The Myth of Action

Action is one of the most misunderstood components of the law of attraction. I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen something to the effect of, “The secret of the law of attraction is action.” Or take an email I just got yesterday, which said, “the biggest part of Attraction is Action.”

It’s a pithy little phrase, but is it true?

Alas, I believe it is not true. I think people say this for one of several reasons:

• They don’t really have faith in the law of attraction itself, so claim that it can only work through action.
• They don’t really understand the mechanisms behind the law of attraction, and so think the gap has to be filled with action.
• They’ve come across people who have made the opposite, yet equally dangerous assumption: that action is forbidden.
• They heard someone else say it, it made sense, so they are just parroting it.

That’s just speculation of course, as I really have no idea why someone would say this. I only know that my own experience says quite the opposite.

The Law of Attraction Works

Let me start with this: the law of attraction works.

It’s not a psychological phenomenon. It’s not confirmation bias. It really, truly works.

I’ve come across numerous people who have said that it’s all just psychological. Thinking positively makes you more optimistic, more willing to go after your goals, and so you’re more likely to take the correct actions to lead to achieving that goal.

Yet, I’ve had numerous goals that I took literally zero action on, and yet achieved them all the same using the law of attraction.

I’ve seen the Universe create a path of least resistance to my goal, over and over again.

It works.

In this age of rationality, people are afraid of “magical thinking”. It seems preposterous that reality could actually be so malleable as to be affected by our minds.

It took me a while to believe it myself, as I’m rather skeptical by default. But, I saw it enough times that I could no longer deny its existence.

The real issue is, I think, that most people have no idea how it works.

I’m in some law of attraction groups on Facebook, and have seen some truly bizarre and frustrating interpretations of the law of attraction. most posts are full of superstition or outright misconceptions.

For example, there’s a technique making the rounds called 55×5 (sometimes other numbers are used). Essentially it says if you repeat an affirmation 55 times per day, for 5 days, you’ll get your goal, as if it’s some sort of formula.

I can just imagine the forces of the Universe saying, “Wait, they only did 54 affirmations one of those days. It doesn’t count! Don’t give them their desire!”

Obviously that’s ridiculous. And saying an affirmation 55 times a day for 5 days is no more likely than any other random technique to overcome your resistance.

Another example is a post that’ll say something like, “DESERVE ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD! AFFIRM YES!” Then the thread is nothing but 200 comments saying “Yes!” as if that will tip off the Universe that they want money and it’ll start flooding in. It’s silly and gimmicky.

I can’t tell you how much things like this frustrate me, because I know this stuff works, and I equally know that these sorts of gimmicks won’t lead anywhere.

I’m even thinking of writing a book on the law of attraction, because I realized there’s no single book I could recommend that I think would accurately cover all relevant aspects of the manifestation process.

Anyway I say all of this because I know it actually works. But I equally know that there are dozens if not hundreds of sometimes dangerous myths out there, getting in the way of people’s success.

And this myth of action is one of them.

The Danger of Action

If I’ve noticed anything in regards to action, it’s generally that people take far too much of it.

Mainly, they act at the wrong time, and then they get horrible results.

In such cases, my first recommendation is to preferably cease all action towards the goal altogether. Sometimes people are too fearful to do that, so I recommend to at least significantly pull back on the action.

Two cases come to mind:

Case 1 was a client who wanted to publish a book. She had been taking relevant action every day for months if not a year. She thought, “If I just take even 30-60 minutes of action a day, it has to work out.”

The problem was, she hated the action. It wasn’t inspired in the least. She thought it was drudgery.

And so, day-after-day, she performed her action towards her goal, but nothing ever happened.

So we started working together, and I told her to cease all action. Don’t do anything towards her goal.

She was hesitant, but went along with it. For roughly two months, she took absolutely no action toward her goal, except doing the inner work I recommended.

Then, when I saw she was closer to the vibration of the goal, I said she could now start taking inspired action as it arose naturally.

Within two weeks, her book was on Amazon for people to purchase.

A year of action yielded absolutely no results, but two months of inaction, and doing the inner work, resulted in her book being published.

Case #2: I had a client who wanted to find a job. He had some serious resistance around the idea that he had to be the provider, and if he was out of work, he was basically worthless. Of course, that got in the way of him actually finding a job he enjoyed.

Problem was, he was spending 8 or more hours a day sending out resumes. It’s like the common advice that I despise: “Make your job finding a job.” That is, spend the 8 hours you’d normally be spending at a job, sending out resumes and applying to jobs.

It’s grueling work. Who really, truly wants to spend 8 hours a day sending out resumes? I had someone once tell me that because I refused to consider taking that action myself, I was resistant to money and finding a good job. Um, no. I simply refuse to take action that isn’t enjoyable and inspired.

Anyway, this guy even felt guilty if he took any kind of break, to, you know, spend time with his wife.

I told him, “If I had it my way, you’d stop applying to any job at all for the next two weeks.” But he wouldn’t do it. So I made him promise to at least take more breaks, and to focus more on the inner work.

Anyway, within about a week of that session, he had found his ideal job. Well, nearly ideal. There were still bits of resistance, since he wouldn’t take my advice and fully do the inner work, but he at least succeeded at finding a better job.

This is the danger of action. It seems like you’re doing something, and that surely it must pay off. But in reality, you’re just spinning your wheels.

I can tell you from experience that there are few things more dangerous to the manifestation process than taking uninspired action, especially when you put a ton of effort into it.

The Effortlessness Principle

It goes against what I call the effortlessness principle (actually I just started calling it that, but it sounds good 😉).

Basically it’s this: you can tell how closely aligned you are to the path to your goal by how effortless it feels. If it feels like tons of effort and stress, then you’re off in the bushes trying to forge your own path, but really headed in the opposite direction. But if it’s effortless and easy, then you’re right on the path, headed perfectly towards your goal.

Yet very few trust this principle. Success seems like it requires effort and force, and so they take uninspired, joyless action that in truth gets them nowhere.

There’s no such thing as sacrifice that gets you what you want. You can’t sacrifice enough time, enough effort, enough joy, to get you what you want. It just doesn’t work, because effort is not the currency of the Universe. Joy is.

Literally the only thing you need to do is to align yourself with the vibration of the goal, releasing resistance that arises to the contrary, and it’ll come.

Sure I have lots of techniques that help with one or more parts of this process, but this is really what it all comes down to.

Stop focusing on the unwanted. Start focusing more and more on the wanted. Persistently redirect your focus back to the thing you want, and things must shift.

Very often, it’ll take no action whatsoever. It happens, almost like magic.

sometimes, it may take a very minimal amount of action. You have to agree to an opportunity, or send in one resume to the perfect job that made itself known to you.

This is exactly how I got my first job. It literally presented itself to me, without me even looking. All I did was to send in my resume, just to see what happened. I didn’t even believe I’d actually get it.

The Secret About Action

Here’s the secret I want you to know about action, which if properly understood, will cut through this myth once and for all:

Action is never the cause of any goal. It is only an effect that arises simultaneously with the goal.

What does that mean?

You sending in the resume, for example, is not the cause of you getting the job.

Sure it may appear that way, but both events took place in this physical world, which can only ever be a world of effects. There are no causes here.

The true cause is your own alignment. Your alignment caused you to send in the resume, and it also caused you to get the job. But it does not follow that sending in the resume caused you to get the job: only your alignment did that.

If you didn’t send in the resume, then it would have happened some other way.

Think of your vibrational work as writing a script. When someone writes a script for a movie, they know what they want to happen. They just have to figure out how it’ll be explained in the movie.

But the actions in the movie are not the cause of the thing happening. It’s just the surface level explanation. Everything in the movie is simply an effect of the script.

So it is with your manifestation work. When you align with a job, or a relationship, or money, or anything else, then it’s going to happen. But the physical world tends to be averse to things just appearing out of nowhere. A storyline needs to develop itself that “explains” how you got the thing you wanted. It could be an action you take, or some random event that presents itself to you, or something else entirely.

But it’s just that— a storyline. It’s not actually responsible for you getting the goal.

That’s why it’s so easy to be skeptical of this stuff. You might say, “The law of attraction didn’t bring me the job. I got the job because I sent in my resume.” But, plenty of people send in their resumes without getting the job.

What really happens is this: your vibration dictates that you must get your ideal job. Now the Universe merely needs to create a path for it to happen in the physical world. It’ll create a path of least resistance, which is believable and explainable within your current beliefs and circumstances.

For example, if you want more money, it’s probably not believable for you for someone to walk up and hand you a bundle of money. But, it might be believable for you to get a promotion, or for your business to succeed, or for some investments to pay off.

It’s actually kind of fun— and I’ve seen this happen— to open up your beliefs about what is possible, and then crazier and crazier things can happen to explain you getting your goal. I’ve heard of people actually finding bundles of money, or checks just showing up for no reason. But this takes deliberate work to open up your subconscious to these possibilities.

The Universe starts from the end and works backwards. The money, or the job, or the relationship, is a sure thing, if your vibration is a match to it. It simply works backwards to the most likely, easily believable way of that happening. But again, the “way” is not actually the cause. It’s just the storyline.

So my client who worked for a year towards her goal and yet nothing happened? Her vibration dictated “stuckness”, and her action was the storyline that created the stuckness.

My other client who worked himself day and night to find a job, and felt guilt if he did anything else? His vibration dictated “hard work and guilt,” and his action was the storyline that brought that about.

So you see, any action, if taken, is just part of the storyline. The action is perfectly incapable of changing the story, because it has no power to cause anything at all.

The Myth of Inaction

I mentioned briefly above that thinking that action is forbidden is equally dangerous.

There are people who just sit around and really believe (or pretend they believe) that a million dollars is just going to show up, and they don’t have to do anything at all.

Now this is a fine line, because, of course, they don’t have to do anything. But also refusing to take action, if action arises, is blocking the energy of your manifestation flowing to you. And, it generally indicates a deeper, vibrational misalignment.

so again, the inaction itself isn’t the problem, because neither action nor inaction can create anything. But, it’s simply a symptom of a deeper issue.

It’s like the old story of the religious man who was caught in a flood. He climbed up on the roof, but was confident that God would save him. A boat came, but he said, “No, God will save me.” Another boat came, and he similarly refused that one. Finally a helicopter came, and he equally refused to get in.

Finally he died and asked God why he didn’t save him. and of course God said, “I sent you two boats and a helicopter. What else did you want?”

If I had neglected to send my resume to that job that presented itself to me, thinking that no action was ever necessary, what would happen? Certainly the Universe would endeavor to find another storyline— another explanation for me to get the job, but with the refusal to take any action at all, its options would be limited.

It’s like in the movie, if the hero refuses to take any action to defeat the villain, the scriptwriter’s options would be rather limited. The hero’s action is never the cause of the defeat of the villain, but with no action at all, the possible storylines are rather limited.

And again, the refusal to take any action at all is usually the symptom of some deeper issue. Usually, some form of escapism. “If I just daydream hard enough, all my problems will disappear and I’ll have everything I want.”

Usually, people with this mentality are trying to get massive goals way outside of their belief. They want a million dollars, or to be the CEO of some Fortune 500 company, or to have a relationship with some celebrity.

Are these things possible? of course— anything is possible. But are they likely, given your current beliefs? NO!

But it’s nice to escape into the daydream of having these things, and it distracts from their current problems, so they think that the law of attraction has to bring it to them, and of course they don’t have to take any action at all.

They refuse to take action, because action ruins their escapism. It makes it too real, and what they want more than anything is to escape reality.

But again, the inaction isn’t the issue. The escapism and unrealistic expectations are the issue.

So, in brief, action may happen, or it may not. Be open to whatever takes place. But whatever happens, realize that it’s only the storyline the Universe has used to explain the results you get. It’s not the cause of the results.

This may seem unlikely and even magical, but I promise it is true. It’s what I’ve experienced over and over again in my own life, and it’s what I’ve seen with my clients. Action is never needed, but sometimes it’s a useful storyline. Just don’t believe in it too much.

How About You?

So what about you? Has this article answered your questions about action? How does it explain your own successes or failures with the law of attraction? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.