How my salmon-smelling car led me to understand the law of attraction

Eight weeks ago, I made a pact to write a blog post every two weeks and an email to my database every two weeks. That’s roughly 2,000 words a week, or close to 20,000 words in total. From nothing to 20,000 words feels good. 

And not only am I doing it, I am teeming with ideas of what to write next. I have a note on my phone called “Blog and email ideas”, and I add to it throughout the week and then choose what I most want to share on my ‘work’ days. I’m so grateful to anyone who reads what I have to say.

I add to this most days of the week.

I’ve been sitting on the fence about what to share this week. Many people in my community are asking to know more about Phhnix and what happened there. I had a rough night with a sick baby last night and could easily share how I push through the days following sleepless nights. 

But the biggest thing that’s happening for me at the moment is that I’m finally starting to understand the law of attraction in a way that transcends the literal definition of it. I’m seeing the results in my own life – good and bad – and although it’s new, and I don’t have all the words to explain it succinctly, it’s been a powerful lesson for me. So that’s what I want to talk about today. Imperfectly. 

You may have heard the expression ‘the law of attraction’ or concepts like manifesting or raising your vibration. I’ve grabbed a definition from Wikipedia to jog your memory. “The law of attraction is the New Thought spiritual belief that positive or negative thoughts bring positive or negative experiences into a person’s life. The belief is based on the idea that people and their thoughts are made from “pure energy” and that like energy can attract like energy, thereby allowing people to improve their health, wealth, or personal relationships.” (Wikipedia, July 2023) 

I always thought it was a bullshit concept. But a few years ago, I did a mini-course on manifesting, and I’ve obviously since gone deep down the rabbit hole of personal development. The rabbit hole I’ve been down transcends the learning of things. Someone who consumes personal development concepts but never integrates them into their life earns themself the nickname of an awareness junkie. 

An awareness junkie is all awareness, no change. I’ve been there; I believe there’s a natural evolution to personal development, and we all start there, but over the last two years or so, I’ve been firmly in the stage of change. Taking what I’ve learned literally and using it to make powerful changes in the way I think, feel and live my life. And for those days that I’m not conscious enough to change, I am always aware of my negative thoughts and the resulting behaviours I take into my day. That’s what I want to talk about today. 

I’ll tell you a story, and you can see if you relate. Then I’ll share my awareness and how it aligns with what I’ve read about the law of attraction. 

Last week I had a bad day. I genuinely don’t have many bad days anymore. I’ve found a lot of gratitude for my life, and I’m very aware of my ego and the games it plays. But bad days still happen, particularly when I’m tired. If I could give you one piece of advice to improve your mindset, it would be to catch enough sleep. You don’t know how much a lack of sleep affects your attitude until you’ve been on both sides. I’m lucky to be a great sleeper, but I also have babies, and they aren’t really fans of solid sleep. 

William has been particularly restless lately, and I’ve been having extremely broken sleep and early mornings. 

I woke up early and tired last Friday and found it impossible to change my mood. I knew I was tired and in a bad mindset, but there wasn’t enough mental space to change. Being tired, for me at least, makes my inner chatter loud and relentless. (And negative!) 

Neither Dreamboat nor I work on a Friday, so it’s usually all hands on deck, but last Friday, Dreamboat decided to clean the car, and anyone with two kids will know how bad the car gets after a few months.

Our car smelled like salmon. Not because we had salmon in the car, but because sometimes the bad badness of children’s smells comes together in weird and disgusting ways – like salmon. That’s where the car was at. So I got it. 

I was very, very tired. I really, really wanted to go back to bed. But I was drawn to the idea of not having a car smelling like salmon, so I agreed to take the kids for the day. 

That was mistake number one. I knew that I was in a bad way. A terrible way. But my thoughts were SO busy and negative that I couldn’t think of alternatives, and I decided to take the kids instead of catching up on sleep. 

We ended up going on an adventure to the library. We caught the tram, always fun, and let loose with giant Lego blocks, computer games and a stack of new books. I came close to shifting my state through action, but the tiredness kept dragging me down, and I never managed to brush it off. I’d say my emotional state was in the realm of feeling weak. Feeling weak is a big trigger for me because of my early drowning. It’s on par with feeling stupid as a ‘story’ I hold deep. You can read the blog post on my drowning here.

Lego, so fun after waking up 27 times during the night.

When I feel weak, I tend to claw onto the emotion and have all kinds of feelings about it. My body gets involved, and I feel physically weak, almost frail. It’s a whole mind, body, soul thing. 

I knew I was spiralling, but I made the call to go and get some lunch because adding hunger to the tired/ weak combo would not do me any favours. 

That was mistake number two. I should have cut and run. Called Dreamboat, admitted I was in the bad place and got him to pick us up and do the car another day. I did not do that. Instead, I took us to the shopping centre FOOD COURT, thinking of finding something relatively nutritious to fuel us for the tram ride home. 

With Will asleep in the baby carrier and pushing Makia in the pram, I made my way to the shopping centre from the library only to discover that the entire food court was closed for renovations, except for three lone eateries. They were: KFC, McDonalds and Subway. What do you think I chose? 

If I were conscious, I would have been at home tucked up in bed at this point, the kids under the watchful gaze of their father. But no, of course, I chose McDonalds. A quarter-pounder (no meat) meal for me, topped off with a chocolate shake, no less, and a happy meal for Miss Makia. And didn’t it feel wonderful?! Carbs, sugar, more sugar.

This is not going to end well.

I spoke to Dreamboat shortly afterwards, and he said, “You sound better”. I replied, “HAHAHAHAHA – OH THIS. I’M TEMPORARILY BETTER, BUT SOON I’M GOING TO FEEL WAY, WAY, WAY WORSE!! HAHAHAHAHA”. 

You guessed it – mistake number three. 

After a delayed retreat from the shopping centre and a looooooong tram ride home, I now had a wide-awake baby, an exhausted toddler and a personal sugar crash on my hands. Not a great situation. Remembering that all of this could have been rectified at any given moment with a quick call to my husband. 

I got home, and Dreamboat was about to leave to take the car to the car washing place to vacuum it – you know, the ones with the super powerful vacuum cleaners. He asked me again, are you okay with the kids? My brain said, “No, I’m dying. Please don’t go. I can’t do it. I’m in pain. I’ve reached the end. I really, really need you right now.” My mouth opened, and I actually said, “Sure, see you soon”. WTF!!!

He left. I got into bed, hoping my wide-awake baby and overtired toddler would curl beside me for a nice nap. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Spoiler alert: that did not happen. Makia started climbing me like a tree. William started whining. I started having those hellish micro naps you have when you’re so tired you can’t help it.

I gave Makia to Grandma to deal with, put William in the baby carrier and started walking him around the apartment. By this point, I couldn’t even make conversation. I was in the bad, bad, bad place. And then, and only then, did I call Emmanuel in tears and say please come home. Which he immediately did so that I could sleep. A sleep that I could have literally had at any time in the previous six hours had I only asked.

A selfie taken roughly 30 seconds before I rang Dreamboat.

So. With all of that in mind, would you say that I chose to feel bad last Friday? I clearly had multiple opportunities to ask for help and do the thing to feel better. But it felt like I was swept away towards an inevitable fate – a terrible day. Do you ever have a bad morning and think,  “It’s going to be one of THOSE” days?

This scenario has nothing to do with children either; I used to have days like this all the time before I had kids. It was like the universe was punishing me. I often had these days after excellent days, and I had a ‘story’ that the universe wanted to bring me back down to earth. 

What do they all have in common? The fact that whatever shitness I’m feeling seems to attract more and more shitness. 

Later that night, I reflected on my day. I’ve been particularly interested in learning about emotions, vibrations and manifesting lately. Hence, my mind wandered to some books I’d been reading and my understanding of the Law of Attraction. 

A while back, I read a book called “The Molecules of Emotions” by the PhD neuroscientist who discovered the opiate receptor in the 70s. Her cutting-edge research proved that body receptors respond to energy and chemical cues by vibrating. She writes:

“Basically, receptors function as sensing molecules – scanners. Just as our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, fingers, and skin act as sense organs, so, too, do the receptors, only on a cellular level. They hover in the membranes of your cells, dancing and vibrating, waiting to pick up messages from other vibrating little creatures, which come cruising along.” 

I’m also mid-way through Eckart Tolle’s book “A New Earth”, where he writes:

“An emotion … is the body’s response to a thought … Although the body is very intelligent, it cannot tell the difference between an actual situation and a thought. It reacts to every thought as if it were a reality … To the body, a worrisome, fearful thought means “I am in danger”, and it responds accordingly, even though you may be lying in a warm and comfortable bed at night”. 

I also know about the basics of emotions. Long story, but I found myself sitting down with my psychologist in 2021 and learning about the difference between feelings and emotions, much to my shame. I remember telling him that I felt like such an idiot for not understanding the difference until the ripe old age of 40. But these things weren’t discussed when I was little, so how would I know? 

Emotions are energy in motion. They are something that we FEEL in our bodies. They can come from our thoughts, as Eckart Tolle outlined above, or external situations, like a sabre tooth tiger chasing us. (The emotion of fear causes the heart to beat faster, our muscles to contract, and our breathing to become rapid).

Great resources: Molecules of Emotion by Candace Pert, A New Earth by Eckart Tolle, and How Do I Feel by Rebekah Lipp and Craig Phillips.

Feelings are different. Our minds invent feelings based on the emotion present. If you ask which came first, the emotion or the feeling, you’ll see that it doesn’t really matter because they feed each other. You think of something anxiety-inducing, which causes the emotion of anxiety to flood your body. Then you focus on the uncomfortable physical sensation and feel even more anxious about feeling anxious.

Likewise, you can be visited by the emotion of anxiety due to an external situation or even someone else’s energy. Then the feelings about the emotion kick in and cause more of the sensation of anxiety. 

Putting feelings aside, emotion – the “energy in motion” – is controlled by varying levels of chemicals in the brain.

In other words, emotions are generated by chemicals present in the brain that are called neurotransmitters. And neurotransmitters communicate using receptors, as defined by Candace Pert in ‘Molecules of Emotion’. Receptors that VIBRATE and attract other, similar chemicals. 

So, it is scientifically proven that the specific chemical combination that makes up any given emotion will physically attract (manifest) more of the same emotion. Your body will VIBRATE at a particular frequency, attracting more of the same thing. 

My vibration last Friday attracted a very specific set of cascading thoughts (no matter how much I tried to fight them), a very specific set of behaviours (refusing to ask for help, doing tiring activities, eating fucking McDonald’s, of all things) and a very specific result – more bad feelings, resulting in a very bad day. 

I felt powerless to halt the familiar march of badness, even with all the knowledge and consciousness I ordinarily have. 

Having all of this land for me, finally, in a way I can completely understand – logically and as a lived experience, has given me so much excitement for what I can create when the cascade goes in the other direction – when I feel positively happy, grateful and joyous, and the universe conspires to bring me more circumstances that meet me at that vibration. 

It’s given a new meaning to the famous quote, “Thoughts become things”. 

I don’t know if this resonates with any of you, but if even one person reads this and has a lightbulb moment, then I’ll be happy. And if nothing else, writing about it always helps to cement my understanding. 

I wish you more good days and none that include mysterious salmon smells. 

Lauren xx


Posted to Personal on 13th July 2023