Law of Attraction

I am a scientist.

Or at least I like to believe that I am a very logical person who tends to look for hard facts and evidence before believing something. But today I came across the Law of Attraction which has absolutely no scientific basis (according to Wikipedia).

The Law of Attraction simply states that you have the ability to make things happen depending on how you think about things. So, if you think positive thoughts - positive things tend to happen. The idea is that like attracts like.

This idea intrigued me enough to start searching for examples in my own life which have supported this and I came up with a few.

The main one is, ofcourse, Adam. I was reading a magazine article which warned against the dangers of moving on too quickly after a break-up - I tend to read a lot of these type of articles these days - and it said that the reason for this was that at the end of a relationship you are broken, vulnerable and tend to have low self-esteem and you attract the kind of guys who mirror you.

But, what the article neglected to mention was that this is not just a condition after a break-up. I can prove it.

I have always had low self-esteem, something I am painfully aware of, yet have been unable to change for some reason or other and any small amount of praise pulls me up to Cloud 9 easily enough. So, when I started university last year, and was timid in front of all the gorgeous girls who had the best designer clothes and whose parents own mansions all around the world, I felt my self-worth drop through the floor.

So when Adam came around offering the perfect compliments and being willing to give me whatever I wanted (as long as it was cheap or free) I was more than happy to jump into a relationship with a guy no-one else would have thought twice about. He reflected everything I felt. He was insecure about his looks, about his background and about ever finding anyone who would love him. So was I.

We were probably the most insecure two people you could have paired together and we both constantly needed the other to give us compliments, shower us with attention and give up everything for us. I never stopped for a moment to think about how unhealthy it was. If I ever chose to spend time with my friends over him, he would get annoyed and we would argue for hours until, most likely, I declined my friends' offers to meet up and chose to spend the time with him instead. Similarly, if he went home, I expected him to continue to tell me how he would rather be with me than with his friends.

We never felt good enough for the other, him probably more so because I was less willing to lie about being in love with him when I wasn't - somehow my morals stayed intact. I chose to stay in that relationship and continued hoping for something better, never realising what a hypocrite I was being to preach about 'believing in yourself' to my friends while I let someone else define my self-esteem.

Being a scientist, I would not be satisfied with one example, so I looked at more.

I didn't believe in myself on so many occasions when I knew I had the ability to do well. I didn't study hard enough for the SATs because I felt that I just wasn't good enough to get into Harvard, when I was. I was reluctant to apply to Oxford because I felt that I was inferior to all the private school, rich kids, when it just depended on my intellectual ability.

But it is not just about the negatives.

I was told by my English teacher in year 12 that since I had started the course four months late, I would never get higher than a D in my English Literature AS-level. Defiant and annoyed at this, I worked hard and got the highest marks in my year - 196/200, after which the head of the English Dept himself said that my work was the best he had seen in a long time. Law of Attraction? Had I thought myself to 98%?

I guess I can't prove it yet, but I want to try it. I have an exam next week Friday. Because of my coursework, I am on track for a Distinction (highest grade), but have been thinking that I would be happy to settle for a Merit (second highest grade) even though I know I am selling my potential short. So, I'm going to give it a go. I am going to believe, with all my energy, that I can do it - and I will work for it.

Let's see how it goes.