Tamara bought me a book for Christmas. It’s a book based on the movie of the same name. “The Secret”. When it came out, it was all the rave about how it could change your life and make things for the better. I have heard several people mention it and they have taken “the secret” and applied it to their own life and have apparently had success with it. Always curious about what this was, when Tamara got me the book, I started reading it.
I’m more than halfway through the book and I can’t decide whether or not I buy into what the book is saying. There are some things in it that make a lot of sense but the author’s way of describing it all seems a little… well too unbelievable and too enthusiastic. It almost comes off sounding somewhat infomercial-ish. But the more I think about what the book is talking about, and the more I look at things I have done in my own life, the more it makes sense. The problem is actually convincing myself that this could actually be completely true and I’ve been my own worst enemy.
The main principle of the book is based on The Law of Attraction. The idea is that pure thought can influence chance. By thinking something, you actually cause it to happen in some fashion. This is not a new idea and I have actually experienced something like this in my own life and even devote a chapter of Gut Theory to it. It more or less says that anything you “think” can happen if you go about it the right way. If you think about having money, you’ll get money. If you think about having that nice car, you’ll get the nice car.
At first it sounds pretty outrageous. How can you possibly just “think shit up” and it happens? The book says that as long as you continue to focus on what you want, the universe will find a way to manifest it in some fashion for you. The book contains a LOT of quotes from people who have studied “the secret” and have applied it and have become successful as a result of it. Apparently the key is to want something, visualize having it, and acting/thinking as if you already have it and then it comes to you. Negative thoughts/emotions and actions against what you want attract negativity and therefore are the reason you don’t get what you want. You should not concern yourself with how things will come to you just that they will.
Now, I can believe a lot of things, but it just sounds so corny that I can think of anything and get it. The book even talks about “pretending” and that helps to bring you what you want. I’m scratching my head and wondering how anyone could really think this stuff was real, but then I started looking at some of the things I have done in my own life and how they have happened. When I say to myself “I’m going to have a good day” in the morning, I have a good day. When I said I was going to go Los Angeles back in the fall of 1996, I never wavered from that and in June of 1997, I went. In countless situations where I have just said to myself, and not let doubt interfere, that I am going to do something, I have.
Now is it the universe making those things happen, or is it me making it happen, or perhaps a combination of both of them? It’s really hard to say and fundamentally I suppose it all depends on what you believe.
At the end of the day though, I look at the things in my life that I want to change and want to make better and I wonder what the best method of doing so is. There are things about myself that I have come to realize are very unhealthy and I need to find a good means of changing. Change is a hard thing to do and I know that it is something that I want, and something that I need, in order to have a better life than I already do.
I’m reading this book and wondering if maybe I can take some of the elements from it, and help make the changes I need.
Has anyone else ever tried any of the stuff from “The Secret”? Is it perhaps the “rational” part of me that is actually a little scared that maybe this “new age” stuff might have some real validity and if I just apply it, I could get what I want?
I’m thinking I need to think about it 😉
