Change Your Thinking. Change the World.

If we changed our thinking, could we change the world?

Over the past 5 years, I've read a lot of books on everything from dieting and nutrition to getting what you want out of life. Out of them all, there are three that have really resonated with me: Skinny Bitch, Naturally Thin and Meeting Your Half-Orange. If Skinny Bitch and Naturally Thin were the books that helped me to transform my body, then Meeting Your Half-Orange was the book that helped me to transform my soul.

Meeting Your Half-Orange is marketed as a guide to dating optimism but it's so much more than that. The author, Amy Spencer, talks a lot about the law of attraction and using dating optimism, to not only lead you to finding the perfect person for you, but to also get what you want out of life. It's a great read for anyone who wants more of life in general - single, dating or even married.

When people think "The law of attraction" they tend to think about The Secret, so naturally, when I was having a conversation with a friend about this book, it segued into a discussion about it. I've been wanting to read it but never seemed to have a chance and then she reminded me that the movie was streaming online. I found myself with a bit of free time this weekend, so I decided to sit down and watch it.

The basics of it is are that like attracts like: positivity attracts positivity, negativity attracts negativity. It makes a lot of sense. When things are going good, everything just seems to fall into place then one bad thing happens and everything seems to go down hill. Once that one bad thing happens, how do you react? I know that my whole attitude would change and I'd go from feeling like I was on top of the world to thinking that the world was going to end. Of course I wasn't going to attract anything good when all I was putting out was negative energy.

I find the law of attraction fascinating. I could go on and on about this stuff, but there was  one section of the movie, that really stood out to me: how to use The Secret to change the world. You think I've lost my mind, right? Let me explain.

"I was once asked why I don't participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I'll be there." ~Mother Teresa

Thought can be a very powerful thing; I'm sure you've experience this before yourself. You think about a person that you haven't seen in a while and shortly thereafter, someone else brings up their name in conversation, they contact you or you just happen to randomly run into them.

People are so intent on fighting for what they believe in, but do we ever stop and think about what type of energy we're putting out there? For the most part, we're "anti-this" and "anti-that" and no matter how good the cause, "anti" anything just brings about negative feelings. With all these people putting those type of feelings out there, can you imagine how powerful that is? By trying to help, we're actually just adding to the problem.

What if we came from a place of love rather than than a place of hate? What if we just changed our thought patterns and wording? We'd still be standing up for what we believe in, but going about it in a different way. Instead of imbuing the negative with power, we'd be imbuing the positive with it. Instead of being "anti-war", what if we were "pro-peace"? Instead of  being "against the death penalty", what if we were "for life in prison"? What if instead of being "against animal cruelty" we were "for the humane treatment of animals"? As Newton states in his third law, "To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction; for every 'anti' there is a 'pro', so why not embrace it?

We all have choices and how we choose to react shapes our lives. If we all chose to live our lives by coming from a place of love and compassion instead of a place of hate and judgment, I really do think we could make the world a better place.