The Four Hundred--As I See It: Attracting What You Want

As far as I can tell, from experience and observation, there are two primary ways for honest people to achieve their aspirations: They can create them, or they can attract them. We all understand the first method--working hard, head down, shoulders slumped, fingers pounding the ergonomic keyboard. Many people keep right on pounding it until their first coronary, only to discover they still haven't lived the life they wanted.

The second method is a bit more abstract. Most of us know someone who, without a great deal of visible effort, seems to glide through life, attracting the opportunities, people, and resources they need. So why do the rest of us have mixed success? There are several possible answers. Perhaps we don't know how to consciously and deliberately attract what we want. Or, perhaps, we are all magnets attracting random outcomes, and some of us just get lucky. Or maybe it's all nonsense. Or just maybe what we are attracting is totally consistent with our beliefs and intentions.

If the latter is true, hard work may not be enough to create desired results if we are simultaneously attracting a lot of negative experiences. But how would someone attract something in the first place? The underlying principle isn't new, but it's one that is picking up scientific credibility: The way we see things determines what we attract.

The way we see things is largely a product of our beliefs, and our beliefs act as a filter through which we see reality. The filter tends to let in data that supports our world view and to keep out data that does not. As an example, for many years I believed that wealth could only be created by working hard at jobs I didn't like, because that was my father's reality. Although there was a lot of evidence to the contrary, I dismissed it because it didn't align with my world view. I didn't see work as it was; I saw it as I was. And as long as I held that belief, I remained professionally unfulfilled and unable to attract rewarding work.

As in my case, most beliefs we have about the world are formed before the age of eight. And although many of our early beliefs are no longer useful, they still operate in our subconscious, fueling unproductive behaviors and attracting the type of people and experiences that are unfavorable to realizing our dreams.

For me, the idea of attracting what I want (instead of being limited to creating it) is appealing because it seems far less exhausting and offers a greater range of possibilities. My wife, for one, lives a lifestyle far beyond her earning capacity, primarily by attracting an array of experiences and opportunities that would otherwise not be available to her. Among the things she has manifested are multiple trips to Hawaii, various concert tickets, and a new car. None of which she paid for. Note the underlying beliefs she holds about abundance: You don't have to "work hard" to get what you want, and being wealthy can take many forms besides having lots of money.

For years people have written about synchronicity and flow states to explain how others can succeed or manifest their desires beyond a level that seems probable. Most of the explanations offered tended to be metaphysical, rather than scientific. But the concept of "attractors" has some serious underpinnings. It comes from chaos theory, in which an attractor is an element that an entire system organizes around. In our planetary arrangement, for example, the sun could be thought of as an attractor around which nine planets organized themselves into a system. Beyond theoretical physics, Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphogenetic fields and neurobiologist Humberto Maturana's work on autopoesis suggest that we, too, function as attractors. And we do it all the time. The questions for us are, can we do it consciously and are we attracting what we want?

I recently met two people who spent a great deal of time studying the subject. Tim and Kris Hallbom are codevelopers of a seminar called WealthyMind, which they have taught in this country and abroad. The purpose of the seminar is to assist people in identifying and breaking through limiting beliefs that prevent them from having the wealth they want. Without diminishing the value of hard work, the Hallboms, both trained in neuro-linguistic-programming, also strive to train the mind to attract its desires. In the course of developing the seminar, they identified a number of key attractors that create conditions that manifest wealth. They call them "bringforthisms," which they define as "keys to consciously bringing forth what you want." And while they were originally identified in the context of manifesting wealth, they work equally well whether a person wishes to attract a job, a relationship, or any other outcome.

There are nine key attractors, but their scope is somewhat encyclopedic, so I have chosen the three that have most to do with the mental aspects of manifestation.

Stated succinctly: What you focus on determines what you get, and what you focus on determines what you miss. Your attitudes, moods, and feelings are energetic attractors and delimiters for various life experiences. Depression and anger, for example, will severely limit what experiences are available to you. Believe the world is a place of few opportunities, and there will be no shortage of evidence to support it. Believe that wealth is only for other people, and you will find ample proof that it is impossible for you to possess it.

Having a negative internal experience will attract a negative external experience. Essentially, our outer experience becomes a reflection of our inner reality. Ever notice how, when you are agitated and in a hurry, every light seems to turn red, and every driver ahead of you is driving like an octogenarian. Or when you're having a bad day at work, people seem more annoying and your boss seems more unreasonable.

If you want to change your experience, monitor your internal process and your internal self-talk. "Negative thoughts are self-reinforcing," say the Hallboms. There is a structure in your brain called the reticular activating system, which is a neurological filter that helps you identify what is important for you to attend to. "When you are in a negative state, you will focus on the negative; when in a positive state, you will sort for the positive." And unless you're attached to negative experiences, sorting for the positive is much more likely to get you what you want.

There are three basic kinds of beliefs, and we can use the issue of money to illustrate them. There are beliefs about cause (x causes y), as in "having money undermines spirituality." There are beliefs about meaning (x=y), as in "money is the root of all evil." And there are beliefs about possibility (is it possible, and is it possible for me), as in "I don't deserve to be rich." Limiting beliefs create limited results. They are the planks of an artificial ceiling that defines how high we can rise and what is acceptable for us to have. There is a profound difference between going through life believing that "money is hard to come by," as opposed to believing that "money comes quickly and easily to me."

Imprints are early traumatic or confusing experiences from which beliefs about life are formed. Emotions associated with imprints are usually very powerful and are often triggered by events in the present. Frequently, imprints create beliefs about lack of worthiness or capability, which are classic obstacles to achievement. The Oracle at Delphi said that the key to creating your wants is "knowing thyself." To the degree we can identify our limiting beliefs and transform them into empowering beliefs, we will remove the barriers that reside within.

There is power in setting a clear intention. Several years ago, Tim Hallbom and some of his colleagues invited a Peruvian shaman to the Utah desert to see if it was possible to model the extraordinary cures the man was purportedly capable of performing. The shaman was at first reluctant, but one of the group had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and was having some difficulty, so he agreed to perform the ritual. He prepared a fire and had the man lie down and remove his shirt. He took a charred stick and made some symbols on the man's chest. He sprinkled sand on him, talked to his arm for some time, then waved a rattle and chanted.

To everyone's amazement, the man got better (and remains so to this day). No one was sure, however, exactly how or when the cure had taken place. So they asked. The shaman told them, "He was cured when I set my intention; the rest is just ceremony."

I can attest, on a more modest scale, that indeed synchronicities occur once I set a clear intention. Earlier this year, I determined to attend some professional training. Within only days of getting clear about what I wanted, I was offered an opportunity to attend two seminars valued at $8,000 at no cost.

But regardless of what science says about the possibility of attracting what you want, shamanic cures and free trips to Hawaii may be more than the skeptical reader can accept. The cynics will sort for the flaw and dismiss the notion as impossible. To which I'll respond in the same way that the Queen of Hearts responded to Alice when she blundered into Wonderland.