In February 2000 I set a goal of being happily married by the end of the year (there were no obvious candidates in sight at that point) and I'm pleased to report that we did just manage to squeak the wedding in on December 29th! Six and a half years later we're still happily married.

Do I attribute this to the Law of Attraction? Not really. As Steve Pavlina points out in his blog, to make the law of attraction work as a philosophical concept, you've either got to believe in reincarnation or in subjective reality:

a belief system in which (1) there is only one consciousness, (2) you are that singular consciousness, and (3) everything and everyone in your reality is a projection of your thoughts.

That's the option Pavlina goes for. Well, you can't disprove it. It's one of those hypotheses that aren't subject to testing by scientific experiment, since any conceivable results you could get might also be a projection of your thoughts.

But there's no reason to believe it either. In order to believe in the Law of Attraction you have to forget the principle called Occam's Razor:

Occam's razor states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating, or "shaving off," those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. In short, when given two equally valid explanations for a phenomenon, one should embrace the less complicated formulation.

Let's look at why people believe in the 'Law of Attraction' in the first place. Assuming they're not just believing it because they hope it's true, they will have had some personal experiences which the Law of Attraction 'explains' - they've wished for something, thought about it, and believed that it will happen, and it's happened.

The LOA is not the only possible explanation though. A simpler one, that is fully consistent with 'common sense' and the scientific worldview, is that of course things will happen for you sooner or later if you get clear about what you want and do the things that will make it happen.

When we add to this the idea that once you've got a clear image of what you want, your unconscious mind will be looking out for opportunities, people and resources that will bring it closer - plus the fact that your mind will amplify any evidence that supports your beliefs, and downplay or ignore anything that contradicts them - I don't think we need to believe in reincarnation or subjective reality to explain the fact that things are more likely to happen for you when you have a clear idea of what you want, and you believe it's possible.

Is it just me, or is that idea that everyone and everything is just a projection of you - essentially, that life is just like a dream, just a bit more solid - lonely and uninviting?

Graham English's blog has an intelligent commentary on the LOA from a Ken Wilber/ Integral perspective. He points out that the LOA reduces everything to the level of the 'individual interior' quadrant and to the level of 'mind', without taking into account the influence of external and collective reality.

One thing you can do which is bound to help you clarify your goals and make them happen sooner is to form a goal-setting group. This is a small group of people who get together at regular intervals (at least once a quarter, though it could be monthly) with each person having an hour to outline their goals and what they are going to do by the next meeting to achieve them. Other members of the group can ask questions about the goals.

Why does this make your goals clearer and speed them up? Firstly, talking about your goals to other people makes them more real. Going on the record about your goals in front of others engages the human desire for consistency which (according to Robert Cialdini in his excellent book "Influence: The Psychology Of Persuasion" is one of our main psychological drivers. Putting our goals in writing engages this drive to some extent, but actually telling people about them - especially when you know that you're going to have to tell them what you've done to achieve the goals in three months time.

Secondly, talking about your goals - and especially having to answer questions about them - will expose whether you are expecting to do too much in the available time, or whether you are underestimating what you could achieve. It makes you 'get real' about what you were thinking of doing, particularly as other people may ask questions that you would never have thought of yourself.

Finally, it gives you support. It can feel like a lonely world out there, particularly if you work for yourself. It's good to have other people around who you can share your hopes and fears with, but who have no stake in you either changing or staying the same (unlike your friends, who on the whole like you the way you are - that's why they are your friends). It's a great way of 'depth networking' - of getting to know people better through engaging in a common purpose.

How big should the group be? You could do it on a 'buddy' system with one other person - I think having at least three people in the group will make it more interesting and bring in more variety of different perspectives. To give an hour for each person's goals, you're probably looking at a maximum group size of seven. From personal experience, the group is likely to last longer if you're all in the same geographical area to cut down on the amount of travel involved.

You could have a virtual group that 'meets' via conference call or web forum but I believe you will get a greater feeling of involvement, commitment and support from face-to-face meetings.

It is a good idea though to use a free web forum such as Yahoo Groups (http://www.groups.yahoo.com) to keep in touch in between meetings. We use Yahoo for our group because it allows you to upload files, you can choose to have new messages sent to you by email or you can read them on the web, and it has a built-in calendar.

Let me know if you start a goal-setting group - perhaps we can link up, share our successes and start a movement!

Make space for what you want in your life

Well, I've been writing a book, and it's taken up all my time.
It's finished now though! So I should be able to make a few more
entries on the newsletter. More about the book in the next entry.

At the beginning of November 2005 a respected publisher contacted
me out of the blue and commissioned me to write a book on
'Achieving Your Goals' (I realise that after that opening
sentence, I'm going to have to work hard to re-establish rapport
with any aspiring authors, whose first thought would have been
'Lucky b*****d!').

The bad news was that because of commitments in January, I had to
complete the book by Christmas.

As it happened, I had already freed up that time to write a book.
The one I had been planning was the 'Practical EQ' book on
emotional intelligence that I have been promising myself to write
for a while now. At the last meeting of my goal-setting group
(more about goal-setting groups in a future newsletter) it became
very clear that there were not enough hours in the day to do this
and all my other goals as well, so as the book was the most
important, I cleared the decks of everything else until after
Christmas.

So, I had the space available, and I was able to get the
manuscript to the publishers on time. Incidentally, the number of
people who have said 'Wow, how did you manage it in that time?'
is beginning to make me think this was quite an achievement,
although while I was writing it I was mainly aware of how much
time I was wasting.

The book I wrote, as it turned out, was not the one I had been
planning - but I'm not complaining, because things turned out
better than I was expecting. If I had written my original book, I
would have been happy - but then I would have had to find a
publisher, something I had no clue about how to do.

This way, I have a publisher, I was paid an advance while I was
writing the book, and of course having to commit to other people
to meet the deadline provided an extra incentive on the days I
didn't feel like writing.

I have learned a few things from this experience:

Firstly, this tremendous lucky break would not have happened
unless I had made myself ready for it by clearing the time to
write a book. OK, the publishers would probably still have
contacted me, but if the time was already committed to some other
project, I could not have said yes - or at least, the lack of
enthusiasm as I thought about the hassle of making the time
available would have come across in my reply and put them off
signing me. So:

- make yourself ready for what you want, otherwise it won't
happen.

Secondly:
- when you do make yourself ready for what you want, sometimes
what you get is better than you expected!

Finally, I undertook a few assignments in 2005 that I wasn't
totally enthusiastic about - because deep down I didn't feel
ready for them. Not surprisingly, they were the ones that didn't
turn out that well. The money was pretty good, but the wear and
tear on the spirit was such that I'm going to be much more
careful about what I accept in future. By contrast, it took about
a tenth of a second to decide to accept the book commission. This
suggests that:

- if you're not 100% enthusiastic about your goal, you're not
ready for it

- so what do you need to do to make yourself ready?

© Andy Smith 2006