Violetta Pleshakova has questions about what happens when “you create your reality” starts to sound like “you caused this.”
Look up why manifestation isn’t working and you may leave with a longer to-do list than you came with.
There’s a limiting belief to work on. Or something you haven’t healed yet. Once you get that sorted, the thing you want can finally happen.
Okay…but what if you do the work and it still doesn’t happen? Are you back at the beginning, looking for whatever else must be wrong with you?
Violetta Pleshakova has watched people get caught in that search. She’s a transformational coach and trainer who has worked in coaching since 2011, and she wanted to get into what happens when people start blaming themselves for circumstances they didn’t choose.
In the version she described, “you create your reality” becomes “it’s all my fault” surprisingly fast.
The original problem is still there. Now you’re trying to figure out how you caused it.
So now there’s something else to heal?
Violetta calls these “healing loops.” Something isn’t going the way you want, and you start looking for the next thing to fix inside yourself.
“Maybe if only I clear my subconscious,” was one example she gave.
Then comes another method. If that doesn’t change things, the search continues. She worries that people end up thinking, “If only I could heal myself better or be better.”
Notice where she says that lands: being better. The explanation has moved from something happening in your life to something being wrong with you.
That is a LOT to hand someone who’s already having a hard time.
Violetta has experienced loss herself. All four of her grandparents died within two years. Later, she lost her father. She was grieving while dealing with the practical responsibilities his death left behind, and she remembered wondering whether she would even be able to work again.
She also questioned what she believed. Helping people change their lives was her work. Now she was trying to make sense of what had happened in her own.
I wanted to know what that did to the way she worked with clients. Was she teaching differently after all of this?
She said her criticism of manifestation culture was already there in her earlier trainings. Her experiences had given her more conviction behind it. She still believed in helping people change their lives. She wanted to question how much responsibility they were being asked to take for everything that happened along the way.
Okay, but some things really are outside your control
Violetta had an example ready.
“I cannot manifest a different passport.”
She wanted to move from Germany to South Africa. She said giving up her German residence permit could make banking and running her business much harder as a Russian citizen, particularly after the sanctions that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
So she had a practical question to answer: how would she keep her business running if she left?
She knew where she wanted to live. She had work experience and connections. There were still consequences to moving that she had to figure out.
“I cannot manifest a different passport.”
Violetta also acknowledged the privileges she has. She wasn’t suggesting she had no options. And she was clear that she believes people have power to improve their lives.
“We can improve our lives, we can make our dreams come true,” she said.
Which brought me to the part I wanted to understand. You can recognize all of that and still have something in your life you can’t make happen. You still want it, though. So how do you live with that?
What she did with the uncertainty
Her first answer was flowers.
She buys herself flowers every week because she wants her daily life to feel as beautiful as she can make it. She can dislike living in Berlin without deciding she hates her entire life.
Then she talked about God.
Her father’s death had shaken her faith. Over time, she rebuilt that relationship and returned to her Christian roots. She described the relief of being able to hand over what she couldn’t keep carrying herself.
“I don’t understand it now, and maybe I don’t need to understand it now.”
For Violetta, trusting God meant accepting that she couldn’t see the whole picture. She could keep dealing with what was in front of her without having an explanation for all of it.
When we spoke, she said she could see about three months ahead. Trying to plan the next ten years felt like too much. Her question was, “What’s the next faithful action?”
I asked her about the language people use for their beliefs. Someone might say they manifested something. Someone else might credit God. Were they sometimes talking about something similar, using different words?
She didn’t pretend to have that completely figured out.
“If somebody wants to believe in manifestation and it’s their frame of reference and it works for them, God bless,” she said.
Her concern was the person whose life had fallen apart and who was now turning against herself. That was why she wanted to question the promise. Her own answer had come through faith, but she wasn’t asking everybody listening to arrive at the same beliefs.
And who are you if things don’t work out?
Later, Violetta brought up another part of this: what happens when being successful has become part of who you are?
She talked about people who see themselves as powerful creators of their lives, then experience something that challenges that. If they’re no longer the person who can make everything happen, who are they?
She’d asked her own version of that question. As a high achiever, she had questioned who she was without her work and the money she’d been making.
Her answer came back to faith again. She believed her dignity remained even when she wasn’t achieving in the same way. Her passport didn’t determine it either.
So when Violetta talks about the limits of manifestation, she’s also talking about what happens after the disappointment. What does someone decide it says about her?
“Self-improvement has limits,” she said.
She still had things she wanted to change when we spoke. Her citizenship application was pending. She was figuring out her next moves while going back and forth between Germany and Cape Town.
“I refuse to make myself wrong,” she said.
Hear the full conversation with Violetta on She Chose Again: You Can’t Manifest Your Way Out of Everything.
CONNECT WITH VIOLETTA
Website: violettapleshakova.com
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Violetta Pleshakova, PhD, is a transformational coach, trainer, and facilitator who works with ambitious, purpose-driven women in business on their relationship with their own power. She’s a former Lead Trainer at an ICF-accredited coaching school, has more than 10,000 hours of facilitation experience across four continents, and holds a postgraduate diploma in psychotherapy. Russian-born and European-formed, she feels most at home in South Africa. Watch her full conversation with Elle Mills on She Chose Again, an Out of Edits interview series about women choosing different ways to live, work, and define success.
I write about changing your mind, choosing again, and figuring out what comes next in Okay, Now What?, my Sunday newsletter.