Do you attract what you are or do you attract what you want? If you attract what you want, then your life will most likely be a big pile of stuff that you don’t really want.
If you’ve been reading and learning about the law of attraction and manifesting then the idea that you attract what you are comes up quite often.
Many repeat it over and over again but few explain it or even understand it.
You do not attract what you want, you attract what you are. We will look at this in a lot more detail and it will soon become clear to you why.
This may be the missing piece of the puzzle for you in making the law of attraction work for you.
You Attract What You Are Not What You Want
If you attract what you are, then the real issue is: what are you?
Are you your thoughts?
No, we are all much more than our thoughts. Apart from your physical characteristics, you are ultimately a soul. You live in a body but you are not that body.
Most of what you are is non-physical. What is meant by the idea that you attract what you are and not what you want relates to what you are emtally, emotionally and spiritually.
Most of this though, stem from your thoughts. Your beliefs, your personality, your emotions and even your decisions all stem from your thoughts and the way you are thinking.
A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.
– James Allen (As a Man Thinketh)
This is why the law of attraction places so much attention on the value of your thoughts. What you are is not just your conscious thoughts, your deliberate thoughts or your thoughts about what you want.
It is much deeper than that. It essentially is everything that makes up the Self.
On a very superficial level the law of attraction promises that you will attract what you think about most of the time.
We all want a lot of ‘stuff’ – most of it, if not all of what we want, is not currently in our lives.
This is what gives birth to our desire for something.
If you were to manifest everything that you merely want then you certainly can have all the good that you desire BUT you will also be left with a lot of garbage that you don’t really want.
The system is perfect in the sense that we only attract things that we really, really, really want.
Only that which you truly give a lot of attention and energy to will eventually manifest in your life.
Being aware of what you give your attention and energy to is the key. Its not hard to figure this out either. Simply look at what you have in your life right now. It is the result of your past thoughts and actions.
Do you want to attract something else?
Become someone else!
You can not be the same person that you were before and expect to attract or create something different in your life. When you understand that you attract what you are then you understand why you need to become someone else.
The idea that you “are what you are” is a lie. Yes, there are things about yourself that you can not change but everything that is important to change, you can indeed change.
There are a lot more about yourself that you can change than you think.
You attract what you are because what you truly are is the sum total of your thoughts, beliefs and your emotions.
This is constantly at play in your life and dictates your vibration and consequently what you attract into your life through the law of attraction.
What Are You Really and How Does It Affect What You Attract?
Almost everything that you think you “are” is a lie. This might sound harsh but allow me to explain. You may think that you are not good with money or not good sports but is this really true?
It is most likely something you’ve been taught to believe about yourself growing up or through a few emotionally charged life experiences.
This may have led you to believe certain things about yourself and your abilities.
The beliefs you have about yourself and your own abilities (or disabilities) are all very superficial. Letting superficial things define you is very limiting – and we all do this to greater or lesser degree.
What you really are is beyond your ego and your personality. Yes, you may be a mother, a teacher or a charity worker but these are all roles that you fulfill in life.
They may define your place in society but that is NOT what you are.
Unless you allow that to define all that you are. Then you will be stuck.
What you really are is much beyond all the roles you fulfill in life, the beliefs you have about yourself and the accomplishments that you may or may not have.
From a scientific point of view, what you really are is a mass of energy at a very high speed of vibration. Like everything else on this planet you are made up of pure energy.
It is a hard concept to grasp since we see things as solid and as “things” but know that you and everything else is just energy.
What sets you apart is the fact that you have the ability to alter your energy and you do this with your thoughts.
What You Are and Your Emotional State
The ability to think is what sets us apart from everything else on this planet. That is also where the importance of thoughts come in with the law of attraction.
We all live and exist in two “places” at the same time. We occupy a physical space in our day to day lives but more importantly we all “live” in a space inside ourselves.
Where do you live emotionally? You may be at work but in your head you are somewhere else.
For most people it is a place of fear. The fear of not having enough, not being enough and everything that comes with this.
We conjure up realities in our minds of what life will look like if we do not get the things we want or if (and when) our fears become a reality.
Consciously you may have the goal to be wealthy, healthy and in a loving relationship but do you live there in your mind? Or do you live in the place where you are broke, alone and sick?
If your thoughts are dominated by fear, worry and anxiety then that is all that can manifest in your life.
That is what you are.
These thoughts create the world inside you and that is where you live emotionally. Because you live there emotionally it dictates your thoughts and therefore your vibration and eventually what you attract into your life.
Recreating Your “Self” To Dictate What You Attract
According to the law of attraction, like attracts like. Your dominant thoughts are simply reproduced in your life experiences.
The reason why the law of attraction does not work for most people is because they may consciously choose to have certain things but the thoughts behind it are often the opposite.
Beliefs are ideas and thoughts that you keep thinking over and over again to the point where it becomes your reality. Changing a belief can be hard because it has such a strong neural pathway in your brain.
When you change a belief you change who you are. Your thoughts about who and what you are make up who and what you are.
And none of them are true.
They are simply the result of past thoughts and beliefs – thoughts and beliefs that you keep thinking.
Noticing these thoughts and beliefs and paying attention to when they come up is an important first step to change them. Awareness itself is often the cure.
Every thought you think has an energy and this energy is always matching up with what you attract into your life.
That is why you can never attract something that you are not in vibrational harmony with.
The good news is that you can choose your thoughts. By choosing new thoughts, you can eliminate the old to the point where the supportive thoughts and habits become the “new” you.
You create and recreate your self with your thinking. No one can do this for you. It is “the work” that you have to do on yourself.
What Comes Out Of You?
This idea that you attract what you are leaves a lot of breadcrumbs to help us uncover our own thoughts and habits that need changing.
By simply looking at what you are currently attracting in your life then it lays bare your past thoughts and actions.
Don’t like what you are attracting?
Change it.
How?
By choosing to become someone else.
We’ve all met people who are always negative. No matter what the situation, they always find what’s wrong, what’s not working and what is negative. The flipside is also true with people who are always optimistic and positive.
Most people fall in the middle somewhere.
One way to judge yourself and to see what you really are is to notice what comes out of you. When you squeeze an orange then orange juice comes out of it. Why? Because that is what is inside.
If someone squeezes you – they do something you don’t like, offend you or make you angry…what comes out of you?
Pressure situations and stressful situations often reveal what is inside of us. It may not always be nice to stare these things in the eye but can be very empowering.
It can reveal to you what you need to change within yourself. If you are worried about money and you get a new bill in the mail, does your heart sink and you get that cold sinking feeling?
Who Do I Choose to Be Now = What Do I Choose To Attract Now
The fact that you do attract what you are means you can deliberately choose to BE what you want to attract.
Do you want to be wealthy? Be wealthy. Think and act like a wealthy person. Be generous. Be kind. Help people. Give of your time, your money and your skills.
It may seem completely out of whack at first but that is only because it is the opposite of what you are at the moment.
You can think yourself into being anything you want to attract.
By using this technique of sitting down and really honing in on the mindset, the behaviours and the personality you need to have to attract what you want into your life you can reverse engineer anything.
This process of mental rehearsal and visualization is crucially important to help change what you are.
Reading books, collecting images and meeting people who have what you want to attract will all help you create and recreate yourself and your self image to fall in line with what your desires are for manifesting.
Do not let yourself be limited by your past. What you did, what you were and what you attracted in the past are just that – your past!
What your future holds depends on what you choose to be now.
You attract what you are. Always ask yourself, “who do I choose to be now?” Ask this question of yourself often.
It forces you to come up with an answer and it forces your mind to think of this person that you need to be come to attract what you ultimately desire.
