Today I want to write about something a little different, which has affected my life on a massive level, giving me the strength to chase my goals with abandon.
I want to talk about the Law of Attraction.
There are so many resources surrounding this idea. Documentaries, books, groups. It has been explored in various media substreams, and some not so sub. (Watch ‘The Secret’– really. It’s worth an hour and a half of your life. While you’re at it, watch ‘What the Bleep: Down the Rabbit Hole’, but that’s a different story… kind of.)
For those of you who haven’t stumbled across this concept in your travels, it comes down to the basic idea that the universe provides what you ask for.
It sounds like a simple idea, but that simplicity doesn’t do it justice. Simple it may be, but it’s not easy. It takes a massive change in how you perceive and approach the world. It requires you to let go of the pessimism and uncertainty that carries our culture.
I think the most misunderstood aspect of the Law of Attraction is how you ask you universe for what you want. It’s easy to write a post-it note of dreams and nail it to the ceiling over your bed. You can recite the words as a mantra a hundred times a day, but if you walk around with your head hung because nothing is working for you, nothing is what you’ll continue to get.
It requires a covenant between you and the universe. The universe is like a strict parent. You earn your allowance by filling up that bloody chore board. If you don’t take out the garbage, you lose fifty cents. You need to mindfully change yourself and remain mindful in how you approach the world.
However, if you can master the ability to take even the hardest times in stride, to thank the world for every lesson you learn, and more than that, learn to recognize the lessons and the benefits they give, you’ll thrive.
It requires work. You can’t ask for money and sit back playing video games expecting it to drop in your lap. Hell, you can’t even win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket in the first place. But, if you make the conscious decision that you need more money in your life, for the right reasons (for bettering you, rather than lessening others – this whole thing comes down to YOU), then you might find the raise you asked for comes through higher than you expected… or that book deal will come though ten times higher than you hoped.
In the writing industry, rejection built into the whole process. It’s easy to get lost in the mirk and decide you can’t do it. But take the lessons as they come, do the work, and you’ll reap the benefits.
Think of it as an extension of ‘like attracts like’. If you’re miserable and hopeless and think you’re a failure, all you’ll do is fail, because that’s what you’ve left yourself open to. But, if you walk through the hard times and the easy ones with your head high and a smile on your face, trusting that things will come through in the end, they usually do, and you’ll be a hell of a lot happier on the journey there.
I’m also not saying that bad things don’t happen to good people, or that everyone deserves everything that happens to them. We live in a world of free choice and chaos, and that chaos spills into everything, no matter how many sandbags we build against it. There will always be bad days and bad times. There will always be the next time you sob into your pillows because your ground has been yanked from beneath you. Tragedies strike without bias, leaving good people and bad on their knees.
But life is built from more than these times.
Approaching the world with gratitude and optimism and a healthy sprinkling of faith (faith in whatever you need to have faith in – God, your internal divinity, luck, Vashog – doesn’t matter), as well as a willingness to approach the hard times as lessons, can make your days that much better.
So align yourself with who and what you want to be, rather than what you’re afraid you are. You might find the difference between them is smaller than you think.
Kimberley Imrie 