First, let me write that I am a firm believer in the power of visualization. I’ve read that it can have effects on your body and I believe it can help people to mentally prepare themselves to achieve their goals.
However, there is a tired ages old recycled idea going around now under a new coat of paint, a new name, called “The Secret”.
In a nutshell, it is the idea that your thoughts create your reality, literally. That is, your thoughts will act directly on reality. If you believe in a red bicycle being yours hard enough, it will appear in your life.
I guess I can’t be too critical, because when I was a teenager I was heavily into Jane Robert’s “Seth” series of books, which pretty much said the same thing. If you believe something, it will be so.
I am disgusted with the hucksters for recycling this very old bogus idea and exploiting people with it. It is right up there the no money down real estate scams and people who have no other talents selling their services as personal development coaches.
I am also disgusted with otherwise intelligent people ignoring their intelligence so they can indulge themselves by believing what they want to hear.
A few months back I read a web board run by a self improvement expert who went full hilt on “The Secrect”, “intention manifestation”, and “the law of attraction”. Before I quit the site I read an amusing post by a young disgruntled 20 something student.
He complained that he bought a copy of the movie “The Secrect”, far too many ancillary books on the subject, and threw himself into visualizing what he wanted for several months only to get no results ( surprise! ). He still had trouble paying his rent, his grades sucked, he put on weight, and he still did not have a girlfriend.
The self improvement expert who owned the forum quickly chimed in on the thread informing the student that he had made a terrible mistake in misinterpreting “The Secrect”. The self improvement expert said that visualizations and changing your beliefs was not enough. A person also had to do concrete work toward achieving his/her goals. You know, good old fashioned efforts like getting a job, studying, working out and making an effort to meet people.
Work? Effort?
There used to be a fad diet called “The Grapefruit Diet”. By eating lots of grapefruit you would get some magical chemical which would help you lose fat. When I was a teenager I walked into a GNC in my local mall and bought a bottle of grapefruit pills. The pills came with a little booklet. In the booklet was a two week menu of reasonable foods, in reasonable portions. The booklet stated that in order to maximize the results of the grapefruit pills that the consumer should use the pills with the diet in the booklet and do regular exercise.
I see “The Secret” as being a bottle of grapefruit pills.