CHAPTER 1
Introduction to the Law of Attraction and Resistance
How the Law of Attraction Came Into My Life
I want to clarify right away that I'm not a physicist or any other kind offormally trained scientist. Nor does one need to be to utilize Law of Attractionprinciples. While I ground virtually everything I teach in science, I do notplay the role of a quantum physicist because I have found that for the mostpart, people's eyes begin to glaze over when my explanations of the Law ofAttraction become too complicated. After all, if you felt you needed amathematics degree to be able to create your life by design, the entire processwould be too daunting to take on in the first place.
A basic understanding of the physics of the Law of Attraction is essential tofully integrating many of the ideas discussed in this book. I believe you'llfind most of the ideas to be utterly fascinating rather than overwhelming, andmy hope is that you will find this part of the education to be as fun andinspiring as I do.
When I began investigating the whole idea of "creating reality" (as I called itwhen I first began exploring the concept in the early 1990s), I was absolutelyturned on by the idea that we have more control over our experience of realitythan we as humans are generally aware of.
I will never forget the fateful evening of December 26, 1990 when a friend ofmine and I were marveling over the technical wonders of a special "holographic"paper wrapped around a pencil we picked up at a convenience store. Depending onhow light hit it, a truly unbelievable array of colors would shoot forth fromthe paper in three dimensions. It looked as if it were lit electronicallysomehow from the inside. I remember truly marveling that science had createdsuch an amazing light show that only a decade before would have cost literallythousands of dollars to create, and yet now was available for pennies onstickers, notebooks, and countless other trinkets one could pick up at any gasstation.
It was while I was in this mindset of "anything is possible" that I receivedwhat I can only call a "download" from the Universe, an ah-ha moment to beat allah-ha moments: Everything Is Energy.
Again, I've never received any kind of formal scientific training aside fromwhat I learned in high school. But what I received in that moment was a knowing.I could clearly see the energetic nature of the Universe and how everything inthe Universe is connected and has influence over everything else—even if wecan't detect it with the five senses we've been trained to acknowledge.
I was so affected by the information that came to me at that moment that I spentthe next twelve years of my life trying to make enough sense of it to actuallydo something with it. In that time I read several books, but most of my work wasinner work. I learned to meditate. I studied hypnosis. I became totallyfascinated with quantum physics, Energy, and the power of the mind.
With all that study came a strong intellectual understanding that actuallycreating life by design was all somehow truly possible, and that people weredoing it. However, a very big piece of the puzzle was still missing for me.Although I read several books that were scientific in nature, there were somedots that weren't connecting for me. I realized that although understanding on aconscious and intellectual level that "anything is possible" was a good start,there was another level of understanding and believing that I was going to needin order fully integrate the idea that I could consciously create my realityinto my worldview.
My breakthrough finally came in October of 2002. I had quit my corporate job inJanuary of that year because it was literally killing me to go there day afterday and feel absolutely no sense of myself or my value in what I was doing. Andalthough the money was good, I had still managed to accumulate roughly sixtythousand dollars in debt. No matter how many raises I got (and I was making justunder one hundred thousand dollars a year when I quit), my financial situationcontinued to decline.
More important than my financial situation was this feeling that my life wasliterally being drained from me. Like most people, I wanted to have a careerthat I was passionate about and in which I could express myself fully andcreatively. Sitting in a windowless office working on human resources softwaredid not afford me that opportunity, and finally the day came that in spite of mypersonal economic crisis, I simply had to walk away from being an employee.
My plan was to fully involve myself in teaching people to create their realitiesusing all the information I'd been researching for over a decade. The onlyproblem was that I wasn't an actual living example of what I was teaching.Still, I forged ahead. I created audio programs on the subject, and tried(mostly in vain) to book myself at hotels to speak and sell CDs and tapes—becausethat's what I believe I had to do to be a part of the self-helpindustry.
I studied marketing like my life depended on it (which I believed it did), andtried so hard to make sales and convince people that I knew what I was talkingabout. At that point, I didn't feel out of integrity because I truly believedeverything I was teaching. But the truth was that there was something I wasn'tgetting.
No matter how hard I worked, no matter how much new information about marketingI learned, and no matter how good my intentions were, nothing was changing forme—except that my money problems continued to increase.
My wife and I reached a breaking point when our financial woes forced her toreturn to work. This was a major blow to my ego, as it had taken me many yearsto convince her to quit the job that was making her so miserable. After all, mycorporate job was paying well enough (I was great at ignoring the truth aboutour financial situation), and my wife finally resigned from her position so shecould stay home with our young children and be a full-time mother.
Because I'd made such a big deal about how we could afford for her to quit herjob, my wife's return to work was a major wake-up call for me. I suddenly becameclear that all this "work" I was doing wasn't getting me anywhere. All thistrying to "figure out what was wrong" wasn't producing any answers. I finallydecided to step back and become a true student of my own teaching.
That meant giving the whole thing up to a much more intelligent power.
Much of what I'd learned was that if you were clear about your vision and heldit, the Universe would provide you with the answers and resources you needed tomove forward. Those answers came in the form of something called intuition. Forthe nine months after I left my job, the voice of my intuition was being drownedout by the screaming of my ego and intellect, and it was time to quiet the noiseand listen to what was being sent to me.
My new strategy became simply to get very clear on what I wanted (a career I waspassionate about); being...
