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Your video broke the layout of this page...

And yes, The Secret is dumb.

I love the Chaser's War on Everything, especially their Trojan Horse stunt.

I hadn't heard of "the secret" before, I can see why people would want to believe :)

Great bit on it.

In my opinion anything like that "The Secret" /"Law of Attraction" is common sense exaggerated, and marketed to a bunch of people who are desperate to find meaning to their lives and become successful without having to really go out and actually do something.

Great video.

Thanks

@davidhayes
Thanks, fixed.

@silvertje
Hah, I'd seen the Trojan skit — damn funny, but didn't remember that was this show.

@Ozone42
No, I hadn't heard about this in a while either despite it's apparent success.

@cooper
Good point about the exaggeration. Take something that isn't improbable (positive thinking helps you achieve things) and just tweak the parameters a bit.

Yeah, I've heard of "The Secret" before and believe it or not, I know people that would put stock in it. The sad thing about it this is that people want shortcuts to finding what they want.

Makes you realize that there are a lot of sad desperate people out there.

I love Chasers War, I watch it almost every week here. It's just priceless some of the things they do.

Go the Chaser!

And yeah, "The Secret" is actually just old fashioned magical thinking re-branded for the 21st century. Humans are pretty much just predisposed to this sort of stuff; hell, even my fish is prone to it.

The real secret of The Secret is getting people to pay big money for an idea that's been kicking around for pretty much the whole of human history.

What you think is what you get. Think it and it shows up more often than not. That's my experience.

I love Slate's coverage on this: Emily Yoffe wrote a tongue in cheek piece on what happened after she followed The Secret for two months, and there's this lovely one about Oprah endorsing the book.

Dear Oprah,

Not too long ago, one of your viewers—a woman named Kim—wrote you to announce that she had decided to halt her breast-cancer treatments and heal herself with her mind. Kim had just seen your two shows dedicated to The Secret, the self-help phenomenon that says we shape the world with our thoughts, and she was inspired to bet her life on it.

Fantastic stuff, this Secret thing.

Basically it is positive thinking which in some ways does work, but not to the extent that "The Secret" proclaims. You don't visualize a 6 digit bank account, sit back and it just appears although I'm sure that's how 95% of us work. The video was great though. However, although it is a parity on The Secret, I wouldn't let the value of positive thinking seem any less now than it was before. Just don't go off doing crazy things.

As for the example Shadowsun has shown with Oprah, no doubt the Secret worked for the cancer patient and failed for 1,000 others that nobody talks about.

I'm with Scrivs on that one... to me, positive thinking is like the placebo effect, both have VERY good effects but it depends on where it's aimed.

Take their example of staring at a material item like an iPod... I can stare at it for YEARS and positively think about and chances are, it'll still just rot on the shelves until I go buy it...

On the other hand, studies have shown that positive thinking DOES in fact HELP in areas like cancer treatment etc. as a positive attitude keeps you lively and healthier than dragging your knuckles around WAITING to die.

I lost interest in "the Secret" back when they sent me an excerpt from the book telling me to IMAGINE my wallet overflowing with money and it would happen. I've imagined myself a millionaire for a long time and guess what... I'm STILL waiting!

I think this whole "secret" is all a matter of setting goals.

You want something, you get it. It's the in between steps that matter. In the video the kid looking at the bike was undoubtedly talking about it all the time, everyone knew he wanted it, someone got it for him. Of course that doesn't apply as easily to adults. But as an adult you want something, you set a goal, you find the money or time, and you get it done.

The secret is that there isn't a secret. Perhaps "believe in yourself," or "strive for your dreams," would be a better description of what's really going on.

The book and video are pure bollocks though.

Hey, RightOn:

Not to be a downer (honest!), but have you seen this?

That's the point Ozone... people are shelling out a LOT of money for all the "supplies" needed to find out the secret when it's all COMPLETE COMMON SENSE!

The Secret to getting rich... fill a book full of nonsense and sell it to all the morons on earth... BLAM! Instant millions!

cechols, I didn't say a positive attitude can cure cancer, I said that it helps if you couple it with the medicines that they normally give you. You can study it all you want, and honestly it's all really subjective.

I'm going on personal experience that it doesn't hurt to be positive during hard times. If you get cancer and fight it and have the will and the drive to push and push, what's the WORST that can happen... you die. If you drag around moping all the time, what's the WORST that can happen... YOU DIE.

I'd much rather go out trying than just toss in the towel and drag out my agony.

To throw in another dimension you see it in sports all the time. Momentum they call it, but when teams start to come back you always hear them say they never stopped believing or that they knew they were going to win. There has to be something to guide you to that success and The Secret takes that idea and runs with it in a totally wrong direction making people think that just thinking will get you what you want.

Moping around about your job won't get you a better one.

In the video the kid looking at the bike was undoubtedly talking about it all the time, everyone knew he wanted it, someone got it for him.

I agree, and with Scrivs & RightOn as well in that positive thinking works and can be explained in a rational manner similar to what you're saying Ozone, or RightOn's mention of the placebo effect. But then this book/film claims with absolute certainty that positive thoughts themselves physically alter the (external) universe.

The first 20 minutes of the documentary are on YouTube. It's mostly interviews similar to those shown in the video above.

I saw the video the whole way though and Scrivs is right - it's all about the power of positive thinking - which I agree with, to an extent. If you're a miserable person, inclined to see the negative in everything, then people won't be inclined to give you a chance to do something different. But if you're positive, you'll see small opportunities and you'll tend to act on them - and actions are what get results, ultimately.

The thing about optimism especially false optimism is that sometimes it can get you killed. No doubt that you got to have the will to push forward to reach your goals, but pushing forward trying to reach for what you want is different from blindly walking into a minefield thinking you're going to get out of it alive because you really want to get to the other side.

In retrospect, I live in a constant state of melancholy. I can't help but give you 20 reasons how something can go wrong. But because I've lived that kind of life, I can also give you 20 solutions to the things that can go wrong. If you really got the will power to see it through, then knowing that things can go wrong is just one of the steps of reaching your goals, you then need to find the solutions and act on them.

"The Secret" just bypasses Murphy's law altogether. It plants in people the idea that just because you have the will to want something, it'll come to you without any problems. Personally, I don't like optimism without the consideration of what's out there. It sickens me altogether.

i've got the secret book from a few months ago.

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i haven't touched it yet. don't ask me why.

By reading the book anybody can get anything they want.. isn't that a bit absurd?

For a time, my mother bought into the whole Christian televangelist thing, and from what I can tell, "The Secret" is pretty well a written form of that. In televangelism, one of the ideas I frequently heard was "you have what you say." The concept was basically a pretty extreme view on a couple of Bible verses. It was widely-encompassing, too, because not only did these crackpots talk about getting what you say and think about in terms of emotional issues, but also the physical, like in the clip shown on Chasers.

Outside of this being just a plain dumb idea, it can be really annoying to live around it. I remember coming home from work or school, saying something like, "Today sucks," and having my mother go, "Stop that! You'll have what you say!" That attitude would, in turn, make my day worse, which I guess, in that case, proves the theory true. :P

There's no doubt that optimism/pessimism, focus and a plethora of other things can contribute to one's achievements in life. However, just thinking about things, or saying things, does not make them true. That only works if you're Dorothy, clicking your red heels and saying, "There's no place like home."