enjoy the video and read on the in dept article bellow it. 

GOAL SETTING vs. LAW OF ATTRACTION

This is going to be a more in depth discussion of the short video posted on this topic of how the discussion of the Law of Attraction (LOA) has changed over the years, and if it contradicts or supports the traditional views on goal setting. In the summary I will relate this to managers, workers, and different situations. As we discuss this topic I am going to take some assumptions. I am going to assume the reader already has some familiarity with what the LOA is, as well as with teacher and writers like Napoleon Hill, and Abraham-Hicks publications etc. If you do not have familiarity with the said topics please feel free to peruse all the video blogs on my website www.ajfarzadLOA.com to find more free and in dept review of this topic going back for a decade.

As professional in the scientific industry, I take success very seriously. As an educator, I do not waste my clients time with untested and unproven methodology. As a scientist I do not bring topics that I have not tested and proven to myself repeatedly.  In every field there is allot of talk about goal setting when ever success is discussed. In the 80s and 90s it was the buzz word. Setting goals was a thing to do. Very few people knew how to set goals. Oh, there was things like setting S.M.A.R.T goals etc., but the real meet of the matter was seldom taught. This led to failed results for people who needed this information the most. Some people just naturally fall into the groove and achieve success. Some people by the nature of their persistence and matter of will, achieve success. Some people have such an intense desire that they overcome every obstacle and achieve success. For most however it is a dynamic process of hits and misses. The irony is that there is very little to the actual process of success. It really is simple. Then why isn’t there more successful people? Well, that is a loaded question. I am not talking about “oh success means different things to different people, or money, love, fill in the blank is not the end all thing”. I am actually talking about being clear about what you want to achieve and then go about and achieve it. The process is simple. Simple however, does not always mean easy.

In the 1950’s there was a book written by Napoleon Hill, titled Think and Grow Rich. It has been held as widely the script for success, not just in the term of financial measures, but in anything a person desires to achieve. By now it is also widely known that the original manuscript of that book called The Laws of Success in 13 Lessons had critical information that was omitted from the book due to the fact that the publishers thought it too “out there” and feared the book would not sell well. Fast forwards to 2004 or there abouts when the movie and the book  The Secret came out and brought the term “law of attraction” to the masses. Unlike Dyanetics and Scientology, The Law of Attraction was older than the principals taught by Napoleon Hill. People like Neville Goddard, Florence Scoval Shinn, and many scholars knew about the power of this law but no one put a name to it. When I started my journey into learning why it was that some people succeeded and others did not seemingly doing the exact same thing, I first was introduced to Think and Grow Rich.  I used the methodical steps in that book to achieve success in many things and at times I failed miserably at other things, and yet seemingly I was doing the same thing. So what was the KEY?

When my wife and I were ready to have our first child at home, our doula introduced us to the book The Secret. This was in 2008. I had not heard anything about this book, although it was a national best seller 6 years before, and Opera evidently had episodes on her show about it.  I looked at the movie for about 5 minutes and turned it off as complete B.S. I was a scientist. To me “sitting down and wishing for something and then have it drop into your lap” was un-reasonable. But my martial art and the study of eastern philosophy had allowed my mind to be just open enough to dive deeper into the energy discussion and discover other teachers that went into the science. When the process took me into quantum physics, everything just clicked. From there I was lead to the Abraham-Hicks publications and the more I read, and listened the more things just made sense. The more I learned the more this Law of Attraction thing and traditional goal setting made sense and became harmonious rather than contradictory.

As time has passed the teachings of Abraham-Hicks has evolved, and as I mentioned in my short video I do not thing they contradict each other or the works of Napoleon Hill. As repeatedly mentioned by Abraham-Hicks’ works in the beginning the teaching involved the clarification and was similar to goal setting principals, but then as they say “we humaned, or humaninged it”.  The entire process is NOT EASY because success depends on the person’s ability to allow. That is so not easy.  Usually when we are setting goals or looking for a change in situation we are coming from a point of view of lack, or negativity. This is also true when we pray but that is another discussion. Our world is poised to bombard us with negativity, because it sells. Every modern tech, and social media tool has been utilized by the masses mainly in vain to spread “crap”, “vanity” or “negativity”. Except maybe “cat videos”.  So where do things go wrong and how do we merge the processes so success is more consistently achievable?

THE ANSWERS:

When you see affirmations and things like “your attitude not your aptitude determines your altitude” with a picture of a majestic eagle, how does that make you feel? These sayings are not just cliché. If they were they would not have an emotional impact. It is that emotional part that many people miss. Dr. Joe Vitale coined a phrase “Nevalize” it.  It is a reference to the works of Nevil Goddard.  It essentially means you have to be what you WANT to be, before you can achieve it. I know it sounds like a catch 22, but it is not. In my seminars I usually do an exercise with words: DO, HAVE, BE and I ask the audience to put them in the right order. Most people think the order is: DO (something like a job), to HAVE (money), to BE (happy).  The actual answer is BE, DO, HAVE.  You must FIRST BE (happy) in order to be inspired to DO (something), in order to HAVE (what it is you want).

At the start of this post I mentioned some people do achieve success by sheer desire or persistence. That is doable but it is just not sustainable because it goes against the laws of nature. You don’t have to believe in the Law of Attraction (LOA) to understand this. It is science. Everything is vibration. There are certain physical laws that govern our little blue planet and in fact the entire Universe in which we float. Believing or not believing is not a option, or material. If you don’t believe in the concept of gravity, you will still fall and break something when you walk off the roof of the house. These concepts are also not taught in school. You don’t go to gravity school, and yet you don’t just float away when you walk out of the house. More importantly succeeding in one thing using these laws does not automatically mean you will succeed in everything. There is no degree that once you get it you are done. It is a constant process of being in the NOW. There some universal laws that are just the way they are weather you are aware of them or not; weather you believe them or not, they affect you. You can ignore them and be doing things by default or you can learn about them and actually use them to your advantage. Much like learning about gravity, drag, lift, can help us fly in airplanes.

This is not an instruction on how to use the Law of Attraction, although my website has tons of blogs on it.  What I want to differentiate here is that when you go about setting goals and you are excited and positive about the prospect you have an exponentially better potential to achieving it, as apposed to when you have to create a goal that your boss gave you and you “know in your gut” that it is bull shit and you will never be able to hit it. As Abraham-Hicks teach, everything is like a stick. It has two ends. When you know you don’t want something, you also know what you DO want and vise versa. As humans we are wired to be negative, because in the evolutionary process that kept us safe. Try this experiment:

Look at your face in the mirror. By default, it is not a positive countenance. It takes effort of multitude of muscles to smile. The same is true with your emotions. You must feed, actively feed yourself positivity every single day if you want this to succeed.  There are things you can do to make things easy. The biggest one is to not listen to the news. I know what you are going to say. “… But AJ how will I know what is going on in the world?”.  I will guarantee you that if there is a news that will actively effect you in the near future, you will hear about it. The rest is just junk. There are many people that are passionate about their projects and causes, but again you can come to those projects from the vibration of positivity or negativity. I applaud charity and compassion. I just am warning you not to get stuck in the wrong end of the stick. This UNIVERSE does not understand words of negation. If I tell you “not to think of your cat/dog/hamster etc.” what is the first thing that comes to your mind. You may not even have one and you are now thinking of the hamster. There is a reason for it. Negation does not compute. When you say “I don’t want dept”, the Universe is understanding you want to have more opportunities to have dept. So when you set a goal “I want to get out of dept” you are already working against the grain.

Now you see how Napoleon Hill’s work and this LOA thing are completely in harmony. In fact, in the original correspondence course that lead to the Laws of Success in 13 lessons there were much talk about vibration and attraction. In the 1950’s however that was not very popular with the “businessman’s” understanding and way of doing things. Hence the information was omitted.  The same is true about the direction the teachings of Abraham have taken.  Instead of concentration on the steps and creation, the emphasis is now on the feeling because the UNIVERSE will do the work for you, you just have to get into the position of allowing it. In order to do that you have to put yourself into the feeling of having what you want. It is not easy to feel wealthy when the bills are coming and there is no job. That is not the process. You CAN ONLY START FROM WHERE YOU ARE NOW. It takes small steps of felling a little better. Abraham-Hicks teach that 16 seconds of a thought will lead to other thoughts that are similar to it.  If a better feeling thought can be held just long enough for the brain to think of something like it, the process begins. The brain likes to link things. It can either do it by default and THAT MEANS IT WILL PROCTECT you from the dinosaur by going negative, or you can do it actively. 

The odd thing is that you don’t even have to think of the subject you are trying to succeed in. In fact that is one of the BIGGEST MISTAKES people make. How can you feel good about having an accident? Of course you can’t. It is unreasonable. But you can be grateful that you are alive and safe. That is the process. You don’t try to fake yourself out. Only you can tell what FEELS BETTER. That is also the reason NO ONE CAN DO THIS FOR YOU. If the thought feels good, stick with it. Go into details on it. Keep at it until the joy is done. Conversely, if a thought does not feel good, you need to stop it as soon as you can. But you don’t have to UN-DO things. You just need to change the thought. In my blogs, I have a demonstration where I put some dirt in a glass of water. That is representing your negative thoughts. You DO NOT HAVE TO TAKE THE DIRT OUT. You just pour more and more clean water and pretty soon the glass is again filled with clean water.

SUMMARY:

I hope by now I have at least made you think that in any industry, success is not just a matter of grinding out goals. For managers it means your goals must have an emotional connection with your people. The people responsible for succeeding need to be able to get a positive “why” out of it to be able to easily succeed. Most people think immediately that means monetary compensation. But you readers are more sophisticated and know that not everyone is motivated by money.  For the work force, succeeding in what you are doing means finding a way to feel good about what you do.  If you can’t then you have to either be general or change.  The problem with change however, is that if you change job, lover, project etc. when you are feeling negativity, you will take “your negativity or as Abraham-Hicks puts it you will take yourself with you”.  That means even if you change circumstances that you feel are making you feel bad, you will soon attract the “bad” to your new situation because that is where your attention is.  It take practice like anything else to become a more positive person. It takes practice to set goals that vocalize your objective in a positive and not negative tone. It takes practice to vocalize what you DO WANT instead of what you do NOT WANT.  Society has not done us any favors. After all people who celebrate their wins are usually seen as “arrogant, bragging, etc.”. That is so sad that we tend to have the water cooler mentality and wallow in each other’s misery readily, but we do not come together and celebrate each other’s wins. If you have been paying attention, celebration of wins, not just our own, is going to attract more opportunities for us to win.  The organization that can change this reality will achieve success. The manager who can convey this to their direct reports will have a successful team. The person who can incorporate this into their daily lives will live the life of their dreams.