The “Law of Attraction” frequently gets misinterpreted as nothing more than just a judgmental way to tell someone that they’re responsible for all the hardships and challenges in their life. We think of it a little differently. In this week’s episode of Breathe In, Breathe Out, we talk about how even though, yes, setting an intention absolutely matters, so does actually doing the work to make it happen.

 

Transcription:

Think meditation is hard? Do me a favor, take a slow deep breath in and now breathe out. Congratulations. You just meditated. Hi, I’m Krystal Jakosky and this is Breathe In, Breathe Out: a weekly mindfulness and meditation podcast for anyone ready to own their own shit and find a little peace while doing it.

Welcome back to Breathe In, Breathe Out. I’m Krystal Jakosky. I’ve had a conversation kind of ongoing with one of my siblings and we talk a lot about The Law of Attraction and “The Secret” and all of the books that have been written about how “you kind of just need to visualize it. You need to visualize, you need to believe it. You need to decide that that’s actually gonna happen and it will happen. And that somehow someway this magic occurs and whatever it is that you wanted will be yours.”

Now we argue back and forth on this a little bit, and it’s not that we argue in a mean way. It’s, it’s more like a, a discussion, um, like a debate on our opinions, what this really means and where it’s really at. And I’m going to share with you my perspective. I think The Law of Attraction works because it means that you are focusing on something.

read more] And it’s not that you just get to say, “I expect to have a million dollars” and it’s going to drop into your lap. You have to do something you have to act. You have to intentionally be a part of the creation of this happening.

“I want a fancy car.” Okay. Number one, what is a fancy car? What’s your definition of that? What does it look like? And what do you need to do to achieve that? Just because you want it doesn’t mean it’s just magically going to come to you.

My perspective comes from an old friend who, whenever I said, “wow, I feel so lucky.” He would correct me and say, “Hmm, you mean preparation just met opportunity.” And I would stop and think about it every single time, whatever it is. I was saying, “wow, I am so lucky about was actually because I had prepared for the opportunity of whatever it was that was coming.”

I had done the work to make sure that when the opportunity presented itself, I would be ready to run with it. I would be ready to embrace it and just go. But I had to do the preparation. And that concept is what feeds into my understanding of The Law of Attraction.

What do you need to do now if you want a new job? You say, “I want a job that has a six-figure income and I want to be this great programmer, and dah, dah, dah, dah.” You cannot be a programmer if you do not have the knowledge of how to program. You cannot have a job that you do not have the knowledge of how to perform. That’s The Law of Attraction saying, “I just want a great job.” My brother was arguing that if I want a great job and I just put it out there that this is supposed to happen.

But if you don’t actively participate in achieving whatever it is that goal is, there’s no way that it will come to you. “I want to live in a bungalow on the ocean. I want to go to sleep to the ocean waves every night and wake up to them every morning. I want to be able to go fishing and enjoy surfing and everything that that life has to offer.” Will that will literally fall into my lap? What do I have to do to achieve that? What work do I need to put in?

My first step is to visualize. My husband and I, we do goal boards. We actually have a document that we both share in Google Docs and we revisit it very frequently. And every year – at least every year – we go in and we sit down together, we kind of go on a little vacation. We run away for a little bit. And then we open up that document and he looks at his parts because it’s all over the place. There’s one that’s his personal goals. There’s one, that’s my personal goals. There’s one that’s his business goals and my business goals. And then there’s a section that’s our couple goals. What do we want to do together?

So every year we revisit every one of those goals, but we don’t just write it down and say, “okay, that’s it” and then leave it. We revisit it throughout the year and say, “Hey, how are we doing on this goal? And do we need a course correction?” Because there have been times where we’ve said, “this is what we want to do” and then halfway there, we recognize that that’s not really what we wanted to do. And we’ve kind of created a problem for ourselves.

So we have to stop back up and say, “okay, what do we really actually want? And how can we course correct so that we don’t continue in this direction of complete and utter disaster?” We are actively participating in our goal. We are actively participating in the direction that we want our lives to go and be. And honestly, most of the time we try to write five-year, one-year, five-year, ten-year goals. And because we revisit it, because we check it out, because we do them in bite-size type goals, we have little steps for now, little steps for later in, little steps down the road, we’re doing all of these little steps. And they usually take half the time that we think that they will, because we’re actively participating. We’re actively choosing and saying, “you know what, let’s alter this, or let’s fix that.”

Preparation meets opportunity. The Law of Attraction. They exist because you are focused on it. Every fiber of your being has said, “that is where I want to be. That is what I want to do. How am I going to get there? What am I going to do?”

I had this good friend once she came to me and she was really, really frustrated. And, um, she had, she works a lot and she is absolutely fabulous and sweet. She’s very bubbly. I love this girl. Absolutely love her. She was lamenting to me one day about how she really just wanted that companion. She just really wanted that person to share life with and have these wonderful experiences with go ride her motorcycle. Just, she really wanted that person in her life. And I asked her, “Is there room?” And she looked at me like I was crazy. She’s like, “what do you mean, is there room for this person in my life?” And I said, “well, if that is your goal, to have a partner, to have somebody to share life with, do you sleep on one side of the bed or do you sleep in the middle?” She said, “well, I sleep in the middle.” I said, “Is there space in your closet for this other person’s clothes?” She laughed and thought I was nuts. I said, “Is there space in your bathroom? Like in the drawers or under the sink for them to put their toiletries?” And no, there wasn’t. “Is there space in your fridge or your pantry for the food that they would enjoy eating?” No. “Is there actually time for you to spend with this person?” She says, “Hmm, I get your point.” So we continued gabbing. Eventually, I left, and a couple of weeks later, I get this text from her.

She says, “I don’t know how you did it, but I started sleeping on one side of the bed. I cleaned out my closet. I cleaned out the bathroom there’s room in my pantry, and I cut back my hours at work. And I just met this amazing guy.” This is awesome. And she was loving life. They were together for two years. She absolutely enjoyed every bit of time that she had with him. And it happened because she said, “this is my end goal. I want a loving, fabulous relationship.” And she had to go through, how do you make that happen? If there’s no space in your life for what it is that you’re asking for, how can it come in? If you filled every nook and cranny with all of these other things that you don’t want, then how can what you do want come to reside with you?

The Law of Attraction – if it’s attracted to you, but it has nowhere to go, what is it going to do? You have to prepare for the opportunity to receive that, which you are asking for. So what do you need to do? How can you change things? What is it that you’re going to do today to help you prepare for that opportunity tomorrow?

Next week, we’re going to do a guided meditation on this very topic. We’re going to visualize it and we’re going to see how much we can pull to ourselves. So I look forward to having you come back next week here Breathe In, Breathe Out.

I hope this moment of self-care and healing brought you some hope and peace. I’m Krystal Jakosky on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube and I hope you check us out and follow along for more content coming soon. I look forward to being with you again, here on Breathe In, Breathe Out. Until next time, take care.[/read]