The Law Of Attraction, or LOA, essentially says that whatever your dominant thoughts are about, more of that thing will manifest in your life.  One of the common examples is having an “abundance mindset”, or to use a better known phrase, seeing the world as your oyster, waiting for you to pluck out the pearl.  What’s interesting about the LOA is that it actually works.

So why do some people use mysterious, unexplainable terms to describe a process that has a simple, common sense explanation?  Because it sells.  If you explain something, even something new and useful, to a person in terms so simple that they feel like it’s common sense, they won’t tell anyone else about it.  Why not?  Because they don’t want the other person to think, or worse yet say, “Duh, everybody knows that.”

On the other hand, if you DO use mysterious, unexplainable terms, they will tell all KINDS of people, because they think it makes them sound like they know something special, that they are knowledgeable in an area where most people are not.  This make them feel special and smart, which is a good thing to make someone feel if you want to sell them something (ask anyone who knows anything at all about marketing).

How does this apply to this article?  Well, there are sources out there, like The Secret, whose logo appears above, that explain the LOA in the way mentioned above.  They use terms like “universal intelligence” (meaning a single awareness that encompasses all of existence) or “secret teachers”, intending to instill exactly the feelings I mentioned.

There is an easier, non-mystical explanation of the LOA.  If you think about something more, you become more aware of it, or things that affect it, around you.  Have you ever noticed that right after you or someone close to you buys a new car, you start seeing a lot more of those cars around you?   Or, more applicable to the topic, have you noticed that when something is on your mind, like you think maybe your significant other is cheating, that you notice all sorts of things related to that thought?

When we think about something, we are telling our subconscious that it is important, and should be brought to our attention.  The more we think about it, the more we are reinforcing this message, giving whatever it is more and more priority in terms of having it and things related to it brought to our conscious awareness from the jumble of constant input from reality.  It becomes more and more likely to get past the filters that the subconscious has in place to keep our conscious awareness from being flooded and overwhelmed.

Since more things about the thought or related to the thought are coming to our attention,we perceive things in a way that is colored by that thought that keeps coming up.  This means that if you have been thinking, as in the example above, that your wife is cheating, when you smell a new perfume on her, you may perceive it as being an attempt to impress “the other man”.  If you hadn’t been thinking that, you might instead think “Oh, she smells good.  I’ll have to ask her to wear this one more often.”  That’s a pretty huge difference.

So what happens when you start perceiving things through the lens of whatever thought has been dominant lately?  It changes which actions seem to make the most sense, which ones are better suited to achieving your goals, be they conscious or subconscious.  Again from the example above, the choices which bring you toward the subconscious goal of “don’t get hurt”, which nearly everyone has,  are very different when you don’t trust your spouse.  This obviously affects which choices you make, thus affecting your actions, and bringing about the manifestation of your most dominant thoughts, as the LOA says will happen.

So, to summarize, when you think about something more often, you are telling your subconscious to alert you to things related to it.  As it does so, this affects your perception of the situations around you.  This changing perception, in turn, causes certain choices to look more appealing, making you more likely to make those choices and take the actions associated with them.  Taking these actions then brings about the manifestation of your originating thought.

What this boils down to is that the LOA is real, actually works, and you can make use of that in the way that the people who use mystical terms teach.  It WILL work, because it’s still the same process, just as pushing the power button will turn on your TV, whether you think that’s because it flips an electrical switch or because it prods a little hamster inside to start running on its wheel.  It doesn’t really matter what explanation you use, if you follow the same process, you get the same results.

But if you want people to spread the word, use mysterious and unexplainable terms to describe that process.  (D’oh!  I guess that means nobody is going to spread the word for me!