If you’ve spent months visualizing, affirming, and "trying" to manifest with nothing to show for it, you are likely among the majority who are "Mentally Mucking around."

Most people fail because they don’t realize they are the operant power. Being the operant power means the buck stops with you; you aren’t waiting for a cosmic green light or divine intervention to change your life.

The frustration of manifesting stems from a fundamental misunderstanding.

This is the perspective of Mr. 2020, a specialist based in Melbourne, Australia, who dives into the often-overlooked final revisions of Neville Goddard’s work.

To get what you want, you have to stop pushing and start returning to the state where your desire already exists.

"Most people can't part with what they don't want long enough to get what they do want."

Shelli spent 12 years of her life dating married men. 7 years with one, and 5 with another. She claimed she wanted a committed partner, yet she was deeply committed to her own "truth": that all men are shallow and only want sex.

Because she habitually returned to this belief, she continued to attract partners who proved her right.

She didn't have to work hard to stay lonely; she just had to stay intimate with her grievances. She was more "married" to her identity as a victim of shallow men than she was to the possibility of a real relationship.

Many students of Neville Goddard are stuck on his earlier concepts of "persisting" in an assumption. However, Neville’s personal philosophy underwent a massive tactical update toward the end of his life.

The 1972 Revisions Before his death in 1972, Neville made handwritten corrections in his personal copy of The Power of Awareness.

These updates were eventually published by his daughter, Victoria, in 1992. They reveal a shift from the effortful "push" of persistence to the natural ease of "returning."

Think of the difference between a man forcing himself to be faithful and a man who can’t wait to get home to his wife.

The first man is using willpower to resist temptation; the second man is simply returning to where he belongs.

Manifesting is the same. It isn't about pushing a philosophy until you're exhausted; it is about "going home" to the state where your desire is a present fact.

You have to part ways with your excuses. Your excuse is a whore you’re sleeping with—it’s comfortable and familiar, but it will never give you the life you actually want.

Consider the man who has been "trying" to sign up for the Manifesting Mastery program for seven years. He claims he wants change, but he won't part with $2 a day to join the Manifesting Mastery Deluxe community. He isn’t lacking funds; he is married to the excuse of "I can't afford it." He has wasted seven years being intimate with a lie, rather than investing in his own transformation.

Manifesting is not a process of "wanting" or "waiting." It is a process of "having" by choosing where you dwell. When you stop trying to force reality to change and instead focus on which state you are returning to each day, the struggle vanishes. You are the operant power of your life; you do not need to wait for a government official or a divine sign to move from the outhouse to the mansion.

The shift from effortful persisting to natural returning is the difference between a life of friction and a life of fulfillment.