The Law of Attraction is BS!

The law of attraction has become a common staple of the self improvement community for quite some time now, especially since the book and movie "the secret" came out... And opinions are always divided, some say it's a law as certain as the law of gravity and others claim it's complete garbage, but at the end of the day I'm going to tell you it is bull crap, because of one simple thing...

It sets the wrong expectations.

When it comes to personal development the authors, speakers and coaches have a responsibility to help people break out of their state of learned helplessness and into a state of resourcefulness. The law of attraction's main message is... If you can imagine it, you can do it. Of course if you've been around personal development for a while now you know it's true, if you can imagine it you can do it... However we need to remember most people are not developing themselves every day, most people are watching TV right now and they are hearing about how fucked up the world is, how many people died, how many house got destroyed, how many children were shot and cut to commercial... Are you depressed? Eat this pill. Most people lead a life where they believe wholeheartedly that they have no control over their lives whatsoever, and there is plenty of "evidence" to back it up!

Learned helplessness...

See what the law of attraction left out was that whoever you believe yourself to be you will become even if it's a self destructive image. What happens with anorexic people? Their spine might be showing through their skin but they will maintain that they are fat and they will even pull "evidence" to support their claim... -"X, person is slimmer than me!" -"I can't fit into X size of pants" -"My dance teacher said so!" And so on... In the same way most people believe that they are completely helpless when it comes to their success and fulfilment. And they will hand out "evidence" to prove it... -"No one will hire me" -"I don't make enough money, and I don't have time left to do anything else" -"I pay too many taxes" -"I have lots of debt" -"My college teacher told me I'm not bright" -"My dad told me I would never be successful" And so on... Why is this important or even relevant to our topic? Because when a person like this is introduced to the idea that you attract what you focus on they will laugh in your face because they have been wishing for years they had a better life, they have become experts at fantasising about having more money and a bigger house, and none of that has come true!

This is the reason why the law of attraction is BS!

It sets the wrong expectations in people... One of the major problems with it is the word "attraction" implying that somehow things will come to you rather than you moving towards those things in your life. Focus is key in any endeavor and yes if you can imagine yourself doing something you can achieve it but these things need to be followed by massive levels of action. Otherwise they are just fantasies... If someone dreams about earning a million dollars but has no plan or prospects as to how to earn that kind of money, it will never happen. The ultimate resource is "resourcefulness" being scrappy and creative in order to get to where you want to go, this is the state we need to evoke in people in order to help them achieve more in their lives. For example: If your goal in life is to be financially free and live in the caribbean, step one is envision yourself actually doing it! And get excited about it! Step two is get a plan, figure out how much money do you need to consider yourself financially free and where in the caribbean do you want to live in, what's the cost of housing, food, utilities? And then how are you going to make the money? Are you going to start a business, invest in real-estate, invest in startups, etc. In other words you set a specific target, and you get a very detailed plan of how you're going to get there, then you take massive action to get there.

However it´s not all BS...

Few things in life ever are... Even since I was a kid I heard these lyrics in a rock song and they stuck with me for some reason but it's one of the most true things I've ever heard: "what consumes your thoughts, controls your life..." (Give a little wink in the comments if you know the song) What consumes your thoughts meaning your daily focus, if all you focus on all day is how crappy your life is, all you're ever going to see in your life are reasons why your life sucks... If I told you to focus on everything that's red in the room you're in, focus on red, find the red, find the red and then asked you to close your eyes and tell me all the things in that room that are blue you would have a very hard time remembering the things that are blue. Because you completely ignored them! You were too busy looking for red stuff! For example: If someone is always angry and just always finds a way to be angry (you may know someone like this... ) it doesn't matter what happens this person will always focus on the negative... If this person were to win the lottery he would complain about how the government is stealing his money because he has to pay taxes on his prize! The object of your focus will always overtake the entire process of your thinking... Your mind is like a heat seeking missile, if you give it a target it will even make things up to get to that target. If the target is always getting angry, your mind will find any excuse to allow you to get angry it doesn't even have to be a good excuse. But that's a whole other story and I'm getting ahead of myself, I just love to go on and give people as much value as I possibly can, but anyway hope you enjoyed the article and let me know what you think in the comments below... Also share this with a friend if you think they will appreciate it. Make it a great day. Yamil Senior Seda