Filed Under: Intrinsic Branding, Leadership
By Emily Soccorsy
Attracting is a calling in. It is an act of faith, belief and vulnerability.
Much has been written about The Law of Attraction. While it is referred to as a “law” and it has been the subject of a few psychological studies, it is more philosophy.
To me, attracting results from the combination of belief, believing and expectancy. I wrote about belief’s role in attracting earlier this month, so I’ll spend more time here taking that foundation outward using the practice of believing and expectancy.
Belief – If I possess a belief, and I am aware of those beliefs, I can then align my actions, my choices and the people I surround myself with to those beliefs. While it is not necessarily easy to determine one’s beliefs, once you do, organizing actions, choices and relationships around them is straightforward. This means less friction in life and more clarity, calm and peace, because decisions are rooted in the “soil of soul,” as we like to call it at Root + River. There’s no gradient on beliefs, so when you have them, you can act from them.
Believing – Believing is the active practice of applying your beliefs to the real world. It is the second step in attracting aligned opportunities to you.
It’s where the intangibility of belief meets the tangible of believing – and bearing all of the consequences of those beliefs. Believing is living out one’s beliefs publicly, openly. It requires courage. It requires facing doubt and walking with uncertainty. It means confronting and accepting rejection. This is not optional, but assured. It is saying what you believe, and following that up with action. In our work with clients, we help them take their beliefs and generate a set of five standards, which is how the put their beliefs into action.
Believing means actively investing yourself in your beliefs when it might benefit you, and others, to do otherwise.
For example, one our core beliefs is in love. The standard for that belief is “Love on them where they are at.” While that sounds nice, over the last seven years, there have been numerous times when I’ve faced conflicts or choices, that present opportunities to reject or argue about what is coming our way. These experiences may have initially evoked indignation, frustration, pride, anger, or disappointment. Those are normal responses. Time and again, when I am tempted to act out of those emotions, I recalibrate by comparing acting from those emotions with what I believe. And I often return our belief in love. I remember that above and below all, I want to be a person of love and I want our company to reflect love. And so, I make a choice to do what love would do. That means accepting.
What most people get wrong about love is they think of it as soft or relenting. It is not. As I often tell my daughters, love is the most powerful force in the universe. Sometimes loving means setting a solid boundary. It means politely saying, “no.” Sometimes loving means taking a difficult step back or being brutally honest. Sometimes loving means saying, “we really messed that up.” But it always, always means respecting and accepting people and circumstances as they are.
The opposite of love is wishing things were different than they were. That’s a roadmap to regret and pain, which is a path to bitterness and disappointment. (Believe me, I’ve travelled it.)
Believing is critical to attracting. To attract what is meant to improve our lives and work, we must model it first.
For Root + River, our practice of applying love and acceptance has been instrumental in attracting the amazing clients we have.
Acting from our beliefs differentiates, even if in the moment, it feels like a small, quiet act.
Expectancy – Nothing works, including the law of attracting, unless you believe in it. The placebo effect is between 30 and 60 percent effective in addressing ailments including cancer, migraines and a variety of other physical and mental issues. The power of our beliefs are incredible. And so, when we get in alignment between beliefs and we practice believing, we must also expect the result we seek. We must envision the forces we seek finding their way to us.
I’ll be very honest: This is the most difficult part of attracting for me. When I lay awake at night, I often wonder and worry about where the next opportunity is coming from. My mind, like everyone else’s, is hardwired to look for the negative and to spend calories solving for the catastrophic. It’s so easy to think, “This is it. I’ve reach the end of the road, the well is now dry.”
I have to work incredibly hard to rewire my brain in those moments. I have to consciously stop those thought patterns. I have to move toward expectancy instead, saying to myself, “I know what I believe, what I want and how I’m practicing toward that. And the check is in the mail. It’s on the way to me.”
It helps to have visual reminders in those moments. I start small – envisioning me happy at work, celebrating with my team, taking time away to pursue other projects because things are going so well.
Taking expectancy out further, its essential to share your expectancy with others. Speak the future into existence. Come from a place of abundance. And involve your team in visioning, goal setting and quarterly reviews of the health of the brand and the health of the individuals. This is expectancy as a group practice.
Expectancy is an act of trust, which also makes it an act of vulnerability, which is always challenging – and critical to any genuine endeavor designed to attract.
