I’ve said many a time before that I am NOT a believer in “the secret”. In fact, I think in many ways, the permeation of the idea of the secret, as many people believe it, is detrimental to society as a whole.
Got your attention?
The idea of “the secret”, that just by focusing on your goals, putting up a dream board, and sending out positive energy to the universe, you can “attract” the things you want into your life, is false, and dangerous. It’s an idea that’s dangerous kind of like how a gun is dangerous… it’s dangerous when used in the wrong way.
If you need any proof of my conjecture, all you need to do is ask anyone you know who’s become wildly successful by their own definition, and ask them how they “attracted” their success. Their answer will almost always be along the lines of:
“Attract it? I worked my ass off, that’s how I attracted it!”
They achieved something not by “thinking” but by ACTING.
Everyone intelligent knows that, we don’t need another TAKE ACTION rant here (if you haven’t come to that understanding yet, you will soon).
But allow me to not simply shoot down this popular meme without some explanation, without contributing something important to this school of thought.
Because I believe that the guy who put up the dreamboard with the house on it REALLY DID get that house however many years later. It’s HOW that counts…
Here’s how it works…
Tell me if you’ve ever had this happen to you…
You drive to work (or to where ever) each day, and on the way, you pass lots of cars.
You don’t notice any in particular, except the occasional Ferrari, but for the most part, they’re all just cars.
One day you start thinking “I quite like the Toyota Prius, I think I’m going to start researching them”…
On your next day’s drive to work, you notice a couple of Prius’ on the road and you admire how nice they look. You realize there is more of them around than you thought.
Finally you pull the trigger and buy a Prius. Needless to say, the new car is at the forefront of your mind on your first day driving to work in the new machine!
Over your next week of driving to work, you notice LOTS of Prius… many more than you ever have before. Suddenly it’s like everyone’s got one! You give a little grin to the guy in the Prius next to you at the lights as you ponder about what it is that caused so many Prius to spring up right after you bought one…
Has that ever happened to you? Not just with a car but anything, an outfit, a cell phone…
Now let me ask you a question…
Did you ATTRACT those new Prius into your life? Did you magically bring them into your life by sending out thought vibrations?
I don’t think you did.
I think this phenomenon is the result of something called a Reticular Activating System.
Disclaimer: I first read about Reticular Activating Systems about 6 years ago in Tony Robbins second book Awaken The Giant Within.
In short, RAS is a biological system, a mechanism within our brain left with us through our evolution thanks to it’s helpfulness to our survival, that makes our brains hyper sensitive to the appearance of circumstances or things with which we are familiar.
In other words, RAS makes sure that if you’ve been thinking about Toyota Prius’s for a while, you’re going to be hyper sensitive to the appearance of Toyota Prius’ in your environment.
If you’re still skeptical, take this quick experiment, again straight out of “Awaken The Giant Within”
Look around the room right now, where ever you’re sitting, and try to find as much of the colour BROWN as you can…
Spot all the BROWN everywhere it is… look hard and in depth for BROWN, notice all the BROWN in places you never saw BROWN before… BROWN BROWN BROWN BROWN… keep doing this for about 20 seconds.
NOW STOP!
I’ve got a question for you?
How much GREEN did you see?
Not much right? But look around the room again and check how much GREEN there is that you totally missed because you were so focused on BROWN.
In fact, I bet you were so focused on BROWN that you saw things that were dark red, maroon, or beige and CALLED THEM BROWN ANYWAY!
Sure you did 😉
Now let me ask you this…
Did you ATTRACT all that BROWN into your life? After all if before the experiment I’d asked you to name everything around you that’s brown, you might have only named a couple of things… but after you FOCUSED on it, you could have named a bunch?
NO, you didn’t “attract” it… your focus on it just made you hyper sensitive to it’s every occurence in your environment!
So how did the guy in the movie ATTRACT the house?
The same way.
He put it up on his dream board and looked it every day, that’s the START.
Obviously he started to realize that to have that house he was going to need a good chunk of money.
Then he realized to have a good chunk of money he was going to need a business or a high paying job to afford it.
So suddenly, he becamse hyper sensitive to any opportunity to start a business or get a high paying job that appeared in his environment… Maybe he even took some actions to MAKE those circumstances appear in his environment…
He came across an opportunity and he started a business… Did he ATTRACT the opportunity? No, he noticed it because he was focusing on business opportunities.
Along the way he started to meet people who had houses just like the one he wanted… Did he ATTRACT these people? No, he noticed them and put himself around them because they matched the concept he already had in his head… people with THAT house…
Is it starting to make sense?
Phew, alright, now we’ve got that out of the way, we can all get back to work and start bringing our dreams into reality by setting plans and taking relentless action towards achieving them.
This is a great post! I really enjoyed reading it. It is so true that no one ever gets what they dream for by simply staring at a picture everyday and just believing that they will get it. They need action. Staring at that picture everyday simply provides the motivation to make sure that you do what’s necessary to achieve that goal.
I love the Tony Robbins stuff. I’ve been getting in to it more and more everyday. It’s especially cool now that he’s talking to people like Frank Kern and John Reese and really relating the concepts to internet marketing.
Thanks for the great post!
Matt
Nice post, Andrew. You’re absolutely right about the importance of taking action. However, you’ve taken a stance on “The Secret” that I think many people did because the movie completely oversimplified the Law of Attraction… and that, I believe, was one of the big flaws in the movie The Secret. It left out the need to action, which is necessary in many instances to complete the process. What you focus on does expand, but, if you try to attract a car and when you see the one you want for sale you don’t take action to purchase it… well, then you won’t have it. The things we attract don’t always show up on the time frame or in the manner that we want them to. Plain and simple. Sometimes you will have things flow to you with no action, but very often you will need to DO something once these things show up in your life. The Law of Attraction often works by presenting you with opportunities – it’s up to you to take advantage of them.
Fantastic post, Andrew. I do believe that when we put our thoughts and goals into action, we will attract positive outcome. Thanks for sharing.
Yeah, the “think about it enough and the space-time continuum will warp itself your way” stuff is ridiculous. I see things like “dream boards” as tools for creating and environment that opens your mind to greater possibilities so that you’ll recognize more opportunities and be more motivated to follow through on them.
I see SO MANY young people who have no vision for their future. They’re running on auto-pilot and will end up no better off than their parents were (or maybe worse) because there’s not much in their environment to inspire them to believe that anything better is possible.
Kids who grow up in an environment that shows them more possibilities tend to go farther.
The secret is to create a more inspiring environment for yourself than the one life handed you, and then to act on what it shows you.
I agree with you 100%.
There have been many times when I said “this is what I want.” I didn’t attract them. I endlessly researched what I wanted. Look at it every day. Made sure the financial decisions I made would allow me to get what I wanted and I started formulating plots and schemes to get it quicker. I became sensitive to what things I could be doing to get things.
The same way I decided “I am going to move to New York City and become a DJ for a living.” I did it with NO savings and I can happily say I’ve been doing it for over a year now by looking out for more chances to DJ and spread my name. I think you’re on the ball with RAS and now I really need to tear through that Tony Robbins book.
Thanks!