Manifestation Goals vs. Traditional Goal-Setting

Setting manifestation goals is not just about wishful thinking – manifestation is a powerful tool that can help you achieve your big dreams, especially when traditional goal-setting methods haven’t been too successful for you.

But how do goals for manifestation differ from traditional goal-setting, and which approach is better? In this article, we’ll explore the key differences between manifesting and goal setting in a traditional way.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • Manifestation goals vs. traditional goal-setting: The key difference is that manifestation focuses more on the “why” and the “how” of our goals, while traditional goal-setting focuses more on the “what” and the “when”.

  • Manifestation is a powerful tool that can help you achieve your goals by aligning your thoughts, beliefs, and actions with what you want.

  • Traditional goal-setting is more outcome-oriented, while manifesting goals are more of a holistic approach.

Difference Between Manifestation Goals & Traditional Goal-Setting

There are two main approaches to achieving your dreams and goals: traditional goal-setting and manifestation.

While traditional goal-setting focuses more on the goal itself, setting manifestation goals is a more holistic approach; manifestation emphasizes the power of positive thinking, visualization, and emotional alignment.

Traditional goal-setting is all about getting things done, no matter what. This often turns into the toxic hustle culture many of us know too well…

When using manifestation for goals, you still have to take action, but it’s all about inspired actions. Actions that are aligned with your subconscious beliefs and, therefore, feel effortless.

It all comes down to how you program your subconscious.

But more on that later in this post; let’s first look at the difference between traditional goals and manifesting goals in more detail.

Goals For Manifestation Are All About Setting Intentions

Manifestation is all about setting intentions for what you want to create in your life. Instead of focusing just on specific outcomes, you focus on the feelings and emotions you want to experience.

This means you must get clarity on what you want to feel and then align your thoughts, beliefs, and actions with those feelings.

That’s something traditional goal-setting does not address. Goal-setting is usually very focused on a specific outcome, while manifestation goals look deeper at the underlying WHY behind your desires.

This emotional alignment makes goals for manifesting more powerful, as it’s a critical subconscious trigger.

Importance of Addressing Abundance Blocks

One of the biggest challenges with traditional goal-setting is that it often doesn’t address the limiting beliefs and abundance blocks that can hold you back from achieving your goals.

For example, if you want to make more money but have deep-seated beliefs that money is evil or that you don’t deserve it, then you may struggle to achieve financial abundance no matter how hard you work.

So, just sitting in front of your notebook and writing your goals on paper is not enough. You need to be ready to reach your manifestation goals.

And by ready, I mean that you first become aware of your blocks and then overcome your major manifestation blocks.

Subconscious Goals: Emotional & Vibrational Alignment

Manifestation emphasizes the importance of emotional and vibrational alignment.

By the way, this doesn’t mean you need to be in a positive emotional state and always have this high vibration everyone is talking about.

But to attract what you want into your life, you need to align your subconscious with your goals.

This requires a shift in mindset from scarcity and lack to abundance and possibility. Only when your subconscious goals are on the same level as your manifestation goals will you experience an effortless manifestation of your big dreams.

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Manifesting Vs Goals – What is Manifestation

Before we dig deeper into how you can achieve the goals you want to manifest, it’s important that you understand the science behind manifestation.

At its core, manifestation is about aligning your thoughts, beliefs, and actions with your goals.

By focusing on what you want and believing that you can achieve it, you can tap into the power of the universe (little hint: that’s your subconscious mind) and attract the resources, opportunities, and people you need to make your dreams a reality.

Manifesting a goal is the process of bringing your desires into reality by using the power of your subconscious mind and the law of attraction. 

In short, it’s about focusing your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs on what you want to achieve and then taking inspired action. The law of attraction is based on the principle that like attracts like.

This means the thoughts and feelings you put into the universe will attract similar energy back to you. So, focusing on positive thoughts and feelings will attract positive experiences and outcomes into your life.

But you don’t just write your manifestation goals down and trust that “the universe” will deliver – that universe is, in fact, your subconscious, and there is some work involved to make your desires happen.

Quotes like “ordering from the universe” led to a lot of misunderstandings when it comes to manifesting goals. That’s why I explain the connection between the subconscious mind and manifestation in very detail in my manifestation book. If you want to learn more, you can download the first chapter for free. Just click here.


Manifestation involves tapping into the power of your subconscious mind, which is responsible for your beliefs, habits, and emotions. By changing your subconscious beliefs and programming, you can align your thoughts and feelings with your desires and attract them into your life.

That’s why manifestation is not just about setting the right kind of goals. It’s actually a 3-step process.

A woman sitting at her desk and writing down manifestation goals

The 3 Manifestation Steps

As I mentioned earlier, manifestation is a process that involves using your thoughts and beliefs to bring something into reality. So, actually, manifestation is a goal-setting and goal-achieving process – but one where the subconscious has your back.

Here are the three main steps involved in the manifestation process:

  1. Set Manifestation Goals: The first step in the manifestation process is to set clear and specific goals. It’s important to be as detailed as possible when setting your goals. Write down exactly what you want to achieve, and be specific about the timeline and any other relevant details.

    To make this easier, I created this resource with seven manifestation questions to ask yourself to find out what you want.

  2. Overcome Abundance Blocks: Abundance blocks are mainly limiting beliefs, but there are many different forms of manifestation blocks that can hold you back from achieving your goals. Things like bad habits, negative emotions, or even relationships, or your environment.

    That’s the part of the manifestation process where you get vibrational aligned with your manifestation goals.

  3. Take Inspired Action: The final step in the manifestation process is to take inspired action towards your goals. This means taking action that is aligned with your manifestation goals, your belief system, your subconscious programming, and, most importantly, feels good to you.

    That’s why we don’t just concentrate on goals when manifesting but also our intentions.


Of course, there is more to manifesting goals and the manifestation process than just a few bullet points. But in this post on manifesting vs. goal setting, I want to concentrate on the first part, the manifestation goals.

If you want to learn all three steps in more detail, check out my in-depth guide on how to manifest for beginners.

Why Traditional Goals Don’t Work for Manifestation

While traditional goal-setting methods, such as SMART goals, can be helpful for achieving smaller and specific outcomes, they don’t really work for manifestation.

Especially not for manifesting big dreams.

This is because manifestation is less about achieving specific outcomes and more about aligning with the energy of what you want to create.

Instead of focusing on specific outcomes, manifestation encourages you to focus on the journey and the process of becoming the person you need to be to achieve your dreams. And this, my friend, will open up limitless abundance.

So, traditional goal-setting is great for achieving smaller goals. However, it falls short when the goal is to manifest your BIG dreams in life.

In conclusion, while traditional goal-setting can be useful for achieving specific outcomes, manifestation offers a more holistic and flexible approach to achieving your dreams and goals.

By focusing on emotional and vibrational alignment, setting intentions, and addressing abundance blocks, you can create a life aligned with your deepest desires and highest purpose.

In my advanced manifestation technique, I even work with three different manifestation goals, as they all play an important role in the manifestation process and have different subconscious triggers.

To learn more, check out my post on manifestation goal examples.

Inspired Action: The Key to Achieving Your Manifestation Goals

So this leaves us with that one big question: how do you manifest your goals?

When it comes to achieving your manifestation goals, taking inspired action is the key.

Manifestation to achieve goals is not a magic trick! So, no matter how perfect your goal-setting process is, you still need to take action.

But as you just learned, there is a big difference between traditional goal-setting and manifestation, which has this amazing superpower: your subconscious mind.

And your actions are the best way to communicate with your subconscious.

Inspired action is the act of taking action that feels natural and aligned with your manifestation goal. This makes achieving goals effortless.

Taking inspired action is one of the best goal manifestation techniques. Inspired action involves listening to your intuition and following your inner guidance (like the signs the universe sends you.)

It’s about being open to opportunities and acting when you feel called to do so.

Be aware that inspired action is not just any action but action that feels aligned with your manifestation goal.

Examples of inspired action can range from small steps, such as reaching out to someone for help or taking a course to learn a new skill. To bigger leaps, such as quitting your job to pursue your passion or moving to a new city to start a new life.

One way to identify inspired action is to pay attention to your emotions. When you feel excited, motivated, and energized about taking a certain action, it’s likely inspired action.

On the other hand, if you feel hesitant, doubtful, or fearful, it is your subconscious sending you a very important message: that you need to have a closer look at your abundance blocks and beliefs.

Important to remember that taking inspired action does not mean that you have to have everything figured out. It’s often the opposite. Trusting your intuition and taking action even when you don’t have all the answers can lead to unexpected opportunities and outcomes.

That’s what I teach in my 7-week manifestation course and my bestselling manifestation book “Become the CEO of Your Dream Life.”

It helps you create an action plan—a blueprint you can follow to unleash “inspired actions” one after the next, like an avalanche.

Don’t forget that manifestation without action is just dreaming.

signature saying xo mia fox

P.S. If you want to learn more about achieving manifestation goals, then get my free journal kit as this will sign you up for my manifestation email tips.

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