Good Vibes, Good Life - critical summary review

Vex King had a rough childhood. He lost his father to tuberculosis before he could even meet him, and was raised by his mother under difficult circumstances along with his sisters. For three years, the family didn’t even have a fixed home, living with relatives and, for some time, even in a housing shelter. Despite facing racist abuse in a violent neighborhood, King went on to earn a university degree and become one of the most recognizable British social influencers of the 21st century. The numbers speak for themselves: King has almost 800,000 followers on Instagram and more than 100,000 followers on Twitter. 

In “Good Vibes, Good Life,” he shares the lessons he learned along his incredible life journey. So, get ready to learn how the Law of Attraction helped him become a positive and happy person despite having such a devastating upbringing, and prepare to use a similar philosophy to transform your life for the better!

The law of attraction

When King was a student, his family struggled financially; hence, he struggled as well. So much so, in fact, that one summer he was forced to find some kind of a job so that he’d be able to stay afloat when he returned to university. His friends didn’t have problems of this kind. On the contrary, they were planning a much-deserved holiday trip. King couldn’t bear the fact that he couldn’t join them. He didn’t feel good about life at all.

But then, one evening, he came across Rhonda Byrne’s bestselling megahit “The Secret.” “You bring about what you think about,” the book said. Many of the people he knew were saying the formula, as deceptively simple as it seemed, actually worked. To King, however, the idea that one could attract the things one wanted by committing their thoughts to them seemed just too good to be true. Even so, he decided to give it a go after realizing he had nothing to lose. He knew exactly what he wanted: about £500. That’s how much he needed to join his friends on their holiday.

After a week or so, he received a letter from the tax office saying that he may have paid too much in taxes. King immediately filled out the attached form to provide the authorities with the necessary details. About a month later, another envelope from the tax office arrived. And, lo and behold, inside there was a cheque for £800! The following Monday, King and his friends booked a last-minute holiday and flew out a few days later. He had a wonderful time. But, more importantly, he became a firm believer in the Law of Attraction. And he decided that he was going to use it to change his entire life.

A paradigm shift

Essentially, the Law of Attraction states that like attracts like. In other words, if you think positively, you’ll attract positive experiences in your life. The caveat is that the opposite is also true: negative thoughts can bring you negative outcomes. And it’s difficult to stay positive when things go wrong in life – and especially when they don’t quite turn out the way you expected them to. Can you remain optimistic in the face of financial problems or possible health issues? If you can, then you’re one of the few. If you can’t, then a single negative event in your life can get you into a vicious cycle of despair and depression. 

There’s another problem with the Law of Attraction. Namely, it doesn’t always work. For years King couldn’t understand why. But then, one day, in the midst of his exams, he went to Goa, India, to attend his eldest sister’s wedding. Even though he went reluctantly, he returned grateful, feeling good about himself and very calm about the chaos around him. Moreover, he returned with a renewed steadiness and a resolve to sail through his final exams. He created a dummy score card that displayed the overall mark he wanted to receive for his degree. He would stare at the card for several minutes every day at the library, pretending that it was real, until one day it was: to his mild surprise, King passed all of his tests quite comfortably, even acing his hardest exam!

So, what was it that King noticed during his sister’s wedding that revealed to him the flaws of the Law of Attraction and opened his eyes to the ways the Universe actually operates? To borrow from the title of a Beach Boys song: “Good Vibrations.” “Everyone there was shining bright with happiness and love for my sister and her new husband,” King remembers. That made it quite impossible for him to feel bad or think negative thoughts. During the wedding, he wasn’t even trying to be positive. He just was. And that made all the difference.

The law of vibration

Consider the following. Everything in the universe – your smartphone, your table, your body, and even your mind – is made up of vibrating atoms. Hence, all matter is vibrational by its very nature. In fact, we perceive things quite differently depending on the frequency of the vibrations at a molecular level. If you heat ice (which is water frozen into a solid state), it melts to form liquid water; if you heat liquid water, it boils and it becomes steam, that is to say, gaseous water. At a molecular level, the substance remains the same; what changes is the frequency of the vibrations.

In his book “The Vibrational Universe,” spiritual author Kenneth James Michael MacLean takes things a step further, arguing that our universe is “a deep sea of vibrational frequencies” and that “reality is perception defined by vibrational interpretation.” In other words, he claims that we perceive only things we are vibrationally compatible with. It may seem far-fetched, but that’s precisely how our auditory perception works: we can only hear sound waves that are between 20 and 20,000 vibrations per second. As far as our ears and brains are concerned, anything below or above that is pretty much nonexistent.

Now, emotions, being also made of atoms, vibrate pretty much the same way as sounds do. In line with the experiments of Swiss physician Hans Jenny, King claims that joyful and loving feelings vibrate with high frequencies, whereas feelings of hatred, anger and despair have a very low frequency. To receive good vibes, he goes on, you must project good vibes; otherwise, you’ll only receive bad vibes. Once again, this should surprise nobody, because this is how radios work. The only way to hear a specific station is to tune in to the frequency of that station. Otherwise, you’ll end up listening to something completely different.

“To bring an idea into existence, or rather, into your perception, you must match its vibrational frequency,” King explains further. “The more ‘real’ or solid something is to you, the closer you are to it vibrationally. This is why when you truly believe in something and act as if it were already true, you increase the chances of it coming to you in your physical reality. To receive or perceive the reality you wish to have, you must be in energetic harmony with that which you desire. This means that our thoughts, emotions, words and actions must align with what we want.” And that’s the Law of Vibration in a nutshell.

Positive lifestyle habits

According to the Law of Vibration, your only aim in life is to feel better by vibrating higher. Thoughts alone – as the Law of Attraction states – will not do. Far from it: you must change not only the way you think, but also the way you feel, speak and act. The Universe responds to everybody’s vibration, returning whatever energy one puts out. However, since everything in the world is vibrational, everything you engage with will affect your vibrations somehow. Consequently, to become the best (and happiest) person you can be, you must change quite a few habits, even your entire lifestyle. Here are a few things you should do instantly:

• Surround yourself with positive people. Recently, scientists discovered that the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is capable of drawing energy from other plants. King claims that humans are no different: positive people infect the ones around them with positivity, and negative people pollute their surroundings with bad vibes. Stay away from the latter, and surround yourself with the former. Energy is contagious.
• Change your body language. A fake smile, demonstrated a 2003 study by Simone Schnall and David Laird, can trick your brain into a feeling of joy and happiness by releasing endorphin, the feel-good hormone. The lesson? “If you can act like someone who feels good, your internal state will change and your vibration will rise.”
• Stay clear of gossip and drama. Everything you say or think vibrates in one way or another. When you discuss other people in a negative way, you’re inadvertently sending negative vibrations into the Universe; this, in turn, lowers your vibrational frequency. There’s a reason why the Ayurveda, the ancient Indian medical system, claims that gossiping affects our chakras negatively. It’s because they intuitively noticed the link between negative vibrations and poor health. “Drama is for TV, not for real life,” writes King. “Don’t play a part in someone else’s episode in which they are the only star.”
• Express gratitude. The best antidote to gossip and drama – as well as to complaints, fear and excuses – is gratitude. We know it’s a cliché to say the  following, but there are indeed so many things you should be grateful about in your life. Make that known. The more often you do that, the more you'll be (aware?) of what you have in the present and the better you’ll feel about the future. Or, in the memorable words of King, “The more you count your blessings, the more blessings you’ll have to count.”

Make yourself a priority

Even though thinking of yourself and not others can be selfish in many contexts, putting yourself first, as a general rule, isn’t. In fact, it’s the other way around. “Your longest relationship in life is with yourself,” elucidates King. “Only when you manage this relationship well can you manage your relationships with others.” In other words, the only way you can be good toward others is if you’re good toward yourself first. Here’s a few habits to help you achieve such balance:

• Check your own behavior. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” asks Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount. That’s one of the most important questions ever posed. Most of us are addicted to cataloguing the toxic behavior of others and yet we rarely review our own actions. It’s time you began doing that. “Always review your behaviors and make an effort to change any that are toxic – towards yourself or others,” advises King. “This isn’t only how you grow, it’s also an act of self-love. You’re showing yourself that you deserve better than the behaviors limiting your progress.”
• Choose real friends and good partners. Friendship is a relationship of mutual affection, not one of mutual gain. Simplify your life by simplifying your circle of friends. Not everybody you know and spend time with adds value to your life. In fact, chances are, most of your so-called friends contaminate your existence with low-frequency emotions. Remove them from your life. Do the same with your partner as well if you feel they are not raising you up. Don’t be in a relationship for the sake of being in one. Be only in such a relationship that makes you and your partner better people.
• Let your good vibes protect you. According to the Law of Vibration, the further something is vibrationally from something else, the less real it is in relation. That’s why some of the most negative people in the world are allergic to positivity: they can’t understand it. Hence, by emitting good vibes – say, by acting kindly toward people who aren’t kind to you – you’re not just making yourself feel good, but you’re also pushing away the people that might make you feel bad. It’s the beautiful mechanism of self-reinforcement!
• Be there for others, but don’t try to please everyone. The more you try to please people, the more you lose sight of who you really are. Put otherwise, the more you say “yes” to others, the more you say “no” to yourself. That can only lead to two things: exhaustion and frustration. In the end, neither you nor your friends will end up pleased. Being there for others means being there for yourself first. Both boil down to the same thing: vibrating as high as you can.  

Final notes

In essence, “Good Vibes, Good Life” is just another Law of Attraction book, albeit with a few interesting additions and appealing enhancements. Even so, Vex King’s relatable persona – as well as his tragic background and influential online presence – made the book quite a hit. We warmly recommend it to anyone who has read and loved books such as Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich,” Norman Vincent Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking,” or especially, Rhonda Byrne’s “The Secret.”

12min tip

Read William Walker Atkinson’s 1906 self-help classic “Thought Vibration” (or our summary, for that matter). Even though it might have happened coincidentally, a lot of Vex King’s ideas seem to have been inspired by Atkinson’s somewhat forgotten book.