How Doing This One Key Law of Attraction Principle Can Increase Happiness

One key to unhappiness is something you do, I do, and nearly everyone you know and don’t know does. Fortunately, we can choose not to do it, or at least not do as much of it, so we and others can be happier.

Increased happiness is no longer elusive just as soon as we realize it’s about attitude—though there’s more to this—SOMETHING SPECIFIC—that you need to know. Here it is.

Ernest Holmes wrote about this particular Law of Attraction KEY: “There is a direct law responding to condemnation and a direct law responding to praise and appreciation. It is, of course, the same law used in different ways… No man can be happy who lives in a continuous state of condemnation of people, conditions and things.” Yikes! That’s so powerful I bolded it. It’s also something we can easily get direct, if not personal, evidence of.

Let’s face it—we’re kind of addicted to criticizing. But, are we ever genuinely happier as a result of criticizing anyone, anything, or ourselves? No. In fact, it makes us unhappier more often than not, because it feeds our negative perspectives, and they grow. We are unaware that our tendency to criticize so freely is a root cause of unhappiness and discontent—ours and those whose lives we touch. Gandhi said, “Gossip is a form of violence.” So is being overly critical. So, why do we do it?

We criticize when we feel restricted. We criticize when we feel a need for validation, recognition, respect, or appreciation. The perceived or obvious absence of any of these can cause us to feel frustrated. When we’re frustrated, we get verbal—in our minds or out our mouths. If we didn’t feel restricted or infringed on in some way, we’d likely have no criticisms to make. All of this points to something in particular: frustration is a call for your attention to be focused inward first, before you focus your comments outward. Why?

Because… If you want to have fewer “opportunities” to be critical, you first have to let go of being so ready to criticize as a way of BEing. Then you can more readily come up with creative, constructive ideas about what to do or say, or how to understand something or someone better—especially you.

At times we do one or more silent run-throughs of something that ticks us off. I caught (still catch) myself doing this (I’m improving), and it is NOT the vibrational energy I want to transmit and attract more of. I wanted a way to stop it—fast! So an inspired idea came to me and I put it into practice. It’s something I forgot I learned around 17 years ago: I make the OM sound, several times if needed, to immediately shift myself out of such mind chatter. When I first started this, I did it for about a week before recalling where it came from: Wayne Dyer’s meditation CD (released in 1995) that uses the AH sound for creation and the OM sound for appreciation. My inner guidance (and subconscious memory) knew what it was doing, even if “I” didn’t, because…

Appreciation is one of the highest vibrational frequencies, one worth transmitting as much of the time as we can. It’s far more Law-of-Attraction favorable than satisfying the ego by complaining to the point where it begins to impact us negatively. Sometimes we just need to vent, but we also can overdo it and move beyond venting into gritching. (Feel free to replace the “gr” with a “b”.)

Sometimes we criticize or condemn before anything actually happens. We anticipate something unpleasant ahead of time—to (ugh!) prepare ourselves to “receive” what we anticipate. Train yourself to expect something good to happen, or to release unfavorable expectations, until you can shift into expecting something better, if your usual practice is to expect something bad before anything happens at all. “What we expect, that we find.” (Aristotle) Ernest Holmes would add, “Merely to abstain from wrong thinking is not enough; there must be active right thinking.”

You want to do what you can to ease up on a tendency to criticize so quickly. Otherwise, you’ll launch into criticism automatically—and keep at it!—which gets transmitted outward. Then, Law of Attraction will send you more reasons to be critical about life, others, or you. And, you’ll wonder how you can ever get off this (self) frustrating loop.

Along with easing up on criticism, another (foundational) way to be happier more consistently is to find and feel your joy in and from Source, not in and from your circumstances. Circumstances are ever-changing—because life and you are ever-evolving. There WILL be times when you wait for what you want, though you can shorten the wait by keeping your vibration higher. If you can’t be happy when you don’t have what you want, you won’t be happy when you do have what you want. Ouch!

Each of us can choose to be in battle (inner or outer) all or most of the time, or in joy and happiness as much as possible. It’s up to us to decide which to put into consistent or better practice: criticize or observe, judge or discern, feel frequent frustration or know everything has a reason and a season, anger or awareness, control or creativity.

What we choose results in our unhappiness or happiness. Conscious choice is a good practice. It’s also good practice not to expect to get this completely correct consistently right from the start. Find a better thought or feeling and choose to increase it. Allow this to be gradual, like moving up a scale on a piano or the way mercury moves upward on a temperature gauge. Tone down criticism and you’ll feel and see improvements. Then tone it down even more so you can attract what you really want more of… to feel happier. Use the fact of Law of Attraction as your motivator.

Practice makes progress.
© Joyce Shafer