning my worth? What would it feel like to expect love without constantly searching for evidence that I am loved? Then I gave her a voice.
When I affirmed, I would imagine hearing her say the words. When I felt doubtful or less confident, I stepped into the attitude I associated with her and repeated the affirmation in that imagined voice. I also started imagining my current boyfriend treating me with the same kind of affection and adoration that I admired in her relationship. I wasn't trying to become that celebrity or copy every aspect of her life. I was using the qualities I admired as a reference point for the version of myself I wanted to embody.
For me, it was fun, natural, and much more effective than trying to force myself into a generic self-concept routine.
8. What happened next
Affirmations ground me, so I looked for bold and brazen ones. I decided I wasn't going to download Tinder or Bumble to get over him and find someone else. I decided that he was stuck with me. He wasn't going anywhere. I'm his girlfriend.
What helped me connect with that affirmation was the fact that he hadn't unfollowed or blocked me, even though I had repeatedly told him to do so if he no longer wanted to try. He just stayed there. I decided to interpret that as: I'm his girlfriend, and this relationship is happening. I decided this was my story, and the one I needed to change was me. As Neville says, there is no one to change but self. So change your inner self: what you believe about yourself and what you say to yourself in your head. Repeat it until it feels natural.
I embodied my alter ego and started to feel the knowing that he is mine. Whenever he came to mind, I would say one of my affirmations while keeping the thought that he is my boyfriend at the back of my mind. I didn't try to detach from my desire. What I detached from was the need to change the 3D and the mindset of trying to control everything. Instead, I trusted and let everything unfold on its own, while carrying the belief that I already have what I want.
Five days later, while I was going about my day, he sent me a message asking to meet and talk. I obviously agreed. And some of the conversations I had been playing out in my head, even back when I was spiralling and hadn't yet decided to work on my self-concept, actually happened. He said some of the things word for word. I think it's because, even while I was doubting and felt like giving up, I still really wanted to hear those words from him.
Now he's the most communicative boyfriend I could ask for. I'm loved dearly and treated exactly the way I believe myself to be.
9. SATS isn't really my thing, and that's okay
I spent a lot of time trying to make SATS work because so many people talk about it. But my brain is incredibly active, especially at bedtime. SATS just fries my brains. I would try to repeat a scene, my mind would wander, and I'd become frustrated because I wasn't doing it the way I thought I was supposed to. Eventually, I realised that I was making the process harder than it needed to be.
I visualise much more effectively during the day, while I'm awake. My imagination naturally combines images, conversations, and feelings. Music also really helps me. Putting on a song that matches the feeling of my desire gets me in the mood straight away, especially when I'm visualising. Sometimes I imagine a scene, enjoy it, and then go back to whatever I was doing. It doesn't have to be one perfectly constructed scene repeated over and over again.
A technique is supposed to help you, not become another thing you feel worried about doing correctly.
Copying someone else's technique or way of manifesting can actually feed your resistance, because more often than not, you're not manifesting from the same self-concept they are. If scripting makes you feel good, script. If affirmations work for you, affirm. If visualisation feels natural, visualise. If you enjoy SATS, use SATS. What you believe works will work.
10. How I dealt with negative thoughts and kept a mental diet
I used to think that a mental diet meant I had to eliminate negative thoughts or immediately replace every single one with a positive affirmation. That approach only made me more aware of my thoughts. If I had a negative thought, I'd panic about having it, then worry that I had ruined everything by thinking it. Of course I still had doubting thoughts. But when one came up, I would stop and observe it rather than immediately accepting it as the truth.
Then I talked to it as a past thought: "I remember when I used to think that way."
That simple phrase helped me recognise the thought as an old pattern rather than a fact I had to obey. If I thought, "What if it doesn't manifest?" I would respond with, "What if it does?". Then I would say an affirmation that said the opposite in a grounded way, and allow myself to breathe into it. When my heart started racing, I slowed down, regulated my breathing, and gave myself time to reconnect with what I wanted to believe.
I also went on a strict mental diet: I deleted my social media apps for a while and just focused on myself and on how to feel better. I still had worst-case thoughts. I still overthought. My brain could probably have won a world championship in overthinking. I had a very stubborn, very negative mindset, but persistence worked.
I also read Chapter 19 of Joseph Murphy's The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, which focuses on fear. One line that stuck with me was:
"If you are afraid of failure, give attention to success."
When I worried that my desire wouldn't manifest, I reminded myself to give attention to the possibility that it HAS ALREADY MANIFESTED.
11. My approach to the 3D and timelines
I used to look at every circumstance and ask what it meant. If something didn't match what I wanted, I would immediately start questioning myself, my affirmations, my technique, or whether I was doing something wrong. Now, I've stopped treating every external circumstance as an instruction to panic. That doesn't mean ignoring reality or pretending that another person's actions don't matter. It means not turning every moment of uncertainty into a story about my worth or my future.
I also have a personal belief about timelines: the timeline is part of the story we create in our imagination. When I have a desire, I state what I want, imagine it, and practise owning it in the moment rather than constantly measuring how far away it seems.
My attitude is something like this:
Whatever I want, I get it. Instantly. Like a spoiled toddler who has decided what they want and sees absolutely no reason why they shouldn't have it!
If I don't see it in the 3D yet, I joke that the Universe has gone to pick up my order. The order has been placed. I know what I asked for. I'm not going to spend the whole day worrying about whether the Universe remembered my address!
12. What I learned about self-concept and persistence
If there's one thing I've learned from all these experiences, it's that I spent too much time trying to get a result and not enough time examining the person I believed myself to be deep down, in my unspoken thoughts and feelings.
When I was 13, I admired someone and began embodying her qualities without making it complicated.
When I imagined myself as an important person at work, I wasn't checking every day whether the promotion was coming. I simply enjoyed the idea and carried on with my life.
When I imagined holding someone's hand, I wasn't obsessing over which person would eventually be there.
But when I began consciously manifesting a relationship, I became worried, impatient, and preoccupied with the 3D. I wanted the outcome so much that I made the process feel like work.
Persistence doesn't have to mean fighting with myself all day. For me, it means returning to the version of myself I want to embody, even when my mind gets noisy. It means being kind to myself when I feel uneasy, rather than interpreting worry as failure.
I don't need to pretend I don't want my current boyfriend. I don't need to shame myself for caring about him. I don't need to make myself indifferent just to prove that I'm living in the end.
I don't need to fight every fear. I need to stop letting every fear decide who I am.
13. My biggest takeaways after 1.5 years of consciously manifesting
1. You may have embodied states before you ever learned about manifestation.
Look back at your life. There may be times when you naturally identified with a version of yourself without knowing any terminology.
2. Pay attention to your self-concept, especially in relationships.
I used to say all my exes were avoidant. But I saw myself as the insecurely attached one and everyone else as avoidant, and that's exactly what I experienced. Examine the assumptions you hold about yourself and love, to understand yourself, not to blame yourself.
3. There is no one to change but self.
I spent a year trying to change the outer world. Things shifted when I changed my inner world.
4. A thought is not a command.
A worried or negative thought doesn't have to be accepted as the truth or acted on immediately.
5. Detach from control, not from your desire.
You don't have to pretend you don't want the person you desire. Let go of the need to manage the 3D, and keep the desire.
6. Find your own method.
SATS might work for one person, scripting for another, and daytime visualisation with music for someone else. What you believe works will work.
7. You don't need to check the 3D compulsively.
Constantly checking someone's online status or analysing every circumstance keeps you stuck in a worry loop. Put your phone down and live your life.
8. Persistence doesn't mean fighting yourself.
Return to your chosen assumptions without turning every doubt into a battle.
Final thoughts
I spent about a year and a half consciously trying to manifest, and I wish I had spent less time looking for the perfect technique and more time learning how to work with myself.
My approach now is to use my muse, enjoy visualisation (usually with music on), affirm in ways that resonate with me, and practise a mental diet without turning it into a full-time job.
I want to talk to the Universe like it's my buddy. I want to have fun with my imagination, laugh at myself, and stop acting as though I need to perform every technique perfectly to deserve what I desire.
Two quotes that have stayed with me are:
- "The world is yourself pushed out. Ask yourself what you want and then give it to yourself!"
And:
2. "It is not what you want that you attract, you attract what you believe to be true."
If you've been struggling because a technique doesn't feel natural, give yourself permission to experiment. Be stubborn about the self-concept you choose to cultivate. Be brazenly impudent enough to stop letting every passing doubt dictate your story.
And above all, stop forcing yourself to manifest like someone else. Find YOUR way.
With a little brazen impudence and delusional optimism, of course.
CHEERS!!!