The Law of Attraction can often be connected to a lot of beliefs that leave people wondering how real the “law” really is. And, that’s fair.
However, when you get down to the logic behind the Law of Attraction and its connection to gratitude, the Law of Attraction feels less silly and more practical. When you walk away from this blog, you will hopefully have learned five things about the Law of Attraction and gratitude.
This blog is designed to give you a powerful way of living in the present moment, appreciating the little things you experience every day, and identifying how you can positive thinking to your benefit.
This post is all about the Law of Attraction and gratitude.
What is the law of attraction?
The Law of Attraction is a philosophy. At its most basic, the philosophy suggests that your thoughts influence the experiences you have. Therefore, positive thoughts will bring about positive experiences and negative thoughts will bring about negative experiences.
In its purest form, the Law of Attraction adheres to the belief that if you maintain a positive attitude, set clear intentions about your goals, and believe in your self-worth, you can manifest the life you want.
It’s worth mentioning that the Law of Attraction is not based on empirical evidence, though some of the ideas that originate from it are worth exploring.
More specifically, the Law of Attraction comes from the idea that the more you choose positive energy and positive emotions, the more likely you are to experience positive, wonderful things and achieve your goals.
For example, if you want to find a loving partner who meets all of your requirements, whatever they may be, you may strive for only positive thoughts around your love life. If you go on a date, you’ll try to catch yourself thinking negative thoughts.
Then, you’ll challenge them so that you attract good energy. Instead of thinking, “I’ll never find a guy that treats me well,” you may reframe that and think, “I’m glad that I know what type of guy I want to date and I’m excited to meet him when he comes into my life.”
In a lot of ways, the ideas behind the Law of Attraction can be traced back to therapeutic interventions and mental health research that is shown to create real change in your life.
You can think of reframing, which changes something from negative to positive, and neuroplasticity, which re-trains your subconscious mind, as two examples.
LAW OF ATTRACTION AND GRATITUDE:
1. The Law of Attraction is not the same thing as toxic positivity
Whenever we talk about positive thoughts and challenging negative thoughts, we always want to differentiate between thinking positively and engaging in toxic positivity. Positivity becomes toxic when we can no longer process our negative emotions because they’re too painful.
It also means that we may invalidate the way we or other people feel when dealing with something painful. Toxic positivity can look like you telling someone that you just lost your dog and them telling you it will pass. Or maybe they say everything happens for a reason.
Regardless of what it is, they don’t give you the space to react naturally to something that is painful and difficult to process. Instead, they strive for positivity at the expense of mental health. This is where the Law of Attraction comes in.
The philosophy behind the Law of Attraction focuses on positivity as a great way of improving your life and encouraging positivity in ways that work toward your goals. Toxic positivity makes it hard to manifest your ideal life.
With toxic positivity, you’re repressing difficult emotions that contribute to living that ideal, real life. In other words, painful emotions are important and we need to feel them.
When thinking about the difference between manifesting through positive thinking and positive vibrations and engaging in toxic positivity, it’s important to remember that positive thinking should never take the place of processing a painful experience.
Instead, it should enhance the different ways in which you process painful emotions because you have a positive mindset through which you can process those emotions.
2. The Law of Attraction is closely connected to gratitude
Now that we have addressed the Law of Attraction (and how it differs from toxic positivity, which we want to avoid), let’s talk about how the Law of Attraction aligns with gratitude. The Law of Attraction, as we talked about earlier, is not based on science.
That doesn’t mean it’s inherently harmful or that we should avoid it. Instead, we should approach it with a critical lens that allows us to take what’s useful while looking at the science to guide us.
That’s where gratitude comes in. Gratitude is scientifically proven to be good for your mental health. It promotes a positive mindset, which does contribute to overall better mental health. It’s never as simple as “treat depression by being happier.”
But, it’s true that positivity does make people healthier overall. It makes sense that we’re happier when we start noticing the positive things more often. We always need to be aware that toxic positivity is not the same thing as positivity.
Then, we can rely on positivity to make us healthier in general. Therefore, if the Law of Attraction is not concrete enough for you, then you can use gratitude to help guide your practice of becoming more positive.
3. Gratitude is important for physical and mental health
Gratitude is important because positivity is important. When you express gratitude, you can more easily notice the good things in your life (whether it’s the small things or the big things).
The more you do it, the more you can train your brain to look for the positive messages and positive impact of your daily experiences. In other words, you can teach your brain to start doing that more often.
You can do this when you when express gratitude and work on putting yourself into a state of gratitude. Therefore, if you develop a gratitude practice, then you will realize how much easier it becomes to access that attitude of gratitude.
You may start looking for reasons to be grateful rather than reflecting back on your day to identify them. From there, it’s easy to see how the practice of gratitude can make you see the world in a positive light.
You still notice the negative things because gratitude doesn’t erase the pain. Instead, when you practice gratitude, you notice the good stuff just as often if not more often than you notice the hard stuff. And that matters to your mental and physical health.
4. You can start applying the Law of Attraction to your life with a daily gratitude list
When people say you can manifest your own life, you may feel overwhelmed. You may even feel like you’ve been wasting your life not doing exactly what you want.
One of the most important things to remember about the Law of Attraction is that there should be no shame or guilt involved. It’s entirely based on you living the life you want. That also means that you may be living the life you want.
Maybe you have a partner who makes you happy and a fulfilling personal life. But, you feel like you would enjoy a different kind of career. Or maybe your life looks a little different and you like it just the way it is.
You are allowed to be content with what you have, no matter how hard that is when you’re living in a world that values you based on your productivity. If you’re interested in incorporating the Law of Attraction into your life, you can start with a gratitude list.
Your gratitude list can be as simple as listing three details from your day that you’re grateful for. To make it more concrete, you can grab a piece of paper and write down five to ten reasons you have to have a grateful heart that day.
For this to be the most effective, pick a specific detail from your day that is not recurring. For example, try to avoid something general like, “I’m grateful for my mom.”
Instead, write something more specific like, “I’m grateful that I called my mom and we had a good talk for an hour.” This can also look like gratitude journaling and be more open-ended.
5. You can start using positive affirmations to manifest your dream life
A gratitude list is not the only way you can start incorporating the Law of Attraction into your life. You can also start repeating affirmations to yourself on a daily basis. The beauty of affirmations is that they’re a powerful tool in any way they’re used.
You can repeat them to yourself daily in front of the mirror when you get ready. But, you can also choose to repeat them as a daily habit when you need to remind yourself of your inherent value and capabilities.
You can also find the perfect way to include them in your everyday life like adding them to your lunch break or saying them at the end of the day before you sleep.
Affirmations are designed to remind you of something you may know rationally but struggle to believe or wrap your head around emotionally. (We have several lists of affirmations including work, general, sexuality, and more.)
Affirmations help you to change your thinking over time so that you begin to believe the positive statements you say and embody them to manifest the life you want through the positive thinking you learn to develop.
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