As regular readers of this blog will know, I have a very low tolerance for BS. The Law of Attraction is one of those subjects that has a ton of false myths and fairytales attached to it, mostly born out of antiquated, limiting beliefs which our society is still subject to. And so, I have appointed myself the official Bullshit Fairy and, wielding my mighty shovel (and a dainty wand, which is mostly for show), I roam the land, seeking out and clearing away the crapola. It’s not a glamorous job, but someone’s got to do it.

Today, I’d like to dissect, debunk and clear away the pervasive and completely false belief that we have to be careful what we wish for, in all its forms. This little morsel was often instilled in us in fairytales when we were young and continues to be alive and well within our adult psyches. It’s also a belief that has been used to attach a great deal of fear to the Law of Attraction. Yes, you can create your own reality, but be careful what you wish for, or it’ll all go horribly wrong and you’ll ruin your life! The Bullshit fairy calls Bullshit.

The Evil Genie in the Bottle

We’ve all heard this story in a myriad of ways: a young boy finds a genie in a bottle and is offered three wishes. The boy makes a wish, only to find that the genie has taken his words super literally or twisted the wish in some way. So yes, he now has a million dollars, but only because his parents were killed in a plane crash and the insurance paid out. Or yes, the girl he likes does do everything he says, but the catch is that she’s a zombie, who ONLY does what he says. So, she no longer feeds herself without being told to lift the fork and chew, and sits on the couch all day waiting for her next command. The guy who wanted to be able to understand women gets turned into a woman. The woman who wished to be stranded on a desert island with a harem of gorgeous men finds out they’re all gay (but who hasn’t been there…?). There are several morals that we can glean (and which have been presented to us over and over) from this type of fable:

• It’s better not to want or wish for anything, because if you get it, you’ll be worse off than you were before. Variation: by giving the person a twisted version of what they asked for, the genie actually taught them this valuable lesson.
• Everything comes at a price. A horrible, horrible price. So, you can get what you want, but you’re going to have to suffer for it. Variation: Suffering is not only necessary to get what you want, but virtuous, because it leads to you getting what you want. It’s the price you have to pay.
• If you want for selfish or inappropriate things (as judged by whoever is making the rules), you will be punished for it. Variation: The punishment is for your own good, to teach you not to be selfish. This moral will also appear in stories where the genie is replaced by the devil, further underscoring the idea that you should know better and that in the end, you totally deserved your crappy fate.
• Wanting for selfish things will have negative repercussions for those you love (never mind you, we’re going after your family now). Variation: a good fairy comes along and shows you how if you got what you wanted, it would be terrible for your loved ones. Sometimes this strategy is used to change people’s negativity, like in A Christmas Carol, but it has been used to guilt people into giving up on their own wishes.

While, on the surface, this belief seems pretty harmless (who really cares about a genie in a bottle?), it’s actually at the root of a rather pervasive fear that keeps people from living the lives they truly want. It’s the fear that you can’t allow yourself to dream, to think about what you really want, to hope that you might actually get it or, God forbid, believe that it’s actually possible, because doing so is akin to making a deal with the devil. Even if you get what you wished for, it will be a huge disappointment or come at a horrible price.

This belief manifests itself in a whole array of minor and major ways:

• You spill something on your new outfit and exclaim, “See? I knew I shouldn’t have bought myself something nice!”
• There’s a job you want to apply for, but it would mean a promotion. You really want it but every time you think about it you have this sense of dread. What if you actually get the promotion and you hate it? It IS more responsibility. Yeah, you’ll probably hate it. Variation: Better to stick with the devil you know. What’s out there could be worse.
• You see a brand new Mercedes with bird poop on it and you think (even just for a second) “Serves the bastard right for driving such a flashy car.”
• You watch a Celebrity being carted off to jail and it fills you with just a little bit of joy or validation. All that whoring around and flashing of bling bling. It’s no wonder that they ended up in jail. Living like that will always bite you in the ass, eventually.
• You’re in a relationship with a person who makes you deeply unhappy, but you believe that the compromise is necessary. You have to be willing to put up with behavior that really bothers you in order to experience love. That’s just the price you have to pay.
• You say things like “You can’t have your cake and eat it too” (which implies that you can’t have what you want and enjoy it, as well.)
• You work like a demon to make good money, but never take the time to actually live your life and enjoy the fruits of your labor.  This does not seem abnormal to you.
• You feel like you need to sacrifice your deepest desires for the wellbeing of your family.
• You feel guilty every time you find yourself wanting something, especially if it’s just for yourself.
• You don’t think that people should use the word “want”, because it’s bad to want things and it leads to negative outcomes.

No one is trying to punish you

This entire belief is one based on fear: Do not allow yourself to dream, to want for anything, to look outside your boundaries or to dare to go for the gold. If you do, God/Spirit/the Universe will swoop in and punish you. Your desire will go horribly, horribly wrong. So, we either don’t allow ourselves to dream big in the first place, or when we do and things go wrong, we are validated in our belief and exclaim “See? I just knew it was all gonna go tits up!” This is a belief that may not have been created by, but was certainly perpetuated by those who wished to keep the proletariat from realizing their own power, from reaching beyond their station and maybe gaining some bling bling of their own. I’m not here to blame the church or the monarchy or the rich elite. I’m not here to blame anyone, actually, but simply to point out that this is an antiquated belief that no longer serves us.

There is no force out there somewhere, waiting to swoop in and punish you for having the gall to have desires. God does not want you to think small. Neither does the Universe. We have imaginations so that we can dream big. There’s nothing wrong with that and the only one that EVER punishes you for following those dreams is, well, you.

Your beliefs manifest your reality

If you believe that you’re not allowed to have nice things, then you will continuously manifest bird poop on your new car and coffee stains on your nice suit. In other words, if you feel like you’re being punished for wanting something, or if every one of your attempts to go after something you truly wanted has ended in disaster, it’s only because the Universe was proving you right. Every time. Because that’s what the Law of Attraction does. It brings you more and more stuff that exactly matches what you already believe – proving you right, over and over again. So, you believe that you can’t want or have nice things, the bird poops on your car, proving to you that you can’t have nice things, which reinforces your belief, which manifests MORE evidence that you shouldn’t want nice things, and so on and so on and so on.

But as long as you keep waiting for evidence of a different belief so that you can change your belief, you’re going to stay stuck exactly where you are. You have to be willing to change your belief so that the evidence of that new thought process can show up.

Why things sometimes go tits up

I read an LOA article the other day, where the author described how she had tried to manifest a new, well working car, but had manifested a piece of crap instead. She blamed it on the fact that she worded her request to the Universe incorrectly. She was convinced that if she’d used different wording, she would’ve manifested a better car. Was she right? Well, yes and no.

The actual words we use, in and of themselves, don’t really matter. What does matter, is the vibration behind them. Essentially, it comes down to what the word means to you and, more importantly, how it feels to you. Furthermore, you are not creating your reality or letting the Universe know what you want when you send off your request. The Universe knows what you want. Your vibration is full of information about what you want and don’t want. You don’t have to send off anything. What you do have to do, and in fact the only thing you have to do, or even CAN do, is to line up with what you want. And so, when you formulate a request to the Universe, the words you naturally choose to use (and how they feel to you) are a clue as to what’s going on in your vibration.

Let me give you an example:

So, this woman wanted to manifest a car. She had included the phrase “I’d be willing to put in some work on the vehicle, if that’s what it takes.” She blamed that sentence for the fact that she received a total lemon. But that sentence didn’t manifest a lemon, it simply reflected her vibration, which is what brought the lemon to her. Simply changing her words without changing her energy would’ve resulted in the exact same manifestation.

She could have, however, seen the fact that she chose to use those words as an indication that she had a limiting belief – namely, one that stated that she needed to be willing to put in some work, or in other words, that the trade off for a nice car would be that it wouldn’t run all that well. It was this belief that manifested a lemon, instead of lining her up with a well working car. She simply didn’t allow for the possibility of a nice AND well working car. She got to have the freaking cake but she kept herself from eating it, too.

If this woman were to shift that belief, then those words, “I’d be willing to put in some work on the vehicle, if that’s what it takes”, wouldn’t ring true to her anymore. They’d feel off and she wouldn’t be at all tempted to include them anymore. Hearing them would invoke a reaction of “Why the hell would I want to put in some work? I want a car that runs well and needs no work at all.” Do you see how this is different from simply leaving those words out in order to try and change the manifestation? You can leave them out all you want, if the meaning they conveyed is still stuck in your vibration, your manifestation won’t change as a result. You have to change your vibration so that these words (and what they mean to you) no longer feel true. Then, your manifestation will change.

Wish like you’ve never wished before

So, go on and become a wishing machine. Allow yourself to have your desires, to dream big, to hope that what you want could actually come to you. But pay attention to how you feel when you do. If you feel some negative emotion, don’t squash it. It is not an indication that someone up there doesn’t like the fact that you’re desiring something. It’s an indication that you have a belief that states that for whatever reason, you don’t believe that you can have that thing. And the reason that it feels bad is because that belief is wrong. You can have whatever you want, even if it’s something “selfish” like a gold watch or a shiny, new car. Best of all, you can have what you REALLY want, like to feel safe, prosperous, passionate, excited, and bouncing-off-the-walls happy. You can allow yourself to desire those feelings, to believe in them, and to go for them, without being punished for it.

And the next time a bird poops on your car, see it as a sign that the Universe is listening to your every request. The entire, vast, infinitely powerful Universe went out of its way to find a bird who’d be willing to cooperate with your vibration and show you what’s going on inside you by pooping, with expert precision, I might add, on the hood of your shiny new car. It did not judge your vibration to be unimportant, it did not judge it to be right or wrong. It simply mirrored it back to you. This energy that is at the heart of everything that is, ever was and ever will be, found you important enough to align circumstances to mirror even the most measly of vibrations back to you so that you would have a chance to change your energy. That realization should make you jump up off your ass and go on a manifesting frenzy. What are you going to wish for first? What will you pay attention to? How can you get to a better feeling place, so that you can let more wanted stuff in (and less of the not-wanted stuff)? HOW ARE YOU GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD TODAY? YAAAAAAAAAAY!