The #1 Mistake People Make When Using the Law of Attraction

Whenever you form an intention, that intention has two primary components. The first component is the content of the intention. The content is the information part of your desire. It’s whatever you decide you want, such as a new career, a better relationship, or an extra $10,000. That part is pretty straightforward.

The second component of an intention is the energy you bring to the intention. Some people describe this as a feeling, like passion or gratitude, but the feeling is actually the result of the energy, not the energy itself. However, you know there is energy in your intention when you connect strong feelings to it.

I’ll explain the energy component in more detail in a moment, but first let’s address…

Failure experiences with the Law of Attraction

I often hear people complain that they’ve dutifully and correctly applied the Law of Attraction, but their intentions just aren’t manifesting. Some of the more stubborn believers will continue beating their heads against the wall, using the same ineffective approach even though it generates no results week after week. (Please don’t do that to yourself.) Others give up within a matter of hours when their cappuccino grande fails to manifest, concluding that the whole Law of Attraction concept is bogus. (Please don’t do that to yourself either.)

I’ve previously written an article called Why Do Intentions Take So Long to Manifest? which covers some common problems people experience when trying (unsuccessfully) to apply the Law of Attraction. Now I want to address the most common mistake of all.

Content alone is not enough

Here’s the #1 mistake people make: They mistake content for complete intentions. The problem is that content alone isn’t enough because energy is an essential component of every intention.

Great content + no energy = an intention that won’t manifest anything but frustration.

Consider all the content that’s available to you on the Internet these days. Does that content just whiz around the world by itself? Of course not. Electricity is required to deliver it to you. Without electricity that content is dead in the water.

Suppose I write a new article for this web site, and before I can post it, my electricity goes out. Initially I’m frustrated that my content isn’t getting delivered to my readers. How do I solve this problem? Is the problem with the content itself? Do I need to improve the quality of the content… to write more content… or to post it on my wall? Those would be pretty stupid solutions, wouldn’t they? But that’s exactly what many people do when trying to “fix” their intentions that don’t seem to be working.

If you’re nitpicking the verbiage of your intentions, you’re like a writer nitpicking the wording of a private journal entry that no one else is going to read. It just doesn’t matter.

What is the energy component of an intention?

The energy of an intention isn’t the same thing as electricity, but it’s a good metaphor for understanding the concept. Don’t get hung up on the exact term — it’s the concept that’s important.

Many people refer to energy as the emotional juice you bring to an intention. That’s part of it, but strong emotions are the result, not the cause, of that energy.

If you want to see some high-energy intentions, look no further than children. Kids are intention-manifestation masters. When they really want something, there’s no mistaking it. They’ll ask for it, they’ll jump up and down, and they’ll drive everyone crazy expressing their desires. And assuming they don’t give up, kids are pretty darned good at manifesting what they want.

What kind of energy do you bring to your intentions? Do you speak of them like you’re talking about a piece of burnt toast? Or are you so juiced that you’re just dripping with enthusiasm?

I’m not suggesting you should behave like a kid throwing a sugar tantrum, but if you get more excited about the coming weekend than you do about your intention, well… the weekend will be the only thing you manifest.

Emotions measure intentional energy

As I mentioned earlier, strong emotions are actually the result of energy, not the cause of it. The value of emotions is that they let you know how much energy you’ve managed to pack into your intention. If you’re so gushingly enthusiastic about your intention that people keep telling you to shut up about it, you clearly have plenty of energy behind it.

So what’s the real source of this energy then?

The source of this energy is actually the universe itself. The energy is already there. You just need to connect some of it with your intention.

Consider how electricity works. The electrons are already sitting there in the wires of your home, and they start flowing when you flip a switch to complete the circuit, thereby creating a current and providing usable electrical power to your appliances. Although the electrons as particles move at a fairly slow pace, the electric field moves at the speed of light, so your appliances turn on right away.

Your intentions work much the same way. The energy is already there. You just need to get the current flowing in the right direction. And this has virtually nothing to do with the actual content of your intentions. Electricity doesn’t care whether it’s powering a computer or a coffee maker, nor does intentional energy care whether you’re building a business or a bomb.

Polarity

So how do you get this energy current flowing? First you need to understand the concept of polarity.

Going back to the electricity example. Imagine a battery. It has two terminals which are polar opposites of each other, one positive and one negative. If you hook the battery up to a circuit, electrons will flow in one direction, thereby creating a current. If you flip the battery around and hook it up the other way, you’ll reverse the flow of electrons through the wires, thereby creating an identical current in the opposite direction. (I’m trying to keep this analogy simple, so if you feel the need to out-nerd me by bringing up things like differential resistance, manifest a life.)

Now what if you wanted to increase the current flowing through your circuit? You could do that by adding more batteries, right? But in order for this to work, the batteries must be aligned to create a current in the same direction. If you put batteries into a device with some facing the correct way and some facing the wrong way, the device won’t work because you’ll screw up the current.

So what does this have to do with intention-manifestation? Well, the energy you apply to your intentions also has polarity, much like a battery. It can flow one way or the other way. You’ll know you have a strong intentional current when you experience strong emotions. No emotions means you have no current.

Many people screw up their intentional energy flow by trying to use both polarities in the same circuit. You can’t do that and expect to get good results with the Law of Attraction. It just won’t work. You must use either one polarity or the other, and you must remain congruent in your usage.

So what are the two polarities of intention-manifestation, and how do you apply them to build a strong intentional current? I’ll cover that in detail in my next article, so stay tuned. Update: here it is… Polarity