Recently, someone suggested that I watch the self-help documentary “The Secret.” I didn’t know anything about it, hadn’t heard anything about it on tv, hadn’t read the book while browsing through the books in Costco. All this person told me was, “It’s amazing. It’ll change your life.” That was about two or three months ago.
When I got the dvd, I have to admit that as far as the production goes, it’s pretty corny. There are a lot of people talking about the power of The Secret. Some dread-locked minister. Some quasi-philosoper. Even the author of Chicken Soup for the Soul chimes in. And as they’re speaking, some weird animations are going on in the background. Then a quote from Emerson or Beethoven comes across the screen. It’s all a little much, but I couldn’t escape the message.
The gist of The Secret is the power of positive thinking. The “experts” on the show discuss the laws of attraction and say that thinking positively will make positive things come into your life. A meta-physicist on the show even gives a scientific explanation for this idea, saying that your thoughts are emitted as energy waves. When those waves are negative, other negative energy adheres itself to them and is brought back to you. So if you think good things, good things will happen to you. End of story.
A lot of people will find this concept to be ridiculous. The video suggests that if you think about acquiring wealth, you’ll get richer! If you think about being healthy, you won’t get sick! The show has a woman who was diagnosed with cancer and instead of going home and thinking, “Oh my God. This is so horrible. What am I going to do?” she went home and thought, “I can’t believe I got over that cancer.” She told her husband to rent a bunch of comedies to watch so that she could just laugh all the time. She never once gave into or accepted the idea that she had a life-threatening disease. And do you know what happened? The malignant mass in her breast completely disappeared. 100% cured without an ounce of chemo or any other medical treatment. Amazing, yes! Possible? I think so.
The effectiveness of placebos is well-documented. There have been many cases where patients with similar medical conditions were given two different kinds of treatments: proven drugs and fake drugs. The people who took the fake drugs, also known as placebos, not only showed similar results to the people who underwent legitimate treatment, but in many cases showed more significant reactions to the “medication.” How is this possible? Is it because they believed they were getting drugs to help them out and that non-physical belief triggered a very real reaction in their bodies? How else might you explain that?
Since watching the video, I have really tried to alter my way of thinking. I’ve always believed in the power of considering things from a positive angle, but now instead of thinking, “I hope I don’t get sick,” I say, “Wow! I’m unbelievably healthy right now!” It may sound silly, but I can tell you this: Early this year, in the midst of flu season, my youngest son had a fever of up to 103 for six days. My other son got a cold and my wife just “wasn’t herself” health-wise for a long time. In the past, I might have worried and almost waited for the viruses to come my way. This year, I just kept thinking “I am well. I am well.” Even when all of my co-workers and students started missing time, I refused to give in. And sure enough, here I am almost in April, and I had the healthiest winter I’ve had in years. Good luck or just good thoughts?
The person who told me about the video is a typically-broke college student. After watching the show, she said she walked around saying, “I need money. I need money.” Sure enough, her mom came up to her and said she had found an un-cashed check from months before that was given as graduation gift. The check had been folded up and lost inside a coat pocket. I decided to give it a try and started walking around thinking, “I could use some more money.” That was on a Sunday night. On Monday, I got a tax refund in the mail for $500, a tax credit given to every Virginia resident, but one I wasn’t expecting. On Tuesday, I found out that a tutoring job that was going to make me a decent bit of extra money in the first place had quadrupled in terms of what I was going to bring home. Then two days later, my credit card bill came and was about 20% less than what my wife and I had anticipated. Again, is it all coincidence? I have no idea, but I believe that it’s not and that’s all that matters for me.
Certainly there are limits to this, right? I mean… I can’t will my disappearing hair back. I can’t suddenly have 20/20 vision again just because I believe that it’s possible to reclaim it. But maybe I can. Each one of those statements started with the words “I can’t.” Anyone who has ever achieved anything in this world never started a line like that.
