Just about everybody has heard of the movie, The Secret, and I have talked to countless different people I know personally who are still raving about the idea of the Law of Attraction to this day. In fact, I heard about the film way before the majority of the public had when it had just barely been released (and before it become a pop culture mainstream media phenomenon). At one point, I found that this was a remarkably effective sort of view and philosophy to have regarding the world and in many different old blog entries I even rave about it myself! The problem is, the Law of Attraction is not necessarily bogus but it is certainly useless in comparison to other ‘Mental Technologies’ as I like to call them.

If you’re curious about what I have said about the Law of Attraction in the past, here are some of my entries on the subject. At one point, I was even doing a “public experiment” in the same sort of spirit as personal development blogger Steve Pavlina (who I also used to be a big fan of).

As you can probably tell purely from the sheer number of different articles I have written on this blog in the past, I took this whole Law of Attraction thing seriously. Since the release of the entire idea, which was already actually being taught by speakers like Jim Rohn and Zig Ziglar (though they did not always call it the Law of Attraction) for decades and indeed possibly hundreds of years going back and back. The question is, did these ideas always belong in the “personal development industry” as we might call it? Or have they actually been taught by truly legitimate teachers of philosophy? No matter what the answer to that question is, I honestly do not care!

The reason? Science is providing you and I with far more answers than an idea like the Law of Attraction ever could. One guy who never really got behind this craze in quite the same way so many other self-help authors and “gurus” did is Tony Robbins, who repeats over and over again that instead of being a motivational speaker, he refers to himself as a strategist. He loves the idea of being positive but he also has to balance that with “being intelligent.” And being intelligent means being rational, logical, and scientific.

Being scientific means relying on valid and reliable experimentation in the form of hypothesis testing and finding empirical evidence to support a particular idea. So if you have gone bankrupt, do not sit there and try to visualize a bunch of money. Chances are probably there that those who go bankrupt may have actually ended up that way by visualizing money in the first place anyway! Instead, admit that you are bankrupt and begin taking the proper actions to get out of that particular situation by moving on methods that have been proven to be highly reliable and that you know will work with full certainty. Do not take risks, do not gamble, do not start your own business yet, do not make further investments – just start earning income again and make a highly conscious effort to save.

What gets measured gets done – do not waste time trying to “feel” your way through “the universe.” You will land flat on your face. A huge problem with the entire crowd that follows the Law of Attraction is of course the notorious sorts of golden prospect images such as owning a sports car, moving into a giant house, and ‘receiving checks in the mail.’ In my most difficulty learned experience, you will of course not have a sports car show up on your driveway, move into a giant house, or receive any checks in the mail unless you DO SOMETHING to make all of that happen. The Secret is a movie that mentions extremely briefly the entire idea of “Inspired Action” when it comes to the Law of Attraction and Inspired Action is essentially the entire process of going about making decisions and taking action with some sort of plan to make a visualization ‘manifest.’

The biggest problem with this, however, is that we simply do not NEED the Law of Attraction or anything presented in The Secret for us to know that this is how we should accomplish both our goals and our dreams. On the other hand, the film makes an extraordinary presentation for optimism and the human spirit by letting everyone know a very real truth that has been scientifically proven a variety of different ways: you are capable of far more than you think, no matter what you believe you are capable of. The vastness of human potential is usually completely untapped in any given lifetime. This is a wonderful thing to teach people and I think that the film does an absolutely incredible job of bringing that entire spirit to the public. Yet another problem arises, of course, in that those spirits will quickly sink when people learn that this generic rubbish is not really going to get them anywhere specific.

To make things very simplistic, you might say that at best, the Law of Attraction and most of the major industry “experts” who are preaching it does send one very specific message that everyone should have already known: you are capable of just about anything you put your mind to if you are willing to work for it through a plan of action and then following through with that plan of action. The only problem in terms of marketing an idea like that is that it is something that should be entirely obvious and at the end of the day is utterly boring (unless you are someone who can present an idea in the way say Jack Canfield or Bob Proctor does).

So instead of following the Law of Attraction, what are some better examples of methodologies and ideologies that can get us to a higher place in life that do NOT involve a bunch of crazy showmanship and nonsensical pop psychology? You can design your own experiments for your own goals using an idea as simple as the scientific method, of course, or you can take a look at data from a variety of different sources. Find good information about what works and what does not in places like peer reviewed scientific journals, many of which are accessible through your local public library. If you are a college student, countless scientific journals are more than likely available for you to access them at no additional cost other than your current tuition.

Books that you find at Barnes & Noble can be good sources of information on certain topics but the main problem is that every single one of those shiny new books is going to be subject to the popular culture trends of the present. Some of the best information is stuff that was discovered decades ago and simply has not changed since. Charles Darwin came up with his theory of evolution in 1859 or Abraham Maslow with the famous Maslow Hierarchy of Human Needs which was first published in 1943, a theory of human motivation. Many thinkers have had amazing breakthrough concepts and the public seem to be ignoring them, mostly because the slew of media that is being released intends to cater to their whims for a quick and easy fix to their life problems.

Some examples of great modern thinkers on a variety of topics who use a more rational approach…

Be Sociable, Share!