We really are what we think. The Law of Attraction
“The law of attraction states that whatever you focus on, think about, read about, and talk about intensely, you’re going to attract more of into your life.” Jack Canfield
“You want to become aware of your thoughts, you want to choose your thoughts carefully and you want to have fun with this, because you are the masterpiece of your own life.” Joe Vitale
“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” Albert Einstein
“A person is only limited by the thoughts that he chooses.” James Allen
Quick Summary
“We attract to our lives what our dominant thoughts are”
Introduction
The Secret
I had always equated this movie and law to some sort of hocus pocus theory. The key with all laws and theories is that they are proven to be either true or false over time. If a concept keeps on getting referred to time and time again over a lengthy period of time then there must be some proof in the pudding. There is literally no smoke without fire.
Oprah would not put her reputation on the line and many other prominent personalities unless there is some truth to what is been said. When you witness the big hitters doing something there must be something cooking and sizzling in the kitchen. Always study what people do not what they say. Look for those with the results you are seeking and great outcomes in their lives, they must be onto something.
As I investigate deeper into the theory I realise that the foundation of all success is rooted in self belief. It all starts when we are children. When we get convinced by our parents we can be anything we want to be they are instilling that important trait of self belief in us. That constant encouragement and them leading by example is what matters in life.
When we are told to try and try again until we make it there is a hidden truth and gem. We are letting our brains practice and get used to success. Building this momentum and success thinking is vital and translates to great results over time.
Power of the Mind
What separates man from any other animal is our ability to create and think. This is what has cemented the superiority of man over other animals. All man made objects ranging from the tiniest devices like buttons to the most complicated machinery like a space rocket were all devised from the imagination of man.
This ability to create and invent is held by all men but we do not exercise and nurture this ability as often as we should. We all have the ability to create our own reality but we have never exercised this power. We let others exercise this power over us and we sit as passive participants and watch them succeed. We then ask ourselves why we never dared do it.
All it takes is courage to go forth and be counted. You can invent a new widget, write a book, write a song, write a movie script. It’s all within our power but we do not realise this or exercise this power.
Self talk our dominant thoughts
The entire premise of the Law of Attraction is built on our most dominant thoughts shifting and manipulating our reality. If we believe we are good at something we tend to excel at that endeavour. If we believe we cannot do something we tend to fail at it. The brain is a neutral machine and will always obey our conscious and sub conscious commands.
Our actions will always reflect our thoughts and that’s why the Law of Attraction can be equated to the habit of thought. Abundant thoughts will generate abundant circumstances and thoughts of scarcity and ill strife will always generate conditions of scarcity and turmoil. Predominant thoughts of ill health will always generate the corresponding ill health in our bodies.
This is a law of a nature proven time and time again. Your outer reality will always match your inner reality. Your outer circumstances will always align with your inner thoughts. Self talk and our inner voice control our lives. What we tell ourselves is what we eventually become over time. You are literally limited by what you believe and what you tell yourself each and every day of your life.
In his book, 10 minute mental toughness, Jason Selk a sports psychology consultant who has worked with many top athletes recounts the story of an American athlete by the name of Sean Townsend who was competing in the Gymnastics. He had failed to make it to the Olympic Games in 2004 due to a knee injury.
Sean decided to commit himself to recover and contend for a position in the 2008 Olympic Games. Many people had written him off and were surprised to see him compete in the national trials in 2007. He eventually won the national trials. He credits the win to his self talk which helped him focus on each individual routine and set.
I will pick out important phrases out of this book that relate to self talk
“ A performance statement is a specifically designed form of self-talk. Self-talk is the conversation that goes on in a person’s head throughout the day. It is said that the average person has up to sixty thousand thoughts per day—that’s a lot of self-talk. The unfortunate thing about those thoughts is that the majority tend to embody self-doubt or negativity. If we do not choose our thoughts carefully they can (and many times do) have a negative impact on performance”
Self-talk is one of the most influential agents for honing self confidence. Extensive research in the sport psychology world confirms that an athlete’s internal dialogue significantly influences performance. Athletes who have negative self-talk will generally experience poor performance; conversely, when athletes keep their minds focused on positive performance cues, they are more likely to experience success.
Also in this book Jason Selk goes on to state “The field of sport psychology has identified self-efficacy (self-confidence) as the most influential mental variable in controlling performance. This means that if you have a strong belief in your ability to perform well, then the chances of your actually performing well greatly improve”.
Athletes visualize success outcomes to enhance self-confidence. They identify the most beneficial thoughts to have and then condition their minds to be able to maintain those thoughts more fully throughout training sessions and competition”
Do you remember the late Cassius Clay also known as Muhammad Ali. He was one of the greatest heavyweight boxing champions the world has ever witnessed. He said “I am the greatest. I said that even before I knew I was. I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.”This self talk and belief propelled him to be the best.
Watch the speeches of billionaires or millionaires. They exude self confidence and belief. They would not be in that position without having massive self confidence which comes out of their inner self talk.
Start disengaging from everyday normal banter and start listening to and reading positive material. If you really have to watch television or social media please be discriminative and restrict yourself to positive programs. It is really essential to build positive self talk and a CAN DO mentality.
The Power of the Mastermind
You find the power of peers, friends and mentors coming into play when you consider the Law of Attraction. If you are exposed to abundance each and every day and to individuals who think abundantly your thoughts will tend to change and align to abundance.
You will always find out that a greater percentage of business people, sales men are better off than those in the formal employment sector. This is always attributed to the fact that business men and women are always trying to expand their world each and every day. They reach out more to people and do not operate in a closed eco system like employees.
In my capital city of Kampala we have the most prominent real estate moguls in a club called ‘Kwagalana’. They formed this group at their own initiative to discuss all matters real estate plus engage in their own welfare. There are numerous stories of investment groups that have lifted themselves out of dire poverty by combining resources and capital to invest in areas they would never have attempted to invest as individuals.
Uganda‘s economy my home country was most prosperous when farmers had cooperative societies that assisted them direct their production and marketing activities. With the collapse of these cooperative societies went the marketing and bargaining power of the farmers. Their individual welfare and prosperity declined.
In neighbouring Kenya their largest home grown bank ‘Equity bank’ was started during a conversation at a golf club in Nairobi. The founding member made his proposal known to those present and asked those who were willing to invest with him to make their intentions known. Some individuals at the club scoffed at him but others felt the idea had merit and invested with him.
40 years down the line this bank has outmuscled international multinational banks like Barclays and become the dominant player in the Kenyan Financial services industry. It’s investors have become billionaires it all started with a conversation and a long term vision to succeed.
Successful business men and women predominant thoughts are on the offense gaining more revenue and income as opposed to those who are fixated on a regular income. Even though you started with a scarcity mindset and get exposed over time to successful individuals over time your thinking changes internally and your predominant actions and habits then change which changes your outer circumstances eventually.
Benjamin Franklin one of the founding fathers of America mentioned the virtue of having a great mastermind group. He formed one in his early youth where they discussed various topics of the day which included morals, politics and natural philosophy and debated upon them each Friday. Each member also chose a book to read and produced an essay about this book each quarter.
This invariably helped hone his political and presentation skills which were used to great effect during the fight for independence by the Americans.
Changing our mental references/Affirmations/Vision Board
A book that references the Law of Attraction indirectly is Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins. He talks about the power of massive action and changing our life experience as fast as we can. Our brain and subconscious work on memories. You can start creating good and great memories as fast as you can by creating more experiences as fast as you can. He called these creating mental references.
Creating a mental file of better and more vivid experiences changes our outer reality quite fast. This is the entire premise of the law of attraction. We can take this further by actually cheating our brains. There is a reason that affirmations and visualisation work.
We are imprinting a new reality into our sub conscious. Once we create a different inner reality we will force circumstances to adapt to this inner reality. We are literally changing the internal standards of our self talk and believing we can accomplish more. This is why a bucket list vision board and other tools that inspire us are vital.
We can reprogram our brains literally by visualizing ourselves already performing an action. The best athletes and performers use this technique in their everyday practice and performance. They constantly visualize successful performances.
Creating the Burning Desire
In his book Think and Grow Rich Napoleon Hill talks about creating a burning desire and the fuel to succeed. Thoughts, emotions and imagery are a powerful combination that fuels our ambitions. That is why you need to expose yourself to better thoughts, images and visions of yourself experiencing, tasting and feeling success.
Get to a state where we burn with desire to achieve our dreams. Visualise our dreams and goals it helps propel us faster to our targets. That was the secret explained and revealed in Napeleon’s hill’s book. We need to drill and burn this repeatedly into our subconscious mind that we truly become what we truly desire.
Every waking hour and minute our focus should be on what we want and not what we do not want. The redirection of our thoughts is paramount to our overall success and well being.
Thoughts are energy. Why do we feel hungry and ravenous after thinking for some time? The reason is that our brains burn up energy as we come up with thoughts. A thought is naturally turned to physical reality over time. We tend to become what we think and do. Energy follows focus.
Deeply spiritual people live happier lives. Their simple faith allows them to connect to the wonders of the universe without too much logic interfering in their thought patterns. This simple faith allows them to experience universal truths and delight. This is the realm of quantum physics and science.
Albert Einstein believed in God as he knew even the simplest atom must have been created by a Being larger than ourselves. Thoughts are pure energy and we need to respect their power. We have to trust in our abilities as creators. Any object we use was once in the imagination of its creator.
Avoid negativity like the plague
Yes avoid negativity in your environment. Banish that word impossible and can’t do from your inner vocabulary. That is why Napoleon Bonaparte the great French general stated that impossible is a word only to be found in the dictionaries of fools.
Avoid negative people if you can and have as little to do with them as possible. It’s literally a life and death situation you are playing with fire if you allow negative people and negative self talk to dominate your everyday life. I have personally suffered the trauma of bad bosses and negative relatives and I know what it can to do to your self esteem.
Here is a passage from Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography that shows the detrimental effect of negative people
“There are croakers in every country, always boding its ruin. Such a one then lived in Philadelphia; a person of note, an elderly man, with a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking; his name was Samuel Mickle. This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopt one day at my door, and asked me if I was the young man who had lately opened a new printing house.
Being answered in the affirmative, he said he was sorry for me, because it was an expensive undertaking, and the expense would be lost; for Philadelphia was a sinking place, the people already half-bankrupts, or near being so; all appearances to the contrary, such as new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his certain knowledge fallacious; for they were, in fact, among the things that would soon ruin us.
And he gave me such a detail of misfortunes now existing, or that were soon to exist, that he left me half melancholy. Had I known him before I engaged in this business, probably I never should have done it.
This man continued to live in this decaying place, and to declaim in the same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there, because all was going to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him give five times as much for one as he might have bought it for when he first began his croaking.”
There is a reason we are always told to do our own due diligence and study the results of the adviser before we take their counsel. What are the external results and the opinions of others about the adviser. If they do not hold up take their advise with a pinch of salt.
Take Action
Apply these techniques of the law of attraction. These can be implemented immediately.
- Right before you go to sleep
Remember your experiences through the day. Turn the negative ones to positive experiences in your mind and put emotion in them before you sleep. Seek for for the answer from God and the Universe. You can ask for anything and also ask for solutions to problems that are troubling you. Ask and it shall be given. As has been proven time and time again by many inventors and successful people when you sleep on a problem you usually get the perfect answer the next day.
- Prepare and list out your top 3 actions for the next day and visualise success
You have always heard the admonition to always get ready for the next day the night before. Rehearse mentally how you will perform the activities and visualise a successful outcome. This is the Law of Attraction working indirectly. Rehearsing that sales pitch, preparing mentally to write a report is you visualising success before it has already happened.
- Learn how to meditate and the distinctions between Beta, Alpha and Theta Conscious states
Using meditation techniques visualise what you want and also get solutions to your problems
- Finally take massive action on your key dreams and goals each and every day do not sleep unless you have taken massive action
Further Reading
The Essential Law of Attraction Collection – Esther and Jerry Hicks
Ask and it is Given – Abraham Hicks
The Silva Mind Control method – Joe Silva
As a man thinketh – James Allen
Think and Grow Rich – Napoleon Hill
The Monk who sold his Ferrari by Robin Sharma
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Thanks for the compliment