Personal Growth From the Bottom Up – BroderickDurisseau.com
A Blog Dedicated to Personal Growth, Success and Goal Achievement

I’m sure if you googled “Law of Attraction” you’d find an incredible amount of information on it, so I’m not going to give you a long, detailed explanation of every aspect of it.  That’s what The Secret is for.  I’m going to share the basics of the Law of Attraction, exactly how it has worked for my benefit and how it can work for you.  The Law of Attraction states that your thoughts determine your life.  Your predominant thoughts find a way to manifest as your reality.  You attract what you think about.   It might be easier to see that your decisions have formed your life, but your decisions ultimately come from your thoughts.

The Secret

I first heard about the Law of Attraction in 2006 when the movie The Secret came out.  Oprah was excited about it and a lot of people were telling me about it, so I got it.  When I watched it the first time, I didn’t quite grasp it all, but I was definitely excited about this new way of thinking, so I showed it to some people I knew.  They watched it for about 10 minutes before they started talking about some drama they had heard on the news.  The excitement I had was gone and I could see they were disinterested, so I put the movie away for about two years.

After coming off two horrible semesters in college where I wasn’t going to class and seemed very disinterested, I decided I needed a break.  I didn’t want another repeat performance with more wasted money, so I decided to take some time off from school.  There was still some left over student loan money, so I could support myself away from my family for a while without having a job.  I was totally free to focus on me, and to this day that was by far the best decision I’ve made in my entire life.

During this time off, I played a lot of video games and watched a lot of TV and movies.   While I was browsing through my collection of movies to watch, I decided that I would watch The Secret again.  The movie inspired me, and it made total sense to me this time because I listened to Rhonda Byrnes commentary (under “Settings”) unlike the first time I saw it, and she explained it perfectly.  After I heard her commentary I could definitely see how my thoughts had caused me to be in the position I was in.  I created the problems in my life.  Me.  I had such a negative attitude towards myself, money and other people.  As a result I found myself in poor health, overweight, lacking money, and without friends.  My circumstances were all caused by my thoughts.  This is why the main premise of The Secret is to focus on what you want, and to feel good if you want to manifest your desires.

How To Control Your Thoughts

It would be extremely difficult to make sure every thought you have is positive seeing as you have tens of thousands of thoughts running through your head everyday.  Fortunately there is a much easier way – your emotions.  Your emotions fuel your thoughts, so your thoughts will change once you change how you feel.  In The Secret, Rhonda Byrne recommends to write 10 things that make you feel good and to do what’s on that list as much as possible.  When you’re feeling overwhelmed, stressed, fearful, disappointed – go to the list.  This was all I needed before my life started to change immensely.  It also raised my awareness.  I realized movies, television, and video games didn’t make me feel good.  They made me feel guilty when I was done with them because I felt like I had wasted time.  That’s when I realized I used them to procrastinate.

The Law of Attraction Test

This documentary was very inspiring, but I wanted to put it to a definite test. I decided it should be small just so I could see if it worked. It pained me to look at my messy apartment everyday, so I decided I would use The Law of Attraction to manifest a clean apartment.  In The Secret they say to be very specific about what you want, so I imagined me standing in the middle of my apartment stress-free appreciating its cleanliness.  I imagined this day in and day out, and I felt the feelings of me being in a clean house.  After a week my bedroom was clean.  After two weeks the living room and the bedroom were clean.  It ultimately took me 2 months for my whole apartment to manifest as I imagined  it.  Yes I had cleaned it, but this whole process was very different from any time I had cleaned my house before.  This time nothing I did felt like it was forced.  Everything I did seemed to flow naturally.  Why did it take so long? It took 2 months because I didn’t just get a clean apartment.  I got a clean, organized and uncluttered apartment.  The best part about this whole process was not me getting this clean, organized, and uncluttered apartment.  It was the fact that I became a clean, organized, uncluttered person.  My car is now clean, organized, and uncluttered.  My relationships are clean, organized, and uncluttered.   Throughout this whole process the real change had come from inside me, and that is why it took longer than one might expect.  The transformation of my outer reality (my apartment, my car, my relationships) was just a reflection of the transformation that had happened on the inside.

During the process I also attracted answers to help me reach my vision.  For instance, I became aware of the power of appreciation.  If you don’t appreciate something, you won’t do your best to take care of it.  I also read that clutter is clutter because you have no designated place for it, so I created a space for everything that I considered clutter.

That test has made me a firm believer in the Law of Attraction, and I can see it working each day more and more.  However, the truth is that it doesn’t matter whether I believe in it or not – it’s at work.  Like gravity.

How Can You Get What You Want?

-Create a detailed image of what you want in your mind.  Focus on it as much as possible.  When you focus on it, feel how you will feel when it comes to reality.
-Do what you have to do to feel good.  Positive feelings —-> Positive thoughts —-> Positive results

-Understand that this is going to change who you are and how you think.  Would you want a million dollars or would you want to be a person that could generate a million dollars very easily and felt like it was nothing if you lost it?
-Give what you want.  I’ll get into more detail about this in another post.

The best part about the Law of Attraction is the fact that there are no limits.  No limits placed on you by your religion, your parents, your friends.  None.  Literally anything is possible. I used the example of how I manifested a clean house, but the possibilities are endless.  You can use the Law of Attraction to manifest anything you want.  Since I’ve proven to myself that it works and understand how, I’m starting to think bigger now.  My focus is now starting to be on things like wealth and financial freedom.

Need anymore detail? Buy The Secret.  It was just what I needed.

Many people would say Thanksgiving is a holiday to remember what we’re thankful for.  That would be true, but what is it about Thanksgiving we look forward to?  The time we’re going to spend with family? The “eat, drink and be merry” part?  I don’t think we look forward to Thanksgiving so we can give thanks, because we have the ability to give thanks any time we want to, so that means we look forward to all the other aspects of the holiday.  We catch up with each other.  We talk about different subjects and offer advice to each other.  We laugh.  We enjoy each others presence (hopefully).  The belief that because that particular span of time is over, that the fun and joy we experience during Thanksgiving has to end is a limiting belief.  It’s also a disappointing belief.   I remember some of the worst feelings I had were when the holidays ended,  the family went their separate ways never to be seen again until the next holiday, and I had to go back to school.  After Thanksgiving I usually had some big school project I had procrastinated on staring me dead in the face, so I guess you can say I added to my own disappointment.

The Power of Appreciation

Thanksgiving has passed, but shouldn’t we give thanks everyday? Or at least more often than once a year?  If we don’t appreciate what we have already, what would be the point of acquiring more? the new feeling?  to impress others?  It would be like trying to fill a bottomless pit.  You will never be at peace with what you have if you’re not at peace with what you have now.

When we appreciate our reality, we take care of it.  We make sure its needs are met.  What’s really great about appreciation is that when we value our reality, we receive more from it anyway.  I found that when I felt genuinely thankful for my apartment, it became much cleaner and much more organized.  Appreciation wasn’t the only reason it became cleaner and more organized, but it definitely played a huge role.  Cleaning the house was no longer an overwhelming job I had to schedule in on my list of things to do like it was before I understood the power of appreciation.

Acknowledging Appreciation

Even if we do understand the value of what we have now, do we acknowledge that we appreciate it?  Do we tell people we love them for no reason? Or do we wait for some special occasion.  Do we tell our kids we appreciate them just for being them? Or do we say “We’re proud of you, but…”.  What if someone came up to you and told you that what you do is enough.  What if they acknowledged the positives about you and really let you know they appreciated you WITH NO ULTERIOR MOTIVE behind it.  How would that make you feel?  What would you think about that person?

Being Thankful or the Bad

Maybe you view your circumstances as awful.  Maybe you just view some aspects of your life as bad.  Whatever it is, it’s not the end of the world.  You can still be thankful for the life circumstances you perceive as bad by treating them as a learning/growing experience.  If you’re in a situation you don’t want to be in, instead of complaining about it or blaming someone else, say to yourself “what can this teach me?”.  Learn the lesson and appreciate that the lesson is there.  You can also share the dark times to help other people out of those same dark situations.

Appreciation is mainly an aspect of awareness, and if we can be aware about the value of what is around us more often, we can reach new heights in all areas of our life.

When I was walking around outside, completely broke, I stopped and started looking at a tree.  I had an “aha” moment around that time, and realized that that tree has many qualities of a person who experiences abundance in all areas of his/her life.  The cycle of a tree from birth to “death” is one of magnificence. I will share.

A tree is born
In the beginning a small tree, a sapling, needs nurturing.  It needs to be taken care of.  It needs help and can only give but a little value to the world.  Pretty soon that tree becomes deeply rooted in the earth and connected to the world. It doesn’t need as nearly as much nurturing as it did before, but its basic needs still must be met.

A tree is focused on growth
From day one, it seems the tree’s goal is to grow, because it knows that if it grows it’s ability to create value to it’s environment also grows.  The path of growth is interesting too.  The tree doesn’t just grow upwards.  Yes, the tree gets taller every year that passes, but the key is it grows outwards and upwards simultaneously.  It’s branches are like arms reaching out to its environment.

A tree gives
It doesn’t ask how can it get this brand new car or all this money.  It stands in offering and just gives. It trusts that the universe will take care of everything it needs if it just focuses on what it can give, not what it can get. It gives shelter to birds and insects.  It gives shade and protection from the suns rays to that which is underneath it.  It bears fruit so that we may eat from it.   It gives us oxygen to breathe and trusts that we will give it carbon dioxide back and the rain will come and quench its thirst.  Even in the midst of adversity, when it sees someone in the distance ready to cut it down, it doesn’t complain.  It doesn’t blame.  It just sees more opportunity to give and becomes the paper that is used for the book that saves lives.  It becomes the wood to light the fire of a happy home.  It’s the pencil that’s used to write a song that inspires the world.

A tree is still and present
A tree doesn’t have anger, regret, or sorrow over the past.  It also doesn’t have anxiety and fear of the future. If it’s not dwelling on the past or worried about the future, what’s left? Now is left.  It enjoys and celebrates Now.

What you take from this is up to you, but I would challenge you to take a closer look at nature.  I think we all could learn some things if we haven’t already.