Weeks ago I made a joke about The Secret and it made me laugh but was pretty derogatory toward anyone remotely interested in this…program? Way of life? Philosophy? Ruse? I didn’t feel guilty about the comment, but I did wonder if I gave it a fair shake. After all, Oprah devoted several shows to The Secret. Maybe there was something I missed the first time I read the back of the book. Maybe the short intro on Oprah about a boy wanting a bike, thinking about the bike, cutting a picture from a catalogue of the bike and sticking it to his wall, then the bike magically appearing wasn’t the whole story
I had to investigate more thoroughly.
It was still the same pie-in-the-sky nonsense I researched when it first arrived. I watched the first twenty minutes of The Secret film on YouTube and was in awe of the production values. The producers spared no expense in dramatizing The Secret and how it has been guarded and passed down from generation to generation. At the core of this philosophy is the law of attraction. What you think about, you attract. If you think negative, I’m going to get nothing but bills in the mail, I’m going to be late, I’m never going to succeed then that is what you will attract. Think positively. Think about what you want and you will get it; you will attract it.What works most effectively about The Secret is not a law, but a power. The power of suggestion. If people buy into The Secret they buy the book or the DVD. Marketing is the best way to describe its success.
Are you seeing what I’m seeing? What’s really at the heart of this philosophy isn’t thinking about something and getting it like the kid getting the bike he was thinking about. It’s the power of positive thinking, something Norman Vincent Peale suggested in the 50s. And like Peale’s philosophy which had no way of being substantiated, so too, falls The Secret.
No one can prove unequivocally that simply thinking about your wants will reward you with them. Nor can anyone say for certain that thinking positively will alter your life for the better. No one leaves their home in the morning thinking they want to be hit by a bus, but it happens. This is the flaw in the theory of positive thinking and likewise, in The Secret.
However, in my thirst for knowledge and while researching whether to delve further into The Secret phenomenon, I made a conscious choice. I decided that I would focus my attention on being positive and recognizing the positive over the negative. It’s been almost a month now and I have to say that it has not brought me fame or fortune. However, it has changed me in a very significant way. I am happier. It may sound strange, but it's the truth. I feel better. I wake up feeling good and go about my day feeling better than I’ve felt in a long time. Does that equal getting everything I ever wanted. Of course not. But it does make a difference in my life and in the lives of those around me.
Thinking positively has not stopped, nor will it ever stop, bad things from happening (bills will continue to arrive in the mail). Positive thinking makes those unpleasant things in life a lot more tolerable.
So, The Secret isn't a secret after all.
