What the Law of Attraction ACTUALLY is

The Law of Attraction (which I often call “LOA” for short) is one of those buzz phrases that has shown up in the entrepreneurial, business, and company culture world within the last, oh, I don’t know…20 years or so.  It’s probably been around much longer than that in some way shape or form.

You hear about it in all sorts of places, from all sorts of people with all sorts of programs to sell.  And sometimes I (and others) wonder if it’s just a new kind of pyramid scheme.  LOA teachers teaching LOA teachers to teach LOA to other LOA teachers.  I think that definitely happens.  There’s a lot of people alive right now and with machines doing more and more of our work for us, and many of us need to find something to do.  The Law of Attraction, as it is often presented, seems to provide a convenient and unusually effortless way to make money with little hassle.

But if that’s how it comes across, you’re reading it wrong, and I notice that many LOA teachers develop ways of qualifying how easy it is, often by adding more traditional commercial structures practices to their theories.  There’s a lot of BS out there.  Let’s sort through a bit of it.

First of all, I assume you are honest, upstanding, hardworking, and understand what it means to be gainfully employed, even if you have a business that isn’t quite cranking yet.  Law of Attraction is not a way to escape the necessity to embody these virtues.  It is simply another layer, and can’t work without having those in place first.

All too often I see naive students buy into some hippie guru LOA program that (subtly or explicitly) implies they can just sit alone in a room and manifest money through visualization.  Doesn’t work that way.  At least I’ve never seen it.

Also, to me, there’s more to attract than money, and it often goes hand-in-hand, thereby improving the whole system.  This includes authority, respect, freedom, influence, wisdom, improvement of the community, harmonious communication, interpersonal peace, improved relationships, and more.  In fact, you could really say that the Law of Attraction in a very real sense comes down to that last one almost all of the time - improved relationships.  There really isn’t much more to life than good relationships, and good relationships are the key to getting pretty much everything else you want.  This includes a relationship with yourself, by the way.

Here’s what the Law of Attraction ACTUALLY is: Humans don’t exist in isolation.  We are a social species, and our success, both individual and collective, depends entirely on creating, building, growing, and deepening more and more good relationships.  This results in a healthy and beneficial energetic exchange, and it is ultimately this that creates attraction, not only of money, but of all those other good results.

Being human is hard, in all times and places.  We each suffer from narrative trauma, existential friction, combinatorial explosion, and a sense of absurdity.  (You can learn more about those perpetual human problems here.)  We like to be with other people who understand those problems, at least instinctively, and provide respite in some way.  We tend to call that sense of respite a “high vibration”.  When you are in a high vibration, or with someone else who is, you tend to forget the pain of living, and this creates a good energetic exchange.

So, how are you cultivating this in yourself?  The more and better you do, the more and better relationships you will attract, and that brings prosperity in many ways.  That’s what the Law of Attraction ACTUALLY is.

At the end of the day, and the beginning, we are a social species, and attraction only happens when you lean into that and remember that everything you do relates to others in some way.  Commit to relieving our collective existential burden, and good things will flow to you.  By the way, the starting place for that process is identifying your two -rations.  Ask me more about that.