Attract the good stuf!

Besides teaching reiki, my reiki master is also a life coach and she holds various workshop on life teachings. The Man and I managed to attend of one of her workshops last week, on the laws of attraction.

The theory on the laws of attraction is simple; you are what you think. You can turn your thoughts into things because the vibration of your thoughts is actually an energy force which you can channel to attract the things you think about. The workshop basically teaches us to how to be conscious about, and to put out positive thoughts on what we want in life so as to ‘switch on’ that magnet.

The main trick to getting the laws of attraction to work is you have to know exactly what you want (and really feel it) before you can attract them. Remember that line from The Alchemist - “When you want something, all the universe conspire in helping you achieve it”?

That line is not a coined bluff. Your thoughts are really that powerful. But therein lies the problem. If you think about it, most people are clueless about what they want in their life. We certainly know what we don’t want though. We are always constant complaining about our job, our friends, our family, the size of our butts– but we never really think about what exactly we want to change about them.

To give you an example, let’s say you are always thinking and feeling (collectively, “vibrating”) “I hate my job, it sucks”, you will find that in every job you take, you always hate it. That is because the universe doesn’t know negativity so it doesn’t respond to your bare complains about what you do not want and so it keeps giving you the same shit until you give it signals about what you want instead. If you are specifically vibrating at “I want to be challenged at work” or “I want to be appreciated by my boss”, you will soon find that you will be presented opportunities for that to happen.

We were taught a couple of ‘exercises’ during the workshop to appreciate how laws of attraction works. One of the exercises is called “Rampage of Appreciation”. My reiki master tells us she used to work in Hong Kong and has to take a mini bus to work, and she absolutely hates it because nobody queues and everyone is just shoving one another about. By the time she reach work, she is stressed and angry. So she started playing the appreciation game during her bus ride. The rule is, she has to appreciate one nice thing about every person she meets on the bus. For example, the fat lady who shoved her? She is wearing a nice shade of lipstick. That old uncle who cursed at her? He is blessed with a full head of hair at his age. The rude teenager who stepped on her shoes? He seems passionate about the music he is blasting from his iPod.

She soon realize that when she start seeing the better stuffs in people, instead of focusing on her own negative feelings, these folks aren’t as bad. What’s more, it helps her to not feel personally ‘attacked’ during the bus ride. It is a hard game to play because when we are in thralls of anger, it is challenging to pause and look for anything good in your aggressor. But if you think about it, that’s how most fights perpetuates. We are so focused on our own judgment on people that we often fail to appreciate that the other person is not the source of our anger, it is our reaction to them that is. So if you are generally a negative person, this is a good exercise for you to help change your perspective on things so that you stop attracting those negative things.

Another exercise taught at the workshop that really resonates with me is The Prosperity Game. Basically, we were asked to write down what we will spend on if we are given a sum of money. The rule is, you cannot save, donate or invest that sum; you have to spend it outright.

Easy? Oh man… it’s so not! I was stuck at the first sum already. I have absolutely NO idea what I will do with $100. Or $1,000. Or even $10,000. All I can think of is really trite things like food or massages. When I ponder further, I realize I don’t really want spend on those things either so I left the columns next to these 3 figures blank. As my reiki master kept raising the sum, I struggled slightly less. At $100,000, I decided to buy a car.

Man: (looking over my shoulder at my worksheet) You can’t get a car with $100,000
Frou: Why not?
Man: A Maserati costs at least $300,000.
Frou: Er.. I just want a Toyota. The Rav4 is $78K.
Man: Gee.

At $1,000,000, I decided on an apartment. At 10,000,000, I couldn’t think of anything so I bought an island. (Though seriously, I wasn’t really all that enthusiastic.) The Man, on the other hand, was going crazy with his imaginary money. He was whopping quietly as the bar goes up. I think I am the only alibaba in that room who doesn’t know what to do with money.

Man: (stabbing his pencil on my worksheet) You can’t get an island with 10 mil!!
Frou: Why not?
Man: You can’t get anything from Dubai or the Middle East.
Frou: Er.. I just want a small one off the Peninsula… a place for me and Philip etc. to party in
Reiki master: (overheard) Yeah, there are cheap ones in Fiji. I can sell you mine.
Man: Gee.

I don't think very big, do I? :(

My reiki master explain later that this is one of the exercises on knowing what we want – if we are able to see prosperity in life in the first place. I quote Warren Buffet who once said, “"I always knew I was going to be rich. I don't think I ever doubted it for a minute." Sounds arrogant? But you see, rich people really can see themselves rich because you need to think money (and know how to spend it) before you can attract the money. If you cannot imagine abundance in your life or believe prosperity can happen to you, you won’t get it.

Which is exactly the reason why my bank account stays the same year after year. This exercise actually made me realize I have always restricted my dreams and aspirations to how much I think I can actually afford at present. For example, I have always wanted to switch career but I always think I can’t get anything better paying than my current job. I want to live in a better place but I didn’t think I live with sacrificing the other luxuries in my life. Those may be practical reality check but then again, if I can’t imagine myself doing or earning more than what I am now, I probably won’t.

So it is really great to attend this workshop not so much as to learn things that I never knew before, but to really think about how it can work. There are other technical things my reiki master taught – like the difference between the subconscious mind vs. conscious mind and the Abrahams emotional guidance scale etc. – which I didn’t discuss in this blog post but you should go explore it online if you are interested.

The bottom line that I want to share is this: It is possible to get the things we dream about because most of us (supposed “grown ups”) do not have impractical dreams in the first place - like wanting to become a superhero with the power of immortality (do you?). Instead, our everyday dreams are usually about getting a handsome boyfriend, that new LV bag, our parents to stop nagging at us, or to hit sales target at work – which if you really think about it, is not so impossible if you really put your mind to it. We have all the resources we need within us; we are only limited by our own mental boundaries.

So folks, if you can dream it, you can achieve it.

And for now, I am dreaming of a nice juicy bacon sandwich for lunch... and I'm almost certainly gonna get one!