When you were a child, did you ever wish for anything, wish REALLY hard? Did you get it? If not, you must not have been wishing clearly enough. According to “The Secret” and its, dare we say, disciples, if you imagine it will come. Oprah did her own show on the topic, exclaiming, “I've been talking about this for so many years on my show, I just never called it The Secret!” And if Oprah's been talking about it, then you know it's gospel.
Now, The Secret has made its way into the NY Times bestseller list and is creating a buzz here, if you count a NY Times Styles article and the NY Post's coverage. In fact, the Post quotes a Diane Von Furstenburg staffer, “It made sense to us because we all have seen how Diane achieved things using similar principles. Diane is the type of person that if she wants it, it will happen."
The real secret is in the marketing. The book and DVD draw on well known historical figures from Aristotle to Winston Churchill, in a pseudo-documentary. The Secret proposes that the law of attraction is an idea that has been hidden from the public throughout history. If you have yet to buy the book, the DVD or the streaming video, Gothamist will throw you a freebie…
If you think about what you want, and really visualize it, you will get it eventually.
Ok, we’re not as poetic as Secret teller Rhonda Byrne, but that’s the gist of it. The film even shows a boy focusing on the cut out picture of a new bike – a bike he eventually receives. Critics claim it downplays the importance of actual work. Schools of positive thinking, however, are not new. The Secret is very similar to The Power of Positive Thinking, for one. Gothamist doesn’t know if this whole “law of attraction” thing really holds any water, but we’ll be cutting out pictures of stacks of money just in case.
Have you heard of The Secret? If not, see Wikipedia for more on “the Secret”. We're trying it the next time we're waiting for an F train.
