Awesome Dudette’s Burning Question: “I understand that to get what you want, you need to be happy now. You need to be grateful for what you already have. If you’re in a job you don’t like, the problem is YOU, and you have to change your own thinking to feel good about what you have.

My question is, if you’re putting positive energy into something that’s not what you want deep down, won’t you just manifest more of what you don’t want?

For example, let’s say you’re a cashier, and you hate your job.  Then you realize the problem is you, not the job, so you shift your thinking and start to feel good about your job. Soon, you love your job as a cashier and feel happy at work, but the job doesn’t align with who you are. Like, you work as a cashier, but where you would REALLY shine is as an accountant. Or a pop star. Or an ad exec. (Or whatever.) So wouldn’t loving your job as a cashier bring on more of “being happy as a cashier?” And deter you from attracting something even BETTER?”

Dear Awesome Dudette,

This is one of the most pervasive limiting beliefs to plague Happy Shiny Puppies in Training (aka, LOA students). If you find a way to make peace with your current, crappy situation and even find joy in it, won’t you just be telling the Universe “Hey, I’ve decided that I like this now. Just go ahead and bring me more of this. You can forget about all those other dreams I’ve been desperately begging you for, for years. K?”

No.

Let me explain.

Complaining doesn’t work

So, I’m guessing that up until now, you’ve been operating under the principle that if you don’t like where you are right now, you should gripe and complain about it as much as possible, in the hopes that the gods will hear you and rescue you. Or something like that. Well, you’ve been running that experiment for long enough to make an assessment. How’s it working out for you? Have you become wildly successful by bitching about how much you hate your sucky job? Are your coffers filled with cash, your bedroom bursting at the seams with gorgeous, nubile lovers? Do your skinny jeans fit?

No? I thought not. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here, would you?

You can’t complain about your bank account enough to fill it. You can’t bitch your job into being better. You can’t argue your relationships into epicness. And the size of your ass certainly doesn’t respond to nagging. Hating where you are doesn’t change it. Ever.

Hate as motivation

Now, some very successful people will credit their horrendous early days with giving them the motivation to go as far as they did. They will tell you that the suffering they endured as a factory worker, or by getting rejected hundreds of times was good for them, as it made them all the more determined and eventually let them appreciate their success more. And, well, this is kind of true. Kind of.

You see, when you’re in a situation that doesn’t serve you and you keep holding yourself there, focusing on it, complaining about it, thinking that you can’t do anything about it, the suffering caused by all that negativity will eventually become so great that you won’t want to take it anymore. You’ll have your cattle prod moment. You’ll surrender. And, in that moment, you’ll begin to open yourself up to the possibility that another option does exist, that things can change. In fact, they have to. Because you can’t take it anymore, as it is. When you release the focus on what you don’t want and finally allow the energy of what you do want in, it can feel like you’re being caught up in a massive amount of momentum (because you are…). A lot of people will then say that they’ve suddenly become very motivated. And, because this motivation seemingly grew out of pain, they’ll often credit the suffering for it.

This is a very popular method of growing, but is it the best? Is it even necessary to grow through pain? Nope and nope. You can evolve through suffering if you like, but you don’t have to. You can just decide to focus differently now, without having to go through all that drama.

Communicating with the Universe

So, what really happens when you start to send a different message to the Universe? Doesn’t it respond to what you focus on? And if not, what does it respond to?

I’ve broken down the whole process of creation in this mega post: How Exactly Do We Create Our Reality? A Technical Explanation. Also, you can learn all the Law of Attraction Basics in my free e-book and audio, which, if you haven’t yet downloaded, you totally should. Because it’s freaking excellent. And free. And will make all my blog posts make more sense. Go on, do it now; I’ll wait. Did I mention that it’s free?

But of course, as always, I’m happy to recap the relevant parts of the process here:

The Universe responds to your vibration, which is a result of how you feel about what you focus on, and then brings you more stuff that feels like that. So, if you spend all your time focusing on your job (or anything else) in a way that makes you feel like crap, the Universe is going to knock itself out to bring you more and more experiences and stuff that feel like crap. If you, however, focus on your job (or whatever) in a way that feels awesome, the big old U. is going to bring you more experiences and stuff that feel awesome.

Let’s do the math!

Here’s another way to look at it: There’s probably a lot about your job that sucks, right now. So, in order for you to feel good about it, you have to be very selective about what you focus on. You might only be able to look at 1% of your job and feel good about it. But, because you’re a Happy Shiny Puppy in Training, you do just that and you begin to feel better. Now, your vibration is rising (towards awesomeness!), and the Universe, instead of bringing you more crappy stuff, begins to respond to your new frequency and delivers experiences that feel just a bit more awesome. In other words, your exterior reality changes to more closely match the vibration you’re putting out.

So now, instead of 1% awesome and 99% crap, your job becomes 5% awesome and 95% crap. There’s more awesome stuff to focus on. It actually becomes easier to find good feeling stuff to focus on. As you continue to emanate this positive vibration, the Universe continues to upgrade your reality, to change the ratio of awesome to crap in your favor. If you continue to focus in this way, eventually, your job will have to change. There will come a time when your current job no longer has the ability to match the percentage of awesome that you’re holding, and when that happens, this job will gravitate out of your reality and a new, much better one, will come dancing in.

The Universe knows what you want

You see, the Universe is a hell of a lot smarter than most people give it credit for. It knows what you want, down to the tiniest detail. Its knowledge, or lack thereof, of what you want is NOT the reason you haven’t yet received your desires. The only holdout is YOU. As long as you keep vibrating at “I hate where I am”, then you cannot step into a reality that feels like “I love where I am”. Such a reality exists, and it’s filled with all the goodies you’ve ever wanted. You don’t change that picture by suddenly no longer hating your job. That slate isn’t wiped clean when you stop bitching about your boss, because, well obviously, you now like your douchebag manager, so you know, we can just keep you there. No! By putting your focus on something, ANYTHING, that feels better, the Universe can now finally stop bringing you more douchebag manager experiences, and start bringing you more of the stuff from your list of what makes your toes curl.

Bottom line

To put it even another way: It’s not what you focus on, it’s how you focus on it. Just because you’re looking at a car crash in a movie, doesn’t mean that you’re going to attract a car crash. If, however, looking at that video brings up your already present fears of safety, and you keep yourself vibrating at that frequency, then you’ll eventually manifest an experience that feels like that fear, which may nor may not include an actual car crash. It’s not as simple as monkey see, monkey do. The Universe matches the essence of what you’re focusing upon and how it feels to you.

So, if you want an awesome job, focus on awesomeness, no matter where you can find it. Even if it’s just 1% of your work life, relationship, finances, body, success, etc. Doing so will not keep you stuck where you are. Think about it: if bitching about it kept you stuck, why would NOT bitching about it also keep you stuck? Stuckness is not your natural state (which is why it feels so crappy). Freedom is. Flow is. Happiness is. Joy is. That’s why when you get into your natural state, you get more stuff that feels like that. It’s not a reward, as such, as much as it just happens to be where all the stuff you want lives.

The stuff that feels like joy lives where joy is. So, if you get into the state of joy, you get to play with joy’s stuff! Just as the stuff that feels like frustration, lives where frustration is. So, if you get into the state of frustration, you get to play with frustration’s stuff. And, this is just my humble opinion, joy has WAY better stuff than frustration. WAHAHAHAAY better stuff  [*whispers seductively* “Soooo much better”].