You’ve probably heard about the Law of Attraction (LoA) that says if you want something badly enough you’ll draw it into your life. This is an axiom that’s been around for years, but does it work? Is all you have to do is wish for something hard enough, and you’ll have it?
No.
The problem with wanting something so badly is that it actually creates a scarcity. According to dictionary.com, some of the definitions of the word want mean, “Absence of deficiency of something desirable or requisite, lack, the state of being without something desired or needed, the state of being without the necessaries of life, destitution, poverty, a sense of lack,” and more.
When you want something, you’re actually creating a lack of that very thing in your life!
This all goes back to the LoA then, where like energy attracts like energy. If you’re spending all your time focusing on what you are missing and creating that want in your life, you’re going to create more want—in this case, more emptiness, more lack—because of where you place your attention.
The Law of Attraction
In order to understand how to get the LoA working in your favor, you first have to understand the science behind it. Physics teaches us that like energy always attracts like energy. Yes, it’s fine to have a goal, to envision it, and to work towards making it manifest. That’s how the LoA works in your favor.
When that goal gets out of balance, when it turns into something just short of desperation, that’s where the problem arises. In this instance, you’re not really making any effort to reach your goal. Instead, you’re focusing on that goal being tantalizingly out of reach; you want for it, rather than you desire to make it come to pass. It’s a subtle, but vital, difference.
The mind is a very powerful tool in this instance. That is why it’s possible to want something too much. Wanting makes you miserable. It focuses on what’s missing in your life. It invokes the LoA in a negative way, often with some challenging consequences.
Setting Yourself up for Failure
You learn from an early age to want something. As a baby you cry because you want food, and as a toddler you cry because you didn’t get what you wanted. As a child you make out lists of what you want for the holidays. As a student you have a ‘wishlist’ on internet shopping sites. You might have created a gift registry at department stores when you set up home with a partner.
Society runs on want, and it’s why so many people are unhappy. The media tells us you’re supposed to want this car, or want to wear these clothes, to listen to this music, or want to look like this icon—and if you don’t, then you’re some kind of an outcast, you don’t want the same things as everyone else, so therefore you’re wrong!! What kind of message is that sending?
Want has become so much a part of daily language that it’s contributing to your downfall. You might even tell the waitress, “I want coffee,” rather than perhaps saying, “I’d like coffee.” Same message, but such a different energy is created by the alternative wording! This is called empowered language.
It’s easy to do, but much harder to really get into the habit of using, particularly in today’s materialistic society!
Creating Success
In order for the LoA to work in a positive way in your life, you have to change your mindset. Start looking at what you have as if the thing you desire is already a done deal. This creates purpose, rather than want. It also gives you a blueprint on how to work backwards from your goals to where you are now, so that you have a path to follow to your desired outcome.
It’s fine to have dreams and to build your castles in the air. That’s where they belong! If they just stay there, though, then you’re not going to accomplish anything. You have to work to build the foundations under those castles and then pull them into reality with you in order to see them become a reality.
If you don’t then your goals are going to remain wishes, no matter how badly you want them. There’s that word again!
Positive Outcomes
It’s not always going to work. Sometimes you keep running into a brick wall because it’s just not what you’re meant to have or meant to be doing in your life. It could be that it’s the wrong time, or simply that the universe has other plans for you.
Usually, though, the reason you aren’t successful is because you get in your own way and create a resistance to what you want coming toward you.
Let’s say someone asks you to go out for a meal and you don’t have the money to do so. It’s so easy to say, “I can’t afford it,” and boom, you’ve created scarcity! What else could you have said? That gets heavy, doesn’t it?! When you apply empowered language, “I want this,” becomes, “I’m making this happen.”
It turns “My life is lacking because this isn’t here,” into “My life is richer because I’m making this manifest.” The LoA works, it really does. It’s just so misunderstood! It strengthens where you aim your attention. You have to have laser-like focus in order to draw your desires to you, and not to increase the space between where you are now and the goal you want to achieve.
Far too often people moan the LoA doesn’t work, and that’s rubbish. It has to work; it’s a law of physics! The reality is that the focus was placed on the want, rather than on the goal.
Related Article: 3 Easy Ways To Strengthen Your Relationship Using The Law Of Attraction