I was listening to a marketing seminar the other day, when the host brought up an interesting point. He was describing how to go about approaching people for potential business partnerships and told us that since the move The Secret came out, a lot of people have apparently been sending requests bordering on demands to him and others in his league (staggeringly successful people) and just expecting them to comply. It’s like walking up to Donald Trump in the street and saying “Hey Donald. I’m sure it’s a pleasure for you to meet me. Gimme a million dollars, would you?”, and then just expecting him to hand it over. He was lamenting the fact that these individuals didn’t think that they actually had to do anything to be successful in business, when it takes a tremendous amount of hard work to make it. And while I don’t entirely agree with the marketing guy on his stance about the Law of Attraction, there’s clearly a basic misunderstanding of the “Ask and it is given” principle going on here (along with just plain bad business practices), that I’m going to clear up today.

Yes, it’s true: if you ask, it is given. When you discover something you like or want, it is automatically created energetically. Once you line up with it, it will come into the physical. Basically, everything you’ve ever wanted or could ever want already exists as energy. Your job is not to create it, but to receive it. Check out my free e-book Seven Steps of Manifestation (it’s totally free!) for a full explanation of how this process works.

The mistake that the individuals who go around demanding others to just give them something make, is that they are trying to control HOW their manifestations will come to them. For example, if I want to manifest a million dollars, I’ll want to make myself feel the same way I would if I already had it. That means, I wouldn’t be worried about money, I’d be excited about shopping (instead of being disappointed about what I can’t afford), I’d look at nice things, cars and houses as potential purchases, as possibilities rather than things I can’t have. Then, my “work” would simply be to sit back and let the manifestation come to me. The key here is to follow my intuition.

I might be inspired to buy a lottery ticket. I might be guided to go to a networking meeting, where I’d meet some great people with whom I’d brainstorm. We might turn the resulting ideas into a fantastic business, which would yield a million dollars. I might inherit the money. I might be guided to my manifestation in a myriad of ways. The expectation (or “it is given”) part of the equation would be to trust that it’s on its way and that the Universe will find the best way for it to come to me.

By walking up to (or sending an email to) a stranger and simply demanding that they lend a hand, these people are actually trying to do the Universe’s job: They’re not aligning with their creation, they’re trying to force it to come to them through this particular funnel – through this person, who is most likely not aligned with their creation. If he were, the askers wouldn’t have to work so hard to get his help.

The reason I said that I don’t entirely agree with the marketing dude, is because of the “hard work” part. There’s another point here that’s often misunderstood: if you understand the Law of Attraction, you’ll know that hard work is never part of the equation. But by “hard work”, I don’t mean that it takes no action at all. It just means that the action it does take will be inspired. When you’re really passionate about something, it doesn’t feel like hard work. It’s not a chore. You can lose yourself in it for hours and not even notice how much time is going by. It just happens naturally. In that state, you can get a tremendous amount of work done, but it wasn’t hard. It wasn’t frustrating.

But this concept is often twisted to mean that action is not required. Well, theoretically, one could argue that if we can truly manipulate energy (and we can), we should be able to just manifest things out of thin air. And if one would be able to drop all limiting beliefs (and I mean ALL of them), one would be right. But realistically, in the vibrational world we live in, it may well be harder to drop all those beliefs than to simply work with them. And that means allowing our manifestations to come to us through channels that we can believe in, like a business, the lottery, or an inheritance. Plus, taking action is fun. We’re in this environment for a reason. We came here to experience the physical, and part of that means taking action. Inspired action is thrilling and fabulous and delicious and you can’t get enough of it. It’s the feeling of lining up with the energy of what you’ve created, and there’s no better feeling in the world than to do that deliberately.

Most people have never associated this kind of action with an activity they can gain value from. Inspired action is playing, and that’s only allowed after all the hard work is done. So when they hear that action is required to achieve a goal, they automatically assume that it means sacrifice and suffering, and of course they’ll latch on to any theory that tells them they don’t have to take action. But we can use inspired action to achieve anything, in fact, when we use the leverage of the Universe, that action is a million times more effective than if we plod along, forcing ourselves to perform tasks we don’t want to do.

And while walking up to someone and asking for their help could possibly be an inspired action, if it was, the person who got asked would react positively. The Law of Attraction will only bring you together with others who are a match to your vibration. So, if you’ve truly aligned with your goal, with getting great business partners for example, then you’ll be guided to approach the right person, at the right time, in just the right way and they will respond with passion and enthusiasm. Then, you’ll take a bunch of inspired action together.

An individual who’s running around demanding that others help him, is most likely coming from a place of scarcity and fear. He thinks he doesn’t have enough and is afraid that he’s never going to get more unless he runs out and makes it happen. What he’ll attract is situations that match those feelings. He’ll face rejection or meet partners who will disappoint him, therefore “proving” his fears to be true.

Now, I’m not condemning these individuals. We’re all guilty of taking uninspired action. God knows I do it all the time. My point is simply that when we do, we don’t get the results we want. But we don’t have to work “hard”, or become frustrated. There’s no price to pay for success. We do have to be willing to wait for our intuition to guide us, and then take action when we’re inspired to do so. When we begin to deliberately receive our manifestations, things become easier. They flow. And life is so much more fun, because not only do we get to play all the time, we’ll finally get everything we’ve ever wanted. 🙂

Have you taken some inspired (or even uninspired) action? What were the results? Tell us about it in the comments and let everyone can benefit from your experience.