Expectation is really the key to everything in manifesting.
Your life is a complete mirror of your expectations. People behave how you expect they will. Your financial situation is as abundant as you expect it to be. Your body is as healthy as you expect it to be.
Expectation comes about as a by-product of the alignment of belief and desire, so you need not concern yourself with the state of either of those things if you are focused on your expectation alone.
That feeling of pure expectation is the single key indicator that tells you that you're absolutely in the right place to get what you want.
But here's what I think trips people up.
When you truly expect something, do you worry about it? Do you keep checking if it is there yet? Do you ask others when it is coming?
Why would you do anything like that when you truly expect something?
After all, you are expecting it so it doesn't matter what external conditions in your life are like. You are expecting it so it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about it or says about it. You are expecting it so it doesn't even matter to you even if it seems to be drifting further away.
The bottom line is that if you are expecting it, you know it will come no matter what happens because you have no doubt whatsoever that it will.
That idea leads us to the absolute key (in one line) as to what deliberate manifesting/creation is:
The offering of thought with a pure intent without doubt
Everything in manifesting stems from this single, simple idea. And is that not also an excellent summing up of what true expectation really is?
Okay, so you may have now understood clearly what expectation is now but there's still another trap to avoid; namely, confusing expectation with excitement. Being excited (in the wrong way) about things you want to manifest can slow them coming.
As in the analogy of the person with a million dollars, it's true that the thought of something manifesting (if you are aligned with it) is not going to be that exciting. But that doesn't mean they won't be pleased that they have it.
I drive a powerful sports car and, though I've had it a few years now, I'm still pleased I have it. I still enjoy the feeling of pushing the accelerator down hard and the engine roaring like an angry lion, and the subsequent sensation of speed. Just because I have it does not mean I no longer have any happy (even excited) feeling about it.
But it's a different kind of happy feeling than that of someone looking at a sports car in a car showroom window and even though the thought of it thrills them, they just know they can't afford it. It's like there's a tinge of sadness about not having it yet.
This latter feeling of excitement/happiness is more like yearning while the former is more like appreciating.
To be more precise, one is tinged with lack and the other is tinged with having (for want of a better word).
It's that subtle lack or resistance in that feeling of yearning that can cause manifestational drag. And I have to say that, especially when you are starting out, it can be quite difficult sometimes to tell if you are in yearning or appreciating what you want.
This is why I recommend that people only use manifesting processes to feel better about what they want - and that's all.
Forget about actually physically having the thing/situation. Get all your pleasure just from the envisioning of it. Live in your imagination regarding it, not the 'real' world around you.
If you do that genuinely, you immediately eliminate this problem of lack-filled yearning, and then, paradoxically, the thing you want will come to you.
That's why when someone has wanted something so long and hard that eventually they just give up on ever having it, then it usually comes into their life at breakneck speed.
They've not given up the desire, they've only given up the yearning (which they confused with pure excitement) that was keeping it away.