Kind of.

It needs a little context and because it’s powerful stuff but also in my view potentially dangerous territory (particularly given all the con artists out there ready to exploit people using such material to promise huge success and life changes).

So, in a nutshell: The law of attraction is a universal principle that states you will attract into your life whatever you focus on.

There is a little more to it than that, but that’s basically it. The general idea is around self-belief and when it comes to the law of attraction, positive affirmations play a huge part – that is telling yourself whatever positive message you need over and over in order to turn negative self-talk into positive self-talk.

The affirmations can be out loud or in your head.

These are phrases like ‘I am rich’ (if you want to know why ‘I am rich’ instead of ‘I will be rich’ ask in the comments below and I’ll explain, it’s basically about belief and how the mind and the sub-conscious works), ‘I am loved’, ‘I can do it’, ‘I am strong’, ‘I am a winner’…

So Does It Work?

I’m going to swerve the question a little here because I don’t think it is a straight-forward answer which is pretty much why I am writing this article.

I have just been asked too many times what I think about the law of attraction (when telling people about how powerful I think the mind is, how much I believe in the power of self-belief, how our thoughts create our reality etc. People often jump to the Law of attraction and ask me what I think about it).

I have come across this in various seminars and learning environments where people interested in one or other related thing will come across this topic (think NLP, Life-Coaching, Hypnotism, you name it… pretty much anything connected with any kind of philosophy, psychology or self-improvement).

So my answer is, yes it can, but then in my personal view it can also be very dangerous and to explain that, some context is needed.

Basically it pains me to think how many people – and generally people who are desperate or in really difficult moments in their lives – have put up serious amounts of money to go to some dodgy seminar and hear some guru telling them they can change their lives and that they only need to believe and they can have/do anything they want. Usually the con is to do with money – people looking in the mirror and saying to themselves ‘I am going to be rich’ every morning when the wake up and every evening before they go to sleep (positive affirmations) is not going to make them rich.

The argument of course is if they truly believe it they will sub-consciously be taking actions and putting themselves in situations which will make them rich (the ‘spiritual’ version of this being they have sent their intentions out into the universe and it’s just a matter of time before the universe will answer).

The counter-argument if ever the whole thing is questioned (‘It’s not working!!!’) is – well that’s because you’re doubting yourself, you clearly don’t believe it enough, you have to really believe etc etc.

So time for a quick recap:
– yes I do believe in the power of the mind,
– yes, I do believe that we generally attract what we focus on
– no I don’t believe that positive affirmations are enough

What is needed for this to Work

I think 3 things are actually needed (so yes, 2 extras in addition to the Law of Attraction):

The Law of Attraction (or strong self-belief or positive affirmations)
plus
Supporting habits or actions – sometimes you just have to put the work in, affirmations and belief aren’t always enough (though they undoubtedly help and possibly could be enough depending upon your starting point and what the actual affirmation/goal/belief is).
plus
The right resources and/or environment to enable progress (e.g. if you lived on the moon then no amount of belief or positive actions will help you – extreme example I know but you get the idea).

Positive Affirmations Alone Aren’t Enough

Whilst (assuming you do it enough) repeating positive affirmations definitely can promote self belief and lead to all kinds of other knock-on good behaviours, habits, actions and thoughts, there is a lot more that needs to happen and whilst sometimes it can happen as a result of the positive affirmations, sometimes it just won’t and therefore we have to put that extra work in too.

The problem is we have many thousands of thoughts every single day so if you just say your positive affirmation one time, it’s not enough. You’d need to do it at least a hundred times throughout the day for it to actually make a difference.

It’s also much harder to make this work from a standing start. What I mean by this is positive affirmations are much easier for someone who already has some of what they’re looking for (whatever the positive affirmation is affirming) than for someone who has none of that at all and is basically starting from scratch (e.g. a stone cold broke person trying to be a millionaire vs an ex-millionaire who went bankrupt, lost their self confidence got into a spiral of debt, hardship and homelessness and hit rock bottom – the latter may be in a worse situation but at least they have been there before so have a reference they can use).

We need evidence to back up the affirmations. Forgetting the millionaire affirmation example I just gave, even in current behaviours we need some evidence to get a foothold with. If the affirmation is ‘I’m a healthy person’ but you’re eating junk food all day then the affirmations are not going to work because you are not going to believe the self-belief you are trying to instill in yourself, you may need to also take a little action to help re-inforce the self belief and give yourself some evidence to go off before letting the law of attraction do its thing and letting the sub-conscious take over.

Successful People Do It Anyway

Successful people don’t need to look in the mirror every morning growling at themselves and saying ‘You’re a Tiger!’. They don’t need a routine of positive affirmations to get off their a$$e$ and know what to do next.

Successful people already have very strong self-belief (i.e. without it even necessarily being conscious or needing to refer to it as the Law of Attraction or positive affirmations, though it’s basically the same thing just without the hype).

The other things that successful people do is they build relationships, they take action and they work hard.

We could argue that these things come with the Law of Attraction because that positive self belief kicks the subconscious into these necessary supporting actions, habits and hard work, all I’m saying is if you want the Law of Attraction to work, then make sure they do.

In Summary…

When people say ‘Does the Law of Attraction work?’ they generally mean ‘Will it drastically change my life?’.

If the question were ‘Does the Law of Attraction work’ meaning can it shift my life in a better direction, can it be a catalyst to better habits or simply does thinking about the right things in the right way attract more good stuff into my life – then yes, yes and yes.

But let’s be real. When people say ‘Does the Law of Attraction work’ what they want to know is, is it the silver bullet they’ve been told, is it the answer, will it make them rich/successful/healthy/fill_in_your_own_blank_here – then no, no, no. Not on its own, no. Sorry.

The Law of Attraction, positive self belief, affirmations are powerful, but they need to be accompanied by good habits, networking, work, education, resources and the right environment if you want massive success in whatever form you are looking for, whatever your goals are.

Just beware thinking the affirmations alone will do it, they won’t.