Is The Secret Real or Not?

The Secret has been an incredible phenomenon. The Independent Newspaper reported that up to August 2010, 19 million books of The Secret had been sold and republished into 32 languages and 2 million DVDs of the movie had been bought. It has also spawned a mini industry of wannabe "Secret" titles - the missing secret, living the law of attraction etc.

The trouble is of all the people who have read the book and seen the movie how many are now rich beyond their wildest dreams, doing their dream job, or cured of terminal cancer? Not many I would surmise, except of course the producers of the movie and the author of the book! So is it a scam?

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Certainly research has shown that energetically we resonate on different frequencies and a more positive frame of mind has different vibrations.

Similarly science has shown that the observer can influence the outcome of an experiment ( for a great exposition of this see the fabulous movie "What the Bleep Do We Know").

We also appear to make our own luck - see Richard Wiseman's book "The Luck Factor: The Scientific Study of the Lucky Mind". In the book he describes an experiment where people are requested to count the number of adverts in a paper. Those who consider themselves lucky are significantly more likely to spot that 2 adverts show they can collect a monetary prize if they notify the examiner. The key point is that those who consider themselves more lucky are open to opportunities. It is though they have trained their mind to look for opportunity.

So there is a body of research that supports some of the contentions of "The Secret" - so why is there a mismatch between the theory and reality?

It is said that you need to take action that is congruent with the aims of what you have deliberately created. Otherwise that would be like me saying I want to be 120 pounds and then stuffing my face with donuts and soda. Oh wait a minute that sounds like New Year's Resolutions!

.... And we all know how effective they are!

There is also more around what we believe. There have been numerous studies about the fate of multimillion lottery winners three years afterwards who are poorer than they were originally.

Why?

One they are not educated on the key to wealth ( positive cash-flow buying assets that add to cash flow, rather than splashing out on material items that drain resources)

Two they have a limiting belief ( to use the jargon) that they do not deserves the money or all rich people are evil or whatever their particular version of the story is.

So the first thing you need to do to be wealthy is clear up your past beliefs around money and to educate yourself about how money really works.

The second thing is then to understand that yes, like The Secret says, we create our own reality whether that is "positive" or "negative" so we can decide at the beginning of the day who we are going to be ( for example open, focused etc) what mindset or context we are going to invent for ourselves. it is for this reason that the ideal day iPhone app gives us the opportunity to create our day each day.

Now let's be honest if you are anything like me you set yourself intentions but then drop out during the day. In research done by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and reported in his book, "Flow: The Psychology of Happiness: The Classic Work on How to Achieve Happiness" if people are given a prompt during the day at a random basis to state what they are doing, thinking, feeling and who they are being that can be sufficient to bounce them back into their powerful context. The problem is we don't all have that rigour of creating our day and being prompted during the day. It is for this reason that I got the create your ideal day iPhone app developed. It is a reminder to get you back into an empowering state.

The third area is that in The Secret the focus is all on things you don't have - although we are encouraged to focus on actually having what we desire as often as not we slip back into the realisation that we don't have it. Research has shown that being grateful fir what we have on a regular basis has a much bigger impact on how satisfied we feel in life and ultimately how happy we are.

There are more aspects that I don't have space to go into here, but happiness is what we are all after right? So to encourage us to look at what we have the ideal day iPhone app has a gratitude journal to record what you have been grateful for in the day.

Is The Secret Real or Not?