Attracting the Good

Posted February 22nd, 2010 by kerri and filed in small house living
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17 Comments
The Little House, my writing career & my writer's studio (above) were all part of the dream

The Little House, my writ­ing career & my writer's stu­dio (above) were all part of the dream

In the past few months, I’ve received many notes about our achiev­ing our dream in our Little House. Sometimes the notes and com­ments I’ve got­ten from folks in email and through Mother Earth News say how our story has moti­vated them to make their own dreams real­ity. Other times, I’ve been asked exactly what steps we took to get here.

I give credit to get­ting here to The Law of Attraction, the power to will things into our lives.

Now, before you go think­ing I’m off my rocker, believ­ing in some woo-woo non­sense of mak­ing things appear through mag­i­cal pow­ers, I’m not, and it isn’t about magic.

The Law of Attraction isn’t about mak­ing things appear with a twitch of the nose or an “abra­cadabra,” or just by draw­ing or writ­ing about your dreams, as it might have been inter­preted in the best sell­ing book and doc­u­men­tary, “The Secret.”

Our house sold within 7 days, to the 3rd looker, just as I had journaled

Our house sold within 7 days, to the 3rd looker, just as I had journaled

The Law of Attraction is about know­ing what you want in your life, believ­ing it will come to fruition, and tak­ing advan­tage of oppor­tu­ni­ties that present them­selves to make it a reality.

And yes, I do believe there is sci­ence behind it as well in Quantum Physics and Neuroplasticity.

My mother believed in the Law of Attraction and so, I really have been a believer, if not only just on a sub­con­scious level, all of my life. In the neigh­bor­hood in which Dale and I grew up, hav­ing a lake home was “it,” and I’d wanted one for as long as I could remember.

In 2003, the oppor­tu­nity to build a lake home on land my aunt ini­tially bought with my uncle and mother pre­sented itself to us.

As with being a full-time writer, I didn’t know how or when the dream of hav­ing a lake home would come true, but I knew enough to grasp both oppor­tu­ni­ties when they were pre­sented in my life.

When we decided to make liv­ing here full-time a real­ity, my aunt had actu­ally just brought me the DVD of “The Secret.” It was the week of my mother’s funeral and know­ing I was dev­as­tated over that loss, my aunt wanted to remind me that my mother believed in the power of attrac­tion. She wanted me to remem­ber that my mom wouldn’t have wanted my dreams to stop because she was gone.

As I wrote above, I think there are a lot of things wrong in that book and DVD for peo­ple who didn’t have a basic under­stand­ing of The Law of Attraction. It relayed the mes­sage that attain­ment of your dreams and goals is quick and easy and it was based on too much com­mer­cial and mate­r­ial attain­ment and didn’t focus enough on the val­ues of love and grat­i­tude as part of the equation.

However, it did remind me of the basics of The Law of Attraction. That very spring I began jour­nal­ing about how I envi­sioned our move. I still have the jour­nal that out­lines every detail including:

  • Our house is only shown three times and sells within a week.
  • Dale gets the job of his dreams by the fall. It is good pay­ing and has benefits.

These things came true for us. Our house did sell exactly 7 days of being put on the mar­ket and was sold to the 3rd cou­ple that toured it and our move went smoothly. Dale did get the job he wanted at a major boat man­u­fac­turer and it was good pay­ing and had benefits.

Of course, it wasn’t just jour­nal­ing the specifics that made those things happen.

We took steps to ensure our goals were real­ized. We hired a great real estate agent with high sales results; we watched a mil­lion episodes of “Sell This House,” learn­ing how to stage it to sell quickly, took advice from our real estate agent and worked our butts off on the house for 2 months prior to putting it on the market.

When I got here, I started mak­ing calls to the boat com­pany to see what jobs they had avail­able. We were both very sur­prised that they hired mechan­ics; we thought Dale would be tak­ing an assem­bly job, not some­thing he actu­ally had skills for!

What putting our dreams down on paper did was crys­tal­lize my inten­tion for our new life here, but we still had to take steps to make our dreams happen.

Now, if you’ve been read­ing “Living Large” for a while, you know that things start­ing going askew about a year after our move.

It’s taken me a lit­tle while to read and do research, going deeper than what “The Secret” lined out about The Law of Attraction to fig­ure out how to get us back on course.

On Wednesday, I’ll talk about the mis­takes we made and how we began attract­ing things we didn’t want into our lives, as well as hav­ing a guest who has writ­ten a book on it (hint: There’s a book give­away in there!)

Do you know any­thing about The Law of Attraction? Do you think there’s some­thing to it, or just fan­tasy? Have you used it in your own life? How?

17 Responses to “Attracting the Good”

  1. Patricia Brown says:
    February 24, 2010 at 10:28 am

    It takes such courage to just let go & go for it. I will try to work more toward the "action" part this year.

  2. Anonymous says:
    February 23, 2010 at 5:42 pm

    I have a hard time with the law of attrac­tion. Just because I am a wor­rier, I worry about becom­ing home­less, or being hun­gry. Being a sin­gle mom and not hav­ing any other sup­port is hard so I feel like I am drown­ing every­day. I know you are sup­posed to think pos­i­tive, but it is hard to do that. I dream of mov­ing to a bet­ter place hav­ing a lit­tle store sell­ing crafts and classes but think­ing pos­i­tive about get­ting it seems to be a long shot. Sorry for the con­fus­ing post.

    • Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell says:
      February 23, 2010 at 8:15 pm

      Dear Friend,
      Your post isn't con­fus­ing. It is hard to think pos­i­tive and stay on that level when you have lit­tle. But believe me, it does work and it does make one feel bet­ter. Hopefully, you'll come back tomor­row and read the post on vision boards.

  3. Cindyt says:
    February 23, 2010 at 4:57 pm

    I don't know about the Law of Attraction…but I am a BIG believer in the Power of Positive Thinking!!! And in away seems to be related because Positive Thoughts and Actions attract Positive results! Has always been so in my life. Just as being Negative attracts neg­a­tive results!

  4. Keema says:
    February 23, 2010 at 11:03 am

    The Law of Attraction is real, and avail­able to any­body who is will­ing to put it into prac­tice. I have watched the DVD of The Secret, and I had a sim­i­lar reac­tion to yours. It seems to be devoid of human car­ing and kind­ness. The part that is true is that you can make good things hap­pen in your life. Be spe­cific, believe it will hap­pen, and then look for the oppor­tu­ni­ties in your life.
    I have a spe­cial way of doing this through my reli­gion, which is Nichiren Buddhism.

  5. Rosie says:
    February 23, 2010 at 8:29 am

    Nice post, Kerri, and a great expla­na­tion of how the Law of Attraction works. So many are dis­ap­pointed when their dreams aren't real­ized. But the Universe likes to see action!

  6. Monica Bhide says:
    February 22, 2010 at 8:48 am

    I am a huge believer in the Laws of Attraction. I loved your post. You have inspired me to have faith in my own jour­nal and to look for­ward to the future.
    thank you! A much needed reminder!

  7. Kathleen Winn says:
    February 22, 2010 at 8:33 am

    My daugh­ter started rid­ing horses at a very young age, hunter jumper Thoroughbreds. She excelled at it, but was lim­ited in how far she could go in com­pe­ti­tion because we sim­ply could not afford the cost of buy­ing and main­tain­ing such an expen­sive ani­mal. We told her we could pay for lessons and a cer­tain num­ber of horse shows, but would never be able to buy her a horse. One Christmas I gave each of the girls a stock­ing stuffer, a lit­tle clay pot with a lid and a word etched on the side. Jessica's word was "wishes." Into the pot she put a note say­ing "I wish I had a horse of my own." She also put some horse hair and a lit­tle horse charm inside. Within the year sev­eral things hap­pened that improved our finan­cial sit­u­a­tion, includ­ing me get­ting a much bet­ter pay­ing job and David a pro­mo­tion. A horse became avail­able at the sta­ble where she was rid­ing, for a very rea­son­able price and you guessed it, we were able to buy her a horse. His name? "Never Say Never"

  8. Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell says:
    February 22, 2010 at 7:07 am

    You're right about it being in the action, Jenna. I will be talk­ing about our "great­est fears com­ing true," on Wednesday!

  9. Jenna Martin says:
    February 22, 2010 at 6:58 am

    I've seen it work over and over again…for good and bad. I've seen peo­ple worry over some­thing hap­pen­ing and inad­ver­tently cause their worry to come true. I've seen peo­ple stay focused on what they want to hap­pen pos­i­tively and it suc­ceed wildly. I've seen peo­ple wish and want and get noth­ing. The dif­fer­ence is always in the action.