
We’ve heard it so many times before since the film The Secret came out: ‘Thoughts become things’.
Is it really true? Do our dominant thoughts actually materialise? Well of course not, or all of us would be living our fantasies and giving up the day job, to live with Angelina Jolie, or Brad Pitt, or both! (Just remember Sandra is mine!).
So what did they mean when they said ‘Thoughts become things’?
Look at this way. When you want to go to the gym for a little exercise think about the process that happens for you to actually go down to the gym.
Conversation in your head
Unconscious: ‘okay lardy, it’s time you did a little exercise’
Conscious: ‘mmm maybe, in fact no I think I’ll watch an episode of ‘Lost’.
Unconscious: ‘Look at your gut, if you’re not careful they’re going to start carving you up and using you for soap! come on get up!’
Your unconscious starts to throw you images of the gym so it’s stuck in your mind. It also throws you images of the benefits of going to the gym; feeling fitter, looking more attractive, losing a little weight, getting into your trousers from last year.
Conscious: ‘Yeah you might be right, I think it’s time to go.’ You get your gym kit on, grab your water, your bag and your car keys.
So what’s happened here is a conversation between your unconscious and your conscious giving you reasons why you should be going to the gym, all the time you are picturing the benefits and the more you hear the benefits and see them in your minds eye the more prone you are to taking action.
Blocking out
What a lot of people do when they would like to take action on something is they block out the thoughts that show the benefits of your proposed actions. Why they do this is to either avoid pain or desire more pleasure. So, in the scenario above the pleasure part would have been to lye on the couch and watch Lost , the painful part would have been going to the gym. Of course there are ways to change your thinking to reverse the pleasure and pain, but that’s for another post.
So when we want to avoid doing something that will ultimately have long term gains we block out the thoughts which lead us to take action. When we really want something we think about it more often and our unconscious mind works on ways to gain that desire and we work toward it slowly but surely. Sometimes it happens quickly and sometimes it’s very slow, but no matter what, if you desire something badly enough and you take action and think about it often enough the chances are you will get what you want in life.
I believe the mis-interpretation of all the law of attraction stuff is that a lot of people were saying ‘If I think about winning the lottery it will happen’, and when it didn’t happen then the Law of Attraction got a bad name. Guess what, if you don’t take action you will never get what you want in life.
Sandra Bullock
I’ve always had a thing for Sandra Bullock and my wife says if she dies I’m allowed to re-marry Sandra (If she’ll have me of course!). Guess what? I got everything I wished for when I met my wife.
















Ok, so here’s what I’ll do to trigger the “right” thoughts: Hang up last year’s trousers right where I can always see them at home. I really really want them to fit again – without looking like a sauage in its skin… :) So hopefully the pants will help my thought workout. And the real one, too.
I don’t believe in the “Law of Attraction.” I call it the “Tendency of Attraction,” meaning you’re more likely to achieve something you actively think about because you’re more likely to pursue action to make it happen.
I think the real point of the Secret is that creating positive energy can change the PROBABILITY of your reality or your future. It is extremely unlikely to be able to turn lead into gold but perhaps the probability of it occurring spontaneously might be a bit higher (but still a zillion to one) if we all focus our energy on it. I believe that in certain aspects of our life, our thought energy can have a very big impact on probabilities. Ask someone who is in sales! They know the power of thought!
For every individual thinking about Sandra Bullock, those thoughts are maybe canceling each other out. IN addition, she has thoughts of her own about what she wants! Don’t forget that!
@diana – If you hang your pants up you will definitely be more motivated to take action to get slimmer to fit back into them. However this could also cause you pain as you remember how slim you used to be and how you fitted into them before. The trick is to make it a pleasurable experience to look at your pants, thinking how good you felt in them, how slim you were back then, so this in trun spurs you on to take action toward getting slimmer.
@Steve – You’re right about creating positive energy. It’s that positive energy that helps you to take more action toward your goal.
The Sandra Bullock thing was an illustration to show that just becasue I think about Sandra Bullock doesn’t mean to say I’ll be with her. An of course you’re right Snadra Bullock has her own ideas about what she want’s to do :)
Well Steve, you said the key word that turns wanting into having – action. That’s also what separates a wish from an intention.
Sometimes people over analyze things until they talk themselves out of doing what they need to do. In the long run though, I have found this one principal to be true: Whenever possible, people mostly do whatever the want to do.
Reasoning can’t override emotion for very long. The key is to use our minds to alter our feelings so that what what we want to do is the same as what we need to do.
@john completely agree with you.
@Jonathan analyzing something too much often stops us from taking action whereas, like you said, if you try and change your emotion toward your goal then it will ultimately lead you there quicker.
[...] Full Post: Why Didn’t I Marry Sandra Bullock?. [...]
Steve:
Back off — Sandra is mine! I thought of her first!
Oh, btw, nice column.
Cheers.
Tom
Totally agree, there is a reason Law of Attr’action’ contains word action in it. Action is crucial.
I couldn’t agree more. I actually just wrote a blog article about this very topic (entitled ‘The Law of Attraction is Bullshit’) which, despite the foul language, actually garnered some really intense debate in the comments!
Great post! I’m looking forward to more!
I agree with what you say in your article Steven. I think where a lot of people get hung up is that their focus is on the negative, ie. “I carrying too much weight” rather than “I feel so great when I’m xx lbs.”
All I can say to John is,”that’s okay. Believe it or not, the LOA does not need your permission to still function. It operates totally independently, unaware of your opinion on the subject. Just like the Law of Gravity.
BTW Sandra Bullock is all yours. My dibs are on Nicole Kidman!
For me, there is definitely a mind/body connection. When my focus is to consumed with negative thoughts or dread of (eg. exercise)… my body actually begins to feel lethargic. Resulting in curling up on the couch watching “Lost”.
Thinking positive about any action in my life helps increase my stamina, thus greatly increasing my chance of success.
Dang you, I finally found out who’s been canceling out all my attracting thoughts on Sandra Bullock.
I appreciate your article. There are so many winds blowing about the LOA that it’s hard to know which to follow. Colin thinks it’s BS, Lana says that you need “action,” and John just thinks it’s a tendency – and all that was found just on this page alone.
Jeez, what’s a guy to do? Sandra seems so far out of reach – and I feel your pain – she doesn’t even know I exist.
I just have two observations:
1. If the LOA is what it says it is, i.e. a “LAW” then it must work absolutely, continuously, consistently 100% of the time, because that’s what LAWs do. So all I have to do is obey it. But since I’m still not with Sandra there must be some piece to the LOA that I’m not obeying correctly, or not understanding correctly. The point being – I better understand it, know it pretty darn well in order to obey it to the point that it renders positive results.
2. I don’t think that the LOA is the ONLY “LAW.” There must be many, many more laws at play. Heck, who said that the LOA is the most powerful, most effective, most important – “The Secret?” Wallace Wattles book spoke of “acting in a certain way,” and the LOA is only a piece/portion/part of that “certain way,” but definitely not the entire piece/portion/part was it? Naw, I think there must be many, many more laws at play.
Anyways, those are my thougths about the subject. Now that I got that off my brain I can go back to thinking about Sandra.
Thanks again for the post!
It’s the difference between “I Can” and “I Do”. You can marry Sandra Bullock, but doing it it’s a completely different thing than being able to. Most of the people are able to do almost anything, but only a few of them are actually doing that stuff… The difference between I can and I do is almost always courage to take action.
@Tom, :)
@Lana, never thought about that one Lana.
@Colin, It’s amazing how the LOA has become almost like a religion and at seems heresy to say anything against it.
@The Obidee thanks for the comments, lets double date Me, Sandra, you and Nicole :)
@Suzan I truly believ in what you’re saying here and in 100 years time it will be taken for granted that our thoughts affect our physical health. Dr Bruce Lipton is doing some great work in this field.
@Michael, LOL it’s you who’s been stopping me then! I think the word LAW in the law of attraction is wrong personally, however for marketing purposes it fits well. It would be difficult to market something called ‘One of the many things we must obey of attraction’ but I get what you are saying. I’ll let you get abck to Sandra :)
@Dragos I would urge everyone to check out the ‘I can versus I do’ post of Dragos Roua’s blog. Thanks for commenting, Dragos.
I definitely agree with this…unfortunately i’m much more likely to sit on the couch watching lost :/
I believe in the Law of Attraction. I also believe you have to take action for the LOA to work. I would LOVE you hear your thoughts on luck.
Every day I say the following affirmation: “I now choose to request and receive to win 100+ prizes, including the 4Cs, a backyard makeover and a 46″+ LCD HDTV, valued at $50K+ in 2009, this or something greater. THANK YOU!” I then submit a 100-200 entries into sweepstakes. To date in 2009 I have won over 80 prizes valued at almost $27K.
Now, I have a very good “sweeping” buddy who does not do affirmation and submits several thousand entries. He has yet to win more then $5K this year.
I teach others that if you focus on the end result (new job, better health, your soul mate, prizes, etc.) and take action towards your goal, the Universe will step in and help you in ways you never could have imagined.
P.S. I am allowed to run off with Pierce Brosnan if the opportunity presents itself, no hard feelings, LOL!
Sorry, but Sandra Bullock is with Jesse James, who’s a Dead Man. Haha!
So true… but I believe in both my unconscious and conscious thoughts though, there are some times when my conscious thoughts can overpower my unconscious one eg, I think I’m failing the exam, when I’m not…it motivates me to work harder, and there are times when unconscious is always there, but then again I’m a Libran, I know how to balance things…
Thanks for the post, nicely put. Obviously you need to have goals and work towards them…sorry, no magic by just wishing for it. I wish the “Law of Attraction” wasn’t so oversold – it’s become nothing more than magical thinking…to paraphrase one writers thoughts on the LOA – there would be a lot more teen age geeks getting beautiful women if there were anything behind it.
Thoughts become Things… Yeah… I heard this many times from people who had watched “The Secret”…
Steve, I agree with you completely… Thoughts w/o Actions is useless and will never work with the Law of Attraction… :o]
@ Michael Claridge
I believe that the Law of Attraction is not the only “Law”. I found a lot of answers in Diana Cooper’s “A Little Light on the Spiritual Laws”, despite not being a religious person. There’s the Law of Resistance and the Law of Reflection to mention just two.
Strictly speaking, it’s your subconscious that communicates with your conscious mind. The unconscious is what you’re completely unaware of.
I’m curious to know how simply thinking about what you want and taking action to get what you want must change in order for it to be called the Law of Attraction, as opposed to just regular life.
Steven, you’ve got it in one here. I could not agree with you more. Too many times the critics of “thoughts become things” seem to think that if you simply think something, it will happen. That’s not what we are saying – as you say, by thinking about how fit we’ll be when we go to the gym, we are more likely to than if we think about how painful it is and how much more pleasurable it would be to sit on the couch – if we do that, then of course we sit on the couch and then get fat. So our thoughts do become things purely because thought is the precursor to action and so the thoughts that we think, when supported by action do become things!
I think the “inner” is an illusion of the ego and that reality happens outside the mind. If I’m looking for a parking space my state of mind has little to do with whether I’ll find one or not. Often enough, someone will pull away from one just as I’m thinking, “I’ll NEVER find a spot!” ;-)
@Carolyn – Wow! that’s amazing Carolyn.
@Jason – Of course I agree it’s a constant struggle between the two but we can use the conscious mind to implant ‘thought seeds’, that grow, into the unconscious in order to change the way we think and act.
@Steve – That was the point of this post really to set the record staright, so I agree with what you’re saying that a lot of people just don’t understand it.
@Ridwan – Thanks for your thoughts on this Ridwan, i appreciate it.
@Ann – Haven’t read of any Diana Coopers books although I have seen them over the years.
@Dot – LOL – That was the secret behind ‘The Secret’, we do this stuff everyday, they just repackaged it.
@Niro – You said it better than I did in one comment than I did in a full post, :)
@Jp Toon – I don’t know I’d agree with you. I’d say reality is created in the mind and projected outwards instead of the other way about.
Dear Steven
I don’t believe the chance and I’m not one of the lazy person in the world.Because of that I’ve tried hard in any stage of my life.But now at the age of 34, still I’m nothing.I didn’t like to get this new view in my life but I saw anytime around myself that,for reaching everything you want(at least here),just need to be IMMODEST and INCONSIDERATE…
I lost many things specially my dear times, just because I’ve been a shame person in whole of my life
I’ve heard someone talking about me… Steve, will you marry me??
I was recently at a personal development event and one of the speakers said there is a new movie coming out called, “How Thoughts Become Things.” Has anyone else ever heard anything else on this film? I really enjoyed The Secret and am curious if it has anything to do with it or if any of the same people are involved?
law of attraction is all a scam—notice its makes a lot of money–people are using it to scam like religion–thers no proof to it whatsoever—-there is beauty in life–but is all just chance–learn to deal with it
Thoughts really do become things… and this is why I have created and write to the blog that I do, "Imagine Into Being." All of the posts, or imaginings, if you will, are intended to co-create the future.
With Love and Gratitude,
The Intentional Sage
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