#7: The Secret, Rhonda Byrne

I feel conflicted about The Secret...on the one hand, I knew what I was getting myself into (fantastical self-help mumbo jumbo) but picked it up anyway and on the other, I'm kinda thinking Rhonda Byrne might be onto something. I have no doubt that there's some validity to the ideas within – it may have already worked for me – but at times, I think The Secret just takes it too far.

The book has been around for a couple of years – it even had a little cameo in the first Sex and the City movie – but I think I was inspired to pick it up after watching the first episode (and only the first episode) of E!'s Pretty Wild. The mother in that show homeschools her three teenage girls and she bases the curriculum off the teachings of The Secret movie version. The Secret is all about using positive thinking and visualization to bring the things you want to you – but ironically, in the reality show, middle daughter Alexis Neiers has misdirected the Universe and gotten herself six months in jail for being linked to a Hollywood burglary ring. I guess I just became a little curious (and a little scared) by the whole thing, by the idea of substituting math and English for a New Age philosophy and having it sort-of work.

The basic premise of The Secret is that you need to figure out what you really want in life, in all areas of your life, and then you use the Creative Process to ask, believe, and receive – and if you do this properly, the Universe will deliver all of it. The key is that you have to go beyond wishing – you have to be completely in tune with those desires and act like you've already received, since the Universe is proposed to be a type of mirror that reflects back to you whatever you're putting out. After that, you don't have to worry about how it's all going to happen – you're just supposed to believe and let the Universe work out the details.

Writing that, it sounds a little ridiculous. I think my biggest issue with The Secret is that it ignores the work and actions that have to take place for anything to happen, much less to achieve success. I mean, I can visualize a best-selling novel all day – I can believe it with every fiber of my being – but I can't attract those 80,000 words. Maybe I can attract an agent and a good review from Michiko Kakutani and an appearance on Oprah, but I can't attract the creation of a book – I will actually have to sit down every day and write it and there's no magical formula for that.

The Secret definitely delves into the ridiculous, so much so that I can't list it all. For example, the book suggests that you should be able to cure your own illnesses – because if you have a disease and you talk about it too much, you will have actually caused more diseased cells to grow. If you're fat, it's because you allowed fat thoughts into your mind – not because you gorged yourself on McDonalds. (Really, I'm not making this up. From page 59: “The most common thought that people hold, and I held it too, is that food was responsible for my weight gain. That is a belief that does not serve you, and in my mind now it is complete balderdash! Food is not responsible for putting on weight.”) For all the talk about positive thinking, there's actually a lot of blame in this book – it’s like, if you die of cancer, you obviously failed to send out the right signal. And what kind of a message is that?

But, on the other hand, I can't deny that positive thinking is a good thing. Getting clear about your goals, visualizing them, believing that they're going to happen – surely that can only help you to get closer to what you want. And even if you don't get there, you've no doubt had a better journey along the road of life because you believed happy thoughts, feeling sure that good things were on their way.

I also must confess that it's maybe already worked for me. The backstory is that my boyfriend broke up with me last August - it was very sudden, out-of-the-blue, and then he just disappeared without another word. I got two short emails at Christmas, but that was it in the space of 8 months. But then the morning after I started reading The Secret? An email. And another few emails since...with some talk on his part of reconciliation. Now, I think you could argue that this is all total coincidence (and the real secret is to run the other direction from the spineless jerk), but it's still weird.

So maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. I think the real secret of The Secret is to perhaps just absorb the worthwhile parts and ignore the looney-tunes bits, and through it all, put a smile on your face.