According to a teaching like the law of attraction, all our experiences are a mirror of something going on in our inner world. Nothing happens randomly; there is something in our energy field that makes us a match to it.
What that something is isn’t always obvious much to our frustration, but that’s a story for another day.
Today I am answering a question that allows me to go into some detail about tuning inward to get a better idea of why certain things may be happening to us. It’s actually not as complicated or as much of a mystery as we may think.
I’d like your insight as to why something keeps happening to me – the universe brings me something I ask for, then immediately starts giving me problems with it.
For instance, the universe provided me with the gently used car I asked for but immediately it started having a bunch of stupid little problems that caused me a lot of stress. The universe gave me the foster dog I asked for, but it had some major issues that immediately caused me stress.
It seems like whenever I do get something I asked for, I get kicked in the pants for it and can’t enjoy it as I’d like to! I realize nothing is perfect, but I would expect to at least be able to enjoy these things for awhile before something going wrong. Thoughts?
Pam
There Seems to Be an Expectation of a Certain Outcome
Based on the question, it seems like this conscious creator is having this sort of outcome happen quite frequently. Now we get in theory the inner world creates the outer world, but it can often take awhile before we make a habit of turning inward and seeing what’s going on in the department of our thoughts, beliefs and feelings.
It is likely that Pam has some sort of belief that things can’t ever go smoothly, that there will always be some sort of problem, and things along those lines. Only she can know and will have to give this some thought.
This sort of belief is very common and can have far-reaching consequences, affecting things in our life both big and small.
Manifestations are always very personal and trigger exactly what would be helpful for us to see. These situations brought this issue to light and now she is getting a better idea of what is happening in her inner world.
The manifestations made her feel a certain way and are revealing to her an energy that has some good momentum behind it.
She is creating the situation–and remember, owning our role isn’t about blaming ourselves.
The Universe isn’t just fucking with her, giving her stuff she wants but then making it ‘defective’ in some way so it causes all sorts of grief. It isn’t punishing her or trying to teach her some sort of ‘lesson.’
It is just a neutral force delivering experiences based on what we have been throwing out there. When we change what we’re putting out there, our experiences have to change along with it.
Changing the Belief
Oy, this is where we really start over-complicating the process of manifesting. We are always on the lookout for what we can ‘do’ to change our limiting beliefs.
We make it way harder than it has to be, struggle mightily and then despair we’ll never make the shifts necessary to effect any real change in our experience.
But it’s actually not that hard to change beliefs. The most powerful thing you can do is simply decide you won’t believe it anymore.
Don’t underestimate the amount of energy this can activate in favor of the beliefs that will serve you and weaken the energy of the current belief.
In this case, one of the best things she can do is look to examples in her life when she received something and it was fine–nothing went wrong, nothing bad happened.
It doesn’t matter how small the incident. Nothing is insignificant and each example serves as ‘proof’ that the belief that things always go wrong or always have a problem isn’t actually true.
The things about beliefs is they tend to be absolute–always, never. On an intellectual level we may realize to some degree that this isn’t true, but emotionally, we are dealing in absolutes.
And even just one piece of evidence to the contrary starts breaking down this belief.
And as this belief breaks down, she can start putting some energy behind the expectation that things will go well, go off without a hitch, she will receive something and there will be no problems with it.
How to build that energy comes down to resonance. She might come up with an affirmation. She might write out how she wants various scenarios to play out. She might engage in a visualization.
The tool itself doesn’t matter as it doesn’t have any power in and of itself. It is useful insofar as it helps shift her focus and create positive expectation.
Be Careful of Using the Law of Attraction to Micromanage Your Life
I’m not saying this is what Pam was doing–these manifestations were significant for her because again, they were showing her something she really needed to see and giving her an opportunity to work on an energy that likely has a lot of power of behind it.
But this issue did bring this little wisdom nugget to mind and I wanted to mention it.
Now, the situations Pam mentioned aren’t exactly big, huge issues and there are countless perspectives one could adopt for any given manifestation, countless reactions.
.But they triggered certain feelings in her and had significance because they were revealing a problematic belief that like I said before, can have far-reaching consequences and manifest in all sorts of unpleasant ways.
Shifting a belief like this can make a huge impact on our lives. It is good she is catching this now rather than letting the energy keep building; when we do that, the manifestations tend to get bigger and nastier, until we can’t ignore them anymore.
It is important to pay attention to how the things we manifest make us feel. When we have strong reactions to something, when we keep manifesting situations that produce similar unpleasant feelings,etc…it’s important to take a look.
But just be careful not to fall into the trap of trying to ‘use’ the law of attraction to create some ‘perfect’ existence where nary an inconvenience touches you.
We can’t ‘use’ the law of attraction to demand that every situation turn out the way our mind wants it to. We can control our experience through managing our energy, but not by controlling everything that happens in our outer reality.
Shit happens sometimes and it’s better to just shake it off rather than go into over-analysis mode. Sometimes you might have a rude waitress, sometimes you might have car trouble, sometimes you’ll lose stuff, sometimes your dog will get sick.
I imagine in my own life for example, there are things that happen that might not happen as much if I did a bit of ‘work’ but I have bigger fish to fry energetically. I just work on choosing to respond differently so it doesn’t bother me as much.
As I work to cultivate certain energies and beliefs, things just tend to go more smoothly overall.
Again,strong reactions, lots of manifestations that all have a similar shitty feeling–that stuff you want to look at.
When it comes to things in your life that are important, like finding a relationship, changing your financial situation, making your dream business a success, you’’ll want to be more diligent with working on your energy.
Those bigger issues tend to have a lot of energetic ‘shit’ around them and we’ll have to pay more attention to what is happening so we can do the proper ‘work’ on our energy.
So, that’s my thoughts on that. Hope you found it helpful.
Your Turn
What did you think? Anything resonate in particular? Have you experienced a similar situation of always seeming to manifest the same thing over and over?
Are you having trouble staying aligned with what you want when your reality still doesn’t seem to be changing? If so, get on this Sunday’s call: Maintaining Your Energy While You Wait for Reality to Catch Up
Great post Kelli,
Perhaps a different and totally unrelated spin on Pam’s situation. For years I kept attracting to me a certain personality type. Someone who was very grating on me. No matter what I did, or how many times I changed my location or circle of friends, someone would appear with the same personality I had come to loath.
So, after several repeats, I know the problem as you mention in Pam’s case, was something inside me and not external to me. I was attracting people with these behaviors, the universe as you write was not conspiring against me.
Once I learned to appreciate these personality types for what they were, just another form of me making their way through this life, they went away, never to be seen again.
Perhaps, in Pam’s situation as you suggest Kelli, not every negative event is something planned for Pam personally, but is something Pam needs to accept as part of her life. This is Pam’s stumbling block which she needs to come into acceptance with. As you say, shit happens,
Hi Michael
Thanks, I’m glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing that example. I love it in particular because it involves our experiences with other people–it is harder to believe our energy is the ‘culprit’ and it is easy to ‘blame’ other people and think they are the problem. But then we clean things up on our end and we manifest different people into our reality or different ‘versions’ of people that are not as problematic.
Thanks for the post, Kelli. 🙂
For me personally with manifesting a relationshiip, I seem to meet men who I feel uncomfortable around in some way. Not all the time but quite a few. I’ve set an intention to manifest men who I feel at ease around but it doesn’t always work. Occcasionally I meet ones who I feel more at ease with but they tend to disappear. (I meet most of them online). I think I might partly be doing this to protect myself from getting involved with someone and getting hurt and also because I’m afraid of change. I’m going to think more about times where something worked out, like you suggested. 🙂
Hello MS
Thanks for sharing your experience. I really resonate because that was one of my main issues. I was always single and either wanting people who didn’t want me or getting involved with people and eventually it would fizzle out somehow, usually with them not wanting to take it further. I would always lament my ‘bad luck’ and what not, but I soon discovered I was afraid of really getting involved with someone in a real way and going after these ‘bad’ matches protected me from that. Once I got clear I didn’t want to do that and I was done with all that BS, I actually met Ryan not long after. It was easy, uncomplicated and I knew we would stay together.
Hi Kelli, thanks for your reply. I remember reading about your experience in one of your posts. I found it inspiring how you met Ryan. 🙂
I’ve been doing a lot of work on myself lately to discover limiting beliefs and fears and stuff and just concentrating on feeling better in myself as well, so I’ll just keep doing that and see what happens.
A looooong time before I knew anything about the LoA (like back when I was 15 or 16), I had a belief that the Universe (God) would do anything to make a liar out of me. The opposite of what I wanted to happen *always* happened, and I found myself constantly battling through crappy (angst-ridden) situations. It wasn’t until college, when my beliefs were already shifting, that I was telling a friend of mine how my mom had never had a car accident. I could feel the power building, and suddenly I was anxious that I was going to cause my mom to get into a horrible wreck and die. When I expressed this worry to my friend, she looked me dead in the eye and said, “It doesn’t work like that.” And all of a sudden, my limited belief was shattered. Just like that. Sometimes it’s helpful to have a person just come out and tell you your belief doesn’t actually mean anything. Even if just from their perspective it doesn’t work, it can be used as proof that this belief of yours is not a hard and fast “rule” of life.
One of the biggest limiting beliefs I think that people carry around is this idea that something can be “too good to be true”. I certainly manifest a lot of situations like this; for example, I had a job opportunity that was literally perfect for me in every way except two; it was an hour and a half commute, and the pay was incredibly lousy. I turned it down, even though it pained me to do so, because I know something that doesn’t have a “catch” will eventually come along at the right time. I am still working on this idea that things don’t have to have flaws, or if they do, they are things I wouldn’t mind, especially in the job front. I’m still learning to tap into my feelings instead of analyzing with my mind (which is hard now that I know I need to pay attention to them, because once I’m aware of my feelings I like to try to analyze them instead of just flowing), but I’m feeling as though I am making progress. 🙂
Hi Emjay
Thanks for your comment and sharing your experience. Your experience with your friend is a great example of how letting go of beliefs isn’t as hard as we make it out to be. Simply realizing they don’t make much sense and choosing not to believe them anymore is much more powerful than we realize. That creates an opening for energetic shifting and manifesting evidence that contradicts the belief, which then makes it even easier to let it go. I think you are right that we do have that sort of idea deeply ingrained. I think you are definitely making progress so make sure you celebrate that and be gentle on yourself with this process. We won’t be ‘perfect’ at it ever.
Hi Kelli. You have shared some excellent advice as always. I love your no-nonsense grasp of the law of attraction. When I hear someone ask, “why does this keep happening?” I want to immediately reply “because you expect it too, duh!” It’s not usually the best way to make new friends, but it is true. To me, experiencing the same thing over and over is a gift. It is showing me exactly what I need to work on.
Hi Ben
Thanks for your comment and I am glad you enjoyed the post. They may not like hearing it but I am sure it gives them something to chew on and hopefully will motivate them to look within a bit. You are right those experiences can be a good thing for us–isn’t that a beautiful perspective that cuts down on so much suffering?
I know this is an old post, but it really resonated with me. I kind of understand Law of Attraction. I am still learning, but there is still some things i just do not understand. You say its because we expect it too happen in some way so it keeps happening, but what if we didn’t? For example I just had a child with someone who doesn’t to even try to be a family now. When we got together, it was amazing and all of this was so unexpected. It was shocking when he didn’t want to try. I still don’t get it. I understand you cannot control people, and i understand i am sure i have issues to work on, but seriously I never saw that going the way it did. I really thought everything was starting to come together and I was feeling amazing even before i met him, I was happy in life but now its back to square one.
Hi Larissa
Thanks for your comment and I am glad you found the post helpful. Without talking with you personally, I can’t give any detailed insight on why this manifested and what it might be representing. It is important to examine the situation and see how it makes you feel. What fears does it triggers? What sort of beliefs are being ‘validated’ by the experience. Once you start doing that, it will become clearer why this situation happened and what it is showing you. And it is important to let yourself process your feelings…that is an important part of the healing process. If you wanted to explore this further, a one on one session could be really helpful if that resonates. Good luck
Hey thanks for the insight, I love this article!
This resonated with me a lot, as I worked very hard and am now able to manifest Amazing things!!!! But… maybe it’s some self-esteem related belief or unworhtyness feeling, manifestations do often come with problems! Well, right now I understand eventhough my mind tells me it’s hard to change a belief, I decide that it’s easy to change a belief! I now believe that I can manifest great things that are going to stay in my life and flourish in an amazing way!! The rest is history… Thanks for that Kelly!
Hi Edith
Thanks for your comment and you are right…it all comes down to a choice. That is really the only thing we can do. Sounds like you are doing great!