Is The Law of Attraction Bullshit? (Part 1)

Before I start to talk about this most controversial of subjects, I want you to know this; I only discovered the Law of Attraction (LOA) 12 months ago.

Before that, I’d seen the phrase knocking around the internet but just assumed it was some cheesy dating thing and ignored it!

Up to that point in my life, I was the kind of guy who mocked things like the LOA. Anything remotely spiritual I would automatically rail against and look for ways of disproving. If it wasn’t backed up by mainstream science, I didn’t want to know. I would actually enjoy picking holes in the arguments.

I considered myself a normal, straight-talking, down to earth, pragmatic man. Liberal and open-minded, yet at the same time, realistic.

But after reading “Think and Grow Rich” and then learning about quantum physics, I was starting to realise that I wasn’t as open-minded and didn’t know as much as I’d thought.

When famous scientists, writers, psychologists, wealthy business men, politicians (Einstein, Jung, Tesla, Napoleon Hill etc) were talking about a different way of thinking an entire century ago, a reality which appeared so incongruent to what I believed, I began to sit up and take it seriously.

It was at this point, I decided to find out just what the LOA actually was. And it had nothing to do with Tinder…..

The Secret

Most people seem to come to the LOA after reading or watching “The Secret”. This is the film that brought the LOA to the attention of the wider public. I didn’t see the movie till a few months after learning about LOA.

Many people criticise the film for not being in-depth enough, allowing people to misinterpret the law. I actually don’t believe it’s the film’s fault.

When I watched “The Secret”, it reinforced what I’d already learned from various teachers online. The problem is not the film, the problem is that some people CHOOSE to interpret it a certain way. They haven’t listened carefully enough and just picked out certain parts and highlighted them. Though the film doesn’t go in depth on some important factors, they are in there.

Here’s the thing; if you aren’t ready for the LOA, “The Secret” isn’t going to make a big impact on you. By that, I mean:

1. If you don’t NEED the LOA, it won’t mean anything. Plenty of people live wonderful, fulfilling lives and have never consciously put into practice the LOA. The theory is that they have unconsciously put the law into practice.
2. If you are not open to change, if you are closed-minded and not ready to put in the work to get what you feel is missing from life, you are highly likely to be cynical towards the LOA. So no matter what is presented to you, you will look to pick holes in it. It’s called “confirmation bias”.

You have to be totally open-minded because otherwise, for most people, the LOA is so way out there, so strange, that you will automatically sneer at it or denounce it as “bullshit” because you don’t want anything to prove that what you’ve believed all your life, might be wrong.

Or that what you’ve been doing and thinking all your life, might be wrong.

Or that the situation you are in, might even be your fault.

However, most people that discover the LOA, as I have, are looking for something. A change in fortune. Answers to big questions. And we know that what we’ve been doing so far, hasn’t worked. So we are open to something a bit leftfield. That’s the key here.

If you aren’t ready for the LOA, it can’t help you. Because ultimately, it is still up to YOU to change your circumstances. The LOA isn’t a magic wand that you can force to instantly make your life better.

So what is the law of attraction?

1. It’s one of the spiritual universal laws (there are others but this is the most well known, mostly because of  “The Secret”) which have been written about since the very earliest recorded human civilisations such as the Ancient Egyptians. It’s nothing new. It’s just reaching a bigger audience due to the internet and a thirst for change, particularly in the Western world.
2. It basically says that your thoughts create or “attract” your reality. In essence, thoughts become things (or thoughts ARE things). I see it as binary. If you tend to think mostly negative thoughts, you will “attract” more negative things into your life. If you focus more on positive thought, you will “attract” more positive things.
3. The term “Law of Attraction” is nothing more than a handy, catchy term invented to make it easier for modern society to latch onto the universal law. Plato and Einstein were not using this term! After “The Secret” was released in 2006, the phrase stuck.

I personally don’t think it needs to be any more complicated that that!

But of course, there are a million and one different courses, techniques for applying the law and getting it to work for you and as such, you’ll hear some conflicting or negative stuff.

It’s your choice what you decide to listen to at the end of the day. It wasn’t like I instantly started believing in it 100%. I was sceptical and that’s a natural reaction for most people.

But I was open-minded. I was curious. I didn’t dismiss it automatically.

There were simply too many people saying this stuff was real and too much history behind it to be ignored. It’s something I had to delve into, months of research, before I decided that it was more likely to be true than bullshit.

 

But crucially, I’d already learned about quantum physics and read “Think and Grow Rich”, which appear to back up the whole idea of “attraction” on a scientific level, with its concentration on energy, vibrations and frequencies. So it wasn’t totally foreign to me, I could instantly see how it could be real.

I also knew from hypnotherapy, that there is a lot more going on inside ourselves with our thoughts, than we can even begin to understand.

Together with all the research I’d done on inspirational stories from real, normal people to back it up, all I really need now to cement my faith in the LOA, is for me to experience it MYSELF.

This is going to be a major part of this blog. How I learn to work with the LOA to see if it really does work.

I’ll admit, I’m not 100% convinced. I’m probably 90% there.

Things have happened over the past year and continue to happen even as I type, which are pushing me towards that final 10%. But what really makes me more certain than not, is what happened ALREADY in my life. And this is what I’ll be writing about in my next post for part 2!