The Secret

Such a great book I am planning on getting several for Christmas gifts - I just finished reading it and am already seeing small results from changing the way I channel thoughts and feelings - I am looking for more changes in near and distant future as I re-read this book over and over!!

I Practice the principles in "The Secret" and can tell you that they truly are working in my life!
In a nutshell, this book is a hands - on practical and easy to read approach to the principles of success, specifically the "law of attraction".

By the using the principles discussed in this book, I was able to re-gain my health, move away from the corporate world, start a business from home and re-ignite my love for music, my family and friends all while earning a Executive level income! To sum it up, the law of attraction says "You attract into your life the people, things and circumstances that are in alignment with your dominant belief and expectation."

In short: you don't get what you want. You get what you think most about which sends off that vibration. Biblically put- you reap what you sow!

Whether you realize it or not or whether you learn this principle, you are ALREADY AND ALWAYS putting it into practice- you do it unconsciously! Whatever your current results are in your life today are a reflection of what you're attracting and have been attracting for some time.

So, in order to change your circumstances, you must learn to re-program your mind and your thoughts to create a different life! You need to do this DELIBERATELY,not unconsciously. Learning how to "attract with a deliberate attitude", will enable you to attract more of what you want in your life and less of what you don't want.
Buy it. You'll be thrilled you did. If you have it - READ IT AGAIN!

Too much of the same things, what is the secret about it? too much focus on the material life which most of the time could cause even more stress in the long run.

The worst book on personal development I have ever read. (being a coach and reading 80 books a year, winning the prize as the worst book was not easy).
The metaphorical message of the book is right: change your thinking and you change your life, embracing the future you want. But the author goes way beyond that, declaring that the universe will conspire with your positive thoughts and make things happen for you. She even tells you that if you are receiving bills to pay, it's because of your negative thinking: think positive, and you will start receiving cheques!! (well, that's convenient!!)
so, although the principe is right, the book goes way too far, thus deluding people into thinking that just thinking hard about something will bring change. thought without action is just philosophical debate: actions in accordance to our thinking is what shapes our future. No matter how you pray, at the end of the month you will receive your elecricity bills!

The book and the video are the two sides of the same coin and I would advise you to follow the one or the other. I will suggest though that you concentrate on the video because the commentary between the quotations are nothing but the proof that some people need a lot more explanations and a lot of paraphrase to understand the basic meaning. Are we all without limits? And that is going to be my very first remark. From my long experience I know that some people are physically handicapped, or mentally handicapped, or psychologically handicapped, or with many hurdles on their road and around them. You should see the state of some of those children born to deep alcoholics or drug addicts. Or what about children with a severe genetic disparagement? And I refuse to say they are just disabled, or differently-abled. They are handicapped by being materialistically in their very body or mind at a disadvantage that will prevent them from doing what most people around them will be able to do. If the mind is intact, and working on positive thinking is the only way for these people, then they can compensate their physical limitations with their spiritual achievements. But you can't run in the standard Olympics without legs just like a bicycle will not run without wheels. And this time, in most of these situations, one will not be able to excel, full stop and period, and if one can excel in one particular field in which he is not or is less limited, it won't be without the help of other people around them. You cannot think positive if there is no signs along that road. The second remark is positive. Apart from these special cases, everyone, absolutely everyone can excel somewhere and that excellence can only be reached if it is targeted, looked for and built. Positive thinking, education, understanding that the pleasure of such achievements is in the goal when reached and not in the effort you have to accomplish, even if for those who will reach the highest points this very effort is a pleasure, the pleasure of the effort itself. A runner has to train day in and day out and that is never, absolutely never a plain entertaining phase of relaxation and abandon. Physical pleasure requires sweat and heart speed. But if one does not set their minds on the aim they are going to strive towards, they will never reach it. Success is enormously in the mind, in the conscious and subconscious motivation of the candidate. Yet it is absolutely false to say that man has no limits. Humanity, and every member of it, has always been limited historically and no one could think plasma physics or quantum computers under Julius Caesar. Each historical period produces its possible fields of investigation that are limited because in a later historical period those fields of investigation will always be vaster, larger, deeper, more intense. Or then the author is speaking metaphorically of man as the representative of humanity in its cosmic history. But that is not helping any individual who is striving to achieve something in his own life. Icarus did try to fly but wax wings were kind of primitive. Then my third and last remark will be a question: why only ONE percent of humanity controls NINETY-SIX percent of wealth? If this is a fact, and it is, it is the proof that all men are not equal in facts but only in rights, and that is so by our collective decision to say so. But one thing is sure: thinking negatively is never good. Think of McCain and Palin and their negative campaigning. Think of all the anarchists of the world who have never achieved the slightest beginning of their dream which is only a negative picture of the world the way it is. If you criticize the world systematically, then your dream becomes the inverted image of this world, hence a negative picture of reality, and that will never guide or inspire people into desiring such a future. When I don't like something I do not ask for the reverse. I wonder what the situation is, what the possibilities are and if another solution is possible and which one. Then I will think positively along that objective, or rather as objective as possible, line, but to demand black because what I don't like is white, or to require red because what I don't like is blue is primitive negative thinking. That kind of realism and collective striving is absent from this book or video and that is a shame because they forget attraction holds the world and the cosmos up because it is always counterbalanced by repulsion. Otherwise the moon would have fallen onto the earth a long very long time ago, even if this repulsion is itself the product of attractions that are standing abreast and against the attraction of the earth. The apple did not fall as long as the stem was strong enough and the apple light enough for the stem not to break. The author of this book or video seems to have forgotten that the cosmos is a complex system of opposed spheres and when a weak point appears, then a catastrophe develops in that weak point, and the earth is doomed sooner or later in cosmic time to disappear, just like the sun which will one day have burned all itself fuel.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines