Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree Below.
The more consciously I’ve been using the Law of Attraction in the past few years, the more I’ve found my circle of friends and colleagues changing. It’s a little disturbing at times. Of course, as I become more positive and more focused, I’m attracting more of that kind of person to me whereas those who insist that the future is horrible are starting to disappear.
So if the Law of Attraction brings to you what you
most want and what is most like the vibration (for lack of a better word) that you yourself put out to the Universe, what happens if it’s not like attracting like? Is there a Law of …Repelling? Or is this just a backlash?
I’m definitely getting a backlash from a colleague I met a little over a year ago. She was always very happy and supportive, or seemed to be. But something happened a year ago in her life that turned her into a profoundly negative person. After that, she was forever finding fault with me. Little things. Meaningless things. Differences in interpretation that really didn’t matter. She would always ask if I’d done something as part of my job and why didn’t I do it a different way, even though it wasn’t her job. Almost every time, the way she wanted me to do it was a way I’d already attempted and had found wouldn’t work or I’d gone with a better way after much effort and research that she didn’t know about. But, being a good bit older than I am and very new to the career field, she began to question and find fault with every decision I made without understanding the basis for it or ignoring that I had years more experience with it than she did.
Very quickly in our professional relationship, I began
to avoid her. Every time I was anywhere near the woman, I felt bad. I just felt…bad. There was no pleasing her, and for reasons I won’t go into, it wasn’t prudent to sever the relationship or tell her to eff-off.
But what I could do was keep my distance.
So with the holidays approaching, she’s been trying to spend more time with me and she’s upset because I’ve been distant. I hadn’t realized it, really. Just a self- protective mechanism.
“Why don’t you ever just call me or send me a note?”
she asks. And not only asks, but asks repeatedly. She’s genuinely hurt that I don’t respond to her in the way she wants and she’s exceptionally hurt if I try to explain what’s wrong. She tells me she’s not a negative person but…and then lists whatever’s wrong with anything and everything. Then she asks again, “Why don’t you ever take the initiative to drop by and see me for a couple of hours?”
The answer’s simple. She never says anything good. Ever. From the word “hello,” I feel my defenses going up. Maybe if she ever, in any of our conversations, said anything good or positive, other than what she’s done for everyone else, I’d enjoy talking with her. But I just can’t right now. She’s toxic, and there’s not much I can do except keep my distance.
Something similar had started with another colleague who’s been a friend for several years, though she moved a while back. She was having a hard time in her new career and romantic life, and every time we talked, I ended the conversation feeling very down—not just about her situation but about mine as well. I’d almost stopped talking with her or answering her messages because of the constant negatives. The same situation was playing out with another friend, too, on the West Coast.
I decided that I wanted to try to keep these two relationships, so I stressed to both women that I was actively practicing positive thinking and would appreciate their support in helping me maintain a positive focus without all the concentration on what-ifs and why-nots. Both women recoiled at the suggestion. They were only trying to protect me, they both said. Did I not realize how dubious both career and romantic efforts could be? I do realize that at least one of them is coming at this from a place of love and not superiority and power plays, but I’ve still had to stress to both not to dump their own doubts on me. So far, they’ve told me they’re supportive and won’t inundate me with their own fears and doubts but in the next sentence, they’ve done exactly that, in the name of explaining their experiences with life and what they believe is most likely lying in wait for me.
Whether they’ll accept my new focus or I’ll end up at a distance, only time will tell. But no one ever tells you how many people will fall by the wayside of your life when you begin practicing the Law of Attraction in a conscious sense. I guess it’s a natural backlash from the Universal Laws to get you from an old state of being to a new one, but the good stuff will remain a part of your life.
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