I love magical practice. It gives me power and control over areas of my life that I otherwise wouldn't. Magical practice has taught me things that improve my approach to life as well. It's funny, because there's a feeling of actual confidence that I take away from this. A knowledge that I have a tool that can apply anywhere.
Sometimes with magical practice, this empowering component can take a tricky turn though. We as witches or practitioners or whatever have power. We have tools available that most folks don't have. Much of it becomes about mindset. Set your intentions were told. Belief creates reality, we're told. It's implied often that if we're not where we should be in reality, it's because our mental state isn't where it should be. To an extent, this is even true. The problem though, is this idea that we start with our ultimate goal. There's a disconnect with this positive mindset and our actual lived reality. Then, because we feel out of control, we lean into it. We decide that our mindset, which IS in our control, is the problem. That's bullshit. The problem here is that we can hold anything positive that we want, and it can't connect. It can't latch on to our reality, if your reality doesn't have anything in common with it.
The importance of mental state isn't a lie though. Your beliefs do shape and control your reality. So, what's actually broken there, and how do we reconcile that? It's actually really simple. What's broken, is that our "positive" thoughts have no bearing on reality. You canny truly believe that you have something that you don't have. What we do here, is break it down. Chunk things up into smaller things, things that you can actually see yourself having. Often, the problem is that we have no clear pathway from where we ACTUALLY are, to that idealized reality that IS the magic. Fix it by making attainable steps. Let me give you all an example.
Say you need a job. You got fired/ laid off 2 weeks ago. You took some time to collect yourself, and you're ready/ need to get something. You would think that the thing here is to close circle on a "job spell". Hold this idea in your mind that you HAVE a job, because that's your goal right? The problem here is that you don't. Getting a new job is complex, and requires many steps. You can't really see from all those unknown steps to your goal. Instead, start with knowing that you have enough money to hold out, to find the job you want/ need. You already have some of that, and that's believable. Start by protecting your money. The next thing you have to do might be to redo your resume. That's clarity work. Also attainable. Then you bless the finished resume, to draw the eye. You might not truly be able to believe that you have a job, but you CAN believe that your resume draws the eye. Then communication stuff, so you get a call. Then charisma, THEN the job. By breaking it up to just the next steps, each step is believable and based in reality. This avoids the spinout of unbelievable goals. There's also a very practical deal of not missing a step.
By breaking our magical goals down to smaller steps, you can believe them, and so aren't trapped in this feedback loop of defeating yourself because you don't have what you want. Reduce things until you're not doing magic in crisis. You also add layers, which adds its own power. You don't have to believe one impossible thing before breakfast, just figure out how to make these things look possible.