Kasen's Book Club Presents: The Secret, Dissected w/ NuclearFalcon

The following is a summary and dissection of Rhonda Byrne's The Secret.

About Kasen's Book Club: This series cuts right to the meat of popular self-help books, but this episode is special: rather than summarize the book, resident philsophy expert WarFalcon and I will be trying to pick the book apart and ground its ideas in legit science and philosophy. No quantum pseudoscience, no subtle energies, no cosmic vibrations: just legit psychology and grounded philosophy.

About The Author: Down on her luck, television producer Rhonda Byrne decided to do a documentary on the Law of Attraction, the New Thought Movement idea that your thoughts attract your life circumstances. She managed to bring on several big name New Thought figures for her documentary, and Byrne became an overnight sensation. She eventually published The Secret as a book, and follow-ups The Power, The Magic, and Hero.

About The Secret:
Genre: New Age
My Thoughts: My thoughts can be summed up by Dave Chappelle in a stand-up set describing when he was feeling down after the incident with Chappelle Show: “This girl sent me a book called 'The Secret.' She said, 'Dave, this is gonna help you.' I read five pages of that s@#$ and threw it in the trash. I couldn't believe it: you know what this bitch said the secret of life is? Positive imagery! You gotta visualize what you want in your life... Really? Bitch, you think the secret to life is positive imagery?... Then kill yourself! There's got to be more to life than that! She should go over to Africa and talk to the starving children. “What's wrong, little guy?” “I haven't eaten in five days.” “What you need to do is visualize some roast beef and some mashed potatoes and gravy!” “Stop it, bitch! You're killing me!” “No, what you need to do is have a better attitude about starving to death!”
In A Nutshell: Your thoughts are a magnet for your circumstances in life. If you want good things, think happy thoughts. If there's bad things in your life, your bad thoughts are attracting them. As you can tell, we're going to have a field day with this.
Why Read It?: Bile fascination, gold nuggets buried under a mound of pseudoscience and backwards philosophy.

The Secret - Dissected:

Ronda Byrne opens by saying that "the secret" of the Law of Attraction has been closely guarded for ages, and Bob Proctor says it's used only by the richest 1%. This is not true: the ideas regarding the Law of Attraction have been discussed in 1910's The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles, 1912's The Master Key System by Charles F. Haanel, and the 1936 classic Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Its ideas are also eventually grounded in later neuroscience: not the quantum woo The Secret spouts, but a combination of Confirmation Bias, the focusing centers of your brain, and your mindset. We'll cover this throughout the rest of this.

The speakers of The Secret say that your thoughts attract your circumstances, but this is an oversimplification. For example, with the Law of Attraction, if you want to get a dream home, just imagine owning that dream home and you'll eventually get it. However, in application, you merely know what you want and eventually take action to get the thing you want. The Secret's true message can be summed up as thus: intention + action + right mindset = results.

The Secret says your thoughts are like a magnet, and if you keep thinking positive things, you'll end up in positive situations, and if you think negative things, you will end up in negative situations. A running thread through The Secret is that it skirts all personal responsibility: your lifestyle is actually what puts you in positive/negative situations. Compare somebody who never goes out to someone who goes clubbing every night: who has the better chance of meeting people? Somebody with a mindset that lets them go out night after night to talk to people is going to have more success with people than the person who will start in every night. The law of attraction basically tells you to control your thoughts as if they would attract the things you don't want/the things you desire.

Another thing to explain the Law of Attraction is that your focus controls the good and bad you see in the world. The Secret cites an example of expecting debt and getting debt. The reality is you're only noticing the debt more than normal and living in a way that creates the debt (overspending, credit issues, not making payments). Plus, if you were to have a debt-free day, you wouldn't notice it because your mind is focusing on the debt. A negative mindset finds problems, focuses on lack, and ignores the positive, while a positive mindset focuses on solutions and resources, putting you in situations where you can use your resources and find solutions.

One thing The Secret does get right is the concept of the time delay: just having one or two negative thoughts won't attract disaster, just as one or two positive thoughts won't attract riches. This is a common sense thing that little successes every day lead to progress. Modern self-help pioneer Jim Rohn put it thusly: "Failure is the accumulation of small mistakes made daily, while success is the accumulation of small successes made daily. I come from a healthy family: my dad always had an apple and a glass of milk every night and never got sick. I did the same and never got sick: it's the old addage, 'An apple a day keeps the doctor away.' But some people got it wrong, thinking it's, 'A Hershey Bar a day-' NO! But this doesn't mean one Hershey bar is going to hurt you, just as long as you remember it's an apple a day, not a Hershey bar." His protege, Anthony Robbins, calls it "lag time." As Robbins puts it, "People tell me, 'I've been on a diet for four weeks, so why am I not losing weight?' Because you ate like a pig for twenty years. Lag time is both your helper and your tester: on one hand, if you screw up once, you still have time to make enough good decisions to get on the right path. However, if you succeed once and fail to follow through, you may feel good for a little while, but you're just going to go back to the way you were." You are what you repeatedly do. As NulcearFalcon put it, man is what he makes with his own two hands.

The Secret warns you that negative thoughts create negative feelings, positive thoughts cause positive feelings, and to control your feelings is vital to attracting what you want. Now, there is some merit to this. In cognitive psychology, this is exactly the model of how it works, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy works with fixing these thoughts. Mindfulness, to downright destroy negative thoughts and enter the mindset of mushin, "No Mind," is another method of avoiding these negative thoughts: something illustrated in the film version of The Secret. Plus, as mentioned earlier, your mindset puts you in situations where you are more likely to attain the things you set out to attain.

One thing I disagree with is the need to always remain positive. Although I agree that you should fight for a positive outcome, you cannot do that by ignoring the negative. You have to acknowledge that life is not all sunshine and rainbows and recognize what you have to work with, even if it's not much. Once you make a realistic assessment of things, then you can make things better. Excess positivity only leads to a greater downfall at the first failure: although you must expect the best, don't forget to prepare for the worst.

The Secret tells people that the universe is like a catologue and it will give you whatever you ask. As NuclearFalcon noticed throughout the documentary, it completely ignores the action part: that all you have to do is ask, despite action. Asking is an oversimplification: you must also take action.

The three steps The Secret gives are...

1. Ask: Write down what you want, put it in the present tense.
2. Believe: Act as if you already have what you want.
3. Receive: You will automatically attract what you want.

NuclearFalcon gives a much better explanation to how it really works:

1. Plan: Know what you want. Set a goal.
   
2. Act: Do something to attain that goal. You will eventually enter a state of mushin where action becomes automatic: you will eventually find a way.
   
3. Follow Through: Enough action eventually results in attaining your objective.

NuclearFalcon also adds there's a hint of Confirmation Bias in the Law of Attraction: that we use everything that happens to us to back up our outlook on life. If we expect the worst, we'll use the worst as evidence that "we knew it was coming." The same applies to the positive. Even in the best of conditions, those expecting the worst will find the worst. Even in the best of conditions, those expecting the best will find the best.

The people of The Secret say that the larger the goal, the longer it will take to attract it: that a cup of coffee is easier to attract than a luxury car. In actually, you're just taking more actions to get the things you want. After all, coffee only requires a brewer or a cafe. Luxury cars require work, skills, money, budgeting, driving skills, and so on: this merely requires more actions than just putting coffee beans through a machine.

One giant criticism of the Law of Attraction is that you attract all negativity, from car accidents to natural disasters. This utterly ignores that there are thousands upon millions of people with different and varying thoughts. Life is a combination of set circumstance and what we do with those circumstances, and it is often more important that we take action to deal with random happenstance.

One thing we can agree with is the idea that you must practice gratitude, regularly being thankful for the good in your life. In fact, this is the basis for Byrne's follow-up guide, The Magic, which many Amazon reviews refer to as the most practical book in the whole Secret series. By practicing gratitude, you become more resourceful with the things you do have, and resourcefulness is a key to success. Too many people complain they don't have enough stuff, but those who work with what they have often do the best work: from Edison's lab to NASA saving Apollo 13, limited resources mean nothing in resourceful hands, but you cannot be resourceful if you're not thankful for what you have.

One of the speakers gives us a story of a "gratitude rock": where he stores up his good feelings and the things he's thankful for in a little rock, and later got a friend of his to take up the same idea. This is based on the idea of "anchoring": where you link feelings up to a prop, movement, or image. Advertisers do this with products by heightening your emotions with creative images and sounds, then flashing the product when your emotions are heightened to a certain point. You can anchor any feeling to just about anything, so use this to your advantage.

The Secret recommends deeply imagining already having or doing thing thing you want or want to do, citing that the brain cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is deeply imagined. This is the idea of "mental rehearsal", recommended by Dr. Maxwell Maltz's concept of Psycho-Cybernetics: that the mind guides itself to stasis depending on the person's identity and goals, similar to how servo-mechanisms aligning themselves to target data. Mental rehearsal trains the mind to condition itself to associate good feelings and certainty to whatever it imagines. By mentally rehearsing more and more, we become more attached to our goals and mentally prepare for them once we do them. By doing this on a regular basis, we end up taking more actions in line with out eventual goal: again, once your mind is aligned with the goal, you will start taking automatic actions to get closer and closer to that goal.

Speaking of which, The Secret says that the things you want in your life will automatically start showing up if your thoughts are in line with the universe. NuclearFalcon says not to ask the universe: ask yourself. Once you've got the intention, trust in yourself to know what to do and then do it.

John Assaraf tells a story where he made a "dream board" of all of the things he wanted in life. Five years later, his son asked him after they moved and he showed him, only to find they had moved into the house pasted on the dream board. That's not the Law of Attraction: that's just planning. Again, it's what NuclearFalcon calls mushin, no mind, where everything becomes automatic.

In another example, Chicken Soup For The Soul's author Jack Canfield tells the story where he was down on his luck and got advice from business guru W. Clement Stone "Whatever the mind can conceive, it can achieve," which is probably the most accurate assessment of the message behind The Secret. Jack Canfield took action to eventually become a writing success, yet he thanks the Law of Attraction for finding the right publisher at the right time. NuclearFalcon and I cite the Reticular Activating System: the part of your brain responsible for filtering things out of your awareness. Again, your mindset and goals filter out the things you see: if your goal is to write like Canfield, you'll simply start noticing the publishing/writing resources you previously ignored. Joe Vitale says the secret to money is merely asking for it, just as Canfield did, but as we said, action must come first.

The Secret warns of focusing too much on scarcity because you will only find more of it. NuclearFalcon and I mention this is the Problem-Oriented Mindset: look for problems, you will find problems, but if you look for solutions, you will find solutions.

One big peculiarity we noticed was that only by the 50-minute mark, after fifty minutes of talking about how to attract material wealth, The Secret finally mentions that there is more to life than merely material goods. In retrospect, it doesn't really touch on this topic again.

Marie Diamond tells a story about a guy who arranged three paintings of women in his house via Fung Shui, but didn't have much of a love life. Marie told him to paint himself with three women to attract women, and sure enough, he got the women. Then, he wanted a wife, painted a picture with his future wife, and got said wife. To us, this is just more mental rehearsal: by being passionate enough to want to paint your goals, you'll eventually expend enough energy to pursue them.

James Arthur Ray and John Gray say you need to take care of yourself first in order to attract the kind of partner you want. We say be the person you would want to be attracted to. Think about it: would you want to be a with a mopey, depressed, clingy, psychology unstable partner, or a peppy, upbeat, independent, healthy partner? The answer is obvious, so be the person somebody would want to be with.

The Secret mentions that if you focus on the positives or negatives of another person, those feelings will penetrate the relationship. I say that this is yet another form of mental rehearsal: it's also how we can drive ourselves into paranoia or delusional about people who only know on the surface, yet don't really get to know. So, we end up making up things to the point where they became real to us. NuclearFalcon adds that by acting out these positive and negative emotions becomes a form of emotional contagion: that our strongest feelings will spread to others. In tough times, you might as well try to spread positive feelings to the people you wish to connect with. After all, the only alternative is to continue spreading negativity, which will eventually destroy the relationship, so use this as a force for good.

In regards to health, The Secret proposes that all diseases are created in the mind via the Placebo affect, and that all disease is merely a stress reaction. Immediately, I will ask, "What about viruses, parasites, and bacteria?!" NuclearFalcon has this one grain of truth: that stress and toxic emotions weaken the immune system, making it more susceptible to disease.

Morris E. Goodman was a pilot who crashed his plane, but once he was conscious and only able to move his eyelids, he made it a goal to walk by Christmas. As a result, he exercised muscle by muscle until he could walk. I was able to spot the intention bit when Goodman stated his goal, and NuclearFalcon was able to spot the action through Goodman's exercise. This story illustrates that core message cited earlier: intention + action + right mindset = results.

Moving on to social issues, The Secret cites that the things we do to prevent world problems only make them worse since we're using negativity to stop negativity: the adage that what we resist, persists. Rather, this is just the vicious cycle: the actions we take to stop something often just make something worse. Instead, they recommend focusing on the things you do want. Now this is something we agreed with: it's the Solution-Oriented Mindset. If you look for solutions, you will find solutions.

The Secret says that the universe is abundant and able to provide for everyone, but we say living in accordance to the mindset The Secret propagates merely comes from a place of resourcefulness. NuclearFalcon says the universe doesn't provide for you: you provide for you based on the universe, and you cannot skirt responsibility. The Secret says we're all made of energy, but energy doesn't have a mindset. Plus, it ignores the deeper structure of matter that The Secret ignores.

Under the Law of Attraction and the idea of manifesting our desires, we're all God incarnate. Being religious folks, NuclearFalcon and I say that while we're made in God's image, only God creates, and we act along God's will. It's not that we create everything from scratch, but God made a plentiful universe. To quote Jesus in Matthew 24-34, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

And besides, given the laws of the universe, you have to be realistic: how plentiful will the universe be after the heat death? (Or better yet, the Big Crunch: there's a great example of abundance when the entire universe is in one place.)

The speakers of The Secret mention how they used the Law of Attraction to reverse their negative pasts, and that your dreams are the key to a brighter future. Once again, NuclearFalcon cites they're missing the second half of this: that they took action, adding, "Perhaps they were in such a state of mushin that they forgot."

The Secret ends by saying that psychology is the final frontier: that the answers do not lie in the stars, but in the mind. While I agree, I would prefer if it was actually grounded in legit neuroscience and more explicit philosophy. NuclearFalcon says although all this may seem trippy, a good foundation can make sense of all of it.

The epilogue asks, "What will you do in this moment now?" NuclearFalcon replies, "Whatever I decide."

NuclearFalcon's Final Thoughts: Although they got the first half of their ideas right, they keep forgetting to tell people to take action. It all seems like a mix of Confirmation Bias, the Reticular Activating System, and unclear descriptions of mushin, zanshin, and Buddhist/Taoist practices. I personally think people would have an easier time understanding these ideas by studying zen than The Secret. The simplicity of its lesson can be summed up in this story: the Buddha was asked to give a profound sermon. When he got up in front of the audience, he said nothing: he pulled out a flower and presented it to the audience. Somebody in the audience smiled, and the Buddha smiled back and let him know, "You got it." You don't have to make a one-hour-thirty-minute documentary about such a simple idea, even though they made The Secret and probably made tons of money off of it. Perhaps they concealed the message on purpose?

Spaztique's Final Thoughts: This is about as much as we can pan for ideas in this self-help/New Age phenomenon: underneath the mound of dubious science and questionable positivity, there are many ideas that can be used for good. After all, there is a reason that 0% of people who don't play the lottery don't win the lottery, and that 100% of all lottery winners were lottery players: your thoughts create your actions and your actions create your life. Though, like NuclearFalcon, I believe there are better sources for this kind of knowledge: my library has a giant list of books I can highly recommend over The Secret. Hell, there are better books on the Law of Attraction than The Secret, which are more grounded in the action part. As I said before, the message can be summed up in this sentence: intention + action + mindset = results. A wish only gives you the direction, but it is action that makes it real.