The Law Of Attraction - Is It A Scam?

 

Don't have time? Read the Article Summary:

The Law of attraction is not a scam - how it is marketed is. The universe or the almighty aren't going to magically provide your desires, whatever they might be. The power lies within your subconscious. You get what you focus on, and you need to train your mind to focus on what you want so that it identifies opportunities for you to achieve your goals.

Or, if you prefer the entertaining long version, read on... 

The Law Of Attraction - Is It A Scam?

If you have been into personal development and trying to figure out success for more than 5 minutes, then the chances are you have probably heard about the law of attraction... I assume you have since you are reading an article titled 'The Law Of Attraction - Is It A Scam?', right? 😊

What you heard about it will probably depend on where you heard about it, and it would likely follow one of the following 2 themes...

Either it is the mystical secret to success that has been kept locked away by the rich and powerful throughout time, but is now being revealed to you for the small fee for the price of the book or course that it will be explained in; or

It's a load of non-sensicle BS that has no scientific founding or proof, but...

If that's the case, why do so many people swear by it? 💁

Let's start at the beginning shall we and try and answer all your Law of Attraction questions so you can make your mind up on whether it is a scam or not.

What is the Law of Attraction?

The law of attraction is the belief that positive thoughts and feelings can lead to positive outcomes, such as attracting more prosperity, happiness, and success into one's life. It is based on the idea that like attracts like, and that focusing on positive thoughts and feelings can bring about positive results. 

The concept of the law of attraction has been popularized in recent years by books, movies, and other media, and is often associated with the idea of manifestation, or the ability to bring about desired outcomes through the power of thought alone. 

Who Discovered The Law of Attraction?

The concept of the law of attraction has been around for centuries, and has been discussed by various philosophers and spiritual leaders throughout history. However, it gained widespread popularity in the early 21st century, due in large part to the release of the book "The Secret," which espoused the idea that people could use the law of attraction to achieve success in their lives. 

The book, which was published in 2006 and was based on the concepts discussed in Napoleon Hill's 1930's book, Think and Grow Rich, became a best-seller and helped to popularize the concept of the law of attraction and manifestation. 

The ideas outlined in "The Secret" and other similar works have been met with both enthusiasm and skepticism, and the effectiveness of the law of attraction as a means of achieving desired outcomes is a matter of ongoing debate.

How does The Law of Attraction Work?

According to the law of attraction, thoughts and feelings have a powerful influence on one's life and can shape one's reality. 

The belief is that if you focus on positive thoughts and feelings, you will attract positive experiences and outcomes into your life, while focusing on negative thoughts and feelings will attract negative experiences and outcomes. 

It is said that the 'universe' responds to one's thoughts and feelings (yes, the universe...), and that by aligning your thoughts and feelings with what you desire, you can create the right frequency and manifest your goals from the ether....O-kay 

Some people believe that the law of attraction can be used to manifest a wide range of outcomes, including success in work or business, improved health, and greater happiness and fulfillment.

There are various techniques and practices that some people claim can help you make use of the law of attraction and manifest your goals. Some of these techniques include:

Visualization

This involves creating mental images of the things you want to manifest in your life, and focusing on these images regularly.

Affirmations

This involves repeating positive statements to yourself, often in the present tense, as if the things you are affirming are already true.

Gratitude

Focusing on the things you are grateful for, and expressing gratitude regularly, is said to help attract more positive experiences and outcomes into your life.

Setting intentions

This involves clearly defining what you want to manifest and then taking action towards achieving it.

Letting go

This involves releasing negative thoughts and feelings, and trusting that the universe will bring about the things you desire.

So, does it work or is it a scam?

Well, Yes and Yes, I'd say - I'll tell you why...

I do believe in the law of attraction - it's pretty hard for me not to given some of the creepily coincidental things that I have 'willed' into existence.... I just don't believe it works how your local guru is telling you it does.

In other words, I don't believe you need to sacrifice a chicken and sit in a dark room chanting until you hit the correct 'vibrational frequency' needed to turn the 'universal ether' into your very wants and desires...

No, I don't believe that God will answer my prayers and stick a million in the bank.

And no, I don't believe 'the universe' is going to buy me a mansion.

On that note, I also don't believe in fairy's, goblins, monster's under my bed, Santa, the Easter Bunny or the latest Facebook conspiracy theory (but I do believe in aliens 😊).

In fact, I believe that the source of this mystical power is much closer to home...

I believe that it is our subconscious minds that holds the power to achieving our dreams.

The mind is a powerful tool for those that dare to use it.

The subconscious mind

The subconscious mind is the power house of our brains that operates below the level of conscious awareness - and it never sleeps. 

More powerful than the most advanced computer on the planet, it responsible for managing automatic processes and behaviors, such as breathing, digestion, and heart function on auto pilot, as well as other activities that we turn into automatic processes through forming habits, for instance riding a bike.

You might have heard the saying, "It's just like riding a bike", which refers to how once you have learnt to ride a bike, just can't forget - it just comes automatically - that's because you have programmed it in your subconscious. 

The subconscious mind is the source of a person's habits, beliefs, and attitudes, which are built up over a lifetime of programming from our environment and external influences to form your 'subconscious map' of the world - how you believe the world to be (which is nothing more than your opinion - after all, there is no right or wrong, just your perspective, and that of the other 8 billion people on the planet!).

This subconscious map has a powerful influence on a person's thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and therefor their results - or level of success. 

In order to 'update' our map, we need to reprogram our belief system, but your subconscious won't like it - not one bit!

The Midas Method

The Midas Method is a little known book by Stuart Goldsmith, a self-made millionaire business man, which was first published in 1987, to share Stuart's findings on how he turned his life around from being in debt, to a millionaire with all the trappings of success over the course of 8 years.

I was first recommended this book by someone I know, someone I would call a mentor. This guy was/is also a millionaire, a local property developer, and he swore by this book - in fact he told me to read it and send him a summary of what I'd learnt from each chapter... so I did!

I am not going to review to full book here (maybe for another article?), but essentially it is a book about belief - more accurately, self belief, and it discusses the role of the subconscious mind and how you can reprogram it to re-wire your belief system so you can achieve more.

It explains how the subconscious builds up a map of the world based on your experiences (which it likens to a jigsaw puzzle). 

Your deep seated core beliefs are in the center of the puzzle and therefor are the hardest to change - furthermore, the Subconscious is mainly concerned with survival and it does not like it's world view being challenged as this presents uncertainty and risk since it has no frame of reference for how the resulting change will affect your world.

For this reason, the subconscious causes you to feel fear and anxiety about what you are trying to achieve. It will make you doubt yourself and try to sabotage you, as it would rather see you fail at 'changing a piece of the puzzle' and prove the existing world view correct than take a chance on uncertainty.

How you get around this, according to the book, is by following a specific process to reprogram your subconscious, which involves setting goals - starting with some easy to achieve goals, writing down and reciting these goals as affirmations aloud twice a day and visualising yourself succeeding...

My Experience

Keeping an open mind about it, and given that I have been told by someone who I respect and who has achieved the success that I was looking for, I decided to give it a go...

As the book suggests, I started off with some small goals and achieved them as I said I would, gradually building up in difficulty (i.e. things less in my control).

That's when things got weird...

First off, at the time I had just been made redundant, I set a goal to get a job on a specific date (it was 1st March 2021) on a specific salary (£85,000). 

Now, understand that this was almost double what I had earned previously, so was for sure a stretch, and at the time was about at the limit of what I believed it was possible for me to earn (there are those limiting self beliefs again), and to be honest, I wasn't truly convince I could earn that much - but I did believe I was worth it.

Time passed, and I was getting nervous - it got to the 26th February, which was the Friday. I got a phone call asking if I was available to start on the Monday (which was the 1st March) as a contractor on a rate equivalent to £84,240 a year - not dead on the nail but close enough for me to be a little freaked by it, then...

I was in the process of selling a house that I bought to flip for a profit. I paid £59k, spent £8.5k on it and expected to get around £80k for it, based on previous sales data. 

I set a goal that I would achieve an offer of £100k. Next thing I know the housing market is going crazy (after COVID lockdown) and I end up selling for £99.5k - again, not perfect but well above the average sale price.

The combination of these plus some other investments meant I achieved another goal - starting the year severely overdrawn in my bank, I said I would have a balance of £100k by the end of they year. A year later and I had achieved it - well, actually it was more like 13 month later since I was waiting for the property sale to complete, but I wasn't complaining - I knew it was coming.

The final one I'll share is my dream house - I started visualising my dream house, what it looked like down to the last detail - 5-bed, triple garage, gym, pool, stream running through the garden - I was going all out!

One day I was searching through properties for sale online and I see it - the house I had in my mind!

It was currently under development not too far from where I lived - and I stress, this WAS the house I had in my head, not just one with the same spec, I mean exactly what I envisioned... it even had the stream - the only thing I got wrong was the price!

This totally freaked me out at this point and honestly, I even stopped following the method as strictly as I was - sounds counterintuitive I know, but I guess I got scared a little, maybe I hit my belief ceiling at the time.... As such, I never did figure a way to get the house - but I know where it is when I'm ready.

I have however continued to grow my income by following this process until lo-and-behold, an opportunity presents itself which moves me to the next step, and now I earn much more - it just works, but why?

The RAS

Well, as I said - I don't believe it is down to the almighty, or the universe. I believe it is the power of the subconscious mind that allows us to find what it is we are looking for, if only we figure out how to tell it what that is.

To do this, there is one particular part of the mind we need to activate.

The Reticular Activating System, or RAS for short, is a network of nerve cells located in the brainstem that plays a role in the regulation of sleep, arousal, and attention. 

The RAS receives input from various sources, such as sensory organs and other areas of the brain, and uses this information to determine which stimuli are important and should be brought to a person's attention. 

It acts like a filter, allowing important information to pass between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind, while blocking out less important or irrelevant information.

That's because we have thousands of bits of information entering our brains at any one time, but there is no way we can process everything - that's where the RAS comes in, and it filters the incoming information based on what you are focussed on so that you only get the information that is important to you at any given time.

If you just bought a new car for example, all of a sudden you will start to notice people driving that same car everywhere - it seems like everyone just bought the same car at the same time as you, but the truth is, those people were always driving that car - you just never noticed because the information wasn't relevant to you...

Or, if you are going through a break-up - notice how all the songs on the radio seem to be talking to you?

Likewise, if you have a certain goal, keeping it in the focus of your RAS will allow you to identify more opportunities related to achieving it that you might not have noticed previously.

The thing is, the RAS can only focus on between 5-9 things at a time, so you need to be careful about what you choose to focus on.

This is why if you focus on positive things, then you will find more positive things - if you focus on the negatives then you will find negative all around you.

How to use it

So, we already established that it is all about keeping whatever it is you desire in focus so you can use your RAS and subconscious to guide you towards them...

But how might we do that?

Well, remember the points above about how the Law of Attraction works - Affirmations, visualistion, setting goals, etc? Bingo!

You see, it's all the same techniques as what is described as the Law of Attraction, only you are not actually relying on the universe to provide for you, you are focussing your mind on the required outcome and using your RAS to guide to to achieving it.

You will notice too the process that was described in the Midas Method are just these same principles, and the whole updating you subconscious world map stuff if where the visualisation comes in - since the subconscious, it is said, does not understand language but rather images and emotion.

So by visualising your success and feeling the emotion related to achieving that success, you reprogram your subconscious belief system - which you need to do if you want to remain focused on your goals and believe that you can achieve them (remember me with the house? I guess I wasn't quite ready to believe I could own it)

Conclusion: How does this all tie together with the Law of Attraction?

So to wrap this up, and try and stay with me for the final straight while I tie this all together...

The law of attraction itself isn't a scam - it is just regularly mis-packaged and mis-sold as some mystical external power that is only understood by a few who, lucky for you, are willing to sell you their secrets to using it.

That is not the case...

The 'power' comes from within - it comes from training your own mind to work for you to focus on what you want to achieve.

You do that simply by adopting some simple techniques and habits to help you get crystal clear on your vision of success. You then need to focus on your vision regularly and feel the emotion associated with that image in order to embed it into your subconscious so that it can help you find the way.

That's it, simple right?

Don't go giving away your power to achieve success by letting someone else convince you that you need them to help you - you don't.

Don't misunderstand me - you still need to put in the action. Your mind isn't going to magically get things done for you, but if you are clear and focused about what you want, and you take action towards your goals, you will be amazed  at the opportunities that seem to find you.