The Secret

Surely you’ve heard of it. The film was released in 2006, followed by the book shortly after. After being featured on Oprah, the book nestled into a 146-week long stint on the New York Times Best Seller list. That’s pretty impressive for a self-help book.

If you haven’t heard of it, they offer the film on Netflix. It’s…well, debatable. In a nutshell, author Rhonda Byrne attributes the occurrences of your life, goals, and general direction to the law of attraction. The law of attraction is said to work by attracting into a person’s life experiences, situations, events, and people that ‘match’ the frequency of the person’s thoughts and feelings. Therefore, positive thinking and feeling positive can create life-changing results such as increased wealth, health, and happiness. (Wikipedia, 2011)

Ronii and I got into a pretty serious conversation about this one day while we were “working.” We teetered back and forth on the subject, but ultimately came to agreement on one thing: While we both agree that positivity breeds positivity, to claim that simply thinking positively will bring butterflies and rainbows into your life is a bit far-fetched.

Or is it?

Ronii says that bad things happen in 3’s. I say they happen when they want, and the general pattern (for me anyways) is that they kind of come crashing down all at once and squash any last inkling of “positivity” you may have for like two weeks. (She also calls me cynical-I don’t know where she gets this stuff!) 

But it never lasts; the bad stuff. Life is so multi-dimensional that even if things are miserable in many aspects of life (like work, family, relationships, or money) you still have it pretty good. You have air in your lungs, food readily available, clean drinking water, and clothing. If you live here in SC, you are drenched in sunshine most of the year with beautiful sunsets and the Atlantic nearby. This is me thinking positively. Granted, your situation may be pretty bad if all you have to be positive about it air, water, and clothes-but when I get all strung out and have convinced myself the world is against me and everything I want to do and be, the only way it’s going to get better is to, well, be positive. I still think it’s a hefty cliché but I’m going to try it out. 

What do you think? Will thinking positively change my life for the better? Do you subscribe to the theory of The Secret? 

~Coco