Is NLP compatible with the Law of Attraction?

NLP and the popular philosophy of the ‘law of attraction’ disagree in several important ways.

The so-called ‘law of attraction’ is a belief system dating from the New Thought movement and the concepts behind ‘positive thinking’. In its original form, it states simply that similar things experience some kind of affinity.

Unlike NLP, it is not a system of change and in its common popular use (as in ‘The Secret’) is, in my opinion, a dangerously sloppy form of wish fulfillment.

NLP, for me is about awareness and positive ecological actions. The philosophy of NLP is one of experimentation, feedback and progression towards stated aims. It explicitly involves formulating outcomes and then taking action.

By contrast, the philosophy of ‘The Secret’ inspires that most fruitless of outcome-related activities – wishing and hoping. The whole philosophy is that a specific type of ‘wishing and hoping’ is itself an effective action and nothing further is required. Some interpretations even go beyond that to suggest that further action to achieve your outcome is counter-productive!

It’s easy to understand how that type of approach is seriously flawed – and insidiously seductive to those who feel powerless or limited in their ability to influence events.

In short, ‘Law of attraction’ thinking encourages the creation of poorly-formed outcomes and can implicitly discourage actions to achieve those outcomes.

If anyone reading this is offended, or believes I’m exaggerating, just watch ‘The Secret’ with both an open mind and common sense. There is no action step beyond ‘intending’.

“You must keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.” – James Oberg, NASA engineer and Science Writer

The whole system is riddled with faulty thinking, preventing high-quality feedback through psychological traps such as consistency and attribution errors (more about those here:  feedback and faulty thinking) – e.g. if it works, the ‘law of attraction’ is responsible, yet if it doesn’t work, you ‘did it wrong’ or ‘had doubts’.

I would assert that the principles behind NLP involve eliminating such faulty thinking.

If, after all this, you’re still interested in getting an edge in achieving outcomes, consider something like Silva Method or mind skills training. The focus there is on manifesting new options and using unconscious faculties to intuitively be aware of relevant opportunities. And taking the required action.

The processes are wholly compatible with NLP and are useful for building good state control too.