TL;DR // You cannot force your magnetism. But it’s also not about sitting on the couch and waiting for your dreams to be served up on a silver platter either.
What if trying to be magnetic was the very thing stopping you from actually becoming magnetic?
Yes, I realise I’m stepping onto a slippery slope here as the very person who’s here saying she can help you become magnetic. But I’m feeling a little reckless today. So let’s see where this leads, hmm? 😉
Remember Yoda’s famous words, “Do or do not. There is no try.”?
He was talking to Luke about commitment and how we’re either in or we’re out. And he’s completely right.
But there’s another layer here I often contemplate. And it’s that we tend to either believe we are are or we aren’t something.
When we’re trying to be something it automatically means we’re not that thing we’re wanting to be. At least, we’ve decided we’re not that thing… or else, why would we need to try to become it?
And herein lies the problem with attempting to be magnetic: As long as we’re seeing it as a destination we need to reach, we’re operating in a reality where we’re not magnetic.
We might not be consciously aware of this gap we’re creating, because it shows up in all sorts of sneaky ways.
→ When we try to come up with topics that will appeal to our audience.
→ When we try to package our videos in a way that’ll appease the YouTube gods.
→ When we show up to a discovery call hoping to impress that potential client.
Every single time we flip into a mindset of “I need to do something in order to get the result I desire” we’re actually shutting off our magnetism.
Why “trying” is definitely not the solution
Funnily enough, I see this dilemma play out the most with my clients who have a 2 line in their Human Design profile.
In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, archetypally the 2 is often known as the Natural (also the hermit, but IMO it’s a very misleading keynote). The natural genius.
And my 2 line clients tend to have a natural aversion to marketing and anything that feels like self-promotion… yet go through cycles of convincing themselves they HAVE to promote themselves or nothing will happen in their businesses. And what happens when they start “trying” to market themselves? Crickets. Oh, and they feel like crap while they’re doing it.
This struggle isn’t exclusive to them though, it’s universal. Something I’ve found more challenging the longer I’m in business (10 years and counting in case you’re wondering). Likely because the pressure to maintain what you already have grows and so while allowing flow to guide me through those earlier years, I suddenly feel like I need to take the reigns or risk having it all blow up in my face.
And yet again, like those 2 lines, when I suddenly get extra strategic and start having more of an agenda to my content (and even business model as a whole), I cut myself off from said flow and find myself experiencing far more obstacles. Most of them in the form of internal resistance and an inability to follow-through on plans that I created from a place of gung-ho “I can do this and I will succeed at all costs” and within a week or 2 find unbearably heavy & restrictive.
But hold up, Kat… how are we supposed to do anything without actually trying? And aren’t things like strategy and discipline essential in business — or any desired achievement?
Welcome to the paradox that is life, my friend.
Finding the line between being and doing
Lately I’ve been contemplating this through the lens of creation as a coming together of the masculine and feminine.
Disclaimer: The following explanations are through my own interpretive lens and lived experience, not to be taken as gospel but simply a lens for your own contemplation that you can then form your own perspectives around.
Traditionally (through spiritual & esoteric teachings) the masculine represents light, output, initiative and forward motion, where the feminine represents darkness (not as something bad but in terms of the creative void and unlimited potential — like a place where literally anything could happen), input, receptivity and flow or even stillness.
The masculine needs to make things happen. It’s restless. It’s strategic. It needs somewhere to channel its energy.
The feminine is comfortable sitting in the unknown. It’s peaceful. Timeless. It’s happy allowing life to bloom all around it.
When the masculine is disconnected from the feminine, it’s like a bull in a china shop. Lacking direction, probably becoming dangerous or reckless, busy being busy but not necessarily creating anything meaningful.
When the feminine is disconnected from the masculine it can become too passive. It can watch life go by and not really “get amongst it”.
Now let me be clear that in this context, I’m not talking about “man and woman” needing each other. I’m referring to the energies that we can access inside of us. Because I believe we’re all made of the same stuff – even if our physical blueprints give us easier access to certain energies than others.
In case you’re wondering what any of this has to do with magnetism and “trying”, I’ll cut to the chase:
The way I’ve been seeing this play out in my own experience is that when I lean too far into the masculine (which is where I’ve spent a huge amount of my life), I get into the zone of “trying”. I have an agenda. I’m trying to “get” something as a result of my actions.
In an attempt to balance things out, I spent the last 3 years intentionally NOT trying.
I basically went dark, creating zero content, not putting myself out there and ultimately ran my business passively, working with the clients who managed to find me as a result of my past “masculine” efforts (mostly website & YouTube SEO).
Not trying at all sustained me for a while… until it didn’t.
And it was in reaching what felt like an expiry date on my past efforts earlier this year that I went down the rabbit hole that was this very contemplation. Because I found that I could no longer force things the way I used to.
It wasn’t just that it didn’t feel good (it didn’t!) but through a multiple year journey with chronic illness, I’d learned that my body would literally start to shut down if I tried to do anything from a place of forcing.
And yet despite what way too many of those law of attraction gurus claimed, not doing anything (other than positive visualisation) wasn’t the solution either. I mean why would it be? I believe we incarnated on this planet to have a human experience. And humans are designed to move, to interact, to create. Not just sit in meditation all day while things magically appear around them!
So what I finally started to understand was that the masculine and the feminine both must exist if we want to continue to expand in a healthy sustainable way. The question is, how can we find the right balance?
The dance requires tension and surrender
Many years ago I tried partner dancing (modern jive, in case you’re wondering!) for the first time after years of being a “solo” dancer. Oh boy, was it a learning experience.
As the female identifying half of the partnership, it was my job to follow.
Me. The bossy projector with her conscious sun in gate 21, the gate of control? Ha!
It didn’t take me long to discover that my resistance to being led and my insane amount of upper body tension that was literally pushing against my partner was not helping.
The number one issue? Being that tense meant I couldn’t actually “read” where he was leading me.
In a healthy partnership, a certain amount of tension is maintained so that you’re able to sense your partner’s subtle directions through their hands, but there’s also softness so that gentle push they give you has somewhere to go.
And while it might seem that the feminine is playing a passive role in this partnership, what’s actually happening is a mutual surrendering. The feminine allows the masculine to initiate movement, but it’s in her receptivity and how she follows through on that movement that the masculine then is inspired about where to move next.
Note that he is not planning out the routine in advance. Because he is also surrendering to the music, to the energy of the room, to what within him wants to be expressed. And if he tried to “choreograph” it all before the song even began, he’d be missing out on the opportunity to channel his own creative energy. The routine would likely look wooden and a bit empty.
We’ve been conditioned to try and “choreograph” our every move as business owners & personal brands
Between the “don’t make the mistakes I did” messaging that sells proven methods, supposedly taking all the guesswork out of the process…
…the fear mongering about the algorithm and what it takes to stand out that leads us to become “strategy” obsessed (not true strategy since it usually involves worrying about what everyone else is doing rather than finding what works for us)…
…and the way capitalism has taught us that hustle is the only path to success. That we need to go out there and GET what we want…
…we’re all working our damn butts off to try and succeed.
And what’s not happening? Us sitting back in the belief that we’re already magnetic before the trying, therefore allowing us to show up in our work in a way that doesn’t actually have anything to prove.
Notice I say sitting back and showing up. Because I believe this is where we find that healthy tension as per the dance analogy.
We need to be in a dance with life.
This isn’t me saying, “do absolutely nothing because your natural magnetism will miraculously attract everything you want to you”.
AND we need to trust that the universe will meet us halfway.
Therefore operating in the way we feel called to rather than trying to keep up with the trends & tactics. Talking about our work in a way that informs people of what we do but doesn’t need to convince them to work with us. And spending as much time nurturing our Selves as we do our “brands” rather than feeling like we can’t rest until we hit goal X or destination Y.
The work of “becoming” magnetic is therefore about UN-becoming all we were trained into believing we are and rediscovering who we really are.
Makes me think I probably should have gone with “Remembering you’re magnetic” rather than “Becoming Magnetic” as my Substack name. Oops.
— Kat x
PS What kind of a dance partner to the universe are you right now?
