• I have put a lot of time and effort into trying to get the things I want in life, and nothing's happening.

• And it baffles me that with all the energy I put into it, nothing's come back in all that time, not even a confirmation.

• I'm not asking to be a billionaire by next week, but it certainly should not take this long to get the small things I want.

By just pulling a few of your sentences out and highlighting them above, I can see why things aren't showing up in your physical reality.

You are far too focused on looking for your stuff instead of simply basking in what makes you feel good.

I understand what you are saying about being nonchalant, feeling it to be real, believing it to be true, etc. You have to ask yourself though, did you really and truly believe those things to be real Right Now or are you just trying to convince yourself that you believe so that you can "eventually" get your stuff?

This is a really important question that you should ponder and ask yourself. I know there was a time when I thought I believed and felt it to be real, when I actually found that it was all coming from a place of getting something instead of feeling good for no particular reason.

Your physical reality is a complete and utter reflection of what is going on inside. What you see all around you is an indicator of your dominant core vibration. So your desires aren't manifesting because the inner and the outer aren't a match of what you prefer.

If you are doing these techniques to get things first and then trying to convince yourself to believe and feel it to be real second, you are on the frequency range of not having and lack, and the universe naturally responds with physical manifestations that match the not having vibration.

If you made the vibration of feeling good the most important thing in your life and completely gave up on anything ever coming to you, then that is when doorways start to open up.

You may think that you went about it this way from the start, but you probably wouldn't be asking this question wondering where your stuff was if you made feeling good the most important thing. You would be too busy immersing yourself in good vibrations to even care about the stuff along with asking this question:)

Ask yourself another question. Why do I want my desires to manifest?

Chances are very high that you want these things to manifest because in some way shape or form it will give you relief. The feeling of relief to me always feels good. So instead of putting in heavy amounts of time and effort, just make feeling good the most important aspect over everything else.

The universe already has every single desire that you want lined up ready and waiting for you. Yes, everything you want exists right now. I have a feeling you probably don't truly believe that in the core of your being but it is so. This is where allowing comes into play. Stop caring about making things happen. This sounds like a confusing paradox that makes no sense but is one of the biggest traps which causes resistance.

The following question/answer is one of the most powerful (if not the most powerful) on Inward Quest. It is a perfect answer to your troubles. I have read through it numerous times and it never fails to make me feel good and give me inspiration.

Sharing something helpful: When I completely let go and was okay with not having what I wanted, things turned around for me

I want things that I know will make life for me and others more enjoyable, and it seems I'm being denied even that.

You aren't being denied anything. It's simply about frequency vibrations not making a match. Wondering where things are at is telling the universe that you don't have said thing.

The universe says, "your wish is my command, I will physically manifest situations and circumstances that match the vibration of where is my stuff into your physical reality."

Now if you went about it in a way of making how you feel in every given moment The Most Important Thing and totally and utterly stop caring about getting certain things (or in other words putting up walls of resisting by focusing on lack) the universe will simply say, "your wish is my command, I will physically manifest every single thing in its perfect timing that matches your good feeling vibration."

You don't have to remind the universe either. At the very nano-second you had the desire, it came into existence. It is just invisible to you similar to how channel 37 would be invisible to you on a television set if you were tuned to channel 4. The frequencies don't match, but that doesn't mean that channel 37 doesn't exist.

All you have to do is get the heck out of the way (walls of resistance) and Allow, Allow, Allow the work and effort to be done for you.

There is an abundance of information here on IQ to help you figure out how to stay in the good feeling place as much as possible. Try a different approach and keep it simple with raising your vibrational frequency at every given moment. Feeling good is the reason we want the things we want in the first place. Why not skip over all the effort and hard work and get there right now without any built in expectations of how everything should turn out.

Hopefully something I said here has helped you in some way.

My take on this, FWIW, is that we are all manifesting all of the time. Our physical realities are reflections of the beliefs we hold. When I, earlier this year, took stock of what I actually believed about LOA stuff, I realized that I did not actually believe, on a fundamental level, that I could choose my own life experience in this way. I just didn't really buy it. I would say that I did, but - no. So that's one place to maybe check with yourself, to see if you deep down REALLY believe that you can choose your own experience. Because I have found that things have begun to shift meaningfully for me since unpacking that stuff.

Also, I am finally starting to understand something Abraham (channeled by Esther Hicks) says: "Words don't teach. Only life experience teaches." Because I think that basically all teachings are about attempts to reduce resistance to the flow of energy that constantly pours through us, but all teachings are also originating from a specific mind, standing in a specific life place, and so they may or may not be that helpful to YOU. Because... words don't teach. They're just words. It's only when you have experiences yourself that you can build a personal life theory that works for you.

I mention that because I used to get really hung up on things like "Why doesn't EFT work for me the way it works for other people? What am I doing wrong?" And now I think more like, look, any given way of releasing resistance is going to work for some people and not for others, but that's okay, because the method itself is just sleight of hand. It's just the "trick" you're using to convince your own mind that you can release resistance now. So EFT or focus wheels or whatever all work... for some people. And for the people they don't work for, there are other techniques that do work. And I regret (in a very mild way) the time I've spent being obsessed with making something that didn't instantly work for me work for me. You are not "doing it wrong". If you are trying something, and you feel discomfort, that, to me, is a sign that you should stop and try something else.

I am also (finally) understanding that when you do things like Abraham processes, or any kind of LOA work, if you have a playful energy about it, if you're doing it like it's a game, and for fun, you're releasing resistance and opening up energy flow. If you're doing it to grrrrrr make something happen through your force of will (ask me how I know), you are probably adding both energy and resistance. At least that is my experience. Being playful is everything, even as it can feel totally implausible as a state of being, when you're in a lower vibrational place.

Another thing I'm finally getting is that if you make your guiding light just a process (whatever it is for you) of seeking relief, you are on your right path. It's really the only commonality I think we can say is true for everyone, that if you seek whatever relief you can from where you authentically are, you are releasing resistance.

The "where you authentically are" thing has been important to me, too, to understand that I can only get accurate emotional feedback if I am willing to be brutally (well, in a manner of speaking) honest with myself about how I feel right this second about a topic. I think many of us, over time, have talked ourselves into feeling bad about our own bad feelings, so that we push them away when they come up, until we say things to ourselves like "Why didn't I get that new job? I felt so great about it!" when in reality, if we could be really honest, we would see that we actually felt a lot of resistance and anxiety that we were pushing away and covering up with faux positivity. (Again, at least in my own experience.)

You might like this Abraham segment about disappointment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsjsEg7M_m0

Anyway, I related to your post, because I have noticed in myself and a couple of my LOA friends that we've moved through similar patterns and stages:

1. Living our pre-knowing-about-LOA lives, relatively low-energy, but pretty full of resistance. Feeling semi-bad.
2. Finding out about LOA. Whoo! Everything is going to be awesome! Your wanting really ramps up and energy flows powerfully. Feeling really excited! The honeymoon period.
3. But you had all of that resistance you've built up along your life path, before you knew about this stuff. Starting to feel not as good.
4. So things get really uncomfortable. Your desires now feel actively thwarted, actively bad, why is this happening, what am I doing wrong? Feeling really quite bad.
5. You give up and turn Zen. You seek relief through wanting less, or at least less specifically. You make peace with some of the things in your life you don't like, because not making peace with them has become nearly unbearable. Your resistance is reduced, but energy isn't flowing very fast. Feeling better, but not good.
6. You get bored with this and start to want more again. Energy is moving pretty fast now, and your resistance is still reduced. Your life starts to change, but only through the "cracks of least resistance", only the things it's easy for you to believe you can change. (It's easy for me to believe that I can find good parking spots. I find a lot of good parking spots. It's easy for me to believe that my relationship with my partner gets better and better, and it does. It's harder for me to believe that I can have the career of my dreams. I am still in the middle of working through that!) Feeling consistently pretty good.
7. I theorize that you hit a tipping point right around here, and you shift into a high-energy, low-resistance state. Life experience teaches, and you understand fairly fully. Life now seems fun and interesting to you. You are manifesting things you really want, only in this vibrational state, you don't feel them as "THINGS I REALLY WANT" (grrrr, gritted teeth), so much as "Oh, there you are. Sweet." Feeling great.
8. Wizardy? Not sure.

I am in phase 6, as it were, right now. I am really noticing the truth of what Abraham says: "It's as easy to create a castle as a button". Except I don't actually believe that. I currently believe that it's much harder to create the career of your dreams than it is to create a parking spot or the perfect shirt on the sale rack or a great afternoon with friends. And so my experience is happily matching that belief. But I do feel that I am drawing closer to a point where I fully understand that I am choosing that belief, and that I can choose another one.

Tl;dr: my primary LOA teacher is Abraham, and for a long time I understood their teachings to mean that you essentially have to achieve a matching vibration for everything you want. Want a new red car: you have to vibrate "I own a new red car", etc. I think this misread of what they're saying inadvertently caused a lot of resistance in me as I tried to make things happen. But now I understand their teachings to mean more: get happy, any way you can, often through distraction, and LOA will bring you thoughts, feelings, news articles, conversations, etc. that match that higher vibration, and you can focus on that, and it forms a cycle of positive feedback, until you move into very a high-energy, low-resistance vibrational state, and instead of specific individual desires needing to be managed and achieved, everything kind of becomes vibrationally available at once, like floodgates opening.

I don't know if that idea is helpful to you, but it was helpful to me when I had that realization, that I didn't need to micro-manage the things I wanted, but just focus on feeling as good as possible, and LOA would bring me the things I want.

If you are using all the correct techniques to manifest without results then the short answer to the question "why are my desires not manifesting" is that they are being short circuited by embedded beliefs that prevent your desires from manifesting. Embedded beliefs are just that, they are so deeply ingrained that they become part of you and you don't even realize they are there, automatically controlling your life.

Trying to manifest in these conditions is like swimming against the tide

you will find it hard going and your results will be negligeable

Over the last few years, I have put a lot of time and effort into trying to get the things I want in life, and nothing's happening. I tried creating things for myself, for family members, for friends, and even for strangers, but after all that time, I can't point to one thing and say "It worked!"

Are you sure this is true, that there is absolutely nothing that you wanted that came to be? Even if life worked by pure Chance and Luck, you will still sometimes get what you want and sometimes not. It won't be absolutely not getting you want.

There ARE things you have successfully manifested into your life, you just have to be aware of them.

Appreciate all that you DID Manifest. Believe that what you want WILL Manifest. Delight in all that things that ARE Manifesting.

You have to KNOW that when you Ask you will Receive whether it is 2 seconds from now, 2 days from now, or 2 years from now. It is coming, just like when The Body feels Pain there is an automatic response to Heal, although it make take a few days or weeks, or even months to notice, it is the same way with Asking and wanting. Even if you don't see it is already happening.