Using The Law Of Attraction aka The Secret To Grow Taller And Increase In Height

I have no idea why in the last week or so the website has been getting traffic from some very unique and interesting websites and forums on the internet. There are people who have been on this forum called www.PowerfulIntentions.org (We are not linking to this specific website) which is an online community for people who believe in the Idea of The Law of Attraction aka “The Secret” which had been this New Age type of revolution sparked by the author Rhonda Byrne. I am guessing that the people are linking back to this website to validate the idea that making humans can use the Law of Attraction aka The Secret to grow taller and increase in height.

The fact that is I’ve personally written over half a dozen posts proposing the ideas that one could use their minds to make themselves taller. The ideas range form using positive affirmations to visualizations, prayer, NLP, autosuggestion, qigong, hypnosis, and whatever else we’ve written brought up. In every single one of those posts, I had concluded with the idea that a person can not make themselves taller through a change in believes or attitude.

• The idea of using positive affirmations to grow taller
• The idea of using imagination and visualization to grow taller
• The idea of using prayer or desperately wishing for oneself to grow taller
• The idea of using qigong (or chi kung) to grow taller
• The idea of using Neuro-Linguistic Programming to grow taller (there was a part 1 and part 2)
• The idea of using autosuggestion and subconscious programming to grow taller
• The idea of using hypnosis and (or) hypnotherapy to grow taller

All of these posts have one central idea that they claim, which is that if we change the state of our minds, or even our real ‘selves’ (whatever that means) we would be somehow be able to increase the length or volume of our bones.

Many people who have tried to find evidence to validate this idea that if you desperately want something enough, and just imagine it in your mind, often point to the case of Oprah Winfrey. There is a famous story often told by her about how she became completely fixated on the novel “The Color Purple” and how she desperately wanted to be in a movie about the novel. She played in the movie back in 1985. She became obsessed about the story. She moved to Chicago and got a call to audition for that exact movie. While that may be a very inspirational story, the problem is that due to law the average of large numbers, there is bound to be situations where strange coincidences happens like the one she mentioned.

The billionaire lawyer partner of Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway is Charlie Munger. I personally own Munger’s book on mental models called “On Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger“. Munger has this brilliant set of mental models he uses to assess any business that reaches his desk to decide whether he wants to invest or not.

The best part of that books is probably the section where the book goes really deep in describing the set of confidence tricks, and self biases we all have to do to make our egos feel validated. As mortal creatures we often misunderstand how the universe really works because of bad judgement and ego defence mechanisms.

For example, the reason why we only hear from the winners in anything (like the local High School Basketball team who won State in a movie) is due to this thing called Survivor Bias. Oprah Winfrey is probably the clearest example of Survivorship Bias. If she thinks that her success is all due to her actions and her hard work, it would explain probably 20% of it all. Most likely than not, 80% of her success is determined just by dumb luck. No one ever tells the story of the group of people who tried their hardest to win or survive, but in the end failed or died. None tells the loser’s story, since there is no happy ending. When most people go see a movie, the need for a happy ending is derived from our human need to have hope. The key difference most people understand and fully accept is that real life does not mirror the movies. Sometimes bad things happen and we couldn’t do anything about it. Most people just don’t want to admit to ourselves that we are in denial and deceiving ourselves.

(For example, everyone can intellectually grasp the theoretical concept of death, and may be even able to hear the news of their parents being diagnosed with cancer. The fact is that in America, 1 out of 3 people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. 1 out of 2 men will be diagnosed with cancer. None of us thinks that we will be in the half of the population which will get cancer. However, for a person himself/herself be diagnosed with cancer is the type of situation where people get a real reality check. No one wants to fully admit that they are going to die, even though we might be able to handle everyone else dying in front of us completely calmly. When death starts to knock on our door, we change and start to take notice. )

When we are the ones getting the universe’s bad mojo and horrible luck given to us, on something which we have absolutely no control over, we feel completely helpless. We create this imaginary image in the sky of a god to justify the unfairness of life. Just like how we can’t manifest what we want towards us, we can’t manifest what we don’t want away from our lives. 

Of course, it is absolutely true about the old adage ‘luck = preparation + opportunity”. If you plan ahead, create some type of life blueprint or map, set goals for yourself, and take action, you are more likely to get to where you want to be. Hard work, being smart enough to realize when there is a great opportunity in front of you, and taking the calculated leap or risk at the right time, is all on you. However, most of it, is just pure dumb luck. It is absolutely true that the most successful people only focus and work on the things that they actually have a control over.

However, there is no way that we can link our thoughts to the shape and form of our bones. It has been shown that extreme negativity and abusive environments can stunt a child’s growth, but there has been no evidence to show that happy, supportive environments in a child will lead to them being taller. There are hundreds of ways to stunt a child and make them shorter but there has been not a single easy way to make them taller. I would guess that a real clinical test would show no statistically significant increase in the overall adult height.

The Law of Attraction is a believe system which is really a repackaged idea which has been stated multiple time over in human history. Before Rhonda Byrne came out, James Allen wrote the same message in his book “As A Man Thinketh“. The Buddha stated in the Dhammapada in the first line that we are what we think about. The central message behind the Law of Attraction is that “Thoughts Become Things“.  This actually shows that our thoughts are objects, not processes. Our thoughts does not manifest into an object though. Just because we think of an apple doesn’t mean an apple will all of a sudden drop from the sky.

Similarly, thoughts do not change the physiology of our bodies. We admit that for some things in life, maybe we can trick ourselves and our minds to change our life slightly. With enough visualization and autosuggestion, we can trick our brains to help us run faster, or think clearer to do better on a test.

Happier thoughts may lower high blood pressure since the emotion inducing hormones are released by the brain to relax the muscles in the heart, but there are no changes with the bone structure. The bones are just too strong to mold. That is why I suggest to anyone who wants to try using the Law of Attraction to grow taller to stop doing it. It just won’t work.