This is the last of a series of posts in which I've been focusing on The Secret, the DVD which has done so much to publicize the law of attraction, the idea that we can create our own reality through the power of positive thought. I've been discussing the three elements of The Secret which I believe to be the most important, and the third technique is perhaps the most valuable of all.
This one appears on The Secret DVD but does not, in my opinion, receive sufficient emphasis. The message is a simple one: give gratitude. Give thanks for all the good things in your life.
There may be many such things in your life or there may be very few just at the moment, but everyone - at least, everyone who is reading this - has something for which to be grateful. So make a list of your blessings - however short it may be! - and give thanks for them.
You may find that, as with the second technique, this is a valuable exercise in itself. It makes you feel good just to do it. But I think you will also find that it triggers the law of attraction. The way this works is obvious really. If someone gives you something good, they're more likely to do it again if you show that you're grateful. So why should the universe be any different? If you don't show that you're grateful for something, how does the universe know what you like? How does it know what to send you next? If, on the other hand, you give thanks for what you receive, then it may send you more of the same...
This is an idea which resonates with me, and I think it may be the reason why religions seem to stress the importance of giving thanks. I used to wonder about this. Why does God need all that praise? Does he have a personality disorder or something? Why should this omnipotent being need the emotional crutch of having its ego stroked all the time? Why should something so powerful be so needy? But now I realize this isn't about what's good for God after all, but about what's good for us. We're asked to give thanks because this is the way the universe works. If we give thanks for what we like, we receive more of what we want in our lives. The exhortation to praise is simply telling us this.
If you aren't convinced by this, I can only suggest what I usually do: give it a try and see. There are two things to watch though. First of all, the gratitude has to be genuine. If you concentrate only on what you're going to get out of it, it won't work. But don't worry - I think you will find that as you practice gratitude, you will find it is such a pleasurable experience that you will be happy to do it for its own sake, instead of focusing on any rewards you may get.
The second potential problem is that those old familiar negative thoughts can rear their heads. You may find yourself asking why you have to be thankful for A when you have to put up with B. And for that matter, what about C and D, which are also a pain in the butt?
The way I deal with this is to tell myself that I can think about B,C, and D later. For the time being, I'm focusing on how good I feel about A. I can think about that other stuff when the gratitude session is over. This tactic seems to work for me, so I hope it will work for you.
The Secret suggests that this gratitude technique is particularly useful for relationship problems. If some things about your partner are annoying you, stop dwelling on them and make a list instead of the things you do like about them. Practice gratitude for these positive things and you will encourage more of them, while those annoying habits you are now ignoring will fade away.
Quite apart from the spiritual dimension, this seems like a good common sense idea to try. Law of attraction or no law of attraction, we see what we focus on most...
And of course, we don't have to concentrate just on ourselves. The same technique can be used to manifest peace and joy for the world. It is all too easy to focus on what is wrong with the world. Spend some time focusing on what is right with the world instead - and give thanks for it.
These, then, are my top three tips for 'law of attraction' techniques to practice - especially if you find that negative thoughts tend to get in the way of your imaginings. The first of them (described in Walk Before You Run!) is simply a beginner's version of the classic 'imagine what you want and so attract it' technique. The other two (described in this post and the previous one) may be less specific than the idea of summoning up a fast car or a dream house, but they are delightful exercises in themselves. And who knows? - perhaps it is better not to be specific. It may be that the universe has a better idea of what will bring you happiness than you do...
(To read the Heart Of The Secret posts in sequence, please start here.)
This may also be of interest:
It has often been said that when we are experiencing Gratitude, we stand within the Presence of God. Thus, the importance of its Expression. But the key is simple.
Be Grateful for ALL experiences.A, B, C, D..Z. Every single one of them is a Present.
Always Ebraces ALL Ways. Not just the positive ones.
You're desire is not to have to transmute, everything YOU have qualified as negative. And you will excuse me if I say, that's rather selfish, to expect someone else to have to clean up the energetic messes you set in motion. That's not very accountible or responsible for your free use of Willpower. The 'negative' has to be in your head before you can project it outwards.
"Karma" is Judgement, any kind of it. And so long and we are qualifying any LIfe experience as 'negative' , we're still in the cycle, our scripts of self judgment and self denial are still running and in operation.
Just watch...as all those of us who have been focusing on the 'positive', get whapped with all that 'negative' they thought to escape. Rubberband always goes *snap*.
Posted by: Sue Ann edwards | November 25, 2007 at 09:26 PM
The more fuel we put into the desire to escape the 'negative', the more POWER of ATTRACTION we're radiating, that will attract that negative. FEAR of negative is what ATTRACTS it.
Balance, Peace, Harmony and Assurance are experiences created by understanding whether positive or negative, there is within us, the substance of character to handle it and respond to it.
Posted by: Sue Ann edwards | November 25, 2007 at 09:31 PM
The Secret is the latest and by far the worst example of a HIGHLY profitable trend where self-help gurus with fabricated new age titles and little relevant education, credentials or legitimate expertise brainwash us into believing that they know what is best for us, our marriages and our families.
Often their only contribution to society is introducing some exotic sounding, new age philosophy. However, they often cleverly form an incestuous group of like-minded “experts” who cross-promote each other by swearing their success is due to following the beliefs of another member of their “cult!” All the while, they ply the airwaves jockeying for an ever-larger audience by appearing in the national media to garner third-party endorsements.
The Self-Help Movement has become the Self-Destruct Movement by diminishing or destroying our critical thinking skills to choose and evolve on our own. We have given up the freedom to build healthy lives, marriages and families based on our unique history and life experience. Instead many victims, blinded to the value of their own life experiences, are attracted to the latest secret in self-help, in an attempt to find out what they should think, feel and how they should act... this is the definition of a cult.
The solution is a return to our (common) senses! The best way out of this learned “self-helplessness” is to go cold turkey. Stop following ALL self-help gurus now. Begin, instead, to reclaim your natural, God-given ability to think for yourself. The common sense that was once readily available to all of us is still there free of charge and waiting to be applied to just about any challenge we might face in life… all you have to do is use it.
Please, let's all work together to stop the flock of "sheepeople" who blindly move from one UNPROVEN concept to the next, looking for the answers to life's challenges that you already possess and that is the OBVIOUS!
Posted by: John Curtis | November 26, 2007 at 12:44 AM
Simon, I like this one. People shouldn't hesitate to express gratitude to other people and that could lead to a better world. People get on well with each other with more care and appreciation.
Jeff
Posted by: Jeff.Wang | November 26, 2007 at 05:34 AM
I am grateful for John Curtis!
Posted by: Lee | November 26, 2007 at 12:30 PM
I find this a wonderful post. Well-written and explained, it explains the concept well. I know that when I am grateful, when I send those thought out to the Universe...I feel warm energy coursing through my body...a very joyful energy. I feel happy to the point of tears.
So, Simon, thank you. No matter what people's beliefs are, ungratefulness equals unhappiness, in my most humblest opinion.
Posted by: Marion | November 26, 2007 at 09:18 PM
I agree, gratitude is very powerful. Practicing gratitude can change your perspective and reinforce the positive/desired behavior of others. Grattitude opens many a door.
Great writing! Thanks for this series.
Posted by: Mark | November 26, 2007 at 10:37 PM
((( Simon ))) This is a FABULOUS post... How interesting that my life has been filled (FILLED) with messages lately about kicking up my Attitude of Gratitude a notch!
What I'm doing is spending the first moments of every day expressing gratitude...both verbally as well as in writing. It's like another form of affirmation.
And let me tell you, it WORKS. When we are expressing Gratitude, we ARE expressing the energy of GOD :) Isn't that amazing? I believe that the energy from God TOWARDS us is also gratitude!!
While The Secret has - in my opinion - gone a little too overboard in the supermarketing department, and hasn't gone far enough to address how the Law of Attraction works with the OTHER laws of the universe, it is still a great piece of work that has assisted so many people to raise their vibrations into more positive, allowing ones.
How anyone can poo-poo THAT is beyond me :)
Posted by: Grace | November 27, 2007 at 02:45 PM
Sue Ann – Many thanks for your comments! They bring me back to the whole question of acceptance versus intention, which I wrote about in the first post in this series. Consciously using the law of attraction while being attached to specific outcomes is always going to be a hit-and-miss business because fear of failure (and so attracting a negative outcome) will tend to get in the way. In this series of posts, I’ve tried to highlight the ‘law of attraction’ techniques which I believe will maximise the chances of success. I hope that people will find them helpful, but even so, I prefer to focus my own attention on the development of acceptance. As I’ve said before, I believe that this is the real ‘secret’. Once we have acceptance, intention follows in its wake, because there are no longer any negative thoughts to get in the way.
Learning to accept whatever comes our way is difficult enough, but being *grateful* for the ‘bad’ as well as the ‘good’, as you suggest, Sue Ann, is taking things a stage further. My wife Chris recently read Byron Katie’s book ‘Loving What Is’ in which the author proposes exactly that: loving whatever comes your way – including heart attacks! Chris has found the book to be very useful but she has found that there are some areas of her life where ‘loving’ things is taking things too far for her, at least at present. In such cases, she has to make do with acceptance: another example of ‘walking before you run’, I suppose. But from my perspective, even acceptance is doing pretty well...
And even without acceptance, is it not possible to practice gratitude for the things you like in your life without radiating too much negativity about the things you don’t? It’s simply that old technique of focusing on the half of the glass that’s full.
Posted by: Secret Simon | November 28, 2007 at 10:36 PM
John – Welcome to my blog and thank you for your erudite contribution! But you will not be surprised to learn that I disagree with almost everything you say.
You speak as though the choice is between ‘new age philosophy’ and common sense. But when I look around me, I see a world that is run not by common sense at all but by *emotions*. We run our private lives according to emotions, we elect our governments according to emotions, we go to war according to emotions, even the stock markets are run by emotions. Governments decide their policies not according to what needs to be done, but according to how the electorate *feel* about things. If we look back over our recent history, we see little evidence of common sense planning. Governments have simply reacted to whatever may be the prevailing emotions of the day.
We interact according to how we *feel* about people and do whatever we *feel* needs to be done. We tend to do this without even pausing to think. We’re like a bunch of automata (or perhaps we should use your own word, ‘sheepeople’), acting out of habit rather than forethought and governed by however we happen to feel at the time. And all around us, all the time, all the various media are telling us how we should feel: what we should be angry about and what we should be afraid of, stirring our up emotions, as though we didn’t have enough of them already.
You speak of us being ‘brainwashed’ by these ‘new age gurus’ as though they are the only people who are trying to tell us anything! But *everyone* is trying to tell us something, John. Can’t you hear them? You even complain about these ‘gurus’ being ‘in the national media’, as though trying to sell their books is some kind of conspiracy. The truth is that just about *everyone* is in the national media these days, even the guy who works at the store down the street. Most of them are trying to sell us something – and so will the rest of them as soon as they’ve persuaded the judges that they can sing.
All of this is fueling the great drama in which we are all immersed, our addiction to the emotion of which has led us to where we are today, a world in which feelings such as fear and anger sometimes seem to have taken over entirely. We need to take a step back from our emotions and, yes, apply our common sense for a change – and believe it or not, some of these ‘new age’ books which you so despise are attempting to persuade us to do exactly that.
I’m not saying that ‘The Secret’ is necessarily one of them! I’ve done my best to be positive about it in this series of posts, because I know that it has inspired a lot of people. But longstanding readers of this blog will know that I have my reservations about it. And it’s hardly surprising really that this work which places so much emphasis on material wealth and puts its most important messages in the small print (from where I’ve tried to extract them!) has proved to be so popular. But this isn’t the fault of the ‘new age’ publishing industry. It’s a reflection of the state of the world around us.
To the casual reader at least, 'The Secret' tends to represent spiritual ideas as a quick fix, which by and large they are not. There are many other books which present a more realistic picture of spirituality. Would that they could prove as popular...
But it doesn’t seem to me that any of these books are ‘brainwashing’ people. I find it ironic that you should even suggest this, John, since the various religions have been doing exactly that about spiritual matters throughout history. They have tried to impose a rigid set of beliefs and have suppressed any attempts by people to think about such things for themselves. So they burn people at the stake if they worship Jesus in the wrong way and submit them to the lash if they give the wrong name to a teddy bear. There’s no one in the ‘new age movement’ trying to do anything like that! It seems to me that they are simply encouraging people to think for themselves for a change. They are offering up new ideas.
And as I always try to make clear in this blog – forgive me if, for the sake of brevity, I haven’t mentioned this enough lately – I don’t expect anyone to necessarily *believe* what I’m telling you here. All I suggest is that you try things out for yourself and see what you think. Listen to yourself. Does this feel *right* to you? And by ‘think’ and ‘feel’ here what I’m talking about is indeed measuring these ideas against your own innate common sense, your own innate intelligence. The Sanskrit word for this is ‘Buddhi’ and it’s all about trusting yourself instead of believing blindly what other people tell you. The conflict is not one of common sense versus new age thought. It is common sense against the world in which we find ourselves today.
Phew! That's done that then. More responses to come...
Posted by: Secret Simon | November 28, 2007 at 10:48 PM
Jeff - I'm glad you liked the post! As you say, it is good to express gratitude to each other. People like to be appreciated. But we should also remember to send out gratitude to the universe. If that sounds silly to anyone reading this, just try it and see how it feels!
Lee - You are grateful for John Curtis? Ha! So *you* attracted him here!
Marion - Many thanks for your support - I'm glad you liked the post. And you have clearly experienced the kind of feeling I'm talking about. If only more people realized what it is like! I like the way Sue Ann put it: "when we are experiencing Gratitude, we stand within the Presence of God".
Mark - Thanks for your comments too, Mark, and you make an important point. Gratitude can change our own perspective. It can accentuate the positive in our lives by making us more aware that it is there.
Grace - You say: "When we are expressing Gratitude, we ARE expressing the energy of GOD :) Isn't that amazing? I believe that the energy from God TOWARDS us is also gratitude!!" That's certainly what it can feel like: a perfect reflection of what we are sending out. The law of attraction in action instantaneously. Once again, I can only suggest that people give it a try - and let us know how it feels!
And as you say, Grace, 'The Secret' seems to have helped a lot of people, which is why I have tried to present it in a positive light in this series of posts. The inspiration is certainly there. I just think that some of the most important information is buried a bit deep.
Thanks for your comments, Grace, and thanks again for all your responses - whatever your opinions!
Posted by: Secret Simon | November 28, 2007 at 11:24 PM
I'd like to respond to {John}, if I may.
You're very Insightful John. Within the past week, I've had two different 'groups' contact me. They came to me, I didn't go to them.
It's something I've noticed and observed over the past 15 years. It's also something that many messages have warned against, coming out the mouths of those who practice it.
An old math teacher once told me that if I wanted to add fractions, I needed to find a common denominator. In order for us to come together, like those fractions, we're factions and, must find a commmon denominator. The one I found was sense.
Sense to me is the ability to add ideas/concepts together without creating any contradictions in the process. It is a Unification of thought, rather then a hodge-podge of random thoughts stuck together in such a way that nothing makes sense.
What I've got to say is that quite a few of us transferred our dependencies over to groups. Therein, becoming dependent upon the group.
And like you say, if all we're going to be is a stick in a teepee, changing teepees really doesn't matter.
I Am a Pillar.
Posted by: Sue Ann edwards | November 29, 2007 at 05:25 AM
I don't join 'groups'. I don't promote 'groups'. I won't allow 'feeding' on my life's energy.
And the only kind of leader I am, is for those who us who do NOT want to be led. And I simply do that by means of example.
Posted by: Sue Ann edwards | November 29, 2007 at 05:30 AM
I think we can always find what we look for. Two people could live identical lives, and one would be full of gratitude, the other full of resentment. Ultimately, happiness does not come from changing the events in your life, it comes from changing your perspective of them. Gratitude is a path for doing this.
Posted by: CJ | November 29, 2007 at 06:45 PM
Timely post inasmuch as "The Secret Gratitude Book" book is due out in a few days to emphasize the kinds of points you are making here.
Malcolm
Posted by: Malcolm R. Campbell | November 30, 2007 at 08:30 PM
"If, on the other hand, you give thanks for what you receive, then it may send you more of the same..." Isn't that the simple beautiful truth? You said it perfectly!
Posted by: Rebbie (with uncommon gratitude) | December 02, 2007 at 12:48 AM
Sue Ann - As you know, I am involved with 'groups' - but I only join the kind that are happy for me to belong to more than one of them! And I think that ultimately it is best to rely on ourselves, rather than putting our trust in organizations.
CJ - Welcome to my blog! I agree 100% with what you say. Sometimes my perspective tells me that my life is under some kind of hex. At other times, I see that it's really a charm!
Malcolm - Thanks for mentioning this. Looking at the info on Amazon, this new book seems to be potted version of 'The Secret' combined with a workbook for putting it into action.
Uncommon Rebbie - Welcome to you too! I'm glad you liked this.
Once again, thanks for all your comments!
Posted by: Secret Simon | December 02, 2007 at 10:37 PM
Every time I'm hurting the one thing that helps me is to remember all those things I do have to be grateful for and what I'm grateful most for I think is the huge love I've discovered that I have in my heart for myself and this world where I can feel the harmony any time I let myself.
Much love and peace to you today and every day.
~ RS ~
Posted by: RubyShooZ | December 03, 2007 at 06:26 AM
Thanks for this lovely perspective, Ruby. I find that I am most aware of my capacity to love when I am giving gratitude, so... it could be exponential couldn't it? Give gratitude and then give gratitude for the love you feel in giving gratitude. It could just grow and grow... You could get caught in a gratitude loop and never come out. I suspect there are worse places to end up...
Thanks for visiting, Ruby. Love and peace to you too!
Posted by: Secret Simon | December 05, 2007 at 12:12 AM