Auschwitz Concentration Camp

The Secret’s Answer- It’s All Their Fault

Rhonda Byrne (author of The Secret) explains tragedy and human suffering as “thought frequency being on the same frequency as the event”:

Often [people] recall events in history where masses of lives were lost, and they find it incomprehensible that so many people could have attracted themselves to the event. By the law of attraction, they had to be on the same frequency as the event. It doesn’t necessarily mean they thought of that exact event, but the frequency of their thoughts matched the frequency of the event. If people believe they can be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they have no control over outside circumstances, those thoughts of fear, separation, and powerlessness, if persistent, can attract them to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

According to Byrne’s view of the Law of Attraction, people facing tragedy, on some level, willed their own suffering.

Steve Pavlina’s Answer- It’s All Your Fault

Steve Pavlina explains that subjective reality answers our question about tragedy/suffering and the Law of Attraction. Subjective reality is the belief that 1) there is only one consciousness, 2) you are that consciousness, and 3) everything and everyone in your reality is a projection of your thoughts.

According to Pavlina’s view of the Law of Attraction, people are facing tragedy, on some level, because you willed their suffering. The more you think about tragedy, the more you’ll see it expand in your subjective reality.

Could the Experts be Wrong?

Neither answer seems correct- both are still basically saying “If a tsunami kills thousands of victims, it’s either your fault or the fault of the victims.” Both answers perpetuate a blame-the-victim or blame-yourself mentality, and make people feel responsible for events outside of their control. Let’s take a closer look at the case for and against the idea that we each have complete control over our lives.

The Case Against Complete Control: Shit Happens

In the words of J.H. Holmes, “The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent.” Natural and man-made disasters happen all the time. Fires. Tornadoes. Floods. Diseases. Murders. Wars. These are tragedies of which we often have little control over. While it is important to do as much as we can to prevent these tragedies from occurring, we shouldn’t expect that our efforts to change external conditions will immediately improve our lives.

Footage from the December 26, 2004 Sumatran Tsunami:

The Case For Complete Control: Our Thoughts Do Impact Our Health, Lifespan, and Success

Research has shown us that positive thinking works. Dr. Martin Seligman, the director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center, and author of Learned Optimism, has studied optimists and pessimists for 25 years. His research has found that positive-thinking optimists:

• Get better results than pessimists in most areas of life
• Live longer
• Are healthier
• Do better at work and in school
• Have fewer depressions
• Have more friends and better social lives

By contrast, negative-thinking pessimists:

• Thinking style leaves vulnerable to depression
• Produces inertia rather than activity in the face of setbacks
• Feels bad subjectively–blue, down worried, anxious
• Self-fulfilling; pessimists don’t persist in the face of challenges and thus fail more frequently (even when success is attainable)
• Is associated with poor physical health
• Even when pessimists turn out to be right, they still feel worse than the deluded optimists

Compromise: We Don’t Have Complete Control Over Outside Events, but We Do Have Control of Our Inner Experience of Those Events

After looking at the evidence for and against complete control of our lives, a compromise is what provides us with the right answer. You don’t have complete control over outside events, but you do have control of how you experience those events. For example, you cannot choose whether or not you get in a car accident. But if you get in a car accident, and are injured, you can choose how to respond to that injury.

Victor Frankl, holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, explains:

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you respond to a situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.

So you can’t choose for a negative or positive situation to happen to you- but you can choose how to respond to the situations which you are given in life.

Changing Our Mindset about The Law of Attraction

The current Law of Attraction mindset promotes a blame-the-victim mentality, and makes people mistakenly believe they are responsibility for events that are out of their control. If we are to continue to experiment with and tell others about The Law of Attraction, we first need re-define it:

The Old Law of Attraction versus The New Law of Attraction

The Old Law of Attraction: Our lives are a result of the things we think about.

The New Law of Attraction: Our responses to life are a result of the things we think about.

Sure, the idea of having complete control of our lives gives us a sense of security, as we are led to believe that we are able to exert control over the great forces of the universe. But is that sense of security not a false one?

Help Popularize The New Law of Attraction

The Law of Attraction helps us visualize our responses to life. It helps enable positive thinking and personal growth. But the current popular thinking about it is wrong. If you are in agreement that it is time to change our mindset about The Law of Attraction, and would like to tell others, please use the Share This button below. If you have a blog, please share this post with your readers.

photo credit: Mädchen aus Ostberlin, grave-digger

Napoleon Hill

Thought, backed by strong desire, has the tendency to transmute itself into its physical equivalent.

-Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich

The Law of Attraction explains that you attract into your life whatever you think about. With the recent popularity of The Secret, and resurgence of books such as Think and Grow Rich, there has been a lot of new attention focused on The Law of Attraction. Science has also started providing new evidence to support The Law of Attraction- neurologists have found that simply thinking changes the brain. Recent books, such as Evolve Your Brain, explain the science behind The Law of Attraction in great detail:

The more we think the same thoughts, which produce the same chemicals, causing the body to have the same feelings, the more we become physically modified by our thoughts.

-Joe Dispenza, Evolve Your Brain

Unfortunately, the popularity of the Law of Attraction has also made available a lot of new material on the subject that is either 1) dumbed down for the masses, or 2) inaccurate. Clay Collins wrote and excellent post about this. The inaccurate information about the Law of Attraction leads to frustration when people try to manifest their intention and fail. In my own experience in manifesting my intentions, I’ve found three failures/mistakes that inhibited “the secret” from working:

3 Ways to Fail at Manifesting Your Intention

1) Not accepting your present reality

So long as we cannot accept what we are at any moment, we cannot change. Put yourself on the side of reality versus trying to fight reality.

-Nathaniel Branden, Honoring the Self

Before you can even begin to manifest your intention using the Law of Attraction, you must first accept your current reality, your current emotions, and your current life in its entirety. When you have a perfect vision of what you want to manifest in your life, but don’t accept your present, that is a recipe for disaster. You must fully accept and validate yourself and all of your emotions, with the goal of achieving your vision.

2) Basing your intention on a false belief

If you are basing your intention on a false belief, such as believing that more money will make you significantly happier, you will fail at manifesting. You may enjoy imagining how happy you will be after manifesting on your completely unrealistic, false belief. But your imagination is as far as the manifestation will go if it is based on a false belief.

3) No energy/emotion in what you are trying to manifest

Steve Pavlina wrote a great article about this, which explains, “Great content + no energy = an intention that won’t manifest anything but frustration.” For example, if you recite or meditate on your intention each day, but have no emotion attached to it, you won’t see results.

This also ties in with the #2 way of failing to manifest (basing your intention on a false belief), because if you are trying to manifest an intention based on a false belief, there’s only so much energy/emotion you will put into manifesting before you realize you are fooling yourself.