The Difference Between Law of Attraction and Wishful Thinking (Part Two)

  A Case Study in Career Success and Suicide Starring Justin Bieber.  

Part Two:

As promised, today we will examine the difference between powerful Law of Attraction and weak Wishful Thinking in the arena of Success and Career, using a well-known youngster from up north as our example.

If you're willing, it may help to go back and read the post that precedes this one, "The Difference Between Law of Attraction and Wishful Thinking," Part One.

Consider your friend and mine, adolescent Canadian pop star Justin Bieber.

 It seems like so very long ago that we lived in a Bieberless world, but really, it was just a mere five years past that “Baby” and Bieber’s bangs burst on the scene (yes, I know that was a lot of alliteration, but I just couldn’t resist). 

And now, flash forward to 2014, and not only is Justin Bieber the notorious inspiration for the most popular petition ever since the White House launched this public service (273,000 Americans signed to get him deported), but during the Winter Olympics he was the subject of much-admired Chicago billboard that was touting a match between America and Canada in ice hockey:  “Loser Keeps Bieber.”

Our erstwhile friend (whose more recent hairstyles make him look like an adorable lesbian in diaper pants) is also in the middle of several civil and criminal investigations, involving alleged drunk-driving, house-egging, LA paparrazo stomach-kicking, and other dubious activities, all of which added up, indicate that he has, in fact, grown up to be kind of a douche.

It’s not surprising, of course, that many adult Americans would hate a multi-million dollar tween dream—consider our history with Britney, Backstreet Boys, New Kids on the Block, Sean Cassidy, Davy Jones, etc.  Nor is it surprising that a 20-year-old kid with 40 million twitter followers would show a lack of taste, sensitivity, and maturity in his choice of leisure activities. 

No, what IS interesting, from a Law of Attraction/Wishful Thinking perspective, is just how quickly Justin Bieber manifested both his fame and his infamy.

 By contrast, it took the other Justin, Justin Timberlake, quite a bit longer to do both. But then, he was saddled for the first several years of his career with the rest of  "N Sync.  Oh, Lance Bass.  The less said about you, the better. (By the way, Justin Timberlake is the only boy-band escapee in history to launch a serious career as an adult artist, so major props to him for that.  If you don’t believe me, look it up).

So, Back to the Justin currently under investigation.  How did Justin Bieber manifest his millions like a Law of Attraction superstar, and why is it Wishful Thinking on his team’s part to assume that one more Top 40 hit is all we need to fall in love with him all over again? 

Baby, baby, baby, Noooooo!

Apparently, so the story goes, we have Usher and Youtube to thank for the original advent of Bieber’s fame.  Bieber’s mom put up a bunch of home videos of Justin singing in talent contests, which were stumbled upon by an American talent manager named Scooter Braun, who then passed him on to another gifted singer-dancer named Usher Raymond, who then got him a contract with music mogul L.A. Reid.

But.  Before that.

Again, according to the official story, Justin managed most of his early musical development by himself.  He is self-taught on piano, drums, guitar, and trumpet, and if you’ve ever seen any of his concert footage, you know the kid is a ridiculously good dancer.   Like, Michael Jackson during the non-shameful years good.

So, whatever else we might say of Justin, we can see that he was definitely doing more than most kids—and most adults—in terms of developing his innate talent and creating his future desired reality in terms of career.  He was not, in fact, just sitting around watching reality shows on MTV and dreaming his own private dream.

By the time he was fourteen, he was entering local talent contests and winning.  And the video footage was enough to impress a very shrewd talent manager who came across the Youtube clips “by accident.”  (Here, we see the hand of what the Vikings called “fate,” and most of us call “luck,” and metaphysicians call “The Law of Attraction.”)

Even after Justin was picked up by Scooter, Usher, and L.A. Reid, the story goes that radio stations didn’t want to play his songs. Apparently they felt there was no market for a fourteen-year-old boy on the radio.  So, just like an 80’s teen star named Tiffany did two decades before him, Justin took to the road, visiting radio stations and malls to expand his brand in the marketplace.

Which meant that he was already “acting as if.”

And you know what?  People, especially twelve-year-old girl people, were all over that shit.  They said, “why yes, I WOULD like the chance to go crazy over my generation’s beguiling moppet-haired, big-eyed, sweet-voiced media darling.”

(This is the part that amuses me: that anyone savvy in media history would find Justin’s rise at all unexpected.  We can go all the way back to 1964 and blame the Beatles, but there’s so many more recent examples to prove that tween and teenage girls are not to be denied when it comes to their perpetual desire to cover themselves in glitter and scream themselves hoarse.)

Again, by all accounts, the young Justin was fairly open-hearted and minded.  He loved singing and dancing, he worked hard to get really good at both, and he wanted to show that off in front of a whole lot of people. 

And because he apparently didn’t have a lot of internal crap, or crap from his family, about why this would be a bad thing to do, he got on with it, and was duly rewarded for his mostly positive energy with a great career.  Good Law of Attraction in action.

Then, Justin proceeded to trash this career by being an idiot, long before he had earned the respect of anyone but twelve-year old girls, some of who, like the fickle beasts they are, have since grown up or defected to One Direction. 

The bad-boy thing is cool if you’re Tommy Lee and you’ve got Pam Anderson to play it out with, but $10,000 of egging-damage to a house when you’re almost 20 years old? Just not in the same league.

And now, his name is Mud, and he probably doesn’t feel that great about it, no matter how much money or power he has. 

It can’t feel that good to know that over a quarter MILLION Americans put their name on a petition to get rid of you.  Or that the United States and Canada are fake-fighting about who has to keep you.

As supporting evidence for my last statement, I offer up the name of Justin’s latest song (released on Twitter), appropriately titled, “Hard 2 Face Reality.”

The problem with Law of Attraction is that it works both ways, for good and for ill. No matter what you are, you just keep attracting more of that.

Now that Justin’s got a sad international bad-joke vibe set in place, I predict that it’s going to be pure wishful thinking on his part to imagine himself magically re-invented as a respected artist and seeing this come to pass. 

No, I think the only hope for Justin is to spend some serious Brenee-Brown-Ted-Talk time and get in touch with his vulnerability, and then share some of that with us, and then maybe we’ll let him move onwards and upwards. 

It would also help if he stopped wearing diaper pants in public.

And now, for the rest of us.  What can we learn about our own consciousness and career from the Cautionary Tale of the Biebs?

I will address some of the highlights in my next post, and in upcoming posts about how to create, communicate, and grow a visionary brand as an Awakened Entrepreneur or Intrapreneur.