Change Your Thoughts, And You Can Change Your Life

I’m going to talk about the law of attraction.

I know most of you have probably heard about it by now. You also probably have one of three opinions about it:

1. it’s new-agey, and you’re no hippy.
2. you don’t know enough about it to form an opinion.
3. you recognize a truth in it and apply it, but feel that you haven’t mastered it.

Whatever your opinion, hear me out. I want to help you the way the person who taught me about the law of attraction helped me.

This is an account of my own experience and thoughts about the law of attraction. I’ve found that it’s a very powerful tool to transform your entire life into something better. I’d go so far as to say it’s the ultimate life hack.

The law of attraction is this: your thoughts and actions dictate your reality.

Therefore, if you believe yourself to be sick, you are sick. If you believe money flows to you easily and often, money flows to you easily and often. If you feel lonely, you repel the company of others. If you feel socially accepted and powerful, you shine in front of others. If you convinced yourself that you’re no longer an actor who played the wheelchair-bound kid in Degrassi, but instead are a chart-topping rapper, you’re Drake.

I know it’s tough to wrap your mind around the idea that your beliefs shape your reality, because our typical ideology in the western world goes something like: “life is hard and will be hard until we get lucky or work enough to escape the cycle.”

It’s unfortunate that so many people accept this idea as truth, because it’s wrong.

Further, that mindset is dangerous. The reason so many of us feel stuck in shitty jobs and situations is because we hold that mindset as the truth. That mindset reinforces the idea that there isn’t enough for everyone. It creates greed, and nothing good ever comes from that.

“But there isn’t enough,” you say. Why not?

“But life is hard, and only a few people make it,” you say. Why?

Because someone told you that? Because everyone told you that? Because “that’s the way it is?”

Why?

Sure, those statements are true, but statistics don’t prove why they’re true.

For the remainder of this article, entertain the idea that those statements are true because the majority of people haven’t accepted the law of attraction as truth instead.

When I first heard about the law of attraction five years ago, I was skeptical, too. When we’re presented information that contradicts our entire belief system, we want proof before we blindly follow.

I decided to make an effort to apply the law to my life, but I also did research. A lot of research. I wanted facts.

Since then, I’ve built a library of over 500 books spanning topics of religion, metaphysics, alchemy and biology. I took recommendations, pored over shelves in used bookstores and were given several titles in unexpected ways. Most of the books entertained me. Some of the books were bullshit. Many of them weren’t. A few gave me bits of the information I was looking for.

I still read all the time, as often as I can, but very little of what I read concerns the law of attraction. These days, most of my books are for entertainment or general curiosity of a specific topic. This is because it didn’t take long for me to become convinced that the law of attraction is very real.

For those of you who are science-minded, I want to tell you about an experiment that took place in 1994 involving water, consciousness and intent.

Dr. Masaru Emoto proved that intentions influence physical reality by developing a technique using a powerful microscope and high-speed photography. Dr. Emoto discovered that crystals formed in frozen water reveal changes when specific, concentrated thoughts are directed towards them. His experiment shows that water from clear springs and water exposed to loving words like “I love you” shows brilliant, complex and colorful snowflake patterns. In contrast, polluted water or water exposed to negative intentions like “I hate you” forms incomplete, asymmetrical and dull-colored patterns. Dr. Emoto was able to replicate this experience around Japan and the U.S. to show that indeed, our attitudes and emotions affect not only the ourselves, but the environment around us.

So the next logical question then is why isn’t the results of this experiment applied in every day life? My answer to that would be that the current belief systems in the Western world don’t allow for those ideas to dominate mass consciousness. We have to get to a point first where we’re open to new ideas and laws that have the potential to change the world.

Yes, change the world. If we can shift our collective thoughts of scarcity, fear and greed to thoughts of abundance, love and gratitude, we’ll find ourselves – and the world – in a much better position.

How do we do that?

On a small scale. In utilizing the law of attraction, we affirm to ourselves that anything and everything is available to us for the taking. Not because we have to take something from someone else, but because or natural state of being is that things will, and do, work out.

You can’t remember, but when you were developing in your mother’s womb, you didn’t look down and think, “my god, I have no hands! What if my hands never develop?”

They just did.

When you learned to walk, you didn’t fall down and think, “Well, I guess this two-legged movement thing just isn’t for me.” Something propelled you forward, and now look at you, gliding around the neighborhood with a pair of Martens on.

By changing our own beliefs about why and how things work out – because of intent rather than blind luck – we transform ourselves from victims to conscious creators.

As you apply the law, you will gain traction and find irrefutable personal evidence of things working in your favor.

I’m going to give you the basics on how to apply the law, but I must preface this information with the fact that things don’t work out because we want them to. They work out because we believe they already have.

Wrapping my mind around this idea was the biggest challenge I encountered in applying the law of attraction to my life. It’s tough to believe that things are good before they are. So how can we change our thoughts before our reality changes?

This is where blind faith comes in. You have to convince yourself it works before it does. Our reality usually creates our thoughts; you have to flip it, and live as if you already have what you want. Your reality will reflect it eventually, I promise.

But you can’t start by thinking, “Okay, I’ll have a million dollars when I wake up tomorrow morning.” That won’t work, and it won’t work because most of us can’t readily convince ourselves that it’s possible. And unless you can 100% convince yourself that something is real for you, it can’t manifest itself in your life.

You have to be able to live already as if you have what you want. And part of that is not wanting. Because wanting reinforces that you don’t have what you’re after.

It’s tricky, but it’s not cruel, it’s just the way the law works. Like everything else in life, the best way to master it is to practice.

My best advice for starting is to start small. The first thing I ever manifested was a to go cup from Subway. I needed to pick something that I cared little about and didn’t really want. Still, I needed it to be so specific that I couldn’t miss the sign when it came.

At the time, I worked at a tanning salon in a strip mall. In the strip mall was a Subway sandwich shop. The night before I worked, I told myself I’d find the cup in my parking spot when I went to work in the morning. It wasn’t a far-fetched idea that I could find the cup in the parking lot, so I could believe it. I envisioned what the cup would look like in my parking spot (visualization is a huge tool in manifestation) and I went to sleep.

In the morning as I drove to work, I visualized the cup again.

As soon as I turned into the parking lot, my eyes immediately darted to the spot to look for my cup. It wasn’t there. Ha ha! I thought, happily accepting that the law didn’t work so I could go back to my miserable, nihilistic existence.

But as I smiled to myself, my eyes glanced over the pavement, and there, in the middle of the parking lot, right next to my car, was the Subway cup I envisioned. I laughed to myself and realized there was something to law I so desperately wanted to dismiss.

I started visualizing parking spots I wanted when I went to the grocery store. I played games as I drove, like envisioning certain models and colors of cars that would then drive past me. I went after little things, like a free cup of coffee. I always got the things I wanted, sometimes quickly, but never immediately.

Remember, your thoughts precede your reality, but are not the cause of it. Ideas become things, not the other way around.

It took some time to build momentum. My thoughts began to change and finally, when I believed that the law worked, it started working for me in ways that actually helped me.

I started living instead of simply existing.

I can manifest money pretty quickly, mostly because I’ve been able to dismiss the idea that money is hard to come by. The other day, I went to work with the intention of making $350, an amount that’s about $200 higher than what I make on a nightly basis. When I left work, I made $258, which left me $92 short of what I indented to make. I shrugged and accepted that at least I’d made more than I usually did, but when I went to work the next day my boss pulled me aside and showed me a letter from the payroll company that said there was an outstanding check in my name from several months back. Can you guess the amount? Yeah, it was $92. Turns out, the universe has a sense of humor.

The biggest tip I can give you is to let go of resistance. Stop thinking of all the reasons something won’t work and think of the one reason it will.

I urge you to apply the law of attraction to manifest something little in your own life, if only to test the theory and prove to yourself it works. Regardless of the reasons I, or anyone else, tells you it works, we can only ever change our own minds.

So do it with a cup of coffee, or a red balloon, or a phone call from a friend you haven’t heard from in a long time, or a song you want to hear. Build your own momentum until you have no choice but to accept it as truth.

You can dismiss everything I’ve said, but what’s the harm in trying? All this untapped energy doesn’t care if you use it to your advantage or not. It’s still there for when you’re ready for it.

But if you don’t try, you’ll never know. Worst case, everything stays the same.