You might have heard of the “Law of Attraction” aka the “teachings of Abraham”. For those of you who haven’t, this is the executive summary: Whatever you focus your thoughts intensely on, you will attract into your life. So given this law, all you have to do to get rich is some focused thinking about getting rich and how you would live your life of affluence - money will then automatically be attracted to your life, sounds nice doesn’t it?

Well, that is actually what the proponents of the Law of Attraction will tell you. I just happen to think that it is a huge scam.

I am a big believer in the principle that if something false can be allowed to spread, it is because there is some truth to it, people are not stupid. So what is it that is true about the Law of Attraction even though it is actually a scam?

First of all most proponents will tell you that it is not exactly that simple, and that is true of course. For the law of attraction to work, it must feel right and you should be careful not to let negative thoughts reverse the “process”.  In other words the law of attraction includes the (true) idea that positive thinking will help you in your quest for personal development.

You will also be told that you need to focus intensely and continously on whatever you want to manifest. If what you want to achieve is on a personal level, this seems an awful lot like another well known personal development technique, affirmations.  I am not a big fan of affirmations but I acknowledge that they have the (true) potential to help with lack of self esteem and other internal problems. Focusing on what it is you want is also the basis of two other valid personal development methods, goal setting and visualizations.

In order to leach some credibility from scientific studies, many proponents of the law of attraction will say that your thoughts “activate a vibration within you” and that we are all “Vibrational Beings”. Supposedly the goal is to be “in tune” with the Universe and then let your thoughts affect the world around you by sending out the right vibrations. It is true that all atoms vibrate, this is called heat. It is also true that heat can be transfered (or transmitted if you like) as you will remember from putting you hand on a hot object, your hand will become warmer. It is, however, entirely unfounded to propose that your thoughts can control these vibrations(heat) and that it will have any consequence for your future succes.

So what is the law of attraction? It is parts from positive thinking, affirmations, visualizations and goal setting with a new spin on it. This also explains why you will hear examples of people having (some) success with it. So why do I call it a scam? I do it because the traditional personal development methods are designed to help improve YOU, so that YOU will take action and YOU will improve your life - in this case the Law of Attraction proposes something very alluring instead: that you do not need to do anything, just send out the right vibrations (thoughts) and the Universe will take care of this for you. If you have always dreamt of owning a Lamborghini, just focus your thoughts intensely on it and someday it will be given to you. If you have always wanted to win the figure skating gold medal at the Winter Olympics, forget about training - just focus your thoughts intensely on it!

Hopefully it is clear from these last two examples how preposterous the Law of Attraction really is. Hopefully you will not get persuaded by their pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo. Hopefully you will acknowledge that if you want to improve your life, you will actually have to work for it.