It's Real: The Law Of Attraction

believe So, my wife and I don’t have cable TV. We cancelled it a few years ago.

Quick Soapbox: If you still have cable TV and turn it on when you get home from work, or if you set your DVR to record more than 2-3 shows each week, I can guarantee that this practice alone is a huge thing holding you back from reaching your goals in life.

But back to my story …

Trevor Mauch here, and now we subscribe to Hulu – which is barely a step above cable TV as far as a time waster, in general. But we started watching stuff in the site’s documentary section, which is awesome.

So I was flipping through the options one night, and I stumbled on a movie Hulu uploaded into their system, called The Secret.

I’m not sure if you’ve heard of this movie or not, but if you haven’t watched The Secret, then you should definitely look it up and watch it.

Here’s the gist of it: What you think about is what comes to be reality in your life.

Simple, right?

The movie shows a guy sitting in his La-Z-Boy, visualizing himself driving a brand spankin’ new sports car – and then the next shot shows that he owns the darn thing, due to “The Law of Attraction.”

In another scene, one of the movie’s experts discusses his “vision board” that he created years ago, on which he posts magazine pictures depicting the stuff he wants to have in his life. At one point in his life, this ambitious fellow stumbled across a picture of his “dream house” in a certain magazine, so he promptly extracted the picture with scissors and posted on the board …

To make a long story short, 5 years after creating his board and posting that picture of his dream house, the man reviewed his board and – without even realizing it had happened – discovered that he had come to live in that exact house.

No, not a house “just like it”… he found himself actually living in the exact same house he had originally posted on his vision board!

imagine Amazing, right?

Definitely…

But it begs the question: Is all of this “Law of Attraction” stuff hocus pocus or the real thing?

Can you really just think about stuff and make it come to life?

Can you simply think positive thoughts, visualizing your preferred future, and then actually live the life of your dreams?

Or is it all a huge load of crapola?

My Experience & Thoughts on “The Law of Attraction”

Before I tell my story, I’ll tell you my honest opinion…

The law of attraction truly is the real deal – but it is also a success-killer for the people who believe in it “too much.”

Confused?

Perhaps you are wondering, “How can it be real and provide real results, but actually kill your dreams when you do it too much?”

Let me explain by telling you part of my own life’s story ...

When I graduated college, I had never even heard of this thing called “personal growth,” much less read any intelligent commentaries on the subject. Instead, I thought all of that “touchy feely stuff” was for wackos who didn’t know how to motivate themselves.

But then I got out into the real world, and I had to start making things happen for myself. And in my first year out of college, when I was trying to start my own company (stubbornly neglecting everybody’s advice to get a real job), I finally discovered “personal growth.”

Now, I’m sure you’ve heard about the importance of goals, and how effective it can be to write them down. That’s nothing new, and most people know they should do it – but 8 out of 10 people still don’t do it on a regular basis.

attract And you’ve probably also heard about the helpfulness of visualization – the simple process of closing your eyes and picturing ideal personal achievements through your mind’s eye. But again, 9 out of 10 people never do this on a consistent basis.

But during this season of my life, my back was against the wall financially (with debts totaling approximately $12,000), so I decided to try a few of these things …

First, I created a special goal sheet for myself. The templates I found online didn’t seem to fit the way my mind works, so I made my own. Then I spent an hour or two doing 3 things:

Writing down my goals for every part of my life
Imposing reasonable timelines on each goal
Outlining the next 5 steps I needed to take in order to reach each goal

All in all, I ended up with about 15 goals on that goal sheet, and then I slapped it on my living room wall.

At that time, my financial goal was to begin generating $4,000/month of self-employed income within 6 months.

What did I do next?

Every morning, I sat down for 20 minutes and intentionally visualized these 15 things that I wanted to accomplish with my life. Of course, I didn’t know how to actually visualize, per se…

You see, I’ve always been a really impatient person, so if I had tried to conjure up a game plan for daily visualization, then my mind would have hopelessly strayed – and I wouldn’t have gotten anything done at all!

So, a mentor of mine gave me this 100-year-old book called The Master Key System by Wallace Wattles. This was my first exposure to “The Secret.”

That book was like the film The Secret but on steroids. In fact, it’s so intense that I was only able to survive 3 of the book’s 11 weekly programs! But those 3 weeks of visualizing every morning… well, they changed my life.

But during those first few months, I wasn’t really achieving many of my goals, so I ripped that goal sheet off my wall and put it in my dresser drawer. Then a few months later, when I was unpacking after moving to a new house we’d just bought, I found my goal sheet …

…and almost every goal on that sheet had been achieved.

It was crazy!

think Everything I had visualized. Everything I had intentionally thought about. It had all become reality.

It really blew my mind. Crazy, spooky stuff.

So, yes, “The Law of Attraction” works.

But it’s not this magical thing – it makes sense when you think about it. (No pun intended.)

If you’re continually thinking about something, then you will notice more of that thing hiding within your daily circumstances – and be drawn toward the tools for building the vision you see.

For instance, if you bought a bright red VW Bug because you thought “nobody else has one of these,” then as soon as you bring it home, you will start to see that same red VW Bug everywhere you go.

It’s what you’re thinking about, so it’s what you’re attracted to.

And if you’re always thinking about your lack of money – or whatever else it may be that you don’t have – then you’ll continue to attract that same frustrating deficit…

…because you’re not investing your thoughts in a healthy manner, toward a preferred alternative.

But Don’t Stop There, Here’s Where It Fails People

The movie The Secret is an undeniably awesome way of introducing people to “The Law of Attraction.”

But when people take it too literally… when they just sit there and think and think (and think) about what they want… well, then they’re never going to achieve their goals.

What’s missing?

Simple: The actual “doing” part.

action Too many people limit their goal-setting and visualization exercises to the theoretical realm (“I want that house…”) without ever considering the equally important practical realms of life. They don’t set the intermediate milestones necessary for moving from “Point A” to “Point Z,” and they don’t visualize themselves actually taking those intermediate actions.

So rather than simply visualizing that house, vacation, car, family, life you want to obtain …

… remember to visualize yourself doing what it takes to get those things. Then be sure to actually do those things you’ve been visualizing!

I’ll close with a brief example, in which you want to obtain your dream house.

Visualize your dream house every morning. That’s Step #1. But also visualize every morning what you must do on that specific day in order to get closer to owning this property. If you need to earn more money, then visualize yourself doing the marketing, talking to the sellers and closing the necessary deals.

So, feel free to use “The Law of Attraction”...

…but then be sure to use what I’ve talked about in this lesson - my own self-titled “Law of Implementation” for actually putting your best intentions to work.

Go ahead! (And have fun!)