Is the Law of Attraction Real or a Total Farce?
After 10 years of experimenting with the concept, here is how I have come to understand it.
We all have come across “the secret” by Rhonda Byrne at some point in our lives. When it launched it took the world by storm, advocating how one can transform their lives simply by thinking good things.
It emphasized that if you were to visualize and hold something in your mind clearly enough it would become a reality for you.
At the time I first came across the book I was a 20 something, and circumstances in my life had driven me to think the worse of everything.
The result of thinking like that was, I used to hate what I did for a living, My relationships sucked, I had become a very angry person on the inside. All of these things were influenced by my circumstances and who I had surrounded myself with.
I took whatever the book and the movie said to heart and started visualizing and spending my days and night dreaming about all the things I wanted.
Here is what happened, NOTHING.
No, this is not a blog bashing the law of attraction and the book, in fact, I still am a believer and practice that stuff every day. However, with my first experience with the Law of Attraction, I failed to notice the secret which The Secret and all the experts in the book don’t talk about.
It has been 10 years since, and ever since I started implementing what I learned I have seen a huge improvement in almost every area of my life, the one I haven’t seen improvement in is more to do with circumstances I can’t control.
Here is what I learned:
The secret only works, if there exist a cause and effect relationship.
It may sound funny, but unfortunately, the book and the movie literally gave people the idea that they can dream things into existence. But if you think logically, how can anything happen if there is no reason for it to happen.
You are able to lose weight because you exercise. You are able to make money because you do the work. You get the result you want because you put in the reps.
The secret works when you are working towards what you want and focus on the most optimal result you can get. I think the only reference made to this in the book was the experience Jack Canfield mentioned when he was trying to sell the book he had written.
The secret is about change.
People got the impression that their dreams and visualizations would bring the change. There is a reason you don’t have what you want currently, and your dreams and visualizations cannot change that reason. You can.
The people and situations in your life define whether you get to where you need to and it is you who needs to decide whether your current situation is serving you well.
You can’t just visualize something and then go back to living your life the way you always have. You need to introspect and change the things which are not really contributing to your growth, only then can you actually unleash the power of your mind.
When you make those changes and think positively, you put yourself in alignment with what you want. Getting uncomfortable is the best way to ensure that you get what you want and you need to introspect. That is one part of the giant secret and NOTHING CHANGES IF NOTHING CHANGES.
The secret is to be aware
Awareness is everything. When trying to use the secret, people inadvertently try to dream and visualize what they want without actually being aware of what is involved in getting there.
For example, we all want to feel good. Joe vitale goes on about how this feeling good is the receiving step. But if you are not aware about why you are not feeling good, how exactly will you change that to feel good?
The secret is the power of compounding gains
It is advocated that you need to focus on the end result, but in trying to focus on the end result we tend to shoot for the stars and not realize the tiny steps which need to be taken to get there.
For anything to work, you first need to roll, then you need to crawl, then you need to stand up, then walk and then finally run.
From personal experience, I did an event in Dubai, a HUGE music festival. I figured that was the way we would go big. I did all my visualizations and took major leaps to get everything in place. It was a great event for the work my colleagues and I put in, but it wasn’t successful.
Had we taken small calculative steps and built a foundation first, the result would have been way different. Although, I still use that experience of my life as the best. Yes we incurred a huge debt, yes we got stressed, but it helped me cross a threshold which I would never have had we not failed.
The secret is a mix of Science and Faith.
In Steve Harvey’s words, Science says, “show me and I will believe”, faith says, “believe and I will show you”.
The science is about doing what it takes, trying, testing, failing, and essentially showing up each day ready to go again. Faith is about believing that if you do whatever needs to be done you will get where you want to go.
The secret is understanding how these two concepts interact.
For me, understanding these things has helped me turn my life around. You can’t just dream your life into existence, you need to put in the work.
The secret is that everything is born through imagination. Everything man-made that you see around you was first a figment of imagination, but that imagination was worked upon over and over again before it manifests into reality.
Live well, take it easy, and enjoy life. We learn every day, and I hope this blog helps you along your way.
