What You Fear Losing Is Costing You More
You aren’t pushed by your past experiences into the person you are now. You’re pulled by the future you’re vividly aware of, backward into the person you are now.
Light isn’t pushed by the past. It’s pulled by the future.
What you fear most intensely will come walking toward you from the future.
I used to see the world the way classical mechanics sees it: the past determines the future. Or to put it another way, what you do and accumulate today determines what you become tomorrow.
But recently, reading Haanel’s The Law of Attraction, I’ve started to feel that it might be the other way around: What shapes the present isn’t the past. It’s the future you want.
You could call it fate.
There’s a line in the book that’s been quoted to death:
People with a money mindset constantly attract money. People with a poverty mindset constantly attract poverty.
And right after:
A man becomes what he thinks about. The things I have always feared keep coming toward me.
I had to stop reading after that. It seemed to be saying: what you’re vividly aware of reaches back from the future and pulls you toward it.
This made me think of Fermat’s principle.
Fermat’s principle says that when light travels from point A through water to point B, it refracts, and the path it ends up taking is always the one that minimizes time. You might ask, shouldn’t a straight line be the fastest? No. Light moves slower in water. If it took a straight line, the underwater segment would be longer, and the total time would actually go up.
This is deeply counterintuitive. Doesn’t it have to try out every possible path before knowing which one is shortest? Apparently not. The moment it leaves, it already seems to know. At the instant of departure, it acts as if it already knows which path is the fastest.
It’s as if the light already knows its destiny.
Light isn’t pushed by the past. It’s pulled by the future.
The law of attraction is saying the same thing. You aren’t pushed by your past experiences into the person you are today. You’re pulled by the future you’re vividly aware of, backward into the person you are today.
Does that make your scalp tingle?
I once read something similar:
The moment I decide to climb the mountain, I’m actually already at the summit. Because in that instant of deciding, the universe spawns a possibility where I appear at the top. Every step I take collapses the timeline a little, until eventually countless universes fold into this single reality. The version of me at the summit is the cause.
Why do I climb the mountain? Because I see the version of me at the top, and that summit-self is what’s pulling the current me along. The summit-self is the cause.
Now flip it. Why does someone end up living the version of themselves that’s afraid of going broke? Because every day, in their head, they’re staring at that broke version of themselves. The scarcity-self is what’s pulling the current self.
Two uses of the same mechanism. The “abundant self” you’re aware of pulls you into the abundant future. The “scarce self” you’re aware of pulls you into the scarce future. That’s exactly what those four words “law of attraction” are pointing at.
So let’s circle back.
If the future is what’s pulling you, does that mean everything is already written?
If fate is fixed, do my choices still mean anything?
Yes, they mean something, and they matter even more. What you choose isn’t what’s important. What’s important is that you’re the one choosing. Because if you don’t choose, someone else chooses for you. The future they see becomes your reality.
For some people, “owning a house, owning a car, getting a stable government job” is the abundance their parents see. Pressed by that expectation, you sink all of your energy into a kind of security you may not actually want.
For some people, “what coffee they drink, what brands they wear, what neighborhood they live in” is the abundance their social circle defines. Pressed by those eyes, your money is always chasing that definition. Your account numbers run at full load, year after year.
I’m not making any judgments about any of this. What matters isn’t what you choose. What matters is whether it’s the future you actually want.
Choosing for yourself has its own traps too.
Nobody actually fantasizes about being broke. But when you’re afraid of going broke, your attention automatically locks onto “will I lose this” and “what if it fails.”
This isn’t about being against thinking ahead. Two people might look like they’re both planning for the future, but one is thinking “I want to climb to that summit,” and the other is thinking “I just can’t fall from where I am.” The first one is taking steps toward the summit. The second one is just standing in place, repeatedly checking they haven’t slipped.
And fear itself is also a beam of light, calculating its own path. The harder you stare at it, the clearer that path becomes.
What you fear most intensely will come walking toward you from the future.
So what can you actually do?
A useful method is to treat this as making a request to the universe. But when you make the request, be as clear as you can. A few years from now, where do I want to be living, what kind of work do I want to be doing, what kind of life do I want to have. The more specific, the better.
It’s just like writing an AI prompt. The more precise your request, the clearer the universe that gets generated. The more clearly you can see it, the more likely it is to actually happen.
It’s not just that the universe hears you. You also hear yourself.
When you can clearly see that future version of you, what he does, the abilities he has, the kind of people he’s around, how he handles difficulties, you have a very specific map in your head.
After that, you don’t need to push for anything. Your attention starts adjusting on its own. The skills he needs, you start paying attention to them this year. The kind of people he’s around, you start moving toward them. How he handles things, you’ll instinctively handle even small things today the same way.
This is what’s at the core of fake it till you make it.
I used to not understand the saying “everything is the best arrangement.” It sounded like an excuse to me.
But looking at it now, what if the one doing the arranging isn’t someone else, but a future version of yourself?
That feeling of fate pressing into your back, that’s very likely the future trying to give you a hint. You just have to listen carefully.
Because you’re already standing at the summit.