With my mental state being a bit in flux as of late, I find myself scouring the recesses of my mind for some of the items that I’ve added to my toolkit over these past years of doing self-work. One of the items that keeps popping to front of mind is the power of attraction. Now this may be a divisive subject for some people. I am not here to proselytize on the matter – I’m not here to convince you that what I’m saying is 100% true, or that if you suddenly start to think you’re going to win a million dollars in the lottery that you’re going to win a million dollars in the lottery. I’m just here to talk about energy, positivity, attraction and abundance.
The book The Secret was a smash new age/self-help hit in the early 2000s. Whether good or bad, it propelled the notion of the law of attraction into the mainstream and got everyone (and their mother) talking about it. I’ll be honest and say that I was working in a book store at the time of the publication of The Secret and I thought it was garbage. But I still sold boxes upon boxes upon boxes of this book. In today’s world, I still am not a fan of the book, but I do buy in to the philosophy behind the book. Namely that where you put your focus brings amplification.
In simple words, if you spend most of your day focusing on how shitty the weather is, and how much you hate your job, and how your credit card bills are racking up and you can never get ahead on paying them, and that you’ve got a gangrenous growth forming on your left buttock, so you can’t sit down comfortably, which makes it really hard to work because you have to be at your desk for a job you already said you hated anyhow, so why do I want to keep working there if it just hurts my ass all the time? Okay, my brain is starting to hurt. But you get my drift. Negative Nelly (sorry to any Nelly’s out there!). I think we can all say that we not only know a couple of these individuals, but have likely been these individuals on occasion. If you have ever had one of those days, it’s often very difficult to pull yourself out of that downward spiral. You get caught in a negative mind loop. I always visualize it as a vortex, or whirlpool, and you get caught into the current and it sucks you in down and down you go until you can’t escape. That’s a scary place to be.
On the other side of that coin is the Positive Polly. (Again, my apologies to any Polly’s out there) Here we find your hippy-dippy, always-smelling-like-patchouli, rainbow-chasing, want-to-punch-them-in-the-face-because-they-are-always-smiling people who just lapped up books like The Secret. These people see the world through rose-coloured lenses and think that everything is great and that everything will work out just perfectly in the end. They also get caught in a vortex, but this one is going in the other direction. It’s an ascending vortex of positivity (imagine a happy tornado!). But this is also a problematic place to be.
You may be wondering why I wouldn’t want to live stuck inside a tornado of happiness and positivity. It’s because that’s not the real world. Neither is the whirlpool of woe (I should trademark these…) We live in a world of highs and lows. My mentor/coach François Lemay helped shape the way I’ve learned this view of the world. He explains it through picturing a sine wave (see the image below). Life is a series of ups and downs. While it’s great to be in the high of the crest, it is not sustainable to remain there. Growth happens through challenge. If you live a life of perfect bliss, eventually you lose the thrill of it. It becomes too routine. You need to “suffer” some setbacks so that you can better appreciate when you surpass them and continue to grow.
“Where’s he going with all of this?” you might ask. Learning to ride those waves is the goal of life. If you get stuck in the bottom, you get depressed and you’re miserable. You live your life in the highs and things get stagnant and boring because there is no challenge. The trick is to learn how to not only live the lows, but appreciate them. When you pull yourself out of that swell and ride the crest to the top, you feel like you’re flying high. But don’t get too comfortable at the top, because that wave is eventually going to crash into the beach. If you’re not ready for it, you’ve got a face full of sand. Learn how to stay in the lows a little less, and ride the highs a little more.
This bring us back to my law of attraction. While I don’t buy into the whole “if I keep saying I’m going to win the lottery…” scenario from earlier, I do fully believe that you see, and attract the same energy you are putting out to the world. So if you focus on nothing but negative things, you’re going to see mostly negative things. If you can learn to flip that thought process and focus on what IS good in your life (because there is always something, even if it’s miniscule), you’ll begin to notice more good things, and more good things, and before you know it, you’ve nearly got a smile on your face!
I’m a big believer in mantras. One that I’ve been using for a few years is I accept abundance into my life. I routinely say this to myself, sometimes out loud sometimes internally. I’ve repeated it ad infinitum and can say with total honesty that I have an amazingly abundant life. Is it all because I’ve been repeating a mantra? Maybe it is. Maybe it’s coincidence. All I know is that I have been much more abundant since starting to tell myself that I am abundant and welcoming abundance (in all its forms) into my life. Now what do I mean by abundance? Some people associate it fully with money. I see it as much more. Though I am in a comfortable place financially (for the first time in my adult life), I have so much more abundance in my life. I have an abundance of freedom, of free time, of creativity, of patience, of energy, of opportunities, of love, of gratitudes, of food, of comfort, of books, of kitty cuddles, of t-shirts (just ask my wife). In short, I have an abundance of abundance. And for this I am eternally grateful. Because I accept abundance into my life. I accept abundance into my life. I accept abundance into my life.
And I am an excellent fucking receiver!
Are you riding the whirlpool of woe? How about the tornado of happiness? Have you been riding the highs or lows too much lately? Where do you want to put your attention and focus tomorrow and the rest of the week? It’s your choice.
Musings of A Boxhead 