It's normal when problems arise in life, that human beings want quick solutions. These quick solutions can be either due to need of band aid, emergencies, or simply due to laziness involved.
As most people want "problems solved" but they don't want themselves to be the source of the problem that is being solved, the above task is how most people see this path. This deludes someone and misguides them, since one does not understand how things work themselves. And that's when false expectations meet tragic failures in magick.
The point of this short post is to explain how to avoid the above and to actually succeed.
The situation is, that if one ask for major changes, one must be willing to put effort and work into them. This is not only because of the nature of the external world, but also because of the effort one needs to change their own ways in order to achieve a goal.
Most people do not want to make any fundamental changes and they try to "bend" the external universe. Bending the external universe is something that requires a lot of persistence in itself. That is another topic in itself.
Now when it comes to changing life direction, let's pick the example of health. One's health has been quite bad, due to heredity or majorly bad habits. A 40 day working will likely help a lot, but one can expect changes after 180 days or a whole year to be very strong. That's not because only of power, but it's because one must work to change the karmic flow that led a person to these situations in the first place.
Changes of course occur as one does the working, but for lasting success, one would for example need to either repeat 40 day workings 3 times per year, or continue for 120 or 180 days. And one must work fundamentally at the same time in actually addressing the issues.
Why there is a lot of failure in magick, is because one is not putting in the actual work to change a situation. If the problem is lack of employment, but you don't do anything that would potentially employ you into a work [studies, reaching out to companies, working to make something, learning what one has to learn for the task to manifest etc] you are essentially halting the situation on your own.
Planets, other people and other things, situations, can also come to cause you issues, adding on top of this. If these are not done, then things will get better faster. These issues presenting themselves are to be managed, too. Without this, there are few things one can truly expect.
When one does a working and they don't engage in the above, they are essentially "holding in" the working, until future circumstances arise that will allow manifestation. This might happen in this or another life, but since one is not doing what one should be doing now, then this will be stalled greatly.
Doing spells and just sitting there doing nothing, is not how magick works at all. This level of delusional misguiding of the self is because most people want to apply laziness and foolishness into the craft of magick, where it's not even working that way.
As much as I would like to sell some snakeoil like your favorite "gurus" out there , I consider proper teaching and truth telling to be the most important thing. We are not like them, and we must learn to face reality in these matters.
The path of those who want to improve has nothing to do with the Western and other nonsense that is preached on lazy manifestation, just sitting there like a bum, and expecting to somehow find yourself in a mansion while you have zero skills and contribute nothing to humanity. For the most part, that is only limited magickal operation, bringing equally limited results.
Some people can get "some results" from these, but these results are not what we intend to do. One wants obviously to know the reality here, and the reality is as I explain here. That should liberate the true seeker of truth, instead of deluding them that by sitting on a couch and just wishing things, things will just "fall in place".
Of course, besides reality, there are miracles as well. But one cannot base all their existence into some sort of "miracle" all the time, if one expects actual results and progress in life.
Demonic help and help from the Gods can transcend many boundaries, but still one must be willing to make the habitual adjustments in order to succeed in what one seeks. That is the nature of the universe and the only way. Miracles can remove barriers, but one still has to work through the aftermath and work required to further these removals.
-High Priest Zevios Metathronos