So, thinking happy thoughts will make you successful. If you’re not successful then you weren’t really thinking happy thoughts. Good luck with that.
Whatever it is it isn’t something that can be tested by science. At best it’s psychology, more likely it’s simply a way for the authors to get rich. I’m sure they were thinking happy thoughts when they wrote that claptrap.
So people who are assaulted, robbed, raped, or murdered suffer as they do because they were thinking about being the victims of such crimes?
No; the assailants, robbers, and rapists were merely thinking stronger thoughts about attracting victims to them!
As you say, there is no magical “Law of Attraction”. But there is a psychological law, which I would put this way: If you think you deserve to lose, you will definitely lose. If you think you deserve to win, there is a chance you might win.
Bullshit. I could be the most negative person in the world and still pick a winning lottery ticket or make the right bet on a football game.
Who do you have in tomorrow’s game?
He always goes with the Washington Generals.
I mean come on! They’re due!
I can give you great odds.
Yes, I’m sure I didn’t use the ‘Law of Attraction’:
There are plenty of people who’ve achieved things by hard work. Gary Player (international golfer) liked to say “The more I practice, the luckier I get.”
How many people have received things under the ‘Law’ by lying in bed all day ‘asking and believing’?
So my sample of one back in post #14 didn’t serve as a clear enough example of the foolishness of “ask, believe, receive?”
Let’s try another approach. Here’s Forbes magazines list of the 400 richest people in the U.S. Take your time and look it over. Find one person on the list who got there by way of the Law of Attraction. Let us know what you come up with.
There’s a quote attributed to Henry Ford: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t - you’re right.” It’s on the same lines as the ‘power of positive thinking’ used in business leadership and entrepenurial handbooks, it all affects things an individual can do, actions that can be taken toward a goal. There’s plenty of bullshit there, too, but the idea doesn’t claim any supernatural assistance. It’s not about wishing on the right star for things to magically come you way, and it sure as hell has jack shit to do with quantum mechanics.
Utter bullshit.
I thought about tits, ass and pussy almost continuously as a teenager and 20-something man, and let me tell you, it didn’t draw women to me. I just about never got laid.
I recall what it’s like to be a teenage boy. If this “Law of Attraction” worked, schools would be like gender specific black holes sucking in anything vaguely feminine that got within range.
[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
What would you accept as evidence that it doesn’t work?
[/QUOTE]
I’m sorry, Gateway, but I can’t make any sense out of your answer to Czarcasm’s question. Neither do I understand what some alleged negative looking crystals in water have to do with the LOA.
There seems to be a lot of money to be made using the LOA, though. The author and publishers of The Secret are making money. And people giving seminars on the LOA are making money too. But other than people who cash in on selling the magic beans of LOA, it’s bojive. You might want to do some research on the success story of Casey Serin, who was an LOA advocate.
I feel as if the law of attraction has been misinterpreted to be, wish upon a star and wake up to your dreams. Yes, it has been portrayed like that in the documentary Secrets to communicate on a colloquial level for the audience to understand. However, we forget that the wisher, the person, needs to play their role in being the person that, for lack of a better word, is worthy of their prize.
For example, you can, as stated above, wish on all those womanly features that a heterosexual man dearly desires, but let me ask you
Do you actively socialise?
Can you attract a female with your charisma, or have you developed qualities that women would find you attractive?
Do you introduce yourself to women?
Do you dress appropriately?
Where do you spend most of your time during the day?
etc etc.
Law of attraction suggest that it increases your luck in receiving your wishes. However, no where does it say that you can, for example, win the lottery without buying a ticket. So, I hope people understand that there is no black and white to this, that you either get what you want or you do not. You are rewarded if you are deemed worthy, but the specifics of the rewards is decided by you.
Okay, I have not read a book on the Law of Attraction but the general principles have been around for awhile. An old roommate was in kind of a cult based on somebody’s principles and they used this all the time.
The first step is to formulate your goal and put it out there. By “put it out there” you tell yourself you are going to accomplish this, you tell your friends, you actively seek out people who can help you accomplish this–teachers, mentors, whatever. You focus on it and not on other things.
The next step, or maybe this should be the first one, is to believe you can actually do it.
It’s not magic but sometime it really does seem like it.
One example: A lot of people in this cult decided they needed to quit smoking. They wrote affirmations saying “I don’t smoke. I don’t like smoking. I am a nonsmoker” and that ilk. A fairly high proportion of them quit smoking. The theory was that you are telling yourself this, and if you can do it for 21 days, you’re successful, because you will either quit smoking or you will quit writing the affirmations because you can’t keep lying to yourself. (I will say, this did not work for me, and I did quit writing it down even though in general I’m not sure I mind lying to myself.)
Another example: A woman in the group wrote affirmations saying, first, that she could write a novel, and then that she could write a novel and sell it, and she did. A novel did not magically appear in her study but she did spend a certain amount of time every day writing on the novel (after writing her affirmations that she could do it).
On the whole, people in this cult were quite successful at getting what they wanted, both as individuals and as a group. Obviously there were time when individuals had conflicting goals and I believe they liked to think that the person with the strongest will was the winner there–but that’s pretty much what happens with or without the law of attraction.
(Winning the lottery is not a goal. It is a dream.)
Who, exactly, is judging your worthiness?
Nature. I believe that the natural forces of the universe is constantly correcting itself, and that what we see as disharmony or unjust, is only temporarily.
Disclaimer: my personal opinion 
Nature. I believe that the natural forces of the universe is constantly correcting itself, and that what we see as disharmony or unjust, is only temporary.
The principle of yin and yang by the Chinese believes that there are only two divine forces that exists. They are polar opposites of each other but exist mutually.
In chemistry, we know about the concept of equilibrium,
In human biology, we understand the need of Blood Colloidal Osmotic Pressure to to maintain desired blood pressure in the arterial system.
In physics, we know that with every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction.
I am merely extending these practical and basic principles to a philosophical and, if you would insist, a spiritual belief.
Some cultures do believe that the universe is a conscious being that can self correct and organise itself. Our DNA can self correcting and edit the amino acid coding, if the human is in an optimal health condition.
Disclaimer: my personal opinion (edit time expired so here is the longer version)
Gateway:
I am going to take this as an opportunity to help you learn to differentiate between a scientific study and an art project, using the “water crystals” as an exemplar. Forgive me if I oversimplify.
First, let us take a look at Mr. Emoto’s work. He labels jars of water with “positive” or “negative” words or phrases, then checks the crystals formed from these samples. He photographs and publishes the symmetrical, snow-flake-like crystals he finds in the “positive” samples and the amorphous masses he finds in the “negative” samples.
This raises several question.
First, how is he forming these crystals? I know it is easy to make ice but we need to know if he puts both jars in the same part of the freezer for the same amount of time.
Second, how does he choose which photos to print and include in his book? If he is cherry picking the best looking ice crystals from one and the worst looking lumps from the other, it is an art project.
For this to be “scientific” we would need all his data. We need directions on how he froze his water to make sure we are doing it the same way he did. We need copies of all photos taken of ice in a sample, not just those he decides should be published. If we have a record of all (or at least most) of the ice being formed, we can then have someone who did not know whether the pictures were from a “positive” or a “negative” jar evaluate the relative amounts of symmetrical and amorphous ice found in that sample. If one set of samples then shows a statistical preponderance of one type of crystal we can then confirm whether there is a relationship between labels on the jars and the type of ice formed from the water within the jars.
If we see a relationship, then other questions can be investigated. Does it matter if the labels are read by the person making the ice? What happens if the label is in a language the experimenter cannot read? What if the labels are hidden? What if we use color coding – do we get different results from red labels from researchers who believe red is a “lucky” color than from those who feel red is inauspicious?
There may well be something to this, but as it stands now it is indistinguishable from woo.