"A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart."

• Goethe

The title of this article is, of course, a take-off on the popular 1978 book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Over the years, my own answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people has changed dramatically. For example, in my 20's, I may have responded that life is inherently unfair. A decade or so later, I would have played the karma card - bad things happen to good people as karmic retribution for misdeeds in a past life.

Now, however, with my understanding of the Law of Attraction, I am clear that:

Bad things happen to good people for the same

reason that good things happen to bad people.

And what could that reason possibly be?

Because we attract what we focus on -

no matter how "good" or "bad" our behavior is.

[For this article, let's define

good people as those who behave in ways you approve of and

bad people as those who behave in ways you don't approve of.]

It doesn't matter whether you ask the question - "Why do good things happen to bad people?" or "Why do bad things happen to good people? - the answer is the same.  Everything we experience in our life - the wanted, the unwanted, the health, the illness, the wealth, the poverty - is a reflection of our thoughts and feelings.

It can be confusing to see someone who exhibits what you consider to be egregious behavior, get away with it and even prosper.

And it can be equally confusing to see someone who appears to be especially kind and loving, consistently experience difficulties and setbacks.

Where's the justice?

Our sense of right and wrong is sorely challenged as the Wall Street bankers who caused the mortgage crisis escape prosecution and continue to rake in millions, while one middle class family after another faces foreclosure [yes, it's still happening.]

But here's the thing:  If the Wall Street banker fat cat has a strong belief that everything always works out well for him and a certainty that prosperity is his birthright, then that's what he'll experience.

Likewise, if the hard working, church going, tax paying middle class family spends a lot of quality time worrying about losing their jobs and feeling fearful about not having enough money to pay the bills, then they're [I'm sorry, I know this sucks] attracting the very things they don't want.

But what if reward and punishment aren't actually based on behavior?

What if we've been working from a flawed premise?

What if the Law of Attraction is right and we really are attracting everything we experience in accordance with our thoughts, beliefs and expectations?

Then, life is fair after all.

In fact, life has no choice but to be fair because the Law of Attraction, like the Law of Gravity, makes no exceptions and refuses to discriminate. Both good people and bad people fall to the ground if they walk off a building.  And both good people and bad people attract their circumstances as a direct result of their thoughts and feelings.

I don't know about you, but I like knowing this.

I like knowing we don't attract our circumstances based on our behavior.

I like knowing we attract our circumstances based on the thoughts we choose to think.

I like knowing that, when we choose thoughts that feel good, we attract that which we consider to be good.  And vice versa.

With this knowing, all we have to do to attract our dreams rather than our nightmares is to consciously choose positive, good feeling thoughts rather than defaulting into negative, bad feeling thoughts.  As my Mike Dooley coffee mug reminds me every morning:

Thoughts become things.

Choose the good ones!