The Law of Attraction
The law of attraction states that you attract what you think about. I learned this when I read “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne (Atria Books, 2006). Byrne asks, “Have you ever started to think about something you were not happy about, and the more you thought about it the worse it seemed? That’s because as you think one sustained thought, the law of attraction immediately brings more like thoughts to you.”
The philosophy described in Byrne’s book is ask-believe-receive. Whether you ask the Universe or you ask God depends on your religious beliefs. Jesus says in Mark 11:24, “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
The “secret” is to think positive thoughts and believe you will get what you want. If you focus on debts and bills, you will get more bills. If you see yourself as wealthy, you will attract wealth. To test this law, visualize an empty spot waiting for you the next time you go somewhere that has a crowded parking lot. Expect your spot to be available and look for it when you get there. Believe it will be there, and it will be.
When we establish a dream, we don’t have to know how it will happen. We merely work the steps toward our goal. Jack Canfield of the “Chicken Soup” series uses the illustration of driving through the night. We can drive all the way from California to New York by never seeing more than the 200 feet illuminated by our headlights. “And that’s how life tends to unfold in front of us,” he says. “Our job is not to figure out the how. The how will show up out of a commitment and belief in the what.”
According to Byrne, our current lives are reflections of our past thoughts. She says, “Since you attract to you what you think about most, it is easy to see what your dominant thoughts have been on every subject of your life, because that is what you have experienced.”
I now see the law of attraction in my writing of Faron Young’s biography. I committed to the project in 1999, with the goal of having the book published in 2007 (his 75th birthday) and a book release party that included a show with his band members. At the time, I didn’t know anybody in either music or publishing and didn’t know how to write a biography. Through the following years of research and writing, I never doubted that my dream would come true, even though I had no idea how it would happen. I just kept working on the book. The University of Illinois Press published “Live Fast, Love Hard: The Faron Young Story,” and the party took place in Nashville, Tennessee, on November 10, 2007, with a show by Faron’s band members.
Henry Ford once said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, either way you are right.”