Hood River, Oregon
The Secret‘ is a movie that claims to reveal the key to health, wealth, and happiness. ‘By applying the knowledge of The Secret, modern day teachers bring to light compelling stories of eradicating disease, acquiring massive wealth, overcoming obstacles, and achieving what many would regard as impossible.’
The movie starts with all kinds of impressive dynamic video and audio effects, images of great historical leaders and thinkers, and dramatic shots of scrolls being hidden and buried and fought over. After all the hype, the rest of the movie was almost bound to be a disappointment. And it was. It’s a shame that an important concept was drowned out in rather silly special effects.
And the secret is not so secret – it can be found in almost any New Age/spiritual/meditation kind of book: we attract whatever it is we focus on.
This can be used to great benefit if we focus on the right things. If you want your business to succeed, it obviously makes sense to focus on the business.
The tricky downside is that a lot of people focus on what they are trying to avoid – being a victim of crime, bad relationships, failure. The law of attraction still applies, even though the focus is a negative one, and so they end up attracting the very thing they most want to avoid.
Some people use this concept very consciously, putting out questions and requests to the universe through meditation and visualisation. Me, I just muddle along, knowing where I’m going but not always how I’ll get there, and through a combination of positive thinking and plain old-fashioned hard work I tend to succeed – not always in the way that I expected but it always seems to turn out for the best.
It can get quite spooky, when I realise that I’ve received exactly what I needed, almost before I knew I needed it. I constantly remind myself to be careful what I wish for.
[Photo: wishing to get my fitness back, but working hard on it too. Mountain-biking along the De Schutes River yesterday]
The greatest mistake you can make is to be continually fearing you will make one. (Elbert Hubbard)