A Miracle A Day

Archive for the ‘Learning’ Category

The Law Of Attraction De-Mystified

The Secret

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!


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Click the link below to enter:
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Author

August 8th

Awareness, Beliefs, Learning, Subconscious

How I Made My Website More Sticky

Being a web developer, I had previously run A Miracle A Day on custom software that I wrote.  It had most of the commonly used features, and provided for my needs, as well as giving me a chance to learn how to write blog software.  It was written in Ruby, running on a Postgresql database.  It had come to my attention when viewing my website stats, however, that my site was not "sticky" enough… that is, much too large a number of people viewed the site and then moved on to the next.

I asked some others with more experience (and traffic!) than I what I needed to do.  They suggested several changes to make, most of which had to do with the design (layout).  Upon reviewing how much time it would take me to make those changes, versus how long it would take me to implement standardized blogging software, and the benefits of each, I decided it was time to switch over to the more standard software.  I am now running Typo, an open source, Ruby based application.  This actually has the best of both worlds… it's standardized software, but open source and written in a language with which I am already familiar, thus allowing me to modify it (which I have done) to fit my tastes better.

Now, on to why this affects you, the reader.  Any comments written previous to the switchover date (July 24th, 2007) did not transfer over.  This is unfortunate, as I consider getting feedback one of the best parts of blogging, if not actually THE best part.  I like to write things that help others, but I appreciate doing so even more when I actually know that it DID help someone.  I even appreciate it when someone disagrees with me, because it stimulates my mind to think more about it, and at greater depth.  So comments are extremely important to me, and it bothers me that I'm losing them, but I don't know of any reasonable way to transfer them… the system I used for the comments is too incompatible with the new system.

On the positive side, however, all of the articles transferred, although the dates are the date of the transfer, not the original date of posting.  The only exceptions were a few very short (as in a couple sentences) announcement posts I wrote, and didn't deem worthy of transfer.  So those few articles were deliberately discarded, not lost.

So, now a request for anyone reading this who has previously viewed this site.  Please leave comments in response to this post about what you think of the new design as compared to the old one, or if there's any further changes I could make that would enhance the usefulness of the site as it now exists.

Author

July 24th

Growth, Learning

Journey VS Destination

When you are headed somewhere, whether in a car or in life, you have two potential statuses. You can be on your journey or at your destination. Which one is a better target upon which to focus your attention?

When you set a goal, you are setting a destination. In order to reach that destination, you must begin a journey from your current location. This may be a long journey, with many intermediate places along the way, or a very short journey, the shortest being a single step.

On a very short journey, there is little difference between the journey and the goal. There is not much upon which to focus your attention along the way, so on very short journeys the focus is really the same… it has to be on the destination because there's so little journey.

On long (or even medium) journeys, however, there is a significant difference between focusing on the destination and focusing on the journey. If you focus on the destination, it's like a race… you'll probably get there faster, but miss out on things along the way. You may miss out on other opportunities and paths that are available to you, possibly including alternative paths to the same destination, which might be more enjoyable, or even faster than your original path. You may even find out along the way that you are no longer interested in reaching the original destination… you might find something better to head toward.

There are other benefits to focusing on the journey, as well. One of these is that you can be aware of where you are now, and enjoy the scenery. Another is that you feel less urgency, and therefore less stress. You have more opportunities in general… to meet new people, have new experiences, learn new things, and to gain enjoyment from each of these things.

So focusing on the journey brings these benefits in exchange for less certainty and potentially less speed in reaching your goals. It's your choice… if you want to focus your energy on quickly reaching specific goals, then you will probably do so more rapidly and will have a more certain path. If you want to focus on the journey, you will gain many more opportunities and be able to more easily reassess your path to see if the original destination is still where you wish to go. If you enjoy personal growth, and if you are reading my web site you probably do, then the choice should be obvious.

Author

July 23rd

Goals, Learning