SDS 304: The Law of Attraction

Kirill: Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast ladies and gentlemen. Today’s going to be a very interesting episode. I’m here in the car with Paolo, the event manager for DataScienceGO. We are driving from San Diego to LA. Paulo, how are you going?

Paulo: Doing great, thank you for inviting me Kirill.

Kirill: It’s really funny. So we are driving in some heavy traffic, the typical San Diego to LA traffic. We finally finished with DataScienceGO. How did you feel by the way?

Paulo: So good. So good. I think the results were great. So much learnings and so much things to start working for the next year.

Kirill: Yeah, for sure. We had the 600, right?

Paulo: 630.

Kirill: 630 people attend. So very, very excited. We spend an extra four days here in San Diego speaking to some business partners for the next event and things like that. And now we’re driving back to LA, to the airport and we’re listening to a book, by Napoleon Hill called Think and Grow Rich. Quite a famous book. And we started listening to with Hadelin already. And now I’m continuing as well with Paolo. And we’re in chapter three and chapter three is very exciting. It’s about the law of attraction. And we were so inspired, decided to record this FMF to share these ideas with you. So in a nutshell, Paulo, what’s the law of attraction to you?

Paulo: So is basically when you repeat thoughts in your mind that eventually that impacts your reality. So they were explaining in the chapter that our thoughts are the only thing that we can control as human being. So basically if you can impact your thoughts in a positive way, it will transform into positive reality.

Kirill: Absolutely. And we were thinking of examples of that. Like first of all, one of the terms they used was autosuggestion. Like you suggest to yourself and it’s, it’s crazy how important this part is in the book because Napoleon Hill actually suggests to spend 30 minutes a day just thinking about what you want and then another 10 minutes a day thinking about the person you want to become in order to accomplish what you want. And so we decided to think of it back into our lives because it’s probably happened to everyone and think about examples when that happened. So what is the first example, so not the interview example, but before that you said what was the first example?

Paulo: Yeah, like sometimes you know, our daily live, we just think of somebody who we have met like in the past or I don’t know, an old friend that perhaps we lost contact with that person. And suddenly like just by thinking into that person or just like, you know, like taking that thought into your mind and do it like several times. Suddenly you hear back from the person, you get that text message on WhatsApp or you go on Facebook and you just find a status of that person or a friend suggestion like that has happened to me recently quite a lot. So it was like even with minimal things in our life, we can see how the law of attraction kind of like gets or it’s a reality or impacts your reality.

Kirill: Absolutely. And what was that other example? Then we started digging further into like examples of not just because that happens to everyone when you think of someone and they message you or they call you when you were about to call them, but it was another examples of when the law of attraction really changed your life changed the course of your life drastically. I thought that was a beautiful one that you’re sharing.

Paulo: Yeah. So actually this was kind of like a very surprising story in my life and now that I heard the chapter, I can find more of the explanation of what that happened. So basically when I was searching for my internship, I really wanted to it to happen at a certain company. I really have heard very good comments about it and I really wanted to make it and run work for that company. I am from Columbia by the way. So it was in my hometown. So I got different interviews. Some of them were not good. I didn’t like the company so I rejected them. But one day I was like almost in the middle of December. So imagine that it’s like you got until pretty much 20th of December to find an internship. It was like 14th of December and I hadn’t gotten any reply from this company.

Paulo: So I went to kind of like one of my final interviews and after chatting with the managers and their recruiters, they offered me the job and in fact like they had like these contracts, like all the proposal for me and I was so tempted to accept, it was like almost like grab a pen and sign. But I was so… That idea of making it to this company, where I wanted my internship was so fixed in my mind. I really wanted to make it happen that I actually declined that job offer. And as soon as I said goodbye to the recruiters and thanked them for everything but kind of explained a little bit my decision. As soon as I left that office, I got a phone call from this company that I wanted. And they told me that I actually got the internship at their company. So that was kind of like fantastic. I now I kind of realize why that happened.

Kirill: That it’s really cool. It shows also the example of you really wanted it so much, but also you had to open the door. You could have the door closed by accepting the first or that second company, if you closed the door, then the other opportunity wouldn’t be able to come.

Paulo: Absolutely. Absolutely. And also I think one of the key principles that they are cheering is about how you build self-confidence. And I think that’s super important because sometimes when you don’t feel you don’t deserve things in life, they just won’t happen. So probably if you’re like at that point in your career where you are trying to make this change or kind of like get these new position or an internship, you first need to kind of like make these exercise of putting into your mind but also make sure that you feel that you deserve it and that you are good enough to make it happen. Otherwise it would never come.

Paulo: So it doesn’t matter how skillful you are, how much experience do you have. If you don’t feel in your inner self that you deserve things they won’t happen. So I think that’s one of the things that we as human beings sometimes forget and that we need to repeat. And they were like giving very actionable advises on how you can start your day always thinking and building that self-confidence so that in the end you can impact your reality and in the end your career for example with this example that I’m telling you.

Kirill: Absolutely. And to extend that thought, they also mentioned that this power of the law of attraction works both with constructive thinking and destructive thinking. So if you’re constantly thinking negative thoughts about how things are bad or how you failed at something or how you might fail at something, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. You’re going to attract the negative elements. The thing is we don’t know how it works and they actually, Napoleon Hill says that in the book, we don’t know how this works, but what we do know is that it does work. And you know, one of the speculations I have heard is that the subconscious mind, which Napoleon Hill thinks is what connects to the infinite intelligence and that provides answers or the guidance or makes this all happen. But basically subconscious mind works in pictures, in visuals.

Kirill: And so it’s really hard to visualize something like I don’t want to fail. You cannot visualize a negative, like a basically saying the word not or when you deny something, you cannot visualize, you are still going to visualize failure and therefore you’re going to attract failure. So always express positive statements, affirmative statements because it works both ways. So yeah, that’s the law of attraction. Nobody knows how it works, but if you believe in it, that works, it’s going to work. My… Probably our call would be first of all, great book, right? Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich. I’ve been told about many, many times. It’s actually from the start of the 20th century. So quite an old book, but its principles hold true. But I guess our call for this weekend would be, try to think of examples when law of attraction has worked in your life. Even if you don’t believe in it, just try to see if there have been examples in your life when it has worked and then try to actually put it to use this weekend. See what happens.

Paulo: Absolutely. I think, sometimes we are just so skeptic about these things, and I personally like, sometimes in my life I’ve been so skeptic about it, but it actually worked. So my advice would be to practice it as baby steps. So start thinking on, don’t try to impact your whole life suddenly. Just do it for five minutes a day and see what the results are. And if you see some positive impact, definitely make it a habit.

Kirill: Absolutely agree. On that note, thank you so much, Paulo, for being here today and we wish our listeners a fantastic weekend.

Paulo: Absolutely.