Episode #26 – Applying The Law Of Attraction To Negotiations With Andrew Kaplan

 

Whether you’re negotiating internally with yourself or externally with other parties, how you show up determines the kind of success that the universe will allow you to manifest. In this episode, Andrew Kaplan joins Christine McKay to explain how the Law of Attraction works and how you can do it properly to bring you the success you have always dreamt of. Andrew is the author of The Last Law of Attraction Book You’ll Ever Need to Read, a number one bestselling book in its category that Forbes has recognized as one of the 21 books to read in 2021. Join in and learn how the Law of Attraction applies to negotiations and can change the way you negotiate for good.

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Applying The Law Of Attraction To Negotiations With Andrew Kaplan

I’m excited about my guest because Andrew Kaplan has impacted my life in a way that I never thought possible. Andrew is an expert in the law of attraction. He has this best-selling book called The Last Law of Attraction Book You’ll Ever Need To Read. He’s right, it is. I was on Andrew’s podcast and I’ve been trying to figure out how do I bring Andrew on? How do I make it relate to negotiation? As a lot of you’ve heard me say before, the hardest part of any negotiation is the negotiation we have between our ears. The law of attraction can help you address that. Who better to have than the man who has the number one best-selling book in this category on the market? He was featured in Forbes as one of the 21 books to read in 2021. He’s been featured on Yahoo multiple times for the same amazing thing. Andrew, thank you for being here. I am glad to have you. I’m grateful to you.

Christine, thank you so much for having me. I’m probably more excited than you. I knew this not even with our interview, but even in our interaction before our interview on my podcast. It’s clear to me how important your podcast is and the impact it’s going to make for people. To be invited on and to try to give some value to this class of people and this class of content is a high compliment. I’m super pumped about where our conversation might go. I know we’re probably going to go in a different direction than most other scenarios. Let’s do it. Thank you for having me. I’m happy to be here and ready to go.

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. I am excited about where this episode is going to be able to take people and how it’s going to impact their businesses and their lives and elevate what they do and what they achieve. Part of that success is what we attract. First, tell us a little bit about you. Tell us a little bit about how you got to where you’re at and what drove you to write the book.

The fastest version off the top of my head is I learned about the law of attraction years ago when I was sixteen. As an entrepreneur looking for positive mindsets, positive modalities, and things like that, it was one of many. It worked but it was inconsistent. I would only find out years later that I was the inconsistent one. I hit this wall back in 2008, where even though I was doing this on the side, I was struggling with my business. I lost my business and my girlfriend of three years all in the same week. It wasn’t even a breakup in person or a breakup over the phone. It was a breakup over text. It was rough going.

Here I am, no business, no relationship. 90% of my life is gone. What do I do? I had this thought in my mind, “That law of attraction thing worked whenever I did it. I’m stubborn, indignant, and upset enough where maybe I can go all-in for a change.” When I say all-in, I don’t mean all day, every day. We understand human nature. We understand burnout. I knew that even then, in that state of motivation, that it was not sustainable. I can go five minutes a day. I can do ten minutes a day. We’re talking gratitude, exercises, visualization, and simple things.

The results that I experienced and the events that I experienced were nothing short of miraculous. Within two weeks, I feel better, which is saying a lot with a broken heart. Within three months, I’m in a brand new and way healthier relationship. I’m over my ex. Within four months, I’m making more money than at any point in life before then. Within six months, everything is different. I’m in the best shape of my life, waking up happy and fulfilled. I realized, at least for me, this works if you work it and I was never the same after that.

It was only years later where I’m deciding, “What do I want to do next in business?” I made a decision, “I need something to do where I’m not going to be candid and I’m not going to get bored. I’m going to be happy to engage with the customers, happy to respond to emails, and be into it.” I thought, “Maybe I can finally permit myself to write a book that I would have wanted years ago. Maybe I can give myself permission and acknowledgment of like, ‘I can articulate this in a way that will connect with people and that will hopefully help them.’” I went with it. This title is a bold promise. You’re either going to be loved in the reviews or get killed in the reviews because you’ve got to live up to it. Fortunately, for me, it clicked the way I hoped it would, a lot of five-star reviews. I’ve been riding that wave of momentum ever since. I’m grateful for the journey so far.

That’s amazing. Thank you very much for sharing that story. I went through a divorce. I had three kids when I was doing it. Getting over it in two weeks is quite the thing. It’s clear what limited vision I have into your world. We’re part of a mastermind group together. I’m seeing you manifesting your success. Your book has sold over 50,000 copies. You have well over 1,000 reviews on Amazon, along with the thing with Forbes, and Yahoo. It keeps coming. Your programs are amazing. I’m taking the Gravity of the Cosmos now. It’s amazing. You’re living it.

For the audience, one of the things that I had been thinking about when I was trying to figure out how to get Andrew on the show is bringing it into my mind and thinking about negotiations that worked well for me and negotiations that didn’t work well for me. Unbeknownst to me at the time, because I didn’t have the language, the ones that worked well are ones where I was doing the law of attraction. I had this view that something was going to happen. Tell us more about the law of attraction because I’m sure some of our readers have no idea what the heck we’re talking about.

In my YouTube channel, I explained it in 60 seconds. There’s always like, “I’ve got to meet that standard.” It’s what you think about and what you focus on manifest into your life. People are like, “How does it happen?” If you look at us under a microscope, even though we look and feel solid, we’re vibrating. Everything around us is a vibration, including our thoughts. When you think about it, your thought is like this abstract thing in your mind. It’s not. It’s a vibration that resonates out there with the universe. The universe finds that similar vibration and mirrors back the experiences, even the holograms of what’s going to happen, which is a long-winded way of saying what you think about comes into your life.

Let’s say I’m wrong about that, I’m lying, I’m deluded, or who knows what. Somehow and someway, something is going on in your mind, whether it’s communicating with the universe and bringing it in or your subconscious mind is powerful that it’s a supercomputer. You will notice things or you will take certain actions. I’m not making my 60-second mark. I’m giving someone an example. Imagine you’re trying to manifest a job promotion and you focus on it every single day. You’re thinking about it with good feelings. All of a sudden, you notice people in the office are talking to you a little bit better. They’re more responsive to you. They’re listening to your ideas more. What happened? Did the universe magically reach out and touch them? Maybe.

Also, you don’t even realize your subconscious mind behind the wheel and the cadence of your voice is different. There are more confidence and certainty. You’re standing up straight or sitting up straighter. You’re coming up with better ideas because your subconscious mind is coming up with these different things and feeding them through you. In other words, I believe that a huge part of this is the universe, energy, and vibration. The beauty of it is I don’t have to be right for people to achieve or experience or enjoy a result. Maybe it’s the universe. Maybe it’s the subconscious mind. Maybe it’s something that we still haven’t discovered that we can see, feel, taste, or touch. Something is happening when you focus with gratitude on things that you want. By hook or by crook, things come to you. If you don’t believe me, try it as an experiment. The worst thing that can happen is you spend five minutes a day feeling good about something where instead, you could have been worrying about your finances, your relationship, your job, or whatever else.

I have a black belt in martial arts. One of my instructors used to always say, “Worry is nothing more than negative goal setting.” What we focus our mind on, we bring into action. It’s almost like when we buy a car. My daughter is looking at a Toyota RAV4. We were driving one weekend and I was like, “She saw every Toyota RAV4 on the road.” Not that she’s ever noticed one ever before but because she’s thinking about buying one, that’s all she sees. She even sees and pinpoints the color, “There’s one in the color I want.” I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” It feels a little bit like that sometimes.

We start telling ourselves, “This is what I want.” We start to see it. Sometimes we don’t see it with our eyes. Sometimes we feel it, which you and I’ve talked about because I’m not a visual person. I don’t visualize very much. I feel things. If I do a visualization exercise, I don’t see myself on the boat on the ocean but I can feel myself feel the wind in my face and I can smell the ocean spray. I don’t see the boat that I want. There’s also a different way of experiencing that whole process as well.

It’s a beautiful thing and it’s also a challenge in the sense that if people read a standard book, they’re supposed to experience something. If they’re not feeling that, they tell themselves that they’re not doing it right. It’s a dangerously fine line to walk. In truth, if you’re getting any positive experience while thinking about what you have or what you want or both, you’re doing it right. It’s working. It’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do. The real key distinction is to understand everyone is going to experience this uniquely. Also, everyone can approach it uniquely. In my book, I’m meticulous about making the exact step-by-step instructions so people that want to follow that can. There’s simultaneously an invitation to them to tweak it in any way that they want. Maybe when I say, “Do X, Y, and Z in the step.” They’ll do Z, Y, X. As long as they’re still getting that benefit, as long as they’re feeling good, that’s all that matters.

This sounds simplistic and this is personal. One of my totem animals is an eagle or a hawk. I love birds of prey. My daughter and I were hiking and I happened to see this board that showed different animals on it and one of them was the eagle. I didn’t think much of it. I’m walking around and I’m noticing every little thing in nature, like this little, teeny, tiny ant that crossed in front of me. We were walking up a steep hill and I started a conversation. I said, “I am grateful for that.” I said, “This hill is steep. Can you imagine being this ant and looking up this hill?” I can’t imagine how much bigger this hill would seem to an ant. As soon as we turn the bend, there was this beautiful golden eagle. He was right there. Some people might think that sounds like woo-woo, but because of your book and because of the programs that I’ve taken that you offer, I’m seeing it. I’m seeing it in my business, too. It’s amazing.

First of all, whether it’s my book or anyone else’s book, thank you for acknowledging it because that’s where the gift is in it for you. The fact that you can notice and acknowledge it is what fuels it and reinforces it. For someone else, they might experience that and they brush it aside. All of a sudden, it’s not in their awareness anymore and they are not inviting it there. It’s still there. There’s so much abundance that we don’t realize no matter where we are in our lives that’s almost begging us to claim it. By that same token, through fixed mental patterns or whatever else that might be, a lot of us are holding it away from us. Thank you for acknowledging that in service to yourself because that’s the secret sauce. That’s the formula right there. I’m sure that it bleeds over into many aspects, even in your negotiation style as well.

When you focus with gratitude on things that you want, by hook or by crook, those things will come to you. Share on X

My husband changed jobs. He had been unemployed for quite a long time many years ago. We moved from Boston to California. He took a job with his dream company but he took a massive pay cut. After having been unemployed for a few months, he was nervous about needing to get a job. He got it and it was with his dream company. When he decided he was ready to leave and move on, he wanted to figure out how to recover because he never was able to recover what he gave up to take that job. He never made it back up again.

He was making far less than he was when he had his job before. He kept telling himself, “Nobody is going to pay me that. Nobody is going to do that.” I said, “You’ve got to stop thinking that way.” What we did is we used data to help build a story for him that allowed him to get to a different point. Now, he got a new job. He’s making more than what he would have likely been making even if he’d stayed in the old job from before because he had that change in his thinking. He could start seeing himself. He changed how he saw the value that he contributed as well as what was possible.

I’m projecting now. I hear that you took valid data points. We used the word story but you constructed a truth around it that it’s the way it is. From that, I’m pretty sure that the way he carried himself in those job interviews or even in the emails that he sent out to reach out for a cover letter. There’s something to the cadence and the structure of your wording and the tonality of your voice when that’s in the mix that people can feel on the other end.

I believe the fact that he took those data points and the fact that he allowed himself to accept the fact that he can be paid that much. That came through in his communication. It came through to the people receiving the communication and they saw it as valid. Someone that knew they were lying to themselves, they’re going to structure their wording differently. The person on the other end is going to see through it and feel something off. Maybe they’re going to feel something off consciously where they can put words to it. Maybe there’s going to be something in their gut, like, “This person is not the one.”

Sometimes things are going to feel out of reach. To whatever measure you can, at least accept the fact that you’re always worth more than you ever are acknowledging yourself for. There’s always something more for you. It’s that truth. Being able to accept that opens the door for better things, which opens the door to stronger, more efficient, more useful communication that’s going to result in a lot of cooperation in those negotiations that you’re doing.

One of the things that I find when I have a stronger sense of value of what I’m asking for is it creates what our friend Blair Dunkley would call self-confidence versus internal confidence. It does inform how you communicate because when you’re more confident in what you’re trying to say and what you’re trying to convey, it can give you more room to be curious about what your counterpart is doing and saying. It allows you to be more observant because you’re standing more in your power. You have more about what you want. It gives you room for that curiosity. I’ve had several people tell me, “The thing I learned the most in your presentation was that I need to think about my counterpart.” I do know that people don’t do that but I’ve not had anyone ever say that to me. When you have more confidence in yourself, it gives you that runway to be more curious.

The way I interpreted it is it’s not just confidence, it’s a relaxed confidence. What I mean by that is when you’re relaxed and you’re confident and you’re a good person, you know deep inside of you that you’re going to get what you want and things are going to work out. Of course, you don’t want to screw over the other person. You want to serve them also. You want to win. You can’t fake it. It’ll come across naturally through how you behave because you’ve got that mindset and that’s how you’re looking at things. It might be a thing where people don’t realize, in my opinion, you’re the expert and I defer to you, it’s going to lead to a healthier negotiation. In the sense that the way you’re coming across will make them relaxed enough to ask for something that they would not normally ask about that they needed, that if they didn’t have, they will resent five months later.

You’re creating a rapport with them through your own ease and confidence with who you are as a person because your abundance mentality versus scarcity mentality allows you to be more abundant in how you treat them. It gives them the comfort and the space to engage with you and get a deeper and more profound, important, long-lasting, resilient negotiation and arrangement that’s going to be healthier for a lot longer time hopefully.

That’s a big deal because when you don’t do that, then your ability to negotiate is limited. We see that all the time in the term win-win, which I have a lot of issues with that term. My apologies to all of my amazing Harvard professors. I have a big issue with it because what it’s become is a nudge, wink, “I’m going to screw you over.” I’ve had somebody say to me, “It was a decent deal when you both walk away unhappy.” I’m like, “No, that’s not the case because if you were effective at negotiating, you’d figure out where there’s more value with each other. The pie is bigger than what you think it is.” This win-win and this win-lose thing ends up becoming, “I’ve got a whole pie. I’m going to cut it into eight slices and there are eight slices to half.”

 

I talk about an egg. You’ve got one egg and it’s raw and it’s in a shell. How do you divide it in 1/3? If three people want the egg, how do you divide it? Universally, people say they boil it and they cut it up, or they scramble it and they divided it into 1/3. If you poke a hole in it and you drain the yolk from the white and the yolk and white out of the shell, you have an empty shell, and then you separate the yolk and the white. Now you have three separate and distinctive parts of an egg that now three people can share and get value out of. That’s negotiation. Effective negotiation is about how do I make that egg still stay an egg, but divided up into three parts without destroying a part of it or changing its properties?

One person can say, “I’ll take some of this yoke because we’re supposed to get an equal amount,” when they only care about the shell and the other two people don’t care about the shell.

You can have somebody who is going to compost the shell or turn it into a piece of art. You’re going to have a baker who’s going to glaze some baked goods and you can still make an omelet out of the egg whites. It’s that ability when you have that quiet confidence and comfort in who you are, you are able to think more creatively about how to divide that egg.

You said that when you’re talking about win-win. If I’m understanding correctly, the thing that you have against the win-win is a lot of times, people are hiding behind a false narrative where they don’t even care about people getting their own unique wins. They’re just trying to look like they’re good so they can get an advantage in the negotiation.

Research out of Cornell suggests that 65% to 70% of negotiations are win-lose negotiations. We think about it as, “If you win something, that means I’m losing something.” Versus it being an overall relationship and you can’t win a relationship. When you acknowledge that negotiation as a conversation about a relationship and you stop trying to win at a relationship, the doors of possibility open up crazy, which is why the Law of Attraction is so important in how we negotiate. When you acknowledge that it’s about the relationship, let that door open, and all the possibilities are there, now you just got to be able to think about what it is that you want out of those possibilities.

John Carlton used to use the word spooky for this kind of stuff like things just happen. You can put whatever word you want to it. It’s one of those things where you let down your walls enough or saying, “I’m going to invite this result that I want. I’m going to focus on us having a good conversation. I’m going to focus on harmony.” Regardless of what form that harmony takes, you will be surprised to see not only how that other person shows up, but how you show up.

It’s such a weird, esoteric, and intangible thing, but the fact that you show up in a unique way, which affects how the other person shows up. They could have shown up as a completely different person or maybe they showed up exactly as it is supposed to. If you were thinking in a negative way, they read that in you immediately, and then they respond in kind. It’s all about, what do you bring to the table as to who are you showing up as that will create the invitation for them to be the most harmonious match?

Let’s talk a little bit about gratitude because you do a lot of work in gratitude. You and I talked a little bit when I was on your show about gratitude. Win-win has become this thing that people are using as a battering ram sometimes and they’re disingenuous about the idea of both parties winning. I’m starting to see people using gratitude as a weapon, especially in certain circles. I want to have you talk a little bit about what gratitude and practicing gratitude means to you.

Thanks for even bringing up that it’s misused. Not the element of gratitude itself, but the concept of what it means to people. In the Law of Attraction space, not that people are necessarily and intentionally doing this, but it’s almost like a fad. It’s almost something like you just say gratitude and you pay lip service to it. What does it mean? To me, gratitude means appreciating and acknowledging what you have. Not only as a means to enjoying the moment but also as simultaneously a means to sending that communication out to either the universe or your subconscious mind, whichever one you believe in more. This to reaffirm that energy and those circumstances that more things come into your life to be grateful for. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy, so to speak.

You’re always worth more than you are acknowledging yourself for. Share on X

By being grateful and appreciating what you have, you invite more situations, circumstances, reasons, and excuses to continue to feel gratitude, which is another way of feeling good, which is another way of attracting more good. It snowballs and keeps going on and on. We all have our challenges. When the book sells 50,000 copies, I’m putting it out there. When it’s featured in Forbes, I’m putting it out there. When someone pisses me off, I’m not putting that out there, even though it happens. There’s a recognition that things aren’t perfect, but what you want to do strategically is be more grateful and put more focus on the good. Not because you’re trying to trick other people, but because you’re trying to quarterback your focus because you want to invite more of those things.

It all comes down to what can I do strategically to appreciate this? Even when things are bad, there’s always something to appreciate. An answer that I always give people when I do podcast appearances is, I say, “You can’t think of anything. What about your heart? What about your heart that’s been beating in your chest every single second of every single day since before the day we were born?” Not only that it’s been there you every single day, but it’s pumping blood, nutrients, and oxygen to all these other parts of your body, which are also serving you. How many people wake up and have to say, “Let me inhale. Let me exhale.” No. It is being taken care of and regulated for you. Air and oxygen are there for you. Most people hopefully have access to clean water.

These are things that we gloss over when we’re under stress. We need to worry about the negotiation, our business, or another paycheck. If you’re focusing on all these good things, you are creating energy, a whirlpool of a vortex of focus and attention that’s going to help you come up with better more constructive ideas on dealing with those negative things that you’re not happy with. Joy to me isn’t just a result. It’s a strategy. By implementing joy and by finding reasons to feel joy, you’re inviting it more. You’re resetting your mind and your focus. Your brain, your subconscious mind is the greatest supercomputer ever. How hard are they working right now to make artificial intelligence and replicate things?

Some things have done amazing but they still have not even come close to equaling the power of the human mind. You have so much resourcefulness within you and you access that. There’s one of many ways, but one great way of accessing it is through simple gratitude. Simply being grateful for your car, your paycheck, and the food that you’re eating will indirectly lead to that relationship that you’ve wanted, that you can now be grateful for as well. You can be grateful for one area of your life and will invite good things from other areas of life that you weren’t even focusing on.

The exercise I got to do was focused on money and gratitude for different things. We did the present, past, future technique, which is a cool technique where you write something down about your present that you are grateful for. It can be about money, health, or anything, and then you write something from your past that you are grateful for. You then write something about your future that you’re grateful for. You haven’t gotten to the future thing yet, but you write it in the present tense. All of those things get jumbled together. The thing that you are wanting, you’re treating like you’ve already had it or have it. It’s a powerful exercise.

For me, living out of the back of my car, homeless, on welfare for a long time, I’m grateful that I got out of my car. I’m grateful that welfare existed as a way for me to be able to rebuild. Barry Taylor, who was a professor of mine when I was at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, bought $200 worth of groceries one time for me and my daughters. I was reminded because you said it on the Gravity of the Cosmos program. It’s like, “If you get a discount on something, we got grandfathered in on cheap internet.” That was something I’m like, “I’m thankful for that. It saves us $100 a month to be grandfathered in on that.”

We get so focused on what we don’t have and sometimes, the bad things in our lives, that we forget all the amazing, wonderful things and we forget all the successes that we’ve had in our lives. When we give ourselves permission to think about those, write them down, and go back and review them, it contributes to our continued success. There’s a reason why many billionaires have been bankrupt, but they’re still billionaires because they’ve accomplished it once. They know what that is. “I’ve already done that. I can do that again.” That matters.

The internal financial thermostat is there. Christine, if I may, you did something interesting and I’d love to teach your audience the method that we’re talking about here. I’m bringing that up because what you did here is what I love. You did your own spin, your own version of it. I’ll show them how it’s expressed in the book and they can see how easy it is to either do something exactly step-by-step or make it your own, which I love. It’s called a time-lapse method. It’s a gratitude method. The way I teach it is someone’s going to write a list of fifteen things that they’re grateful for. Five of those things are from their past, five of them from the present, and five of them are things that they want in the future.

The hook of all this is they’re going to write every single thing out in the present tense where if they did read it to someone, the person could not tell whether it’s going to happen or did happen. They’d write everything in the present tense, and then they jumble up the order of that list. Maybe the first thing in the list is a present, followed by a past, followed by another past, followed by a future. Who knows? It’s all over the place. The cool thing about this is when you then go through that list and you read it one thing at a time, and then you give yourself 20 to 60 seconds to bask in the gratitude of that specific thing, there are confidence and certainty to those things that have already happened or are happening.

 

That’s 2/3 of your list, and 2/3 of your list has happened already. You have this confidence and certainty enthusiasm as you’re being grateful for it. The cool thing about this is, are we tricking our subconscious mind? Are we tricking our vibration to connect with the universe? I don’t care. All I know is that we as humans, don’t downshift easily. When we’re reading those five future things in the present tense intermix through it, we also have that confidence, certainty, and enthusiasm that was infusing our being.

The reason I want to bring this up because besides the fact that we had your take on it and besides, here’s this now this classic way, how do we apply this negotiation? You can do anything in life just to feel good or if you’re a person who goes into a lot of the negotiations, why don’t you take five past points of negotiation that you got that you enjoyed? Five present things in the current deal that you’re in, and then five things about your upcoming thing that you’d like. You’re taking this thing and you’re applying it to negotiation, even though you don’t have to. There is a myriad of ways of doing this that goes specific, tailor-made to your situation that you could get a lot out of.

Thank you for sharing that with the audience. I appreciate that. Here’s the thing that I love about it. In the negotiation parlance in our language and lingo, we use the word precedent all the time. Precedent is often used when somebody agrees to do something that they didn’t want to do and you’ve now set a precedent and it’s usually set as a negative. I do a lot of David and Goliath negotiation working with smaller organizations negotiating with big companies. It’s like, “If we set that precedent, then that’s going to hurt our revenue, etc.” If you’re the bigger company, it’s like, “If I give that away, then I’m setting precedent.”

This exercise lets you acknowledge as the negotiator that you are indeed setting precedent and you’re taking ownership of that precedent. Those precedents that work best for you in your negotiation, you’re going to make those continue to happen. It’s important, especially because a lot of our audience is smaller and mid-sized companies. It’s important to know that you have every right to set those precedents as well. If you’re negotiating with a huge company, it doesn’t matter. You can still use this technique to help you get more of what you want in your negotiation.

A quick reminder, they would not be negotiating with you if they didn’t need you or if there wasn’t a benefit to you. Not to be negative, but there’s always those get-rich-quick schemes and the person is like, “Here’s my new system and all you have to do is X, Y, and Z.” They need you for something, whether it’s paying or whatever it might be. Anytime somebody is voluntarily involving you in a process, that is your indicator right there that you have value because we’re self-interested beings.

It’s just the way we are. It’s human nature, and that’s fine. We can forgive that. It’s a good thing to have that recognition of no one’s going to spend any time with you if they don’t have anything perceived or real to gain from that interaction. Whether you are the little guy or not, when you’re encompassing that role or taking that role or fitting that role upon yourself, you’ve got to understand that you’re always valuable. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be at that table, to begin with.

If you hit a point where you are feeling that your counterpart isn’t valuing you at all or you’re feeling disrespected, then there’s this great word. It’s got two letters in it, an N and an O, at least in English, but it’s a short word in every language. Just say no and you get up and you walk away because that’s the ultimate leverage. Walking away is your ultimate leverage. When you know what you’re trying to attract through the various different techniques that Andrew talks about in his book and what you’re trying to attract and you have clarity on where you’re trying to go. Whether it’s overarching for objectives for your business or your personal life or specific to individual negotiation, when you have that clarity, then you know, “This isn’t the right person. This isn’t the right company. This isn’t the right relationship.” It’s out there. It’s coming. I don’t need to sweat about it. I don’t need to worry about it. The amount of power and freedom that gives you is incredible.

Christine, I wanted to further you here. You are the expert, so please tear what I’m about to say to shreds if I’m misleading people. A personal approach that I might have based on my personality and perspective is if I’m not being valued, I’ll outright say, “Don’t take this the wrong way. I feel like the value I’m bringing here is not recognized and maybe I’m not recognizing it. Maybe you can tell me what can I bring to this? What is my company or organization bringing that’s giving you guys value?” Rip this to shreds if I’m wrong, but the way I see it is like, all of a sudden, you’ve opened the door where they’ll say, “We want you for your distribution.” I’m like, “Let’s talk about that. If this is worth to you, let’s make this work.” Rip that to shreds if I’m wrong, but I feel like if you’re not being valued, bring it to the table and make them state where the value is.

You’re not wrong. I agree with that approach. It’s about being transparent. The thing is that negotiation is inherently emotional. Once you know that you want or you think that you want something from somebody, your emotions are fully engaged. You cannot put them on a shelf and you cannot ignore them. It’s better just to acknowledge them. I have many times in a negotiation where I’ll say, “I will acknowledge my feelings. I feel that this is how I’m being treated. I’m unhappy about that. I’ll acknowledge that.” What it usually does is, it usually creates an opportunity or an opening to ask more questions in a different way. I often say that except in sex where no is no. Except in sex, no is an invitation to ask another question in a different way. What you’re trying to do is get that information so you’re evaluating things more effectively and that’s what negotiation is. It’s an evaluative process.

The ego doesn’t know how to negotiate. It keeps you stuck in place. Share on X

I’m going to make an assumption now and I’m going to assume that there are certain people that are reading the conversation now and even agreeing with me by saying, “There’s no way I’m doing that negotiation,” because they don’t want to risk blowing the deal up. It’s important to note that everyone’s got to make their own decisions. I learned a ton from Eben Pagan called Wanting Attacks, where sometimes you want something so badly that you’re going to act in contradiction to your interest because you think that you need that thing, which is a fancy way of saying scarcity thinking.

I’m not in each person’s business but I would argue that abundance thinking is so brilliant and beautiful, because it bleeds across so many different ways. Not only does it serve in the sense of owning your power in a negotiation. We’re not beating up the other person, you’re owning your own power but also it dictates or governs your decisions on other things in your business. We are reaching for the positive, where you’re seeing the positive, and you’re being more resourceful. There’s so much more to abundance thinking than scarcity thinking.

I would argue that if someone is scared to make a certain move that isn’t rude, they are scared that they’re going to blow up the deal. They might be stuck paying wanting attacks, and they might be stuck in scarcity thinking. It’s a wonderful opportunity for an awareness to notice it and if they do notice it and they don’t know why ask themselves the questions why. Why is this deal so important? Is this a deal that I need now or is it a deal that I can do other business and get this three years from now when I’m much stronger and can build? What are the questions I can ask to have a better awareness so they can have a better real result? In the end, we all want this to be a sustainable deal. We don’t want something that’s going to blow up anyway in our faces a month later.

One of the things that Blair Dunkley talks about is safety versus comfort. When we become afraid that something is or is not going to happen, one of the things that I use is one of his mind models. Is this a safety issue or is it a comfort issue? If the outcome is not what I want, but I’m still safe, is it that bad? Probably not. It’s probably okay. One of my other favorite quotes from my martial arts instructor is, “People are screwed because we are composed mostly of water and electricity. Water seeks the lowest level and electricity seeks the path of least resistance.” We are not geared toward making change and making big moves.

When we think in a scarcity mindset, it keeps us stuck there and that fear is our brain telling us, “I want you to be safe. I’m here to protect you,” and that’s what it’s there to do so you’ve got to move beyond that. When you start thinking in an abundance mindset and thinking about the possibilities, the world opens up for you. When you start thinking about possibilities and how this benefits you in a negotiation, you can have ten things on a list that you’re negotiating. You get two of those, you get 8 out of the 10 and you can go, “I’ve got 8 out of the 10.”

If you were thinking about it, the two created more value than the other eight. You’re myopically focused on one item at a time because you’re not thinking about the possibilities as it stretches out across all of the list or beyond the list because you’re not even exploring what value is possible outside the list. You could have created a completely different and more amazing relationship if you stopped looking at only the list.

Talking about safety, the parallels are so interesting, because I go into this a little bit in my book, where I give my version of the ego. I realized that I’m not a clinical psychologist, and the definition isn’t exact but I always explained the ego in the context of us having three minds. We have a conscious, and we have a subconscious and in the middle, we’ve got that ego, which is stronger than the conscious mind, but nothing compared to the subconscious. The ego, as I define it, only has one purpose and that’s to keep you alive.

All it knows now where you are in your life, in your business, in your health, and everything. You are alive now so it does not want to risk the status quo. Oftentimes that discomfort on the other end of that is something glorious but because your ego doesn’t know how to negotiate and doesn’t want to risk what it might be, it keeps you stuck in place. It loves you and it’s a misguided thing but the fact is, it’s keeping you stuck in place in a way that might not necessarily be in your best interests. It’s important to recognize that, do something about it and respond in kind in a strategic way, so that doesn’t stop you from making progress in your business or your life.

I do want to say that one of the things that you mentioned a little bit earlier, and I want to go back to it. It’s around this idea of doing the Law of Attraction right. Andrew knows because I texted him one day, and I was like, “I feel like I’m doing this all wrong.” He was gracious and got on the phone with me to help me realize that wasn’t the case. Talk about some of the other things that people can do around. We talked about the time-lapse method. Talk about some of the other things that people can do with respect to the Law of Attraction to help them move forward in this thinking.

 

To hopefully get them the best bang for their buck here, let’s talk about the elephant in the room and the fact that people think it doesn’t work. I’ll never forget, someone wrote to me and they hadn’t even read my book yet, “I’m thinking about quitting Law of Attraction.” I wrote him back and said, “That’s nice, but you can maybe quit whatever intentional processes that you’re putting yourself through in order to invite the Law of Attraction and bring results, but it’s happening whether you like it or not. It is what it is.”

A lot of times people have a frustration with the Law of Attraction where they’ll be like, “You’re telling me that if I think about this job promotion, I’m going to get the job promotion. I’ve been thinking about it for a year and nothing’s happened. What’s going on?” We had a hard conversation, which I would hate to hear myself back in the day because I was as guilty as anyone else. They were not thinking about the job promotion. They were thinking about the lack of the job promotion.

They know whether they were thinking about the actual thing or not is because if they’re thinking about that promotion with frustration, impatience, uncertainty, doubt, and fear that’s the lack of the promotion, not the promotion. Whereas if they’re thinking about it, with enthusiasm, anticipation, and gratitude, it’s an overused word, but legit, real gratitude, that would be a different thing. The huge hook to this, they don’t mess up the Law of Attraction, they mess up their approach to engaging with it. They do the method to get the result. It’s like, “Andrew, isn’t that the whole point? You’re trying to give me this book, and it’s got all these methods. Aren’t I supposed to do the methods to get results?” Yes and no. You’re supposed to do the method to enjoy the method. This is the fine line that we walk, this is the high wire act.

When you’re doing the method to get the result, you’re not realizing that you’re focusing and reinforcing the energy and awareness to the universe and your subconscious mind that you don’t have the result. That’s the lack of the result. Whereas when you do the method for the sake of enjoying the method and basking in either the feelings or the images, or whatever it might be for your unique experience of enjoying that piece without worrying about how it’s going to come, when it’s going to come, why it’s going to come, you’re indirectly opening that energy up for the thing to come.

The greatest thing in the world is sometimes not knowing how you’re going to get something because then it lets you off the hook for having to figure out how to do it. You will let inspiration come and you’re still going to do work but your action will be inspired. A great idea will come and you’ll lean in versus trying to force the issue versus trying to fight through a negotiation where it’s obvious that you guys are not on the same wavelength. What can you do better than that?

My long-winded answer is this is about understanding are you engaging in a way with enthusiasm and confidence and feeling good or are you frustrated? Are you viewing these things as a chore, rather than a choice as something that you have to do versus something that you get to do, whether it’s five minutes of gratitude or visualizations, whatever it might be? What’s your true motivation and true experience in the moment when you’re doing it? That answers everything regarding the Law of Attraction.

I love that because I started Andrew’s Gravity of the Cosmos Program. I’m on day eight and he asked me before we started recording how it was going. I missed a day but as we’re talking, I’m like, “I didn’t miss a day. I didn’t do this specific exercise that Andrew had on day six and I did something else instead.” Giving ourselves permission to be flexible, including with the time-lapse method. I did it a little bit differently. That’s the part I like about your book. There are so many different methods that we can use in them. There are a lot. You can use combinations of them, use all of them, find a few of them that work for you. You can do it however it is that you want to do it.

I started doing it and I don’t know how many times I’ve texted you or called you a few times, and said, “This stuff worked.” I was working and doing a gratitude thing when I had a friend call. She was going through a nasty divorce, nasty separation. They’re trying to sell some property and distribute the proceeds from the property between the two of them. The husband had all the data and all the information. He had a detailed spreadsheet, had access to the bank accounts, and all these things. She’s not a numbers person, she was freaking out, she thought that he was trying to screw her. His attitude was, “This is what the number is. If she doesn’t like it, she can sue me.”

She’s all freaked out and we got them to the point where he essentially gave her everything. This was almost $2.5 million worth of assets and he gave her everything. She split it in half with him. I texted you because I was like, “Oh my god.” I felt that result came out of gratitude because I was able to think of different ways to ask questions of each of them that put them in different mindsets, place, and position so they could act in a way that was consistent with what they were trying to attract and not based on scarcity, because they had grandkids and all that stuff. Their relationship with still going to be around. They were still going to have to hear about each other at a minimum. I appreciate this stuff that you’re doing because it’s so powerful.

When you facilitate a different perspective, you invite a different result. Share on X

Thank you for the update. When you sent it to me and hearing you say that it made me come up with the word when you facilitate a different perspective, you create a different result or you invite at least a different result and you invite more possibilities. Through your facilitation of a better perspective through both of them, giving them that opportunity to see something in a different way less confrontational, less adversarial, and more harmonious. I remember when you told me and I’m like, “That’s so awesome.” I remember thinking, “I don’t know what happened and how it happened but I know that Christine was basically pulling magic out of herself and sharing it with these two people,” which was awesome.

They both sent me a thank you note afterward but I was only hired by one of them so I was surprised that she split it with the two of them. It was about putting her in her future state and getting her to think about what you want when you’re in your future. They’re both in their 70s so when you’re in your 80s, and you look back at this moment, what do you want it to look like? It was trying to make it so they weren’t pulling this past into the future and that they were living in that moment. I had manifested. I had this conversation with my husband. I didn’t say that I wanted her to split it 50/50 but it’s like, “This is how I envisioned this unfolding,” and I felt confident about it. It did. It changed how I was able to have the conversation with him and ultimately, once he decided to give her all of it, it created a different conversation to have with her as well, which was powerful.

Hearing you say that is so exciting. Also, it’s important for people to know and you’ll correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m assuming you weren’t manufacturing feelings. You weren’t saying this with gritted teeth. You weren’t telling your husband the gritted teeth, “This is going to work.” you had relaxed confidence and an ease about this moment that bled out into the situation. I say that because some people might read this and be like, “I’m going to speak it into being.”

I want to go back to, are you speaking it to being by gritting your teeth with fear, uncertainty, and doubt, or have you got yourself enough feeling good about the situation that thought naturally occurs to you and you express it verbally when it’s already there? It’s such an important distinction for people. You have your magic and they have theirs. No one can replicate anyone else’s magic. I know magic sounds so airy-fairy and so esoteric, call it whatever you want.

It’s either brilliant or genius.

Thank you. I was losing words. You’ve got your brilliance and they’ve got theirs. Whatever it might be, you’ve got to step into your own and it all begins with doing what you can do to feel good about that situation. You, Christine, in my opinion, ask such a wonderful question. How do you want this to look in the future? When you look back, what do you want this to be? I’m paraphrasing you already, but whatever you said was brilliant, and I love it. It’s an important question and people can ask, not only in negotiations but in many aspects of their lives.

In my philosophy, and people who have read this before have read me say this, but for those who haven’t, my core philosophy on negotiation is, “Negotiation is a conversation about a relationship and you cannot win a relationship.” Even if you are dissolving a relationship, it is still a conversation about a relationship and how you look back in the future and on that moment. Also, how you dissolve that partnership and that marriage. Whatever it is, it is going to impact you. It’s going to matter. It’s going to influence your future absolutely, so do it now.

Negotiate that effectively now so it doesn’t have a negative impact on you in the future so you can look back at what you did and your decisions with pride. That goes beyond winning and whether you’re dissolving a relationship or entering into a new relationship. That goes beyond winning because you can’t win in a relationship. When you see negotiation as a relationship, it sets you up for longer-term success overall.

It builds. I’ll say this, and I’m not a gamer so hopefully, I’m not butchering this explanation, analogy, metaphor, or whatever it might be. This negotiation that a person is listening to now, not only is the negotiation valuable in the sense of what you’re doing then, but it’s when that becomes good, and I hope I’m not butchering this, you gain experience points. Those experience points will carry over into the way you carry yourself into the next negotiation. That’s another huge thing for your company and there are more experience points.

 

By the time you’re on negotiation ten, not only did all those other deals in and of themselves work out well for you, but you’re such a higher leverage point of power with who you are and how you show up in the world. That makes so many more dynamic possibilities and such a stronger more efficient when, for lack of a better term, for both parties as you continue to move forward with longer, better, more productive, and efficient deals. Everything across the board keeps getting better and better and better.

If you don’t have those experience points and you’re in a situation where let’s say, you’re a midsize company or small company doing business with a big company, and you’re only going to do one of those deals a year. Get somebody on your team that has those experience points that can help move you forward more readily and more successfully than if you tried to do it yourself.

Not to kill your calendar, Christine, but get Christine on your team. Go reach out to her. She knows her stuff. Trust me.

How can people find you?

It’s pretty easy. I always have two links for people. I make it simple. They can either go to LastLawOfAttractionBook.com and that’ll auto-forward to the Amazon listing where they can get either audiobook, Kindle, or paperback. If they don’t want to pull their wallets out, I have free content from my YouTube channel that’s in support of the book and that’s Youtube.com/andrewkap. I’ll teach new methods. I’ve got social media and stuff but for the most part, I usually point people towards that, because these days, you can’t hire me for marketing consulting anymore. These days, if you’re going to glean value, those are the two best resources, so I like to make it nice and simple for people.

It has been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. I am so grateful for you. I appreciate you so much. I appreciate the two people who brought us together and who introduced us. You’re making an impact not on my life through what you teach, but on the lives of people who I am around and who I am influencing as well. It’s definitely a ripple effect. It’s pretty remarkable to see, so thank you. Thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me and let me say that the feeling is more than mutual. Even now, based on the conversation we had when I interviewed you, I still remember things that you told me that helped me make better decisions. This is my true honor to be on the show. Thank you so much.

Thank you to everyone who stayed tuned in. We are so grateful for you that you are here sharing your most valuable asset with us, which is your time. Thank you very much. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode of In the Venn Zone. Until then, have a great day. Cheers, everyone.

Important Links:

• Instagram – Andrew Kaplan
• The Last Law of Attraction Book You’ll Ever Need To Read
• Podcast – Shatter The Mold Podcast
• Gravity of the Cosmos
• YouTube – Andrew Kaplan

About Andrew Kaplan