Have you ever tried to create anything by using the Law of attraction - only to fail miserably? If so, rather than concluding the Law is a scam for gullible fools you might want to consider trying a special 'twist' suggested by Esther Hicks, author of the famous Abraham Hicks series of written and audio materials on the Law of attraction.
The Law of attraction simply states that 'like is attracted to like'. What this means in a practical sense is that where we predominantly place our attention creates what eventually shows up in our lives. We get what we think about, whether we want it or not,because our attention, our energy, is inviting events and experiences into physical reality.
There's nothing especially "woo woo" or mystical about this. If, for some reason, green Honda Accords become important to you, you will start noticing them everywhere. Likewise, if we realize how much we enjoy the company of happy, successful people we will naturally notice and be attracted to these folks whenever we run across them.
So it's obvious that if we want to make changes in our lives it's important to notice where we're placing our attention. If we continually focus on what's "wrong" we are certain to find reasons to be upset and unhappy. Conversely, if we expect to be successful we will notice opportunities and resources that the depressed and unhappy person will never see because they're too busy being miserable.
The problem is that we live in a very negative culture. I once conducted a week-long experiment involving the evening news. Every night I recorded the number of stories presented and then noted which ones were negative and which were positive. The positive ones were in the single digits and even those were accompanied by a warning. A gloomy newscaster looked ominously at the camera, remarking that everything was OK... for now. The implication was that this positive state of affairs wouldn't last long.
We are all drowning in a sea of negativity! This constant misery may sell magazines and newspapers but it surely doesn't help us to create joyful conditions in our lives!
So how can we turn this around?
"Watching Your Thoughts" = Exercise in Futility
The classic advice is to "watch your thoughts". In other words, as much as possible pay attention to what you're thinking so that you can catch yourself when you go negative and turn that thought around by finding something positive.
This advice has been offered for centuries - but it's not very helpful for anyone interested in using the Law of attraction.
1. First, it's exhausting. Dr. Deepak Chopra mentions that the average person has about 60,000 thoughts per day. How can anyone pay attention to such an overwhelming mass of thoughts? We would have the energy to do nothing else.
2. It's destructive advice because we would be so inwardly focused that we would have no attention left for anything that is going on around us. This means we're not getting feedback from our environment or our actions. And this feedback is critical to any successful venture because without it we don't know what's working and what's failing so that we can make course corrections.
3. It's just plain impossible! Thoughts cascade through our mind at incredible speeds and we will get lost in them in seconds and forget to observe what's actually going on in our heads. Perhaps Buddhist monks who've meditated every day for 25 years can pull this off - but the rest of us simply cannot.
So, any effort to monitor our thoughts is almost 100% certain to fail and we will be left feeling even more hopeless than before.
Fortunately, the Abraham Hicks materials offers a much easier solution that Esther Hicks calls our "Emotional Guidance System". Quite simply all we need to do is pay attention to our emotions! That is, when we notice we're beginning to be angry or depressed or upset in any way, we can choose to change the direction of our thoughts.
How? There is ALWAYS something to be joyful about! It might be as simple as how easy the commute to work was this morning, or pleasure at the sight of your delicious lunch or the fact that it's a beautiful day and the birds are singing right outside your window. There is always a way to change our emotional direction and there is always something to be joyful about - we often just don't notice.
By deliberately seeking reasons to feel joyful you are guaranteed to attracted more causes for joy into your life, just as you can also invite misery. As president Abraham Lincoln once said, "People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be."
Using the Abraham Hicks Emotional Guidance takes some practice - but it's infinitely easier and wiser than the impossible, exhausting job of monitoring your thoughts. And the payoffs for making this effort will amaze you.
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