Drew Rozell, Ph.D.

Author and Coach

Attention! Attention!

12 Comments

So, you want to feel more in control of what’s showing up in your life, huh?

You want to manifest your desires on a more consistent basis, right?

First, I hear you.

And second, I’m with you.

There’s nothing better than living your life on your own terms and watching your desires come together before your eyes. This feeling of being the deliberate creator of your life is the essence of a Very Cool Life™.

However, before you can see the stuff you want begin to show up around you, you must know and respect how things work.

My inspiration for this post was reading the words of a teacher who wrote that “the Universe always gives you want you want.”

Horse hockey.

Statements like this are what keep many people leery from learning more about the Law of Attraction. Most people recognize these words to be false from their own experience and then reject the Law of Attraction as New Age mumbo jumbo. And other folks, overly-optimistic and hungry in their desire for a better life, cling to this idea for as long as possible, but never make any progress and end up jaded about their own belief in the Law of Attraction.

I do not want these outcomes for anyone and I believe they come from a crucial misunderstanding of the principles at work.

So let’s clear a few things up right now.

The Universe does not give you what you want.

In fact, the Universe does not care what you want. It’s not a person! There’s no wizard behind a curtain, no white-haired man dressed in a robe and sandals, floating about in the sky keeping tabs on a list of your desires. (Oh, Susie wants a new car? Hmmmn. Let’s see here… Does she deserve a new car?) In fact, thinking that there exists some entity outside yourself that cares for you is a way of abdicating your own free will and sense of personal responsibility for your own life.

A better way to understand how the Universe works is to picture it as a massive amplifying machine. This amplifying machine does not care what kind of “music” you feed into it. It’s a machine, after all. It has no preferences. It only does one thing: It takes what you feed into it and then makes it louder.

This is how the process of manifestation works. The thoughts and feelings that you choose emanate from you, sending a specific signal out to this massive amplifier, the Universe. The amplified signal then comes back to you, a simple, perfect feedback system. Whatever you put into the system is what comes back out, only louder.

Most people are so focused on what they want (and their distress over the fact that what they want is not showing up) that they fail to see where the process of manifestation is breaking down. Here’s the distinction to help break this cycle.

The Universe does not give you more of what you want, the Universe gives you more of that which you give your attention.

In other words, what you want does not matter. Where you focus your attention determines what you create.

So, if you like what you are getting in a particular area of your life, keep your attention where it is.

If you do not like what you are getting, or wish to create something better, it’s your job to look inward and make changes based on your discovery of where your attention is focused on thoughts and feelings that reflect what you do NOT want.

When you understand and embrace the concept of the Universe as a big amplifier, this leads you to take charge of the thoughts and feelings you choose to activate. You begin to look at the results you create and then connect the dots to where you’ve been focusing your thoughts. You practice, tweak, and make adjustments.

You get what you focus upon. Whether that’s  good stuff or bad stuff, it’s just a reflection of where you put your attention. So why not get in the habit of attending to the things that feel good to focus on?

I promise you that this is the best investment of your time and energy if you wish to begin seeing your life unfold on your own terms.

More on Gratitude vs. Appreciation

4 Comments

My video (posted on drewrozell.com) on the distinction between gratitude and appreciation has gotten me lots of feedback. (Thank you.)

Some now see the distinction clearly, some seem to disagree with the general sentiment being that there’s value in looking back from where you have come.

I’ve learned that only fools debate over the Internet, yet I find this distinction so important, that I am compelled to write more here.

The real game in consciously choosing and creating your life is to practice becoming super-sensitive to how the thoughts you are choosing make you feel. In fact, you need to care more about how you feel than the truth.

Putting how you feel above the truth represents a complete paradigm shift for most people. It’s radical. It’s a leap not everyone wishes to take.

My job as a coach is to give people feedback on their thought processes. I’ve done this work with hundreds and hundreds of people. For the vast majority of people — no matter how spiritually evolved or “awake” that yourself to be — you are still in the habit of choosing thoughts that do not feel good. This is a powerful habit because we are trained to focus on “the truth” (and no one really sees themselves as clearly as they think they do).

In other words, in the course of our lives we have experiences and events, struggles and growth. From these, you form a narrative of your life, a story to fit those experiences and facts. However, the law of attraction is really simple and clear. The thoughts you choose — whether they are “true” or not  — will determine what you create going forward in your life. Each thought has an energy underneath it. Again, your work is to become less interested in “the truth” and more interested in how the thought you are offering feels.

Briefly, if I start to think thoughts of gratitude around my health, I immediately activate the story I’ve constructed from my personal experiences. Very quickly, I start to think about my mother’s long decay from Alzheimer’s disease. I start to think thoughts like, I’m glad I’m healthy. Right underneath that thought, comes I hope I do not get Alzheimer’s. I cannot stop these thoughts. They are just what gets activate for me when thinking about gratitude and health.

Certainly, that second thought, while true, does not feel good. I’ve had doctors and family members suggest that I get tested for the presence gene they believe will determine my fate. But I reject that perspective completely. I believe that the thoughts I choose and the feelings I project are the only thing that determines what I create in my life. In short, my life is all up to me. My health, my wealth, my relationships… all of it simply reflects my thoughts and energy.

If you do not resonate with the law of attraction you likely have another way of seeing the world. What I propose will likely seem radical or foolish and we can simply agree to disagree. However, if you go through life with the understanding that the thoughts you choose will determine everything that shows up in your life, you’ll want to delve deeper and really sensitize yourself to the thoughts you choose. In fact, this is your real work in this lifetime, your true responsibility.

So, if there’s some aspect of your life that you wish to upgrade, the fastest, easiest way to do that is to disconnect yourself with the “reality” of your past experiences. Quite simply, you cannot tell the stories from your past that do not feel good to tell and create something radically different. It defies law.

Because of this, I rarely talk about my mother’s experience outside of using it as an example. While it’s certainly true that the experience made me grow and evolve as a person, it’s also true that thinking about that experience does not feel good. When I first began this practice, the little voice in my head, the little guy running the GUILT department of my brain, tried to coerce me into feeling bad about divorcing myself from the story. Yet because I believe in the power of my thoughts, continuing to tell a story that does not feel good — not matter how true it might be — or choosing to dwell in feelings of guilt are simply not options.

Instead, I choose to place my attention on thoughts that feel better. An easy way to do that is to turn my attention to appreciation. I can easily come up with a list of things I appreciate about my health. I can also easily come up with many aspects of my mom that I appreciate. (Just typing sentence gets good feelings flowing through my body.)

If you still find yourself bristling at the distinction between gratitude and appreciation, I would suggest that you not THINK about the difference between the words, but allow yourself 5 minutes of your life to sit quietly and FEEL the difference that the respective thoughts activating by appreciation and gratitiude evoke. Let this be your guide.

Finally, this came in my e-mail today (what timing!)… there is no better source, in my opinion…

When you feel gratitude, often you are looking at a difficulty that you have overcome, but there is still some of that “struggle” vibration present. The state of appreciation is seeing whatever you are looking at through the eyes of Source. . . You could walk down a crowded street with all kinds of things that a lot of other people would find reason to criticize or worry about, and you would not have access to them because your vibration of appreciation is picking out for you things of a different vibrational nature.

— Abraham

Excerpted from the book “Money and the Law of Attraction: Learning to Attract Health, Wealth and Happiness” #271

Wisdom of Babes

Leave a Comment

I have no children, but from what I read and see, we come into this world as beings who following our knowing; there’s an innate sense of how the universe operates and where to look for guidance.

In short, children follow what pleases them (as we are all built to do) until they are programmed by their environment (family, culture, peers) to ignore what feels best in favor of what makes “sense” or is the most “secure.”

“The wisdom of babes” may sound like a cliche, but it’s a cliche because watching and listening to children shows us that they are often closer to their higher selves than adults.

My good friend Jenn is part of my VLCN community and yesterday she shared a post on our community site. It blew me away, especially so because I find myself writing more and more about the concept of repsonsibility in creating a very cool life. Here’s what Jenn shared and I thank her for allowing me to repost it here.  

so i’ve been out of alignment over the last few weeks. after our last call, one would think i was on my way to great change, but no such luck. anyway, my 4 year old daughter and i were in the car and she was talking all about princess songs and belting them out to her delight.

out of the blue she says to me “mom, you need to be more happy lately.” i said “i know.”

she then said “it’s your responsibility.”