If I get one more email with information about how to Attract more money, more clients, the right relationship, a better job, a new car, or anything else for that matter, I think I’m going to scream (actually, I just got THREE of them, which made me scream, and then write this post).
Here’s another option, if there’s something you want, why not DO SOMETHING that will, with a high degree of confidence, increase the probability that you can GET IT.
I call this the “Shampoo School of Living.” Instead of lather, rinse, repeat, it’s Orient in the direction of what you want, Take a simple step that moves you in that direction, Re-Orient and repeat.
Do this and I GUARANTEE one of two results:
- You’ll get what you want!
- You won’t get what you want.
I can’t tell, in advance, which of those will happen — nor can anyone else — but, I assure you, it will only be one of those two possibilities.
You may have noticed something with my formula: There is no guarantee that you’ll get what you want. Or, just as true, there’s no guarantee that if you get what you want, you’ll be happy.
(There is, though, a guarantee that if you find a million people who’ve gotten what you want and were no happier for it, you’ll think you’re special and that you would be unlike all of them — “I’ve never heard of anyone becoming permanently happy as a result of becoming wealthy, but when I become rich, I’ll be different.”)
Want a guarantee of getting what you want and being happy? Well, to paraphrase the Buddha, move to a different universe.
They don’t sell those guarantees in this one.
Oh, wait, they do! It’s all the crap about “Attracting” what you want that clogs my inbox every day!
If it’s possible to “attract” new clients from the comfort of my own mind, that’s so much easier than writing a good advertisement, or giving free lectures to potential clients, or cold calling, or asking for referrals, or, well… anything!
And, hell, if you weren’t going to get what you wanted, wouldn’t you rather have not put out any real effort than busted your hump only to be thwarted by factors out of your control?
Personally, I’d rather do something tangible, something that you could see me doing on a video tape (okay, it’s 2008, a DVD or on YouTube). I don’t want to try to “attract” something to me. I want to move toward it! The odds are, I’m more mobile than whatever I think I want.
The joke, of course, is that if you want to control the universe, there’s an easy way: Get up off your attracting-something butt and do something. Guaranteed that when you do, the universe will change.
If you seem to be progressing, keep going. If you seem to be going in the wrong direction, or in circles, either do something different or, maybe, recognize that what you’re trying to do isn’t possible… like making some un-measurable inner change that will magically cause you to become a “magnet to” what you think you want.
Comments
6 responses to “In fact, I DON’T want to ATTRACT anything to me”
I fully agree with the ‘do something’ point.
However, i believe there is something behind the attraction idea that leads people to believe in magic. It’s s cognitive process called ‘perceptual priming’ wherein a person starts noticing incidents of something that have been recently on one’s mind which helps to inform confirmation bias, the tendency to ignore or not notice counter examples, a form of illogical thinking.
The one case i know of where someone said “it works!” of the Secret, missed the fact that she actually did something that greatly improved the odds of her attracting something – being on a ‘Secret’ forum – as well as having done something to seed perceptual priming, send money to a random person. She didn’t attract money from the universe, but from someone else sending money that was in the program.
The odds can be further increased in this case by focussing on the act of giving so that any act of being given to is highlighted by the brain and confirms the initial belief though the actual item given be different.
Hey, Ric,
Agreed… people who think that there is a thing called the LOA, and that it works, are relying on a number of cognitive biases to come to that conclusion, perceptual priming being one.
Sometimes, they are taking actions that increase their odds, and then ignoring the impact of those actions.
I like to say that if you boil down all the “manifestation” techniques, you end up with a very simple, non-magical, formula:
1) Remind yourself of what you want
2) Relax enough to think clearly (and find a possible action to take)
3) React … that is, take action, whether you initiate it or whether it “appears”
4) Repeat, as necessary
Notice that there’s no guarantee of getting what you want (too many factors influence that), and CERTAINLY no guarantee that getting what you want will make you happier.
Oh, I realized I have an even more boiled down formula. I call this the “Shampoo School of Creation”… instead of Lather, Rinse, Repeat, you have:
1) Step (take any action that could move you towards what you want)
2) Reorient (see if it worked, redirect if necessary)
3) Repeat
Right. That last bit resembles the NLP TOTE model, Test, Operate, Test, Exit.
I don’t know squat about NLP, but I used to own a Tote’s umbrella.
Probably just as well, it looks like you have your hands full with the guru thing. I was into the therapy thing, different format, but similar logic, use of magical thinking and a thick layer of hyperbole. NLP came at the end of that for me. It had some good practical stuff, but a lot of unsupported claims and even a pattern very similar to the LOA. It seems just about everywhere you look Tinker Bell has had a hand in it.
Guru schmuru… gurus have things like prescriptions for living, and they claim to be role models (or near-models), and have practices that (they promise) will give you something you want in the future.
Each of those makes me nauseated (some are more puke-y than others)