The Law Of Attraction and Wishful Thinking

Ever since the movie The Secret came out, I have read over and over again from many and varied sources how the Law of Attraction is merely “wishful thinking” and that it doesn’t really work the way that it is portrayed in any of the movies, books, recordings, etc. written about it.

I have even seen some people, who are otherwise huge new age and metaphysical proponents, completely bash LOA as being nothing more than delusional and wishful thinking. When asked by others why doesn’t it work the way it’s advertized to work, the ones against it say things like “it just doesn’t” or “it can’t work like that”, and “that’s just wishful thinking” and “it’s pseudoscience”.

You're kidding me, right??

The thing is that they are under the mistaken impression that all you have to do is “think about what you want and it materializes”. They believe that LOA is somehow “magic” and that those who are espousing it are claiming magical properties for it. Well, no that’s not how it works, and it’s not how anyone I’ve seen talking or writing about it has protrayed it. I read one post where the poster was sighting the story in The Secret about the young boy who “wished” for a new bike and got it. The thing is, he didn’t just “wish” for it. He visualized it. He saw it as his. He drew a picture of himself with the bike. All of these things are in fact just one thing. That thing is taking action.

In his book, “Affirmations”, Stuart Wilde talks about this very thing.


He gives an example of a young woman who dreams of being a successful Hollywood actress, yet all of her affirmations aren’t going to get her there as long as she’s still living in Kansas. He says you have to take action. You have to be emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually in a place that is as conducive as possible to achieve your desires. You see, the Universe responds whether you believe it does or not, but you will only get positive results if you believe in yourself. When you believe in yourself, you automatically put yourself in the right places at the right times. If you don’t believe in yourself, then your results are not going to turn out as you want them to.

I think, therefore, I am. I think.

Way too often we do not believe in ourselves. We’ve been conditioned all our lives that we can’t just have what we want. That we have to struggle and slog and “work hard” to achieve anything. Usually then and only then do we give ourselves permission to have what we want. Then we use terms like “I earned it” or “I worked hard for this” and because we’ve got everyone else and our egos tellings us that’s the only way to get anything, we believe it. On top of that, if we see someone else getting something that they want without any struggle or years of labor, we think they must have cheated, or that they were somehow “lucky”.

Nonsense. Utter and complete nonsense, yet we do this to ourselves our whole lives. Ask anyone who has achieved any level of greatness in most any endeavor and they’ll all basically say the same thing. They made their own luck. They had a desire, and used their imagination and thoughts and will to bring it about. However, most people don’t want to hear that because, and this is where it starts to border on insanity, that requires work and effort.

Wait… what? Didn’t they just say that it requires work and effort and struggle to achieve anything? Now, when given a sure fire recipe to achieve what they want with a minimum of effort, they say “that takes too much work.” I’ve even read several posts where people actually argue that the things they have achieved in this life was done without using their thoughts or imagination at all. Ok, let’s leave imagination out of it for a moment, and just deal with the thoughts/thinking part. To say that you achieved anything and that you didn’t use your “thoughts” to get you there, is ludicrous in the extreme. Of course you used your thoughts. Your thoughts are what brought the idea to you in the first place. You “think” things like “Hey, that person has a car, and I’d like a car of my own. Hmm, wonder how I get a car. Well, I’ll have to get some money, which means getting a job, or borrowing it, and then once I’ve gotten enough money, I’ll have to go to the dealership and figure out which one I want, and then I’ll have to think about getting insurance for it and maybe a maintainence plan and….”

Hey, wait a minute. That’s an awful lot of thoughts and thinking going on here. And that’s just for one small example. To say or even (if you’ll pardon the pun) “think” that your thinking is not involved in the creation process is just a bit on the nutty side of things.

“One mans magic is another mans engineering” – Robert Heinlein

This is the main point of this post really. There is no “magic” involved with the Law of Attraction. It’s not fairyland dreaming, or pixie dust apparitions. It is what it is. A power that works all the time, every time, for everyone. Until scientists figured out how to actually harness and use electricity, the idea of it was considered magic. Even after it was harnessed, and the first light bulb was shown to the world, people still believed it was magic, and some of them said it was evil, because it wasn’t “natural”. Yet, it didn’t matter what anyone thought or believed about electricty, because it was always there, waiting to be “discovered”. It’s no different with the Law of Attraction.

Does it matter where it comes from or how it does what it does? No, it doesn’t. The bottom line is that, just like with electricity, you either use it to your advantage, or you don’t. It’s up to you to decide how you want to live your life. On your own terms, or at the whim of “chance” and “fate”.

May you choose wisely.

In my next post, I’m going to talk about the various necessary methods and steps that will help us in achieving all that we want.

Deep Peace.

Ross – “Tolemac”