This post was inspired by a video by Sara K which I'll link
here, and it was the first time I had heard anyone talk about this topic before and with this viewpoint. I really loved the video and it got me thinking, and when those two things come together, I generally feel the overwhelming urge to write something, so here we are.
I feel like a lot of people online are talking about this thing called The Law of Attraction. Basically, what this concept encompasses is if you think about your goals, those things you want most in life, if you think about them enough, you will receive them. It seems to make sense, and I thought it did when I heard about it the first 100 times and I truly believed in it; now, not so much. Here's why.
In Sara K's video, she talks about the idea of resistance. It's an hour long video, and every second is honestly gold, and it is worth taking the time to sit down with a cup of tea and listen to her explain this concept and all the topics that spring from it. To put in a very, very, very small and extremely simplified nutshell, resistance is a distraction from your creative being. You probably all know and can think of many examples of what resistance is. It's telling yourself that you shouldn't bother getting out of bed because what you're doing isn't benefiting or going to benefit anyone, it's calling in sick to work or school because it just seems to hard that day, it's getting so close to your goals and letting yourself celebrate and slack off before you actually reach the finish line, procrastination is a symptom of it; it's the enemy of creativity, and it is self-made and self-inflicted.
Success is the by-product of hard work. It's not simply wanting something.
This Law of Attraction seems to revolve around this idea of instant gratification, because we live in a world where we can get so much of that and now it's all we want. We don't want to have to put in too much work to get something, we just want to be able to feel the want to have it and then get it without too much fuss on our part. The Law of Attraction feeds into this. This idea that we just need to think about something enough and we will get it. Where is the real hard work in that? The Law of Attraction seems to miss a vital step in the process. Yes, we need to think and believe in what we want, but in between wanting, believing and then receiving falls hard work, working your ass off to get whatever it is you're after, to achieve that goal you dream of. You can't just receive something or achieve something simply because you think you want it or because you think about it a lot.
Life is nowhere near as easy and as simple as the Law of Attraction would have you believe, unfortunately. If you want something you need to work hard to get there, and you need to constantly fight resistance to get there, and then keep fighting it once you get there to keep a hold of it and to make sure you don't fall into a trap of negative energy when you get there and don't know what to do next.
The Law of Attraction may have some bits and pieces within in that make sense; you do need to understand and know your goals in order to achieve them, and it's good to focus on them to remind yourself what you're working towards and remember why you do what you do every day. But it doesn't stop there, you need to work, and it's going to be hard, and there's nothing a nice sounding theory can do to take that away. We might be able to instantly gratify ourselves in many areas of our of life now thanks to the world we live in, and in some areas that's great, but when it comes to true long-term goals, life goals, the things that we really want to achieve in life, that make us proud and make us truly feel fulfilled and happy, there are no shortcuts, there is no piece of technology to make it better and there's no theory to make it easier.
