Meaning, anytime I hear anyone with anything they claim supports the Law of Attraction, there’s always someone saying "more New Age nonsense" or "they’re misinterpreting/twisting scientific principles" or "that’s just anecdotal and it can’t be proven."
Are there examples of evidence for the law of attraction that nay-sayers don’t have such an easy time dismissing? Evidence that comes from people whose credibility isn’t so easily attacked?
Serious answers only please, either supporters or nay-sayers, just have serious answers to contribute.
To me, once you get in the mind frame of seeking truth it always has to be from a standing point of what you know and understand from where you are now. This law of attraction or whatever they are discovering about it doesn’t make it the whole "truth", no more than science can make their discoveries an absolute truth. People roamed the earth for years without even thinking about a thing such as the law of gravity, but that doesn’t make this law non-existent because at the time they did not understand or had any basis in which to even disover or think about it. Science progresses, and the more they discover, the more questions arrise and things that just can confuse the hell out of you when you get into quantum physics.
I feel that this law of attraction isn’t anything new…no more than the law of gravity was new when they discovered it, but I also feel that the explanation or percetion of it isn’t the complete picture either. You can’t discredit that some people through what they believe as the power of faith or believing have actually accomplished things that go against medical science and understanding. People have cured themselves of all kinds of diseases, and what about the placebo effect? Doctors recognize that much has to do with your mental focus and belief that it "works".
So in things like this, people search for answers, and they come to discoveries on effects of meditation, studies on prayer and faith. In fact the law of attraction has had many different names and spoken in various degrees. Try William James, a prominent philosopher and psychologist in the 19th century who wrote the Will to Believe.
Think of logic where someone sets a goal and if they are negative and say "I will never get this, I am not smart enough, blah blah blah. but if he instead said "This is possible, I can make it work" and then is inspired to look into ways in how….then who is more likely to achieve the goal? LOA just goes even further with that same type of thinking, and has progressed, and goes well beyond what the Secret was trying to say.
So keep looking from where you are. And using logic instead of saying "This is so stupid. It is New age crap" etc, and begin to say. "Not sure about this, but if it is true, then I want to find some evidence to back it up and open to finding this. I will know if I find that." Which way of thinking do you think could answer your own question…from a logical point of view?
Either way, what law of attraction would say is that "if you think you can, you’re right, if you think you can’t, you’re right." So no matter what, your belief would be valid, and you would be supported in your belief and find all the reasons why it is new age crap magnified and attracted to you.
July 10th, 2009 at
The problem with the so-called "law of attraction" is that there is no way to test whether or not it exists. How would you measure it? It can’t be seen and unlike the law of gravity, it’s effects can’t be observed in any scientific way.
For example, if I focus my attention on something I desire (as the law of attraction suggests) and that thing comes into my life, how do I know that it was the law of attraction that was responsible for it? It could just as easily come into my life because I acted on my desire or that I told other people what I wanted and they helped bring it into my life. The "success" of this "law" could easily be attributable to more down-to-earth reasons. It’s less magical to think of things this way, but more realistic than believing in some force.
The other problem with the law of attraction is that we can easily interpret whatever happens to us as proof that the law of attraction brought it into my life. It’s not unlike a horoscope. If you read your horoscope you’re more likely to pay attention to things in your life that day that correspond to your horoscope’s prediction. Psychologists call that the confirmation bias – we tend to pay attention to things that confirm what we want or believe to be true.
I recorded a few podcast episodes on the topic of positive psychology in which I address this law of attraction. You might want to listen to them. Here’s one:
http://www.thepsychfiles.com/2008/02/09/episode-46-thinking-positively-or-running-away-from-your-feelings/
There’s also the problem of what scientists call "falsifiable" – when a theory is so vague that there’s no way to disprove it. This is another problem with the "law of attraction". Might sound a little dull and scientific, but I did an episode on this topic and I think you’ll find it helpful and interesting (at least I hope so). Here’s the link to that episode:
http://www.thepsychfiles.com/2007/02/11/episode-3-falsifiability/
Hope this helps!
Michael
Host of The Psych Files podcast
Subscribe in iTunes
http://www.psychfilespodcast.com
References :
July 11th, 2009 at
To me, once you get in the mind frame of seeking truth it always has to be from a standing point of what you know and understand from where you are now. This law of attraction or whatever they are discovering about it doesn’t make it the whole "truth", no more than science can make their discoveries an absolute truth. People roamed the earth for years without even thinking about a thing such as the law of gravity, but that doesn’t make this law non-existent because at the time they did not understand or had any basis in which to even disover or think about it. Science progresses, and the more they discover, the more questions arrise and things that just can confuse the hell out of you when you get into quantum physics.
I feel that this Law of attraction isn’t anything new…no more than the law of gravity was new when they discovered it, but I also feel that the explanation or percetion of it isn’t the complete picture either. You can’t discredit that some people through what they believe as the power of faith or believing have actually accomplished things that go against medical science and understanding. People have cured themselves of all kinds of diseases, and what about the placebo effect? Doctors recognize that much has to do with your mental focus and belief that it "works".
So in things like this, people search for answers, and they come to discoveries on effects of meditation, studies on prayer and faith. In fact the law of attraction has had many different names and spoken in various degrees. Try William James, a prominent philosopher and psychologist in the 19th century who wrote the Will to Believe.
Think of logic where someone sets a goal and if they are negative and say "I will never get this, I am not smart enough, blah blah blah. but if he instead said "This is possible, I can make it work" and then is inspired to look into ways in how….then who is more likely to achieve the goal? LOA just goes even further with that same type of thinking, and has progressed, and goes well beyond what the Secret was trying to say.
So keep looking from where you are. And using logic instead of saying "This is so stupid. It is New age crap" etc, and begin to say. "Not sure about this, but if it is true, then I want to find some evidence to back it up and open to finding this. I will know if I find that." Which way of thinking do you think could answer your own question…from a logical point of view?
Either way, what law of attraction would say is that "if you think you can, you’re right, if you think you can’t, you’re right." So no matter what, your belief would be valid, and you would be supported in your belief and find all the reasons why it is new age crap magnified and attracted to you.
References :
June 14th, 2011 at
Yes. I have proof – written proof as well as a witness, and on more than one occasion.
My (now ex partner of 21 years) a self-confessed skeptic, witnessed the literal manifestation (before I ever knew about concepts like LOA) of what I’d been passionately asking for and stubbornly declaring.
As briefly as possible (because it’s a long enough story), I felt as though my partner and I were living in a bird cage with no privacy (metropolitan area) and we were no longer happy in that environment, although he wasn’t quite as unhappy as I was.
I can’t say that I used ‘positive thinking’ per se, as advocated by LOA…if anything, I felt absolute fury and desperation but it was combined with all the stubborn determination I seem to possess at times.
We were poor as church mice at the time, didn’t possess a car and the location we wanted to move to, was approximately 30 miles away. Also, at the time, there was absolutely nothing available to rent in the location we desired.
I refused to accept reality and stubbornly scoured the local newspaper for available rental properties. Nothing. No way was I going to accept that!
So I turned my attention to the ‘Houses for Sale’ section and saw just one property for sale in the area – there were no pictures of the house in the ad, nor was an address given, just the location.
I rang the agent immediately and said “Look, we’re not in a position to buy, but when the house is sold, would you please keep us in mind if the new owners want to rent it out?” The agent sounded bored and I wasn’t entirely sure he’d even bothered to write down our details, but I left our contact details with him anyway.
As soon as I got off the phone. I grabbed my dream diary (a notebook I kept next to the bed to write down any dreams I had at night). I was so of pent-up emotions, that I had to get them out of my system and the only thing available to me to do that, was writing it all down.
I wrote and wrote and wrote. I had an image in my mind of a bend in a particular street in the area we wanted to move to, although I didn’t realise that image meant anything. Remember, I wasn’t conversant with things like LOA at the time.
In any event, I poured out what I wanted with pen and paper. This is what I wrote on the 19th of October ’92::
“ The type of home in (B…P…) we are looking for would be bright and sunny, spacious, have a lock-up garage, a nice, private back yard with no neighbours able to peer in, nice lawns in front and back, a double sink in the kitchen, lots of built-in wardrobes and cupboards like the house we had in (other location), 3 or 4 spacious bedrooms, good quality wall-to-wall carpet throughout, ducted gas heating, ducted evaporative air cooling, gas stove and oven, gas hot water, a good size bathroom with a full size bathtub and a separate shower, a good sized laundry room, that the rent be comfortably affordable for us, that we be allowed to have pets if we want to and may the new landlords be as good as our current landlords.”
Six weeks later, we received a phone call from the agent, asking us if we were “still interested in renting the house” and four weeks after that, on New Years Eve, we moved in.
The house was situated right on the bend in the road that I’d seen in my mind when I’d first started writing about the house we wanted.
It wasn’t for another few months after we moved in, that I came across my dream diary and what I’d written so frantically and with so much emotion. It was eerie! I raced out and showed my partner and we felt ‘eerie’ together.
Almost everything I’d written down, was in the new house…everything except gas, because the location we’d moved to was an ‘all electric’ area, but we weren’t complaining!
This situation had occurred a few times with the 21 years we’d been together; two involved moving houses, the other one concerned money owed to us.
Each instance had come about after I’d written the situation down with a great deal of passion.
Again, I didn’t know about LOA or the importance of adding feeling – preferably intense feeling – to your wish.
Now that I’ve learned about LOA, I can clearly see why other things I’ve asked for didn’t come about…I’d merely written them down, but hadn’t given them life by adding passion and feeling behind them, nor had I spent any time visualising.
But yes, there IS proof. You just have to ask for it.