What would you do if a genie offered to grant you three wishes? What if you didn't even have to wish for more wishes, because you could have infinite wishes?
That's what The Secret is telling You that You have. The Universe is the genie and You can have anything from the Universe that You want. Provided you think it, feel it, live it, believe it, and are grateful to have it. Before you even really have it.
There. I've just told you what The Secret is and you didn't have to read this book or see the DVD it's based on. You didn't even have to watch the Oprah shows that have been on discussing The Secret. And I did it in much fewer words than Rhonda Byrne and her friends have used.
The 'theory' behind The Secret is that your thoughts and emotions are emitting energy on a frequency out into the Universe and the Universe is resonating in response to that frequency and giving you back things on that frequency. So if you feel wealthy, the Universe will bring you wealth. If you feel sick, the Universe will bring you sickness. She calls this the 'law of attraction' or sometimes the 'law of love' and also says that it's 'magnetic' and that 'like attracts like'.
Apparently no one ever told her that the law of magnetism is that like repels and opposites attract. So if the Universe is operating on the law of magnetism, then if you think and feel you're sick, you should be attracting health and wellness to you.
What's kind of sad is that she has some people with doctorates and a quantum physicist backing her up on these ideas. I could give you a list of all the people quoted in this book, but their names meant absolutely nothing to me. One is the author of Chicken Soup for the Soul, and two helped write spinoff Chicken Soups. I've never read any of them. Is there a Cream of Potato Soup for the Soul for us vegetarians?
Another author is the Men are From Mars and Women are From Venus guy. I never read that either.
As you can tell, I don't normally read books like The Secret. I watched the first Oprah show about it and was a bit intrigued. The local libraries didn't have the DVD, but one was getting in this book. So I put myself on the waiting list for it.
It's a smallish little book. It costs $23.95 anyway though, probably because of the hard cover and glossy pages. It's only 198 pages and those not filled with much text.
The book quotes a lot of people: most living, some dead. They have titles like 'personal coach', 'metaphysician', and 'moneymaking expert'. Byrne calls them collectively teachers and avatars. In between the quotes, Byrne tries to present her points.
I didn't find the text terribly coherent. Truthfully, I didn't find the Oprah show I watched very coherent either. There are chapters that divide the text into subjects, but I still didn't find it terribly organized. There are chapters like 'The Secret to Money' and 'The Secret to Relationships', which sound understandable enough. But then there's 'The Secret to You'. What the heck is that supposed to be?
It's all very repetitive and there are 'Secret Summaries' which outline at the end of the chapter what that chapter was supposedly about. If you compiled all the 'Secret Summaries' and weeded out the duplicates, you wouldn't have many left.
Byrne talks directly to You, using the capital You. I find it a bit offputting. That and referring to people as teachers and avatars. Are moneymaking experts really gods incarnate?
There are anecdotes about how she lost postpartum weight by thinking herself thin and reversing her aging vision loss. And stories of other people. One guy thought of the exact feather he wanted to prove to himself that The Secret worked, and one day he found that exact feather lying on the ground.
At the end are pages and pages of biographies of the people quoted. Most of them end with a plug for the person's website. Not everyone got a bio, however. None for Einstein, or Buddha, or Martin Luther King.
So What Do I Think?
There are a few ideas in here that are probably good, but they're not new. The Secret pretty much boils down to 'think positive'. Which has been proven to work, like with the placebo effect and optimistic people living longer.
I was expecting a more coherent book that explained what The Secret was, gave examples of it working, and then outlined methods to get it to work in your own life. It sort of tried to do that, but with all the quotes from lots of different people, it really interrupted the flow.
As a book, it's poorly written. As science, it's pseudo-science at best. As spirituality? I don't really have enough experience to judge.
Do I Believe in The Secret?
I don't know. Can I believe in it enough to get it to work? I don't know.
Ask me again when I've lost significant weight and make a decent living writing.
And my third wish?
Write 100 reviews this month for the contest.
Check back April 1st to see if I've done it!
(According to The Secret, I should rewrite that last line. So here's how it should go: Check back April 1st and read all 100 of my March reviews.)
Details
ISBNs 1582701709 and 9781582701707. Oddly, the library has decided to classify this book as Teen and has shelved it with the Young Adult books. I can't figure out why.
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