So, I've had a lot of folks asking about "well what happens if my spells backfire?". Here's the thing about it. Spells don't really backfire and make things worse. Sure sometimes you only get one shot, and the spell is your shot.
That said, there's something here that I think IS important to consider. Magic is about influencing your internal landscape to make changes on the external right? So what do you tell your internal landscape every time you do a spell if you only do spells when things are desperate? The act of doing the spell tells you that you're desperate. If you want to really make your magic work, it has to be the first thing you turn to every time. You have to not so much DO magic as live magic.
In our society, lots of people aren't believers in magic at all, and at least where I'm at, we're taught that religion is something that we don't talk about. Spirit is treated as something separate from our daily life, to the point of being almost dirty. Prayer, magic, God, it's all things we are taught to turn to when other things fail, the last refuge of the desperate. Here's the problem with that. If it's the last refuge of the desperate, only the desperate use it.
So how do we fix something like this? Traditional "non magical" faith would teach us to give thanks for your blessings and not turn to God only when you need things. I like that, it's a good star, however as folks that do magic, we also need to start doing things that are predictable and patterned to our life. Every time you know you need something, add magic to it. Every time you make a deliberate mundane choice, add the magic. It needs to become just another part of your life. Every morning, i have coffee right? I manage a cup every morning, and I take that time to figure out what my day holds. So i make that a form of magic. I choose my coffee mug based on what energies I need for the day. My coffee becomes a way of taking on what I need for my day. Quiet little magics like that throughout the day are ways to live my magic.
Another example is when you start looking at things like I need more money, a lot of times what you're wanting to do is hit something like a candle, or do this big ritual. That's fine you know that's great but I kind of passed you right here that you have already failed you have not grabbed a hold of the energy of your money to begin with so what I would rather see people doing is doing some very light very quiet work around everything in their lives have a money alter running feed it maybe the day before payday so when something comes up then when you add a tiny little thing in there you add a spell you're not adjusting your whole outlook.
The biggest advantage to that is that you make smaller changes as you see something every time you're working that every day every week whatever it is, you see something coming up and you can make the tiny little adjustment and that can have a major effect down the road. Folks talk about magic being all about energy and connection, but often fail to connect the magic to their life until somethings already out of balance. Christian teachings talk about giving thanks for all your blessings. This is the same idea. Be in harmony with everything, have ahold of everything, so your magic is part of your life.
Takes a little getting used to, and I don't suggest doing it all at once. Start with one thing. If you are doing work for things now, don't stop when things get "right" for that area. Keep up maintenance work on that, add other areas of your life as they come up, but work everything, LIVE your magic, and stop doing magic in crisis mode.