Getting What You Want with the Law of Attraction

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Law of Attraction

As I put together last week’s posts on using affirmations to reach your goals, I got obsessed with figuring out how the new thought concept of the Law of Attraction works. It seems so magical to me and so mysterious. Countless celebrities, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jay-Z, Will Smith, Jim Carrey, and Oprah Winfrey give credit to the Law of Attraction at least in part for their successes. So I feel all the more compelled to find out as much as I can about it!

Most of you by now have likely heard about the Law of Attraction. And if you have, you probably already have an opinion regarding whether it’s truly wonderful or it’s just a load of trash. The Law of Attraction has criticisms. In my opinion, the 2006 best-selling self-help book “The Secret” just served to create still more mistaken beliefs about how the mystical Law of Attraction works. But since it has been able to help so many people, it’s natural to wonder if it could help you, too. Especially when all that’s required for it to work is learning how to control your mind (this is a subject I’m always interested in learning more about!).

In this post I’ll share what I understand as the Law of Attraction basics. I’m still new to it all, though, so I’m certainly not claiming that I have the answers to all of the questions you may have. As always, I’ll share what I’m learning as I learn it. I know many of you are as interested in exploring these concepts as I’ve become!

If you believe that the Law of Attraction is nonsense, I’m certain that my amateur explanation of the concepts will only leave you more skeptical. I apologize for that. But please have an open mind as you consider what I’m sharing. The Law of Attraction can only work for people who have a willingness to believe new things. If you want to learn more, be sure to take a look at some of the Law of Attraction resources I share in this post!

With all that said, here are some of the highlights from what I’ve learned so far about the Law of Attraction. I look forward to sharing more information, along with my success stories, with you in the future!

The Foundation

Law of AttractionThe Law of Vibration forms the basic foundation of the Law of Attraction, so that’s where I’ll start. According to The Law of Vibration, everything in the universe, whether it’s visible or not, can be quantified as an energetic pattern or a frequency. Everything in the universe is made of subatomic particles that constantly vibrate. This includes all physical matter that you can touch as well as intangible things like our feelings and thoughts.

Honesty, I’ve been trying to understand this for a while now. Despite that, I’ve concluded that the Law of Vibration is something I’ll need to resolve to believe in despite the fact that I can’t perceive it with my five senses. There are all sorts of things that I believe although I can’t actually perceive. We live in a universe with more than billions of galaxies that I can’t see. The earth is round, and I can’t readily perceive that, So I’m open to the Law of Attraction. You’ll have to decide yourself where you stand!

If you are a bit skeptical, this explanation from Albert Einstein may help. He said that everything is energy. If you match the frequency of the reality you desire, you can’t help but get in that reality. It’s not philosophy. It’s physics. He concluded that it can’t be any other way.

Like Attracts Like

Basically, the Law of Attraction states that like attracts like. This means that vibrations with similar frequencies are drawn together, just as Einstein explained. One fundamental of the Law of Attraction is the concept that we have the ability to control our vibration frequency, and what we can attract, through controlling our feelings and thoughts.

At this stage in my learning, I still find discussing “raising your vibration” to be a difficult concept to grapple with. I’m just being honest here! So I myself like to think about the Law of Attraction in simpler terms—the idea that you will get more of what it is that you’re focused on. Law of Attraction adherents talk about this aspect a lot. Once I explored the science behind this, and saw it working in its completely mystical way, I felt my only option was to believe in it!

This explanation from Bob Proctor summarizes the Law of Attraction very succinctly. He explains that if you can picture something in your thoughts, you can hold it in your hands. Add to that the quote from Napoleon Hill’s book “Think and Grow Rich:” “Anybody can wish for riches, and most people do, but only a few know that a definite plan, plus a burning desire for wealth, are the only dependable means of accumulating wealth.”

What Can You Attract?

According to teachers of the Law of Attraction, a person can attract anything they by using the Law of Attraction. This includes material objects, money, a relationship, your dream job, and pretty much anything else that they could possibly imagine. So it’s critically important for you to know exactly what it is that you want. Otherwise, how will you be able to get it?

Law Of Attraction Misconceptions

I can’t get into all of the misunderstandings surrounding the Law of Attraction in one blog post. And honestly, there are some questions that I haven’t found a good answer to yet! I thought I’d highlight a few of the more common misunderstandings some doubters have in case you have one of them, too.

One common misunderstanding about the Law of Attraction is that it’s simply wishful thinking, so all that you have to do is to think about what it is that you want and it will make it materialize. There’s much more to it than that, and the teachers of the Law of Attraction don’t hide that fact! It certainly is important to focus on what it is that you want. But there’s lots of other things that are important, too. Further, since most of us live in a place of spiritual lack and scarcity, it will take some time to develop the set of skills that are required to allow the Law of Attraction to function properly.

Another misunderstanding about the Law of Attraction is that it’s a pseudo-scientific New Age concept. As I explained earlier, the Law of Attraction predates the book “The Secret.” It was pondered by scientists, including Albert Einstein. It appeared in classic books like “Think and Grow Rich,” which was written by Napoleon Hill back in the 1930s. So you see, the Law of Attraction isn’t a new concept just because it’s gaining popularity now and people are only just starting to hear about it.

Another misunderstanding is that for the Law of Attraction to work, you have to always feel positive . That isn’t true at all, though. Negative feelings are an inherent component of the human experience. If you resist feeling negative emotions, you won’t have the ability to attract what it is that you want. In order to use the Law of Attraction, you have to learn how to process and to feel negative emotions instead of resisting them.

The Conscious, the Subconscious, and the Unconscious Mind

I mentioned earlier that controlling your feelings and thoughts is a crucial component of the Law of Attraction. But if you’re like most people, your gut response is to protest, “But I have thousands of thoughts each day! There’s no way I could control them all!” I get that!

There’s just a very small portion of our thoughts that are conscious, somewhere around 10 percent. This means that the other 90 percent are ruled by our subconsciousness. It’s important to note here that the conscious mind can direct the subconscious mind and can tell it what to do. One reason that thinking consciously about what we want won’t be enough is that our subconscious mind must have the belief that it’s possible to achieve. Our subconscious minds are filled with beliefs and thoughts that we often don’t realize we have!

Essentially, we need to learn to be purposeful with our conscious beliefs and thoughts. You can also do things to form and influence subconscious beliefs. You could repeat new beliefs right before bed or immediately after waking up. You could listen to a guided meditation to reinforce the beliefs you want to hold in your subconscious mind. You could use affirmations. The things we place in our subconscious minds and encourage with emotion and repetition will certainly become reality someday.

This is one of the things I’m honing right now, so I’m not able to say much more at the moment. Suffice it to say that I’ve experienced much success using affirmations to form and encourage new subconscious beliefs. Visualization and vision boards can also be helpful.

Essentials About the Law Of Attraction

Essentials About the Law Of AttractionFrom what I’ve come to understand thus far, the following six things are crucially important to have so the Law of Attraction can work.

  1. Belief: You have to believe you already have what you want. Jim Carrey described it this way: “People still sit around and think ‘When’s it gonna come…’ and that’s the wrong way. You’re facing the wrong way, you’re facing away from it. You have to go ‘it’s here, it’s here, it’s here.’” One side note: if you haven’t already seen his 1997 interview with Oprah Winfrey on how he achieved success using the Law of Attraction, go watch it now!

This is challenging. Your conscious mind will try to tell you you’re lying to yourself. But listen to how Lady Gaga described it: “You repeat it to yourself every day… And it’s not yet, it’s a lie. You’re saying a lie over and over and over again but then one day, the lie is true.”

If you feel and think like you already have something, that something will be attracted to you. But if you just think about wanting that something sometime in the future, you’re perpetuating the wanting instead of the having. People call this “acting as-if.” For me, the easiest way to approach this is that I believe I already have what it is that I want, but reality just isn’t reflecting that quite yet.

  1. Imagination: You have to be able to believe in things you can’t see yet. I honestly felt kind of delusional when I first started doing this. That Lady Gaga quote above describes it perfectly! But look at it this way: all of us already have countless thoughts every day that aren’t “real.” We already have limiting beliefs and distorted self-images. So why not imagine ourselves in a way that will help us achieve our goals? Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”
  2. Emotion: It’s important to believe you already have what it is that you want. But you also need to generate the emotions of already having it. This is what makes it real. I definitely still have a lot of practice to do with this!
  3. Gratitude: Even if the only research you’ve done on the Law of Attraction is reading this article, you’ve come across the concept of abundance. I think this is closely related to gratitude. When you’re grateful for what you have, you are not in a place of scarcity and lack. Scarcity and lack will prevent the Law of Attraction from working. Focus on and be grateful for what you have, and you’ll start attracting more into your life.
  4. Letting go: It’s important for you to intensely desire getting what it is that you want. But it’s also important that you aren’t attached to getting it within a certain timeframe or in a specific way. Finally, don’t believe that your future will be an improvement over the present. This comes from scarcity and lack and will prevent the Law of Attraction from working.

It takes work and time for people to learn how they can have a desire for something without becoming attached to it. It’s hard to feel true gratitude for what you already have while you genuinely desire more. This is something I’m personally working on right now! But this isn’t exactly a new concept. It’s something people commonly talk about. You’ll get what it is that you want when you aren’t needy and desperate for it!

  1. Persistence and repetition: Persistence and repetition are crucial when it comes to working with the Law of Attraction. It will take persistence to form and direct your thoughts for the length of time it will take to get your desired result, It will take repetition to change the patterns of your thoughts. This won’t happen quickly. You must stay strong in your beliefs. You can’t let any doubts enter in, even when you face setbacks and obstacles. It will take real skill to believe in something when reality points to just the opposite as true, but this is critical.
  2. Patience: As I just mentioned above, it takes time for our desires to materialize. They often won’t happen in the exact way or within the timeframe we had planned in our conscious minds. It’s important to be patient. And if things don’t turn out quite the way you wanted them to, remind yourself “If not this, then something better!”

This can all be quite overwhelming to take in. It’s difficult to know not just what you should be doing, but also what you shouldn’t be doing. So I posted a podcast episode about the ten ways you’re unknowingly blocking success. I hope it helps you be certain you’re not self-sabotaging your hard work and not realizing it!