The Secret is a best-selling book, was featured on Oprah, and has received much talk on here. I've been amidst composing a write-up exposing the bad science, faulty thinking, and superstitious woo-woo non-sense behind What The Bleep Do We Know? and The Secret, because both have been so popular that it crossed the threshold where nonsense needs to be addressed. But lucky little me, I subscribe to Skeptic magazine's newsletter and came across this wonderful gem. I was thinking I would weave my write-up with the following book review, except the review is already long enough. I might still post my write-up, should I ever finish, but definitely at a later time.
(The moral of the story will be while positive thinking is good... keep it real. If you want positive thinking, there are many fine books out there, but do so without New Age quackism which poisons your mind.)
Note: Skeptic magazine's newsletter comes with the disclaimer: "Permission is granted to print, distribute, and post with proper citation and acknowledgment". No worries there.
The Secret Behind The Secret
What is Attracting Millions to the Law of Attraction?
by Ingrid Hansen Smythe
Psst! Have you heard The Secret? If not, the first thing you need to know is that The Secret isn’t a secret, and this in itself should set your skeptical alarm bells ringing, since whenever the very name of a thing is a contradiction of the thing itself, it is easy to imagine that the bridge up ahead may be washed out.
The Secret is a simple New-Age notion that is the subject of a recent and wildly successful book by Rhonda Byrne and DVD by Rhonda Byrne of Prime Time Productions. The secret is “The Law of Attraction” that asserts what you think creates what you feel, and these feelings flow from your body as magnetic energy waves over vast distances, which then cause the universe around you to vibrate at the same energy level as your feelings. If your feelings are negative, negative experiences will inevitably flow right back, positive feelings elicit positive experiences. Like attracts like. “Thoughts are sending out that magnetic signal that is drawing the parallel back to you. It always works; it works every time, with every person.” (1) Thus there is no such thing as accident or coincidence; it is you, the individual, who brings misery on yourself because of your toxic thinking. But the good news, Eeyore, is this: if you can only alter your thoughts, and therefore your feelings, you can actually cause the universe around you to vibrate at a positive energy level and the desires of your heart will come to be realized! All you have to do is Ask — Believe — Receive.(2) You just have to visualize what you want, feel good about it, and then ask the universe (and ask once only, oh ye of little faith) — and whatever you can imagine can be yours. “This is like having the universe as your catalogue and you flip through it and go, ‘Well I’d like to have this experience and I’d like to have that product and I’d like to have a person like that’ … It is you just placing your order with the universe. It’s really that easy … [Just] start to have different beliefs like there is more than enough in the universe, everything goes right for me … have the belief ‘I’m not getting older, I’m getting younger.’ We can create it the way we want it.” (3)
This is excellent news indeed for those of us who previously thought that something like aging was not optional. There are 100 assertions that constitute the backbone of The Law of Attraction, (4) including:
Imagining that we are like magnets is not an especially harmful mental exercise in metaphorical thinking, but when metaphor slips into metaphysics, problems with The Secret become glaringly apparent. The Secret relies heavily on fuzzy thinking, and nowhere is this fuzziness demonstrated better than by the fact that The Secret is actually proposing two completely different systems for achieving one’s goals and then blurring the line between those systems — in effect, selling the system that works on the back of the one that doesn’t. On the one hand, we are told that all that is required to get what we desire is to ask, believe, and receive. For example: A little boy wants a bike, he believes he will get a bike, he gets a bike (as dramatized in The Secret DVD). On the other hand, we are told that we can’t merely ask, believe, receive. “A lot of people watch The Secret and they say, ‘Well, I’m sitting around visualizing my millions coming into my lap.’ Well, they’ll come take your furniture away. And then how are you going to visualize [when you’re living] on the curb? You’ve got to act on it.” (6) So, a little boy wants a bike, he gets a paper route to earn money to get a bike, he gets a bike. In the first scenario, the supernatural is required. In the second scenario, a paper-route is required. The second scenario is the one that most of us recognize as the only one that will actually work, in which a person has an “idea,” then acts on that idea, and then gets the desired results. The second system renders irrelevant the first system.
The testimonial of the editor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, Jack Canfield, provides an excellent example of the first system (ask-believe-receive) getting the credit for the second system (idea-action-results). He tells us that he visualized earning $100,000 (even writing the desired amount on a bill worth far less and tacking it to the ceiling above his bed) and focused his mental energy only on the goal of attaining the money. He tells us that he had absolutely no idea how he was going to get the money — he simply focused on believing that he would get the money, somehow. But how? For four weeks he had no breakthrough ideas but then, one day in the shower, he remembered that he had written a book and, if it was published (particularly if he sold 400,000 copies and he made a quarter on each) he just might achieve his financial goals. Of course the book was published, and the results were only a few thousand dollars shy of 100,000 dollars. (7)
Mr. Canfield attributes his success to knowing and applying the principles of The Secret — he literally attracted 100,000 dollars through good feelings, positive energy, and the power of visualization. Is it possible, however, that this is a misattribution, and that the actual reason for his success is that he suddenly remembered that he had written a book, got it published, and subsequently earned money from it? You know, the way all other authors do it. The post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this therefore because of this) fallacy would appear to be working overtime in the minds of enthusiastic Secreteers. “It happened because I wished for it,” the Secreteer would say, instead of the more obvious explanation, “It happened because I worked for it.” (8)
(The moral of the story will be while positive thinking is good... keep it real. If you want positive thinking, there are many fine books out there, but do so without New Age quackism which poisons your mind.)
Note: Skeptic magazine's newsletter comes with the disclaimer: "Permission is granted to print, distribute, and post with proper citation and acknowledgment". No worries there.
The Secret Behind The Secret
What is Attracting Millions to the Law of Attraction?
by Ingrid Hansen Smythe
Psst! Have you heard The Secret? If not, the first thing you need to know is that The Secret isn’t a secret, and this in itself should set your skeptical alarm bells ringing, since whenever the very name of a thing is a contradiction of the thing itself, it is easy to imagine that the bridge up ahead may be washed out.
The Secret is a simple New-Age notion that is the subject of a recent and wildly successful book by Rhonda Byrne and DVD by Rhonda Byrne of Prime Time Productions. The secret is “The Law of Attraction” that asserts what you think creates what you feel, and these feelings flow from your body as magnetic energy waves over vast distances, which then cause the universe around you to vibrate at the same energy level as your feelings. If your feelings are negative, negative experiences will inevitably flow right back, positive feelings elicit positive experiences. Like attracts like. “Thoughts are sending out that magnetic signal that is drawing the parallel back to you. It always works; it works every time, with every person.” (1) Thus there is no such thing as accident or coincidence; it is you, the individual, who brings misery on yourself because of your toxic thinking. But the good news, Eeyore, is this: if you can only alter your thoughts, and therefore your feelings, you can actually cause the universe around you to vibrate at a positive energy level and the desires of your heart will come to be realized! All you have to do is Ask — Believe — Receive.(2) You just have to visualize what you want, feel good about it, and then ask the universe (and ask once only, oh ye of little faith) — and whatever you can imagine can be yours. “This is like having the universe as your catalogue and you flip through it and go, ‘Well I’d like to have this experience and I’d like to have that product and I’d like to have a person like that’ … It is you just placing your order with the universe. It’s really that easy … [Just] start to have different beliefs like there is more than enough in the universe, everything goes right for me … have the belief ‘I’m not getting older, I’m getting younger.’ We can create it the way we want it.” (3)
This is excellent news indeed for those of us who previously thought that something like aging was not optional. There are 100 assertions that constitute the backbone of The Law of Attraction, (4) including:
- Whatever is going on in your mind is what you are attracting.
- Thought = creation. If these thoughts are attached to powerful emotions (good or bad) that speeds the creation.
- Those who speak most of illness have illness, those who speak most of prosperity have it, etc.
- It’s OK that thoughts don’t manifest into reality immediately (if we saw a picture of an elephant and it instantly appeared, that would be too soon).
- Everything in your life you have attracted. Accept that fact; it’s true.
- You get exactly what you are feeling.
- What you think and what you feel and what actually manifests is always a match — no exception.
- You don’t need to know how the universe is going to rearrange itself.
- How long??? No rules on time; the more aligned you are with positive feelings the quicker things happen.
- Size is nothing to the universe (unlimited abundance if that’s what you wish). We make the rules on size and time.
- If you turn it over to the universe, you will be surprised and dazzled by what is delivered. This is where magic and miracles happen.
- The Hows are the domain of the universe. It always knows the quickest, fastest, most harmonious way between you and your dream.
- Our job is not to worry about the “How”. The “How” will show up out of the commitment and belief in the “what”.
- We are mass energy. Everything is energy. Everything.
- An affirmative thought is 100 times more powerful than a negative one.(5)
Imagining that we are like magnets is not an especially harmful mental exercise in metaphorical thinking, but when metaphor slips into metaphysics, problems with The Secret become glaringly apparent. The Secret relies heavily on fuzzy thinking, and nowhere is this fuzziness demonstrated better than by the fact that The Secret is actually proposing two completely different systems for achieving one’s goals and then blurring the line between those systems — in effect, selling the system that works on the back of the one that doesn’t. On the one hand, we are told that all that is required to get what we desire is to ask, believe, and receive. For example: A little boy wants a bike, he believes he will get a bike, he gets a bike (as dramatized in The Secret DVD). On the other hand, we are told that we can’t merely ask, believe, receive. “A lot of people watch The Secret and they say, ‘Well, I’m sitting around visualizing my millions coming into my lap.’ Well, they’ll come take your furniture away. And then how are you going to visualize [when you’re living] on the curb? You’ve got to act on it.” (6) So, a little boy wants a bike, he gets a paper route to earn money to get a bike, he gets a bike. In the first scenario, the supernatural is required. In the second scenario, a paper-route is required. The second scenario is the one that most of us recognize as the only one that will actually work, in which a person has an “idea,” then acts on that idea, and then gets the desired results. The second system renders irrelevant the first system.
The testimonial of the editor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, Jack Canfield, provides an excellent example of the first system (ask-believe-receive) getting the credit for the second system (idea-action-results). He tells us that he visualized earning $100,000 (even writing the desired amount on a bill worth far less and tacking it to the ceiling above his bed) and focused his mental energy only on the goal of attaining the money. He tells us that he had absolutely no idea how he was going to get the money — he simply focused on believing that he would get the money, somehow. But how? For four weeks he had no breakthrough ideas but then, one day in the shower, he remembered that he had written a book and, if it was published (particularly if he sold 400,000 copies and he made a quarter on each) he just might achieve his financial goals. Of course the book was published, and the results were only a few thousand dollars shy of 100,000 dollars. (7)
Mr. Canfield attributes his success to knowing and applying the principles of The Secret — he literally attracted 100,000 dollars through good feelings, positive energy, and the power of visualization. Is it possible, however, that this is a misattribution, and that the actual reason for his success is that he suddenly remembered that he had written a book, got it published, and subsequently earned money from it? You know, the way all other authors do it. The post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this therefore because of this) fallacy would appear to be working overtime in the minds of enthusiastic Secreteers. “It happened because I wished for it,” the Secreteer would say, instead of the more obvious explanation, “It happened because I worked for it.” (8)
