You Attract What You Are, Not What You Want

Certain truths can’t be measured. There’s no ‘study’ that can ‘prove’ them. That doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile. I rely much more on these phenomenological truths because they’re proven to be true over time through the experiences of many people.

After all this time, I’ve come to believe in the power of the law of attraction. Not the literal law of attraction where you can throw a picture of a Lamborghini on the wall. But the idea that working on yourself draws positive outcomes into your life.

This is different than simply wanting something. We all have things that we want. There are people, maybe you, in situations that they definitely don’t want to be in, but find themselves in nonetheless.

So how do you bridge the gap between wanting something and getting it?

You attract it by taking steps to become the type of person who gets said outcome. It sounds trite and condescending to say that you’re being held back in life primarily because of your belief systems, but if you embrace the attitude that changing your beliefs on a deep level will change the outcomes in your life, you stand at a chance at getting them.

The Primary Rule of Success

“To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of
undeserving people.” – Charlie Munger

Take a look at the things that you want from life and ask yourself why you don’t have them. Let’s say you want to increase your income. Most people desperately want to do that. But unless you put yourself in a position to feel like you deserve a higher income, what are your chances of getting it?

Your subconscious mind runs you. No matter how much you tell yourself you deserve something, you’re not going to believe it until your subconscious mind accepts it. Your subconscious mind will accept it when you’ve taken steps in the real world to convince it.

Your brain wants ‘proof, not promises.’ When you take certain actions they either positively or negatively reinforce certain beliefs about yourself.

Taking time to develop profitable skills, reading books about wealth, and networking with successful business people will send a ‘proof’ signal to your brain. Talking about how much you want to make more money while doing nothing, will send a signal to your brain that you’re all talk.

When it comes to the word ‘deserve,’ it depends on many different factors — your current beliefs, your upbringing, your environment, etc — but without that earned feeling of deservedness, you’re not going to attract what you want into your life.

What do I mean by attracting? Doesn’t it just sound like I’m describing working hard to reach a goal? On the one hand, you do take certain steps to achieve an outcome. On the other hand, your path to success will be easier if you try to attract the outcomes you want instead of trying to force them to happen.

The Subtle Mindset Shift That Makes All The Difference

“Success is something you attract by the person you become.” – Jim Rohn

There’s a subtle distinction that comes from the idea of attracting success as a result of the person you become versus chasing success. When you’re focused on attracting to success you basically say to yourself “If I work on myself and take the right steps, good things will happen.” You’re not desperate or overly needy for a certain result to happen at a certain time.

When you chase success, you focus way too much on the results, on what you want, without doing the work it takes to be deserving of success and attract it.

People who chase success are the types to get into get rich quick schemes, cut corners, and dive into projects that they end up quitting shortly after. Since they don’t have intrinsic motivation, they lost momentum as soon as things get hard.

Intrinsic motivation drives you to grow for the sake of growth, which leads you to get the results you want as a byproduct. Viktor Frankl put it well:

“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.

So how do you get what you want without, you know, wanting it? Simple. Just look at your life and your outcomes based more on the actions you take vs the results you get:

• Don’t try to make money from your business, focus on creating a great product that solves a problem
• Don’t try to build an audience, focus on creating the best content possible
• Instead of trying to get people to like you, focus on cultivating a positive and cheerful vibe for the sake of it

Doing things this way makes you more powerful, which creates a smoother path to success.

Become Magnetic

“Power serves others, whereas force is self-serving.” – Dr. David Hawkins

I’m layering the topics here, but it’s to solidify the point. Hard work and effort are important. But there’s a powerful way to do it and a forceful way to do it.

I talked about this in an article I wrote about the concept of power vs. force:

The ultimate goal is power, but then you come to realize that you achieve power by not seeking it in the first place. You just move up the levels with more of a sense of ease.

When you use power, you have a ‘giving’ energy. When you use force, you have a ‘taking’ energy. If you try to force something to happen in your life, subconsciously you’re telling yourself that you’re not good enough to get the outcome.

Think about it, do you ever force things when you know the outcome is going to go your way? No. In those situations, you expect good things to happen because you feel like you deserve them. See how this works?

All of these concepts have the common denominator of a lack of selfishness. You realize you have to provide value to the world to attract what you want. You don’t place the blame on the outside world if you don’t have what you want. Your energy is magnetic. Since you’re patient, the things you want end up falling into place.

Here’s Your Science

“What you focus on expands, and when you focus on the goodness in your life, you create more of it.” – Oprah Winfrey

For those looking for a bit of scientific evidence here, you can look at the law of attraction and all of these other concepts in a simple way. There’s a concept in psychology called selective attention.

Selective attention is the process of directing our awareness to relevant stimuli while ignoring irrelevant stimuli in the environment.

This is an important process as there is a limit to how much information can be processed at a given time, and selective attention allows us to tune out insignificant details and focus on what is important.

When you’re focused on growth, opportunity, giving, and self-improvement, where do you think your attention is going to go? The law of attraction is nothing more than the idea that personal growth makes you more aware of potential opportunities.

When I first started working on self-improvement, all sorts of opportunities just started to fall in my lap. Why? Because I became a person who focused on opportunity.

When I used to focus just on what I wanted, all I could see was the object of my want and the sense of lack, nothing else. People who lack money think about money constantly. People who lack the outcomes they want in life, in general, think about the outcomes often. Their focus is misdirected.

If you turn the focus on both yourself and the opportunities that will arise when you work on yourself first, that’s when your attention will be properly focused.

Final Thoughts

“Always seem patient, as if you know that everything will come to you eventually.” – Robert Greene

This is one of my favorite quotes and gives me the blueprint to live by. In my life, I just focus on the things I can control with the understanding that the things I want will happen given enough time. But I have to use that time actively becoming the person who’s capable of getting those outcomes versus just sitting there and wishing for them.

It’s up to you. You can listen to the messaging in society that says you’re destined to live the same way forever. Your choice. You can listen to the people who scoff at self-improvement and call it a pipe dream. You can be one of those people who needs a ‘scientific study’ to believe something instead of understanding philosophical truths.

It’s your life, after all. I’d think about it, though. Think about your role in the events in your life. Think of what you’re attracting and think of what you’re repelling. Look inward and ask yourself if you believe you’re the type of person who deserves what you want. Make a decision based on that answer. And be patient.