The law of attraction (LOA) is the belief that the universe can or will provide for you whatever you strongly desire and focus on. As the term suggests, it is believed to be a universal law just like physics, biology, and other sciences. Many believers of LOA think that positive thoughts always bring positive results and that questioning things no matter how unrealistic or doubting your own capabilities will always bring failure or negative outcome. Much like scientism or postmodernism, questioning LOA is like questioning religion or a political ideology. The dogma of Law of Attraction (LOA) is of course very much alive today, in the New Age subculture but most importantly also in the entrepreneurial communities. LOA, especially if coupled with the nihilistic influence of postmodernism, will no doubt bring catastrophic impact to one’s life.
One example that is very toxic is the “victim blaming” tendency, that whatever bad happens to you or no matter how unfortunate your experiences are, it’s your own thoughts that “attract” them therefore it’s your fault because you “subconsciously wanted” it or it’s the “karma” for what you did in the past or in your past life. The fact is that you cannot control nature and collective “reality” is most of the time much more assertive than individual reality; meaning you cannot control other people most of the time. And, there are things we cannot influence or affect without collective effort; such as politics for example.
To give you an example of some of the absolutist logics LOA has, here are quotations from the most famous proponent and crusaders of LOA believed by many people today who, like my self before, buy this seemingly religious psychological movement (credits to Neil Farber, (M.D., Ph.D)., a “retired physician, life coach, hypnotherapist, researcher and the author of Throw Away Your Vision Board”):
“Disease cannot live in a body that’s in a healthy emotional state.” – Bob Proctor
“You cannot catch anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is inviting it to you with your thought.” -From The Secret
“Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results. Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought in some direction.” – James Allen
“If man will think only thoughts of perfect health, he can cause within himself the functioning of perfect health…” – Wallace Wattles
So as a result from this, many people who believe in LOA avoid thinking about challenging situations. From the perspective of a person who believe in LOA, anticipation of challenges are negative thoughts that can bring you or whatever projects you’re doing a negative result. But the fact is that risk assessment and preparation is very helpful for your security or success. Ignoring the possibility of challenges or failure will leave you unprepared and therefore less resilient. When you plan and when you set your goals and your deadlines and schedules, it makes you more motivated and geared towards “success” and less susceptible to failure; it’s not that things depend only on your positive thoughts or so-called visualization or that the universe has given you rewards for your faith on it.
Another issue people have with LOA is that it mostly stresses materialism, even irresponsible consumerism, to the believers. It’s not a question that rational, sincere, and authentic people “aligned” themselves on goals based on their values, not so much on their materialistic desires but on thoughts and actions that also benefit and improve other people’s lives. What’s worse is that most LOA believers believe that the universe will provide these wants, just waiting for the person to “attract” them; with less effort. It must be hard for them to understand that the surest way to achieve our goals is to concretely identify them then plan and work for them. Of course we should think about the future but on a practical way and we must also be realistic about the present moment as it will help us clearly define challenges, risks, and importantly, our desired outcome. As what Neil Farber has also said:
“To invoke a LOA, you need to live continuously in an unreal future as you anticipate that it will be once you’ve achieved your goal and only visualize a successful outcome. This shows faith in the universe. Thinking about plans, actions, and challenges are discordant and negative, so skip the process and focus on the result; live without regard to the present. This is the definition of mindlessness. Being fully aware of and attentive to the here and now is mindfulness and has been shown to produce powerful health and wellness benefits, such as greater life satisfaction and happiness.”
Lastly, not all of them but what I usually notice in people who dogmatically believe in LOA is that they are less concerned about helping other people. This is probably because in general, they avoid thinking about and seeing unfortunate circumstances because these are “negative” things and out of ignorance, they thought this will also happen to them because helping the people that are suffering is “attracting” suffering. This is not purely speculation or just isolated cases, this is being taught by the leaders of the LOA movement themselves such as those mentioned above. Just as much as we need support, other people also need our support and it is good to help them as long as we can because a healthy society depends on understanding and cooperation and not on ignorance and distrust. Though of course there is nothing wrong with being confident and success oriented, we just have to keep it on a healthy and practical level. Believing in something that can improve your self and your well-being is very important and believing in them is the first step to achieve them. However, there’s no such thing as law of attraction that is behind all of these. It’s all just basic principle: desire plus action equals result.
To learn more about not so known disadvantages of religiously believing the LOA, go to these links:
