What Does “Raising Your Vibration” Mean? How (+Why) to Do It

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading.

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Did you know that you have a radio-like frequency that gets sent out into the universe? What does raising your vibration mean?

The law of vibration means that your frequency changes and can help you manifest the things. So when you ask, “What does raising your vibration mean?”, you first need to learn about the law of vibration and decide what frequency you should be on to get the things you want in life.

The Law of Attraction: Vibration and Your Frequency

What does raising your vibration mean? Your thoughts have an energetic frequency that beckons other sources with the same energetic frequency. When you focus on a thought, you send a frequency into the universe that attracts that same frequency back. You are a magnet pulling the things you think about to you.

When you ask yourself “What does raising your vibration mean?” think of yourself as a human transmission tower. You understand the concept of transmission as signals sent from your television to a satellite. You turn on a station, and an image appears on the screen. This image is delivered through the frequency slated for that particular channel. If you don’t like the program on one channel, you change it. A new frequency is sent for the new channel, and a new picture appears.

You have the power to operate similarly through your thoughts. Your dominant thought sends the frequency signal to the universe, which sends that frequency back as a picture. In this case, the picture is your experience. Because energy returns to the source, the universe must return whatever frequency you send out, no matter how outlandish. So what does raising your vibration mean? It means that you have energy you send out. Here’s how:

All the things you want vibrate with energy. When you focus on something, you are causing the energy particles to shift toward your vibration frequency. That new energy composition now matches yours, and that energy will return to the source, being you.
For example, if you want a new job, hold a picture of that job in your mind. You may feel the energy, or vibrations, that job emits. If you then think of yourself in that job, you have changed the vibration of that job to one meshed with your vibration. That new vibration creates a new frequency that sends the new picture to your life. That new picture is you in that job.

Like television, if you don’t like the picture of your life, change your thoughts like you would change a channel. This can help you answer the question, “What does raising your vibration mean?”

If you allow your thoughts to be dominated by negative thinking, you are creating a negative frequency. The Law of Attraction doesn’t distinguish between good thoughts or bad thoughts. The universe can only transmit the pictures you send out with your thoughts. If you focus on what you don’t want, you will attract what you don’t want back to you. What does raising your vibration mean in this case? It means you need to change your frequency to focus on the positive.

Think about being stuck in a dead-end job. Focusing on feeling stuck in that dead-end job creates a frequency with that energy. Since like attracts like, the energy vibration of your negative thought (stuck in job) can only create and receive a picture of you stuck. You will continue to be stuck until you change the frequency to what you want.
Instead of focusing on what you don’t want, let thoughts of what you do want dominate your mind.
If you have a pest problem in your home, and you consistently think “I don’t want pests in my home,” the signal you’re sending into the universe surrounds the idea of pests in your home. According to the Law of Attraction, you are attracting more pests into your home.
- If instead you say, “I want a clean and sanitary home,” the universe will understand, pick up that signal, and conspire to keep your home pest-free.

Don’t worry about being perfect with positive thoughts. We all think negative thoughts from time to time. Nothing can come into your existence unless you summon it with persistent thoughts. Therefore, a negative thought once in a while is nothing to worry about. Bad things only come into your life when you think about them persistently.

Negative Vibrational Frequency

Along with the question of what does raising your vibration mean is the understanding of negative frequencies. You may have experienced negative circumstances in your past and felt you were simply unlucky. Those circumstances were likely a result of being unaware of the power of your thoughts. There’s no reason to blame yourself. Now you know to change the frequency of your thoughts to a positive one to create a positive picture of your life.

If you previously believed you had no control over outside circumstances, the underlying message you created was one of fear, separation, and powerlessness. That frequency had no choice but to bring people, events, or situations that perpetuate those feelings in your life.
- For example, if you believe you can be in the wrong place at the wrong time, you are attracting the wrong circumstances to you.
Instead, if you believe that the outside world is yours to design, you will have the power to design it. Think “I am always safe and immune to external dangers,” and the universe will make it so.

Your negative thoughts about others create the same outcome. You cannot hurt another with your thoughts, just yourself. If you focus on what you don’t like about someone, you will attract more people with that trait. Likewise, if you focus on wanting something bad to happen to someone, all the universe picks up is the bad thing. Guess who that bad thing gets brought to? The law of attraction vibration works to bring you both positive and negative things.

For example, if you think, “I hope Melissa fails her drivers’ test,” you’ve signaled the vibrations of failing. That vibration mixes with yours, as the owner of the thought, and you are now attracting failure to your life.
Through the Law of Attraction, negative thoughts about another person draw harm into existence. By calling harm into existence through your thoughts, you are placing yourself on that frequency. You are attracting the harm back to you as the pictures you emit.
If you don’t want to be harmed, avoiding that negative frequency is a good way to ensure you aren’t.

There is no trick to subverting negative thoughts, and remember, that law of attraction vibration means either can happen. Set your intention to only think good things. Declare that your negative thoughts have no power. Declare that your positive thoughts are the most powerful. Proclaim and believe the universe is a good place. The Law of Attraction vibration will reflect pictures back that allow you to experience it as such.

So, what does raising your vibration mean? It means you can change the energy you put out into a more positive frequency, in order to receive positive things in return. Work on changing your frequency and achieving a positive mindset.

What Does “Raising Your Vibration” Mean? How (+Why) to Do It