30-Day Digital Journaling Challenge
Day 3 Prompt:
According to Law of Attraction, we attract to our lives whatever we give our attention to, whether wanted and/or unwanted. Describe in one sentence something that is uncomfortable and unwanted for you. Then give 5 minutes to writing about how you would like things to be.
What? These prompts are going downhill fast. Today’s Journaling Challenge message had this information about the prompt’s contributor:
Michael Pearlman, M.D. is a Boston area psychiatrist and Personal Life Strategist with a spiritual focus. He uses the Law of Attraction to help people reveal their Divine Self-Expression and live the life of their dreams. Throughout his journey, journaling provided clarity and insights, and, at a deeper level, a way of listening to the soul. This awakening led him to develop Law of Attraction Journaling. The LoA Journal provides a direct route to Self-Realization via an intentional, meditative journaling inquiry – guiding people to effectively separate their heart’s will from their ego’s will.
Oh my god, no.
Of course, that motivated me to look up “Law of Attraction” on Wikipedia:
Although there are some cases where positive or negative attitudes can produce corresponding results (principally the placebo and nocebo effects), there is no scientific basis to the law of attraction.
And:
Skeptical Inquirer magazine criticized the lack of falsifiability and testability of these claims.
Haha, that’s awesome! It’s rewarding to see the organizations I work for pop up in online references to provide evidence-based perspectives on these squishy issues.
Shoot, I’m supposed to be journaling. Hmmm…let me think… “Describe in one sentence something that is uncomfortable and unwanted for you. Then give 5 minutes to writing about how you would like things to be.”
I thought of a couple of things after mulling this over for a few minutes, but I can’t write about most of them because they involve individuals who may read this in the future.
Lacking better ideas, I’ll commit to my first thought: Cold northern winter weather is uncomfortable and unwanted for me. I will now spend five minutes describing how I would like things to be. That’s easy!
I would like evenings for the next six months to be warm enough that I can walk outside comfortably in a medium-weight sweater. I would like sunset to take place after 7:00 pm so that we have more sunlight in our days. I would like to walk into my apartment after the commute home and be comfortable with the indoor temperature. I would like to banish worries about heating costs and sweaters and coats and gloves from my mind. I would like my hands to work every day as well as they do in the summertime, instead of having to warm them up throughout the day just so that I can type. I would like to avoid the pain of a cold bed, a cold bathroom, a cold car, and a cold office, and instead expect to be comfortable in my environment wherever I need to be.
Well, that was about five minutes of unfulfilling writing. Maybe I did the assignment incorrectly? Whatever. Although that prompt wasn’t inspiring, I believe it is useful to commit to coming up with an idea and to put thoughts down. Yay, positive outlook, whoopee…
I am inspired to get back to work, though. There’s a lot of bad thinking out there! Perhaps if I concentrate on my inbox having fewer emails, then the universe will reward me with a smaller number of new emails? Or perhaps I have to concentrate on actually reading and responding to emails. Hmm, yeah, I think I’ll go with that.