Law of Attraction: When Your Mind is Being an Uncooperative A-Hole

With a mind that has been deeply conditioned to have everything ‘make sense’, want ‘proof’ and just be kind of a negative Nelly, a concept like the law of attraction can be something that is easily rejected. It took me awhile to really buy in, and I’m sure glad I stuck it out, because it has been my main ingredient in cooking up a life made to order.

Because this line of thinking is so different from how we have been thinking most of our lives, just totally going with the flow right from the get-go is unlikely. Anyone capable of doing so would probably already be thinking like this, and have everything they want.

Our mind can be our greatest foe or our best friend, and can easily end up in enemy territory during our LOA work. Here are some of my insights on how to get it to play nice.

Acknowledge and Accept The Crappy Feelings

With all this talk about attraction being based on how we feel, it can put a lot of pressure on us to always be happy and shiny. And sometimes, you are just not going to feel that way.  Again,we have a lot of programming that can make it hard to fully buy into LOA, and shifting our beliefs and cleaning up our energy is not something that most of us will be able to do within a couple of days.

We have a lot of momentum behind our negative thought patterns and feelings, and it doesn’t take much to fall back onto them.Even though we feel on some level there is some truth, there is a lot to counteract that little spark.

You may be working towards something, and you are not seeing any indicators it is being delivered anytime soon. Being around certain people may make you feel doubtful about this. Conversations activate old thought patterns. Something happens that you interpret as ‘bad’ and you go into a tailspin.

You may have moments of sheer panic or intense worry that you are not going to get what you want. You are trying to force things; you are obsessing over the ‘how’ and with the limited paths of which your mind can conceive, you have serious doubts you will get what you want.

So, you are feeling kind of low, and because you know how important your feelings are, this makes you feel even worse. You may try and force yourself to feel better in some way, but it really isn’t working. You try to pretend you feel okay, but you really don’t.

During these times when your mind is being a real douche, it is important you acknowledge how you are feeling. Going into total denial, or pushing it down and not dealing with it, is not the way to go. Sit with what is happening, and evaluate. What are you feeling? Why are you feeling that way? What could you do now to feel better?

Reach for better feeling thoughts—do this gradually. If you are worried about money, and you barely have enough to pay your bills, visualizing and affirming you are a millionaire, is probably not going to do much for you.

We attract based on our predominant vibration, so you don’t need to feel good every second to get what you want. It may come a bit more slowly, but it will still come.

You know how I know this? When I ended up attracting more money than I ever made, it was during a time I was without income and living off credit cards—I had plenty of moments of panic, intense anxiety and depression. Like really low-vibe feelings. But I felt good more than I felt badly and it worked out.

If Thinking about the ‘Bad’ Stuff is Tripping You Up, Just Let It Go for Now

Sure, LOA sounds great for the good stuff, but what about all the bad stuff that happens, like the really bad stuff? Are people being punished? What did they do to deserve it? This is just preposterous many say.But, as someone who is gaining a greater understanding of this concept, I can see how the ‘bad’ stuff is explained, and it has nothing to do with people being arbitrarily punished.

Concepts like collective consciousness and beliefs shared by a large group of people, souls choosing their incarnations to have the full range of human experience (even the bad stuff) and death being a transition and not a negative manifestation, are some of the biggies that can really cause you to look at things in a new light.

I’ll be honest with you..I’m not at a point where I fully understand this side of the coin, so I won’t go into great detail.

The main point I wanted to make here was trying to understand the ‘bad’ things can make you very skeptical of the whole process, and cause you to give up on it. The desire to understand how everything is explained through the lens of LOA is natural, but I am not sure if any human can ever fully understand—there are limits imposed on us, and I have made peace with that.

I am willing to bet your initial foray into LOA was triggered by a desire to make your life better in some way, so just concentrate on that for now.

Know Everything that Is Happening Is to Move You Closer 

When we start getting deeper into our work with LOA, we start having a greater expectation that things will happen more effortlessly and we will be able to totally eradicate unwanted experiences simply because we are now working consciously with the process.

And yes, things certainly do get easier and we have less ‘crap’ that shows up in our reality. But, for most of us, myself included, we have a lot of junk we need to root out, and oodles of very deep-seated beliefs that need shifting.  Things can take a bit sometimes.

As you work to bring more into your life, you will naturally come up against some more beliefs that need changing. It’s kind of like an onion–you work at it layer by layer. And this means, you may still experience things you don’t like, or struggle in your manifesting efforts.

Of course, we don’t like when ‘bad’ things happen, and these little detours towards our desire are most unwelcome. Our mind goes to the ‘bad place’ again, and we start doubting. This is particularly true when we feel like we were led to a certain situation by taking ‘inspired action.’ We did something from a place of a high vibration and it felt good and easy. So, what we want is definitely waiting in the wings, waiting to make its appearance right? Lots of times yes, but sometimes not.

Let’s say you felt inspired to apply to a job from a certain company. You got called for an interview, and it went well. You probably have a high expectation that this is your manifestation, but then you don’t get it. And you think..what the fudge??

This situation turned out the way it did at this moment because of where your current ‘vibration’ is at, and you can use it to figure out where you still may have blocks. So, it serves a positive purpose. This feedback allows you to see the ‘problem’ areas. We can’t solve a problem without being alerted there is one, right?

The best way to discover what may have led to this particular outcome is asking yourself how the situation makes you feel and why you think things turned out this way.

So, don’t see these unwelcome situations as some sort of sign this is all bullshit, or you can’t get what you want. They are there to help you do just that, actually.

Releasing on Outcomes and the Search for ‘Proof’ It is Working

One of the ways in which our mind messes with our LOA efforts is getting attached to outcomes and always being on the lookout for ‘proof’ our efforts are bearing fruit.

We look at our outside circumstances, and if things don’t seem to be getting better, or we haven’t experienced any major event that suggests we are aligned with what we want, we start feeling badly.

We worry things aren’t working. Situations arise that seem like they could be a path to what we want, and when it doesn’t pan out, we get consumed with disappointment. We got very attached to this as being the way it was going to happen, and when it doesn’t, it can take us down a really bad path.

For me, one of the most effective ways to to deal with this is just focusing on doing things that make me feel good and doing my best not to analyze everything; when I feel inspired to take a certain action, I just take it.

I started this blog a few months ago, and over time, I noticed my readership was increasing and I was getting more subscribers. That made me feel good. But, I found myself becoming overly preoccupied with these things.

I would check my stats several times a day. If I didn’t see as much traffic from a particular source, I would wonder if perhaps the title was not good, or if I should have written about something else.

I comment on other blogs to increase my exposure, and when I wouldn’t get as much traffic through this tactic, I would wonder if my comments weren’t insightful enough or I would think it is a waste of time. If I went a bit without a subscriber, I would worry if people were not liking what I was writing.

Focusing on these things was not making me feel good. It made me feel more stressed about creating content and I knew I was not directing my attention and energy in the right way from an LOA perspective.

So, awhile back, I took out the visitor stats plug-in; I no longer use the option to get notified when I get a new subscriber, and I don’t look at the list in my back office.

I have really shifted my focus to just feeling good about my content, taking inspired action to build traffic, like commenting on blogs that I enjoy, joining communities where I can meet people who would be interested in the type of content I produce and anything else I feel compelled to do that just makes me feel good.

And in a short time, I can see without a doubt this is working—getting more positive feedback, more people sharing my content through various channels, a big surge in Twitter followers, connections with influential people in my niche and new opportunities being presented to me.

The reason it is working is because I detached from outcomes,and am no longer looking for ‘proof’ that what I am doing is working by seeing how many readers I get or who is subscribing to my blog. I know what I am doing will work because I have clarity of purpose and I feel good. I don’t need that outside feedback to confirm anything.

When we look for that ‘proof’ to see if what we are doing is working, we move out of alignment. We start feeling badly. The ‘logical’ part of us starts taking over, and this usually leads us to doing things that don’t make us feel good.

Knowing When to Work Through Your Feelings and When to Just Walk Away

When you are feeling pretty badly, it is good to determine whether this is something you should work through at this moment or just totally walk away. When we are feeling really low, trying to do this work is very counterproductive if we really can’t conceive of a better perspective in this very moment. The fastest route to feeling better involves just doing anything that will improve our mood.

There is no one best way I suppose, but in my own personal opinion, going to sleep can do wonders. This is not being lazy or ‘avoiding’ your issues. When I do this, something just resets within me, and I wake up feeling much better. Then, from this higher-vibing space, I can look at what is going on inside with a better perspective, and more effectively.

When you have been feeling pretty good, and an emotion just kind of floats in, and it is not overwhelming to you, then it can be a good idea to do a bit of emotional detective work. Don’t try to force it out, just sit with it and feel it. What do you think is making you feel this way? What thought can you reach for that feels better than this one?

The name of the game is to do whatever makes you feel better, and chances are, when these feelings arise, you’ll intuitively know which path to take.

Seriously…Just Work on Feeling Good

It can be a bit hard to wrap our minds around the fact that the core of manifesting is how we feel—it is not about visualizing what we want (this can be a great tool but not a necessity) and it is not about thinking about what we want 24 hours a day. It is not about completing a specific set of steps.

When we first get into LOA, it is easy to get this idea that we must always be doing this intense work on ourselves, or we will not get what we want. We forget this concept is something that is always working, even before we ‘discovered’ it, and that we just need to get into the right flow. 

When our mind is being a real stick in the mud, we forget this important truth, and we can get on a really unproductive path to our desire–we start pushing and forcing, all the while feeling like garbage. We make choices from a place of fear. We don’t feel good, all this effort is not making us feel even worse, we know on a deeper level this is not the way, but we just can’t seem to stop torturing ourselves.

At this point, the most important thing you can do is shift your mood and try to feel better. It doesn’t matter how you accomplish this goal, just find a way to do it. This is more important than any action you can take that you believe is ‘necessary’ to get what you want.

This was a hard concept for me to grasp for a long time, especially when my mind was being an a-hole. It will tell you that you have to take charge and make things happen; that you have to do all sorts of unpleasant things to succeed. Anything less than that, and you are being lazy.

Yes, you can get what you want doing all that crap so long as you have the belief you will get what you want, but it doesn’t have to be such an unpleasant process.

 I have gotten more in my life by simply feeling good and taking actions that felt good than any other ‘strategy.’ All those hours spent petting cats, watching 30 Rock and Curb Your Enthusiasm dvds, being silly with my fiance and reading a good book were some of my most productive because they helped me feel good, and feeling good is what aligns you with what you want.

Don’t let your jerky mind try and convince you otherwise.

Hope you enjoyed this post, and that you have gained some little nuggets of LOA wisdom to apply next time you find yourself in the pit mentally.