This is a fair question, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a mystical dodge: witchcraft communities have a common piece of advice for exactly this, usually phrased as "mundane before magical." It's worth understanding before you cast anything.
What "mundane before magical" means
The idea is simple: do the practical, real-world action first, or alongside the ritual, rather than instead of it. A money working paired with actually applying for the job or reviewing your budget. A love spell paired with actually putting yourself somewhere you might meet people. A protection ritual paired with actually locking your doors. The mundane action is the part doing the concrete work; the ritual is what focuses your intention, builds your resolve, and marks the moment you committed to doing something about it.
This isn't a way of saying magic "doesn't count" or is secretly just self-help with extra steps. It's closer to the opposite: treating spellwork as one real component of an effort, rather than a replacement for the rest of the effort, gives it something to actually work alongside.
What this means for expecting results
If a ritual is paired with zero real-world action, expecting a dramatic, ready-made outcome is setting yourself up for disappointment for a straightforward reason: you've only done half of what most experienced practitioners would actually recommend. That's not a failure of the ritual, it's a mismatch of expectations.
On the flip side, when a working does line up with real effort, results usually show up as a shift in clarity, confidence, or noticing an opportunity you might have otherwise missed: not as an obvious, unmistakable supernatural event. That's a completely legitimate outcome, not a sign that "nothing happened."
A practical way to think about it
Before any working, ask yourself what the mundane half of this looks like. If there isn't one (if the whole plan is the ritual and nothing else) that's worth noticing, and worth adding something concrete alongside it if you actually want the outcome to land.
