Category Archives: Law of Attraction

The Law of Attraction

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I’m a big fan of self-help. In my late teens I started going regularly to what I call, “poor man’s therapy” located in my local Barnes & Noble. Often times, I found some answers to my emotional ailment du jour between those glossy covers with catchy titles, and if I couldn’t find answers, I found solace in knowing that I wasn’t the only one looking for answers. It was kinda of like church.

It was also a main reason I chose Psychology as my major in college. Well that, and a penchant for self-destruction and a flimsy support system.

On my bookshelf you can find a historical roadmap to my psychosis. It began by wanting to understand myself. Under that category, you’ll find The Undiscovered Self by Carl Jung, and Self Matters by Phil McGraw better known as Dr. Phil.

Then, I moved on to the more existential topics of meaning and purpose. In that section, you’ll find Victor Frankels Man’s Search for Meaning, Deepak Chopra’s How to Know God, and Gary Zukav’s Seat of the Soul.

After that, I got married and wore butt prints into the chair at the end cap of my local B&N Self Help section because I was in some serious trouble. Under my how-the-hell-do-I-be-married? category you’ll find, Getting the Love you Want by Harville Hendrix and, Please Understand Me II by David Keirsey, because Please Understand Me I just didn’t leave me feeling understood enough.

In addition to these categories, you will also find books on how to be a successful sales person, how to have a healthy pregnancy and how the f*ck to get your baby to sleep–the latter is an ongoing issue in my house.

As I type this there are 18 books on Amazon’s Top 100 that could be categorized as “self-help” NOT including diet books. Among them, there are several about the brain as it pertains to habits, depression, happiness and health. It seems that the biological understanding of behavior is all the rage now. I have been doing some reading into this new scientific, self-help genre, and there are a few common themes:

1.) Our thoughts can have a real, tangible power in the world based on the energy they produce. This energy, attracts like energy. 2.) Our thoughts create habits, our habits determine our actions, and our actions create our reality. 3.) If you want to change your reality, change your thoughts.

The basic premise being thoughts first, feelings second, then reality.

This new genre of self-help is another, more scientific derivative of the principles of popular theory known as The Law of Attraction, of which the main premise is, what you think about is what you attract into your life, for better or for worse.

I have believed this for a long time, even before it became a self-help genre with a trademark name. Actually, I used to think I was a little bit psychic.

I am a thinker and a dreamer by nature. If something is important to me, I spend energy thinking and day dreaming about it happening to me. Often times, it really happens the way I dreamed it would.  I get lost in these fantasies of receiving things I want–a promotion, a sought after client, a surprise–I go all the way, I fully allow myself to feel as though they are really happening. I rehearse future conversations, reactions and phone calls pertaining to the event. It used to freak me out a little when they came true right down to the minute details.

In 2004 the first of my core group of best friends was getting married. It was the first everything from bachelorette party, to wedding shower to actual wedding for anyone of the girls in my close friend group. At the time I was already living in another city, and so making every event was unlikely. Not one to miss a good party, I decided that I MUST attend the bachelorette party, but I decided that I didn’t want to just attend. My friends are very important to me, they are like my family. I wanted to contribute to the specialness of the occasion by making it even more memorable. I wanted to do something unexpected and outrageous.

I hatched this hair-brained idea that I was going to surprise everyone in some dramatic way. I planned to secretly fly into town. I thought maybe I’d pop out of the partition that separated the back of the limo from the driver’s cab while they were driving to the first bar. I thought maybe I’d write a funny poem about how I wish I was there to call shotgun one last time (which I was infamous for). I’d call them from the front seat of the limo and read it to them on speaker phone. As they laughed I’d stick my head through the partition and say, “shotgun.” They would start laughing and crying and it would an amazing way to kick off the night.

And it was, down to the last detail. Although there were a lot of variables to making that situation happen that weren’t necessarily in my control, it still happened the way I’d hoped and it was then that I started to believe.

Then there was my wedding day, my career, my awards, my children, our financial issues–all visualized, all happening very close to the way I visualized them. This belief in being the co-creator of my life is the very reason that when my life went to shit after filing a sexual harassment complaint against my boss, the first thing I did was make a vision board. I needed my visualizations made into something tangible so that I could physically look at them while going through some of the most painful months of my life. A time when I knew my optimism would wane.

It worked.

I set a date in my head when I thought would be an appropriate time to start getting paid for my writing. It was a specific week for a specific reason. Actually, it was this week. Out of the clear blue visualized sky an online publication asked me to write things for them on a part-time basis. For like, real money.

I’m telling you guys right now, if I know one thing, I know this… watch your thoughts, they are who you become.

Now, before you think I’m crazy let me say this; not EVERYTHING I have visualized has come to fruition. I have yet to win the lottery or meet Oprah and I have visualized the SHIT out of those situations. In fact, the skeptic in me wants to chalk it up to coincidence, or a trick of the mind. Part of me thinks that maybe I just revise my visualizations after the fact to match my current reality. I’m tempted to think that.

But then I come across another quote, anecdote or self-help book that supports my belief in being a co-creator of my own reality. It’s a profound wisdom that has been espoused for centuries by many people, in many ways:

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it. ~William Arthur Ward, Author

Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right. ~Henry Ford

… and my second favorite:

Watch your thoughts, for they become your words.

Watch your words, for the become your actions.

Watch your actions, for they become your habits.

Watch your habits, for they become your character.

Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

~Author Unknown

In the latest self-help genre focusing on brain chemistry, they are getting closer to understanding this phenomenon on a scientific, physical, biological level. Although I strongly believe in science, I also believe in miracles, and faith. Because my ALL TIME favorite quote regarding The Law of Attraction is:

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  Matthew 7:7

Multi-tasking Master, Got Schooled

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I am a stay-at-home mother of two small children. That means, whether I like it or not, I am a master at the art of mult-tasking. I have cooked macaroni and cheese while breastfeeding a baby and doing the hokey-pokey. I have sung nursery rhymes while composing grocery lists. I have written blog posts in my head while running, pushing a baby in a stroller and listening to audiobooks. If I don’t do at least two to three things at once, I’m not sure I would accomplish much of anything.

Today, I woke up to a surprise gift– my mother-in-law was taking my toddler for the day which left me with just one child. Huzzah! If you’re not familiar with Mom Math, it works like this: take the number of children you have, subtract one and you can multiply your productivity by two. Subtract a toddler and you multiply it by at least a thousand. Subtract all your children and after your brain recovers from a temporary state of shock, it will be overflowing with an uncomputable amount of bliss. Anyway, upon hearing this news my mind was racing with all the things I wanted to accomplish today.

First, I went to the post office, then the craft store. Next, I got the car washed, picked up groceries and carried on a metaphysical conversation with one of my girlfriends via text. After that, I geared up for a quick run with my infant son and BOB… the jogging stroller. I had planned to listen to my audiobook and get my zen on while burning a few post-Christmas calories.

Just like I try to do before everything I do, I set out my intentions for this run. I’m a strong believer in intentions. I believe our intentions are what creates our experiences and if we’re conscious of our intentions, we can create the kind of experience we want to have. To me, it’s just a quick check-in with myself and what I hope to get out of an experience. It’s a reminder to pay attention, to become aware and present to the moment; to stop, listen and be grateful– to say, at the very least, thank you. Even with all I had going on, the running, the baby in the BOB, the book… in true multi-tasking fashion, I added one more thing to my list. To take a moment and be present in the middle of all that. Well, God had a different plan for me this day.

The run I take is a quick 2.2 miles through a wooded trail, around a small lake, through a blueberry farm and back again. It’s quite lovely and I feel so lucky to have such a wonderful resource just outside my doorstep. On Christmas Day I did this same run and I took this picture with my phone.

It was a typical, overcast, Seattle, winter’s day, but it was also Christmas, and so there was an extra-specialness in the air it that I felt needed to be immortalized by cell phone photography.

Today, God wanted to make sure I wasn’t doing anything but paying close attention to this world. On another typical, overcast, Seattle, winter’s day I rounded the familiar corner of my run and stopped, breathless and it wasn’t because of the running. It was because there was the most brilliant beginning of a rainbow the I had ever seen. I not only saw the red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple; but I saw the color that is often forgotten in the spectrum, Indigo. I stopped, took out my ear buds and took it in for a moment. Alrighty then I got my zen, now… moving on. I put the ear buds back in and kept running because I had an extra helping of whipped cream to work off, too. Multi-tasking master here! what! what!

As I got closer to the rainbow, my view expanded I saw that it was a DOUBLE rainbow. Suddenly, I felt like that guy on YouTube  that starts crying hysterically when he sees a double rainbow.

I immediately wished I had my phone because I wanted to document that shit. A DOUBLE rainbow? On an overcast, December, winter’s day in Seattle? No one would have believed it. But I left my phone at home to charge so I just kept running and listening to my audiobook because calories aren’t going to burn themselves.

As I rounded another corner, I saw ahead of me, the end of that rainbow. Okay, that’s it! This. Must. Be. Documented. I remembered that my iPod had video camera function that I have never used. I pulled it out, hoping to get a decent shot of this awesomeness.

And then… I kept running because the clock was ticking and I had to get back home and shower and start dinner and feed the baby…. and….fill-in-the-blank of any menial task that needs to get done.

Then God brought me to my knees. As I rounded another corner I saw a man coming toward me pulling a child’s wagon. It’s the same wagon I bought for Brooke last summer. It’s a plastic radio flyer with the canopy. Just so you know, those things are like $100. As I approached him I saw that he didn’t have a child in that expensive wagon; he was pulling a very elderly Jack Russell Terrier laying on top of brocade pillows. The look on that dogs face DID turn me into the guy on YouTube that cries hysterically over the double rainbow. It was one of the most profound displays of complete love that I have ever seen.

I stopped running. I stopped listening to my audiobook. I walked the rest of the way and stayed in that moment because I realized that God was trying to tell me something. He was trying to say slow down, stop rushing, take this in because it doesn’t get any better than this and because I am the greatest multi-tasker of all time and I have a few things to teach YOU woman.

And you know what I saw just before I got home?

It is not likely that I will stop multi-tasking anytime soon, but when it comes to God and this Universe, there are too many amazing things to be missed if I don’t stop and set my intentions so He can hear me. To slow down and remember to be present and at the very least, say thank you. Think of what I would have missed today had I not?

I might not have lost those calories in my body, but I filled my soul with so much more.

The Science of Spirituality

I’ve got this side of me that geeks-out over science. I have been known to wander aimlessly, by myself, in some of this country’s best science and natural history museums while on business travel. I visited Bodies: The Exhibit, twice, alone. I aced college level chemistry in high school and almost chose it as my college major until I realized how much math was involved.  Science = bueno, Math = no bueno.

I suppose I get this trait from my father who is a chemistry teacher and a science nerd to his core. The man wore a t-shirt imprinted with the periodic table of elements when I was kid. (A t-shirt I rescued from the donation bin and still have to this day.)  I seem to be genetically hard-wired with this insatiable curiosity about how my world works on an empirical, scientific level. The facts about life never cease to amaze me.

Then there’s this other side of me that geeks-out over the spiritual. The side that loves yoga and meditation and learning about religion. It is where these two worlds collide that my brain explodes into a frenzy of hyperactive, toddleresque-overstimilation and I want to pee all over myself like a nervous chihuahua. I could literally talk about this for hours.

Oh will you looky there, I went and created myself a blog wherein I’m pretty much free to talk about whatever I want so…

There are two theories in particular that I think about often as it pertains to science and spirituality. The first, is Newton’s Third Law of Motion. Newton’s Third Law of Motion states: The mutual forces of action and reaction between two bodies are equal, opposite and collinear.

The second law, is a law of physics pertaining to the conservation of energy. This law means that energy can change its location within the system, and that it can change form within the system, but that energy can be neither created nor destroyed.

I know, sounds totally boring right? If you’re still with me and haven’t started skimming to get to the end of this snoozer of a high school physics lesson/ blog post, then stick with me and I’ll break it down.

Have you ever been to an open casket funeral? Have you ever buried the family pet? Do you remember the first time you saw anything that was dead? Do you remember how you felt when you first laid eyes on the deceased? It’s not my intention to stir up a bad memory, I don’t want you to think about the specific person, animal, or situation, but rather the physical experience of seeing it.

I was about six when I went to my first open casket funeral. Since then, I’ve been to more open caskets funerals than I care to recount here, but that’s not the point. My point is that when I saw that for the first time I wasn’t afraid, and I haven’t been afraid since. I wasn’t afraid to see death at age six because what I was seeing might have looked like something that used to be alive, but I knew, at a six-year-old instinctual level, that what I was seeing was not the same as a real person. The energy that animates life was missing because, (and this is the tie that binds it all together so let me be very clear)…

We. Are. All. Just. Energy.

When you understand that, you will start to see life in a whole new way.

We can feel each other’s energy if we pay attention. It resides in the silent, empty spaces between our physical bodies. Have you ever gotten “a bad vibe” from someone? Conversely, have you ever been instantly attracted to another? That’s your energy connecting with another person’s energy. On this instinctive level we draw to us like magnets the same energy we are putting into the world, which conveniently brings me back to Newton’s Third Law.

Newton’s Third Law says that each action (use of energy) has an equal and opposite reaction. To put it more plainly, Karma’s a bitch folks. What you put out into the world, comes back to you. It is up to you to choose what that energy will be. Will it be positive? Or negative? Will you give? Or will you take? Have you ever heard of the saying, the more you give the more you get? It’s true, because it’s science.

Now let’s take the second law, the law of conservation of energy. This essentially states that energy can never cease to exist, it merely changes form. So let me repeat just in case you didn’t get it the first time, We. Are. All. Just. Energy. We never cease to exist, we merely change form.

When our bodies fail us, when it’s time for us to leave the physical world, our energy (or soul, as it is more commonly referred to) lives on in another form. It is our bodies that stay behind. Where we go is the million dollar, highly debatable, unanswered question, but I have no doubt that we all have always, and will always exist in one energetic form or another. It’s true, because it’s science.

Furthermore, (and perhaps another blog post), I believe that all the energy in this world is connected through an elegant system of design that is far beyond my abilities to comprehend. At every moment our energies are speaking and perceiving, connecting and being acted upon by forces that we have yet to fully realize. That’s the spirituality part.

It’s true, because it’s science… and spirituality.