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Exposing Rhonda Byrne's THE SECRET
The holidays are here and Rhonda Byrne’s “The Secret” is STILL on the NYT Bestseller list, meaning some of you might be getting a copy for Hanukkah or Christmas. The Secret has been translated into every major language and has sold over seven million copies.
But not all readers celebrated the book’s popularity. Many readers criticized its blame-the-victim mentality. Dr. Richard Wender feared that it would drive those in need of western medical attention away. Journalist Catherine Bennet called The Secret a “moronic hymn to greed and selfishness.” But to me, criticizing The Secret for such specific things is kind of like criticizing Hitler for being a braggart and a narcissist; it’s true, but it misses the big picture. Hitler was a murderous tyrant and The Secret is complete and utter nonsense.
For those of you who haven’t read The Secret—the both of you—Rhonda Byrne’s “secret” is something called “the law of attraction.” According to The Secret, “The law of attraction simply gives you whatever it is you are thinking about.” It’s important to point out that when Byrne says this, she isn’t speaking metaphorically; “The law of attraction is a law of nature. It is as impartial and impersonal as the law of gravity is. It is precise, and it is exact.”
Let’s test Byrne’s theory out. When you’re done reading this sentence, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and think about a million extra dollars in your bank account.
If you didn’t actually close your eyes and attempt this experiment, I don’t blame you. But if you did, allow me to fully explain the irony of what just took place: you don’t have a million extra dollars in your bank account, but Byrne does, and she got that money by telling people that they’d get whatever they thought about—including money, the book has a whole chapter on it. Byrne, of course, would tell you that the reason you don’t have a million dollars in your bank account right now is that you didn’t actually believe that such a feat was possible:
“How it will happen, how the Universe will bring it to you, is not your concern or job. Allow the Universe to do it for you. When you are trying to work out how it will happen, you are emitting a frequency that contains a lack of faith—that you don’t believe you have it already. You think you have to do it and you do not believe the Universe will do it for you. The how is not your part in the Creative Process.”
Later in the The Secret, though, Byrne explains “the how,” which is to say, she explains how, preciselyish, wishing for something makes it so:
“Remember that your thoughts are the primary cause of everything. So when you think a sustained thorough it is immediately sent out into the Universe. That thought magnetically attaches itself to the like frequency and then within seconds sends the reading of that frequency back to you through your feelings.”
I was surprised to see Byrne offering such a scientific-sounding explanation of the law of attraction. I assumed the Australian writer/television producer would shy away from all things science for fear of being attacked on her lack of credentials. Little did I know, Byrne has scientific credentials: “I never studied science or physics at school, and yet when I read complex books on quantum physics I understood them perfectly because I wanted to understand them.” Here’s what Byrne took from her physics books:
“Let me explain how you are the most powerful transmission tower in the Universe. In simple terms, all energy vibrates at a frequency. Being energy, you also vibrate at a frequency and what determines your frequency at any time is whatever you are thinking and feeling. And the things you want are made of energy, and they are vibrating too…When you think about what you want, and you emit that frequency, you cause the energy of what you want to vibrate at that frequency and you bring it to You! As you focus on what you want, you are changing the vibration of the atoms of that thing, and you are causing it to vibrate to You.”
You don’t need a Harvard or Yale physicist to tell you that the above passage is garbage. Still, I contacted a professor of physicists at Harvard and one at Yale, and asked them to evaluate the accuracy of the above passage. Harvard said that she “couldn’t make any sense of it”, and Yale called it “complete nonsense.” I asked Yale whether he though Byrne had read any books on physics, and he said, “There is little in this passage that indicates any understand of quantum physics.”
Really, there are so many better gifts to give for Christmas or Hanukkah...anything is better than the gift of false hope.
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Gratuitous Pictures
Submitted by ricklax on Sat, 12/20/2008 - 03:09.
YES! The glorious return of
Submitted by Ryan (not verified) on Sat, 12/20/2008 - 16:16.
YES! The glorious return of too-many-pictures-blogging! A picture is worth a thousand words, so by my math you just shoveled 4,000 words into my brain in a mere 8 seconds. That's 500 words a second! Holy crap!
I just showed the 3rd to
Submitted by linda (not verified) on Sun, 12/21/2008 - 06:55.
I just showed the 3rd to Fruvous. He barked.
Could this web site be more
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 12/21/2008 - 22:46.
Could this web site be more irrelevant or more boring?
is someone forcing you to
Submitted by Zel (not verified) on Mon, 12/22/2008 - 01:12.
is someone forcing you to visit it? why not just stop being such a baby and go somewhere else?
I secretly love Rick Lax and
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 12/23/2008 - 00:19.
I secretly love Rick Lax and want to have like 1,000 of his babies. I'm just too shy to ask...
I forgot we took this pic at
Submitted by Jeremy Espinosa (not verified) on Sun, 01/04/2009 - 09:38.
I forgot we took this pic at the Lawyer Boy signing. It looks like Apollo is heckling you off cam.
Las Vegas Weekly Interview: Lawyer Boy Book Reading
Tomorrow, December 18th at 7pm, I’m doing a book reading in Las Vegas at the Town Square Borders on Las Vegas Boulevard. The local weekly (Las Vegas’s Village Voice) interviewed me, mostly about magic, and here’s what was said:
Q: When you say you’re here three hours a day working, are you writing, lawyering or doing magic stuff?
A: A combination of writing and magicking; no lawyering. I recently passed the bar in Illinois; I got the results as I was moving to Las Vegas. So if you’re planning on getting injured or killing someone, go to Illinois and do it.
Here, I’m writing a book about deception and Las Vegas. But sometimes I do a little magic, too. Sometimes I play with cards as I write, and people say, “Are you a magician?” and I say, “Yeah,” and show them a trick. That was my plan, for a lot of my life, to be a professional magician. Because my dad, he was an attorney and he liked it, but I wanted to be my own person, have my own life, so I pushed that away and thought magic was the gig for me.
Q: How did you get into magic?
A: The biggest step was going to my dad’s parents’ house; they had an amazing collection of David Copperfield VHS tapes. Every time we’d go over there I’d watch one. I wanted to impress people the way David Copperfield impressed my grandparents.
Q; How old were you?
A: These are my first memories. Two, 3, 4? One of my first lawyering memories, which ties into magic, was I wanted to get some doves for my act. My parents were completely against it. So we worked up this contract, and my dad helped me with all this formal contract language, that essentially said, if I get these grades, or at least work with a tutor consistently, then I could get the doves. Only a few years ago did I learn what those terms actually mean.
Q: What magicians do you admire?
A: Let me say something good about Criss Angel. I’ve read all the local reviews of his show, and aside from all that, here’s something good about him. He’s truly brought magic to a lot of people who otherwise wouldn’t be interested in it. So I respect him for that. Otherwise, I like a lot of the magicians on the Strip. Penn & Teller; they have the illusions that are the hardest to figure out. Copperfield, because he stays on the cutting edge. I saw Lance Burton’s show; that was great. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of people around the world trying to duplicate Lance Burton’s dove act, and no one does it like him.
Q: Will the book you’re working on now deal with magic?
A: Magic has a much bigger element in this book. I’ve been seeing a lot of shows, talking with a lot of magicians. I’ve been asking them whether they, like me, see deception in other parts of life, whether some people are easier to fool. We’ve been talking about the psychology of deception. One of the big problems is, when you tell people you’re working on a book about deception and lying, they’re understandably skeptical. Why should I believe you? That’s a good question. I’d be skeptical, too. But usually they figure out I’m for real.
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Ricky: CONGRATS! You'll now
Submitted by Chuck (not verified) on Wed, 12/17/2008 - 20:44.
Ricky:
CONGRATS! You'll now be able to tell evryone that you've played the Strip in Vegas.
Chuck
Gary Darwin's Magic Club at Boomers on Wednesday
This is the working intro to this piece I might be doing for the local weekly paper. Some notes on the guys I've been hanging out with...
Las Vegas doesn’t have an active chapter of the Society of American Magicians or the International Brotherhood of Magicians. Las Vegas doesn’t need one. We’ve got Gary Darwin’s Magic Club.
Darwin started the club forty years ago because the local SAM and IBM chapters wouldn’t allow Jews or Blacks into their meetings. Darwin isn’t black or Jewish, but he recognized that many skilled magicians were, so he set up his own magic club—one with no restrictions, membership fees, or rules of order. For Darwin, it was all about the magic. Within a few years the local IBM and SAM chapters both folded. They couldn’t compete with Darwin.
Darwin’s Magic Club’s meets every Wednesday night in the back room of Boomer's, a dive bar on Sirius. “Pleasantly tolerates”—those are the right words; Boomer’s pleasantly tolerates the magicians.
“Magicians don’t drink a lot,” the bartender told me. “Guess they need their hands for other things.”
The two non-magicians to my right laughed. I’d assumed the bartender was referring to sleight-of-hand maneuvers, but the laymen clearly thought she meant something else. The guy to my left, an older magician in a brown bomber jacket, thought the same: “I was doing magic long before you were born,” he told me, “and let me tell you: I’ve heard better insults than that.”
Since moving to Las Vegas about a half century ago, Gary Darwin has worked at the Flamingo, Desert Inn, Caesars Palace, and MGM Grand. He’s invented over 500 magic tricks, writes a book every month, and was the first person to do a straightjacket escape underwater. If you get the chance to meet the man (Boomer's, Wednesday nights, he’ll be there) he’ll tell you all this himself, a minute or two after you shake his hand. Then he’ll pull out a plastic thimble or red sponge ball and show you a series of appearances and disappearances, which, as you’d expect, he performs damn well. He’ll continue doing this until 1) you ask him to show you a card trick or 2) a woman walks into the room.
There are usually a handful of women at Darwin’s Club. Some of them are magicians’ assistants like Shedini (who works with Jason Byrne), Melanie (who works with Jeff McBride), and Mistie (who works with her fiancée Kyle on cruise ships and was voted Miss Nevada in 2007). In addition, there are always two or three non-performing girlfriends whose lot in life is to select playing cards until their thumbs blister.
Last Wednesday I saw Darwin performing his thimble sequence before one of these non-magician girlfriends. Halfway through the routine, the woman developed a terrible coughing fit.
“Do you know any cough jokes?” Darwin asked her.
“No.”
“If you go around coughing like that, you should have a cough joke ready to go.”
“I have asthma,” she said, clearly offended.
Gary though for a moment and then said, “If you want to work on the strip, you’ll have to think up a better line than that.”
On average the club draws 30 to 40 magicians—a mixture of newbies in their 20's, pros in their 30's, 40's, and 50's, and former pros in their 60's, 70's, and even 80's. Most the pros perform at private parties and tradeshows, which is a polite way of saying that you haven’t heard of any of them. Every month or so a big name will drop by, like Lance Burton or Siegfried, but the big names never perform any magic tricks. They’re there to meet old friends and rack up street cred.
I, on the other hand, perform before these guys every chance I get. I look at it as a chance to improve my skills. Most of my performances take place before the StreetOfCards.com webcam. AJ Olson, founded the site and webcasts live from Boomer's every week for those illusionists across the country who’d like to be in attendance but can’t. These online magicians give me real-time constructive criticism, letting me know how I can improve my act (e.g., “hey new guy: STOP STEALING DERREN BROWN’S MATERIAL”).
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Backpacking Through Europe After The Bar Exam
A lot of soon-to-be lawyers go backpacking in Europe after they take the bar exam, before the results come back. The theory goes like this: as an attorney, you won’t have any free time until retirement, so you might as well go have some fun while you have the chance. The main flaw in this theory is that backpacking isn’t fun, it’s miserable. Maybe backpacking was fun when backpacks were first invented, when the alternative was hiking around carrying your supplies on a platter, but today, backpacks should be reserved for elementary school children and hipsters.
I sound like an expert on the matter, but the truth is it took me years to figure out how awful hiking is. When I was a kid, I bugged my dad to take me camping every year.
“I don’t spend all day at the office so I can sleep in plastic shacks set up on a tree root,” he’d tell me.
And of course that’d make me want to go camping even more. For years I called him a bore, and imagined how much fun we’d have in the middle of the woods, telling ghost stories and eating s’mores, and doing all the things I saw backpackers doing on TV and in movies.
Then I actually went backpacking, through the Upper Peninsula’s Porcupine Mountains (the Porkies), with ten other boys from Camp Nebagamon. It was the worst week of my entire life and it gave me a newfound respect for my father and his judgment.
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As you may or may not know,
Submitted by Ryhttp://ricklax.com/comment/reply/182#comment-forman (not verified) on Tue, 12/09/2008 - 19:27.
As you may or may not know, I actually went backpacking through Europe with 5 friends a few years ago. The actual trip was not a vacation and could hardly be classified as fun. It was much more similar to a business trip during which our objective was to take as many pictures at as many places as possible. We went to 5 cities in 12 days and snapped over 1000 pictures collectively.
A short and incomplete list of our conquests:
The Louvre
Notre Dame
Arc de Triumph
Michaelangelo's David
The Vatican (St. Peter's basilica and the Sistine chapel)
The Forum
The Colosseum
The Pantheon
Various Fountains
A Train Station in Milan
Gaudi's Sagrada Familia and various other landmarks
About Every Cathedral in Europe
Several Bars and Night Clubs
2 Girls we Convinced Mike Barovski(sp?) was the Guitarist for Maroon 5
Fiesole (Williams' favorite city)
Every Hostel we Stayed In (including the one we snuck 3 people into in Milan and the one we tried unsuccessfully to sneak 3 people into in Florence)
Wow you stayed busy! But
Submitted by ricklax on Wed, 12/10/2008 - 01:17.
Wow you stayed busy! But you have so much cocktail party value now.
"Actually, i've BEEN there, and...."
Funny...i'm here in vegas...i can see replicas of like half that stuff...and all in one day!
Perhaps you went about it
Submitted by Michelle (not verified) on Wed, 12/10/2008 - 17:17.
Perhaps you went about it the wrong way or at the wrong age. And yeah, Ryan(?), your group definitely had the wrong approach. Actually I am not a hiker and would not like to backpack traipsing through the woods. But a friend and I went to Europe after our first year of university (undergrad) and had a BLAST! I would kill to do it again.
We flew to Amsterdam with an open return ticket so we could come back when we ran out of money. Took the train, backpacked, stayed in hostels, got accosted numerous times and had a blast. Let's see ... Holland, France, Italy, somehow we got to Greece and then took the "Magic Bus" back to Amsterdam when the funds dried up. I remember getting the worst sun burn of my entire life in Nice (France) and having to spend 2 extra days in the hostel because there was no way in hell we could carry our packs. Anyway, it was a blast and I came home with very, very blond hair, an incredible tan and a toned body. Oh, for the old days...
Unfortunately whenever I
Submitted by Ryan (not verified) on Wed, 12/10/2008 - 19:01.
Unfortunately whenever I talk about having been someplace in Europe I end up sounding like a pompous ass...not unlike whenever I talk about any other subject.
What Happens Here, Stays Here Ad Campaign: The Most Successful City Marketing Operation Since Shangri-La and The Vatican
In 2003, the city itself got in on the deception game when The Las Vegas Visitors and Convention Committee debuted its “What happens here, stays here” ad campaign. Most people know this campaign as, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” but the point is, most people know it. Not since, Shangri-La or the Vatican has an entire city seen such successful marketing. The ‘What Happens’ campaign centered around a handful of TV commercials promoting explicit lying. Some of these commercials feature men and women telling their friends, unconvincingly, that they came to Las Vegas for the food or for the shows—yeah, for the shows, that’s the ticket. The other ones feature Las Vegas tourists lying to other Las Vegas tourists.
When city advertising executives discuss what makes the ads so successful, they say things like, “The beauty of the ‘What happens here’ campaign is that it means different things to different people. It can mean everything from going to a risqué review show to splurging on a fancy dinner.” That characterization is as deceitful as the ad campaign itself. The “What happens here” ad campaign’s implication is crystal clear: If you come to Las Vegas and gamble away your children’s college fund and cheat on your wife, the city’s tourism board will reaccredit your bank account when you check out of your hotel and fly you home in a time machine so you can un-cheat on your wife and preserve the sanctity of your marriage.
One of these commercial features a guy approaching a dozen women in a dozen different locations on the strip and telling each one of them that the has a different occupation. “I’m a rock star,” “I’m an astrophysicist”—that sort of thing. He tells one woman that he’s a writer and she replies, “You told my friend you were an attorney.” He pauses, and then says, “I am…in the off-season.”
...yeah, nobody believes me when I use that line either. But it's true!
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Counselor Rick: You don't
Submitted by Chuck (not verified) on Thu, 12/04/2008 - 17:41.
Counselor Rick: You don't "reaccredit" a bank account, you "credit" a bank account. Actually you "reaccredit" a person or an organization which has lost their accreditation. Chuck
Has anybody threatened to
Submitted by Ryan (not verified) on Thu, 12/04/2008 - 21:15.
Has anybody threatened to put a hit out on you for working on a book that promises to take that which happens in Vegas and bring it outside of Vegas to a Borders near you?
Three people have told me
Submitted by ricklax on Fri, 12/05/2008 - 09:25.
Three people have told me that if I wrote about what they had just told me, that somebody would kill me.
The truth is that you are
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 12/06/2008 - 01:19.
The truth is that you are "discovering" nothing which anyone with half a brain does not already know. The book will bomb. Do you ever work? How do you support yourself? Parents?
One has to wonder exactly
Submitted by MMC (not verified) on Mon, 12/08/2008 - 15:27.
One has to wonder exactly how you support yourself, Anonymous.
Perhaps some unknown entity pays you to troll various blogs? Or is it just Rick who is so fortunate? Enquiring minds and all that...
I'm the best-selling author
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 12/08/2008 - 15:48.
I'm the best-selling author of the book "Autobiography of a douchebag."
But seriously, people pay to watch me eat my own poo on street corners. Seriously. $1.
ok i was going to give the
Submitted by DaveG (not verified) on Mon, 12/08/2008 - 22:10.
ok i was going to give the bitter jealousy award to counselor ryan, but now i'm thinking it should go to counselor anonymous.
The Media's Allegedly Impossible Standard Of Beauty: Las Vegas Observation
The theory goes like this: advertisers present female consumers with an ideal, impossible standard beauty. They do this so women feel perpetually inadequate and insecure, which keeps them buying and buying in the hopes of achieving the unachievable, of becoming one of the magazine women. The magazine women, though, have no real world counterpart. They’re not only the product of plastic surgery, personal trainers, makeup artists and hair stylists, but of Photoshop artists. They’re a myth.
There’s a hole in that argument, but you won’t spot it by reading the above paragraph alone. If you spend some time in the Bellagio, though, you’ll spot the hole for sure. You’ll spot it walking by you every few seconds. I did last night, at least. The supposedly impossible standard of female beauty is not only possible, not only achievable, but has been achieved, by every other woman in the place.
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Rick. You and I have had
Rick.
You and I have had several conversations regarding this book. To be honest, I've only seen the film version because I heard it was much better (my guess is that this is partially due to a lack of science-esque garble) but I will comment on this post nonetheless.
1) I do not fully endorse the book or movie, but I do think that some of what they have to say can be extremely powerful and helpful to some people.
2) There are plenty of things that science cannot yet explain (the fact that Byrne offers a ridiculous scientific explanation is her own fault. Stupid). A more reasonable explanation might be that if you think about something happening often enough, it is more likely to happen than if you don't think about it. If you actually believe it will happen rather than secretly doubting it, it is even more likely to happen. Simply having the thought constantly present in your conscious or even sub-conscious will "draw" it to you because you are more likely to act in a way that brings whatever it is about.
As an example, take this fictitious story:
Bob is a lazy man. His girlfriend complains that he smells terrible all the time and leaves him. Bob reads the Secret. Bob puts a picture of his girlfriend on his "vision board" (or whatever) and constantly thinks about her. While he is constantly thinking about her, Bob remembers that she used to complain about how he smelled. He decides to wear deodorant, which only mildly affects his problem. He keeps thinking about her. Bob starts doing his laundry weekly instead of monthly. He keeps thinking about her. Bob starts showering daily. He keeps thinking about her. One day Bob is thinking about her while he is on a walk with his dog and he notices that he is in her neighborhood. While he passes her door she comes outside to get the mail. He says hi and gives her a hug. At first she shies away but notices that his stench cloud has been replaced by a magical combination of Pure Sport, Irish Spring and Tide "Clean Breeze". She buries her nose in his chest and they never again part.
Now I understand that this is nothing more than anecdotal evidence, but it is a simple explanation of how thought can "draw" something to you by what appears to be a "magnetic force". It is hard to deny that thinking about something makes it more likely to occur. Anything that anyone has made or done started with a thought. If Rick never thought about blogging about his misadventures, then he never would have done it, guaranteed. My guess is that he had to think about it several times and even believe that it was going to happen before it did. Same idea, less hoakie, but it makes sense to me at least.
Now I won't argue that some of what Byrne says is silly. Still, saying that the whole book is worthless is also silly. I suggest that if you actually tried some of her methods and allowed yourself to believe that they would work, they would. For a staunch skeptic like you, that might be a tall order to fill. Has anybody besides me found any success with this stuff?
Hi, thanks for your great
Hi, thanks for your great insights and being one of the very few capable of seeing though all the smokes and mirrors.
It’s amazing how people defend it. Usually along the lines: Yes, I have found some problem with it, but… And often bright scientists, and indeed layers.
How is it possible that these sober minded individuals cannot see the light of reason… or are they in a trance of some sorts?
It simply is the greatest con ever conceived, thriving on our neediness and greed. And granted, the makers surely have studied their target market very well.
Ever since I saw the airing of it on Oprah I knew it spelt trouble and started doing some research. I very soon realized the same babble surfaced during the boom period before the great depression. And eighty years later – notably as that generation is no more – we’re back to square one, the current economic crisis, which analysts now are saying is far more severe than then.
That Oprah show led me to write a book which warned that a severe crisis was looming because of what I described as a prevailing consumerist psychosis. The book is titled THE SCOURGE OF OUR TIME: THE DEMISE OF CRITICAL THINKING IN THE AGE OF THE SECRET.
It was completed in early August and I sent a copy to The University of Amsterdam and Simon and Schuster, the publisher of the book – not that I expected them to publish, but rather for the record.
For more go to: http://www.newfort.co.za/scourgeindex.html (general);
http://www.newfort.co.za/scourge.pdf (on the economy) and
http://www.newfort.co.za/voodoo.pdf (on science).
The relevant extract on the economy is as per the aforementioned books for to the UA and S&S.
Counselor Ryan, I agree that
Counselor Ryan,
I agree that it’s powerful to people. Helpful is debatable. I mean, does false hope really help people? Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know if there’s anything science “can’t” explain, but there is some stuff that science “hasn’t” explained. Big difference.
The story about Bob is nice, and I’m glad he got the girl, but I don’t think The Secret helped him; I think it was the deodorant.
And I HAVE read a lot of the book, and I HAVE tried it. Nothing came of it.
Counselor Newton, That's
Counselor Newton,
That's so interesting that the Secret started during the Great Depression. Makes sense, though. Will check out those links now.
To get a sense of what it
To get a sense of what it was like during the time before The Great Depression, consider the following by Manly P Hall, founder of the American Philosophic Society, written in 1926.
“Though the demonism of the Middle Ages seems to have disappeared, there is abundant evidence that in many forms of modern thought – especially the so-called "prosperity" psychology, "willpower-building" metaphysics, and systems of "high-pressure" salesmanship – black magic has merely passed through a metamorphosis, and although its name be changed its nature remains the same…
“My fleeting contact with high finance resulted in serious doubts concerning business as it was being conducted at that time. It was apparent that materialism was in complete control of the economic structure, the final objective of which was for the individual to become part of a system providing an economic security at the expense of the human soul, mind, and body.”
I don’t know about black magic, but this gives a general sense of the attitudes at the time which parallels the mentality of today, and particularly that associated with "The Secret".
Notwithstanding this, the guru’s referenced in The Secret which supposedly inspired Byrne – advocating the Law of Attraction and the power of the universe – all proliferated the same “power of positive thinking” prosperity message during this time, basing their general ideology on the emerging new age movement of the early 1900’s. As such we are obliged to question the efficacy of the methods as it resulted in the bleakest time in US economic history. Note however that the movement completely fizzled out after that (I suppose because of the bitter experiences), and now resurfacing as that generation is no more… This age old human pathology of history being intent on repeating itself…
I propose an experiment. It
I propose an experiment. It will take 2 years, but I think it will be invaluable to anyone that feels the need to undertake it.
Year 1: Spend all year thinking as negatively as possible. Any time something positive looms, instantly think of how it will turn to shit. Fill your mind with doubt. Instead of having goals, be steadfast in the knowledge that you can accomplish nothing of worth.
Year 2: Spend all year thinking as positively as possible. Any time something negative pops into your head, think of a way that you can turn it into something that will help you. Be absolutely assured in your ability to accomplish anything you put your mind to. Constantly make goals (big, small, whatever) and do your best to accomplish them.
At the end of year 2, decide which year went better. During which year did you accomplish more as a human? During which year did you get more done, make more money, make and keep more friends, etc? During which year were you happier?
Simple. Whichever mode of thought makes you more satisfied, go with it. If it makes you feel better to be more practical than ignorant, as you see it, then go for it. If it makes you happier to focus on the positive aspects of your life and constantly seeking to accomplish your goals, then do it.
I'm not saying that happiness is the absolute purpose of our time on earth. I'm not even saying that "positive thinking" will work as well for everyone. I suggest that being happy is a nice perk, however, and will probably help you do whatever it is you want to do at least a little bit better. And I strongly suggest that if you are constantly directing your mind towards happiness, you are more likely to get there. Will you magnetically draw a new car through the universe by thought alone? Probably not. So don't be a dumbass and spend all your time hoping for a car you can't afford, unless you are willing to get off your butt and work for it.
Yeah, I kinda agree with
Yeah, I kinda agree with your last paragraph. But it doesn't really prove any of the stuff in The Secret. Plus the sample size is so small...
The issue is not about being
The issue is not about being positive or negative. I've seen some of the most negative people becoming the wealthiness. They generally are referred to as Obsessive Compulsive Disordered because they obsess about the slightest detail because they are so damned scared of failure... I agree with your last comment though, and it does not change that The Secret is a con which thrives on the shallowness of our time.
Fortunately I'm not American, in fact I live in Africa (ironically where the poorest, but also according to some obscure happiness index, where the happiest of people live) and so I think it is difficult for the average American to discern the wood from the trees. Perhaps it is useful to consider the following lines from Viktor Frankl's (well know Nazi death camp survivor)Man's Search for Meaning.
"How can we say yes to life in spite of pain, guilt and death?
After all, “saying yes to life in spite of everything” presupposes that life is meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable. And this presupposes the human capacity to creatively turn life’s negative aspects into something positive or constructive. In other words, what matters is to make the best of every given situation. Hence I speak of a tragic optimism, that is an optimism in the face of tragedy and in view of human potential which at its best always allows for: turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; deriving from life’s transistorizes an incentive to take responsible action.
It must be kept in mind, however, that optimism is not anything to be commanded or ordered. One cannot even force oneself to be optimistic indiscriminately, against all odds, against all hope. And what is true for hope is also true for the other two components of the triad inasmuch as faith and love cannot be commanded or ordered either.
"To the European, it is a character of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to “be happy.” But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to “be happy.” Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualising the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation."
Personally I think it is American's "Pursuit of Happiness" mentality that is at the heart of the current financial mess the world now is finding itself in. Nevertheless, stay positive and happy regardless... What choice do we have, unless it is an obsessive compulsive preoccupation to be happy which in fact is holding you back from actually being truly happy, and not happy only for others to see.
Happy 2009 notwithstanding
Also see "The poison of
Also see "The poison of positive thinking: How self-help culture helped create the credit crisis", a recent article in the New York Daily News.
The link is: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2008/12/26/2008-12-26_the_poison_of_....
Glad to know I'm not the only one making such a otherwise seemingly ludicris claim.