There has been a lot of chatter lately about ‘The Secret’ since Oprah featured the topic on her show . The foundation of the secret centers around what they call ‘the law of attraction’ – which essentially means that you ‘get what you think about’ or ‘you become what you think about all day long’. The DVD is extremely goofy, even some of the ‘experts’ seem a little evangelist-like and get in the way of the actual message. I have been listening to the audio book, which helps to get past these other issues. If you really listen to what they are saying – it all seems very logical. At the very least approaching life in this manner can help you become much more positive and engaged in the process of who you really want to be and how you want to live your life. Is this way of thinking rubbish? I don’t think so. Is it really a secret? Absolutely not.
I have encountered many people who say that the Secret is hogwash and that they don’t believe in it – and that it is all a marketing ploy. Rhonda Byrne’s secret is that she took concepts that have been around for centuries, wrote a book about them – hired a few people she calls ‘thought leaders?’ and packaged it in a very slick and somewhat unclassy way that is making her millions of dollars. What she is doing is no secret, she took un-original ideas and packaged them to make people believe that she is on to something. People bought it, hook, line and sinker.
If you can get past the slick packaging, and the hokiness of it all and dissect the basic premise of ‘The Secret’, it does provide great guidelines to live by. These concepts and approaches are not new, they have been taught, written about, and discussed throughout the ages. There is a lot of very ‘zen’ thinking here, and I absolutely believe in it. I am not saying that I believe in a magic bullet called the secret, I am merely saying that there are truths to approaching life in such a manner. This is my takeaway:
- Be grateful and thankful for everything you have – and for everything you are about to receive
- Focus all of your intention on positive outcomes – in the most inspired way possible, and believe with all your heart that it will happen.
- Be generous with kindness and everthing else – give to others freely and this will come back to you
- Do not engage in negative conversation or activities as acting in such a manner will bring more of it to you
- Believe in yourself, your health, and all of the abundance that life has to offer – and you will live a better life for it
Life: Version 2.0 
I’m one that thinks of it as a bit of hogwash, but I agree that being grateful and positive is important. I find the power of negative thinking works well too, I think the worst… and then I’m happy when it doesn’t happen. 🙂 I also think the Secret avoids the real issues in the world and kind of sets us up to blame ourselves when something bad happens. Maybe I’m wrong?
I will have to respectfully disagree (but of course you knew this) – I don’t think that negative thinking does us any good at all – just makes things worse. It doesn’t mean ignoring the reality, it just means that a choice is made to focus on a more positive outcome. I can’t find anything constructive about negative thinking – and when I get caught up in it (which happens a lot unfortunately), nothing ever good comes from it. I like life a lot better when all of my focus is on positive outcomes – this in no way means that I am ignoring the bad things, it’s just a focus on how things should be and constructively taking action (whether through thought, action, or intent) to make it be so.
I am just happy to know what this stupid secret is – FINALLY!
“I like life a lot better when all of my focus is on positive outcomes – this in no way means that I am ignoring the bad things, it’s just a focus on how things should be and constructively taking action (whether through thought, action, or intent) to make it be so.”
I agree completely, I don’t think I said it well, it seemed like in the video version of the Secret, big horrors, like war, slavery, were ignored. I absolutely agree that putting positive action out there helps immensely. I also gave up talkin trash for lent (& for all time) so that makes sense to me.