A Secret About the Secret
Unless you've been living under the proverbial rock (or just have a busy life), you have most likely heard of The Secret. This documentary was released in 2006 and was heavily promoted by Oprah, among others. The film seeks to describe the universal principle called The Law of Attraction. In essence, the idea is that everything in our world is governed by energy. Therefore, the energy that we put out into the world is attracting like energy and will dictate what comes back to us.
The movie is chock full of inspiring information that, if understood and implemented, truly can be a catalyst for life transformation. All of the featured speakers are living examples of how these concepts are foundational for anyone who wants to improve their reality, as each has used them to build exceptional lives and careers.
Most basic is the understanding that the Law of Attraction promotes the importance of positive thinking. It has been demonstrated that our thoughts, in fact, govern the state of our lives. In addition, The Secret clarifies that visualization is also paramount in bringing forth the changes you wish to see materialize. An activity that was recommended in the film was the creation of a vision board, in which you cut out or draw pictures of everything you wish to manifest in your life, and place them on a poster board. When you can see the things you want in your future, it helps the brain conceive of actually having them. As a result of this movie, millions of people (including myself) created elaborate collages to remind ourselves of the lives we wanted to effectuate. And like millions, I then waited...and waited...and waited, and was disappointed.
What was the problem? Wasn't I supposed to put my desires out into the universe, and then have them miraculously appear? I had taken my assignment seriously, but soon became discouraged as the objects on my vision board continued to remain just illusions on a poster board. So what was I missing in my quest to improve my life? Could it be possible that The Secret failed to clarify the single most important aspect of allowing The Law of Attraction to actually work? I would propose that this is the case. While I wholeheartedly agree that putting out positive energy into the world, and making your wants and desires known are critical pieces to the puzzle, the final component that must be present is action.
Much about the brain has been learned in the years since The Secret was first introduced into the mainstream. What is now understood in great detail is that the way we think is a result of years of repeating patterns. We may think that we are in control of the thoughts we think and the behaviors we exhibit, but in actuality, we go through life more like we are on autopilot. We wake up in the morning and go through our routines without paying much attention to the activities we are engaging in. We don't have to put much effort into showering, brushing our teeth, making breakfast or getting dressed because our brains have learned to complete those tasks through repetition.
What if we decided, however, to make an elaborate breakfast casserole one morning rather than pouring a bowl of cereal or making some toast? Most likely we would need to follow a recipe which would cause us to engage our brain on a deeper level. There would actually be attention paid to the instructions and as a result, new neural pathways would be created. The difference is that we took an action that disrupted our normal habit, and as a result we created something new and different.
So how does this translate to The Law of Attraction? Just like following the new recipe, in order to manifest a change in your life, you must change old habits. The issue arises when you realize that changing old habits in the way you think is much more challenging than deciding to divert your attention to learning to make a casserole. Altering years of programmed thinking takes awareness of the process that has taken place. You first must understand that you have a choice in the thoughts your think and the actions you subsequently take. Only then can you modify these subconscious activities.
In the book Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, Dr. Joe Dispenza describes taking on the effort to change one's thinking like this, "For most of us, to go from thinking to doing is like inspiring snails to pick up the pace. We want to stay in the intellectual philosophical realm of our reality; we like to identify with the memorized, recognizable feeling of our familiar self." This makes complete sense as trying anything new is temporarily uncomfortable. In the same vein, however, once you form these new habits, they become your new reality and they are no longer uncomfortable.
The Law of Attraction is most definitely real and will help to bring about changes in your life, but you must make a deliberate decision to take the actions that will allow it to work for you. Vision boards are wonderful tools to remind yourself of goals that you are working towards, in addition to being a tangible demonstration to the universe of what you desire. The next step though is crucial...you must do the things that will propel you towards those goals. Perhaps you need to change your relationship or job situation, maybe there are friends or acquaintances in your life who do not encourage you, and you would benefit from finding more positive friends. It is possible that you have subconscious ideas that repeatedly run in your mind saying that you don't deserve the life you want. You must take an inventory of these things and then make a conscious effort to challenge them.
Depending on what it is you want to manifest, maybe there are concrete things you need to begin doing. I have always wanted to be a writer; I have been talking about it for 30 years, but the one thing I was not doing was writing. I may have had a picture of a book on my vision board, but you can see that without committing to writing on a consistent basis, this dream will never become my reality. What is it that you wish to have in your life that you must act upon?
At first, it will feel uncomfortable, but over time you begin to behave differently and it will become automatic. That is when you know that you have begun to actually change your brain. One day you will wake up and this new way of thinking will not be new anymore; it will just be your state of being. Sometimes we need to shock ourselves. Like a glass of ice water to the face, paying attention to the things that cause our thoughts can wake us up to the patterns that have been controlling us for years. It is at that point that you will be well on your way to the life you truly want and deserve.
Do not be a passive participant in your future. It doesn't matter how deep your programming is or how old you are; you have total control over every single thought you allow into your brain. If you find yourself deliberating over something that is out of alignment with the destiny you envision for yourself, get busy changing it. It is so empowering once you internalize just how much authority you have over your circumstances. The Law of Attraction, once mastered, dispels the myth that you ever have to be a victim to anything you encounter. Once you commit to these principles, you will be astonished at the changes that will happen in your life...and that's no secret.