The Law of Attraction - It's No Secret

My favorite grad school professor turned me on to a fantastic book "Before You Think Another Thought: An Illustrated Guide to Understanding How Your Thoughts and Beliefs Create Your Life" by Bruce Doyle. The book is a primer in understanding the Law of Attraction, a theory attributed to William Atkinson's "Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World." Notably, however, the principles of the Law of Attraction appear in a number of historic, sometimes sacred, texts -- including the Bible.

Recently spit-shined and glamorized for pop consumption in the book and corresponding DVD "The Secret", the Law of Attraction simply suggests that our lives (reality as we perceive it) are a manifestation of our most predominant thoughts. Essentially it says "You'll see it when you believe it," rather than the converse.

Formed by our past experiences, beliefs are the basis of our thoughts and our thoughts form the basis of our actions. Our actions tell the Universe what we expect to happen and the Universe complies. Why? How? Some quantum physicists say that thoughts have a measurable energy that, as a rule, attracts like energy. If one has a positive thought it can therefore be expected to attract a positive manifestation (outcome).

Ideally, then, we should focus on what we DO want versus what we DON'T want in order to see the most desirable outcome because at the end of the day -- you ARE what you THINK.

If you THINK about drama, scandals and unhappiness , you'll produce them. If you focus on THINKING about rich experiences and happy endings, you'll produce THOSE instead. If you think you won't win - you won't. If you, like The Little Engine that Could, think you can, you will.

Sounds simple enough, but here's the caveat; remember I said that thoughts are derived from our beliefs which are derived from our past experience? Well, imagine for a moment, that before I knew about the Law of Attraction I learned about love from observing my parents' interaction (this is a super-simplified hypothetical example). Say then that my parents divorced and I witnessed their grief over the loss of their marriage/love. I subsequently form a belief that love ends in heartbreak. A belief like this was necessary at the time; it made it possible to understand the observable situation.

Fast forward - assuming I still carry that belief somewhere in my stable of beliefs, my thoughts will continue to be affected as will my subsequent actions and therefore the outcome of my romantic relationships. So, if I continue to think that love always ends in heartbreak, it will.

You can avoid this phenomenon by simply reevaluating your fundamental beliefs every so often taking care to get rid of those you know are limiting or no longer necessary.

It can be a helpful and insightful exercise to list ALL of your beliefs - as many as you can - on paper. You'll be surprised to see just how many are limiting or antiquated!

Bottom line: check out the book by Doyle - it's a quick read. If you're an Oprah fan, she highly recommends checking out The Secret (click on the title in the 2nd paragraph to go to the official site; for $5 you can view the 90 min video online - I did and thought it was worth it). Either way, in what can seem like an out of control existence it's good to be reminded that we ultimately create our reality one thought at a time.