Positive Thinking ‘Without the Steroids’
F#@k ‘The Secret’.
Seriously.
What bulls#!+.
The book has been successful.
It has a best-seller status. Slick marketing and being promoted on Oprah certainly helped sales and exposed it to millions.
But, in my opinion, it also has been dangerous.
It has left disillusionment and broken people in its wake. And it has taken victim blaming to a brand new level.
Because at its basic level it contains fundamental truths –
all of which help us when we wish to change something in our life, overcome a harmful habit or make a new practice a regular feature in our life.
Confirmation Bias
A simple psychological concept called ‘confirmation bias’ goes some way to explaining how the power of positive thinking works. In a nutshell-
Confirmation bias postulates that when we start thinking about something or pursuing a specific line of inquiry, we suddenly begin noticing everywhere evidence of this new way of thinking where previously we had not seen it.
For example:
The first time I read about serendipity I was fascinated.
I had never heard or read about the concept before. Suddenly in the next few weeks, I saw it everywhere being mentioned.
The thing is:
The information always would have been there, my brain had just been passing it over and not picked up on the fact; until suddenly — it had meaning and interest to me.
How Confirmation Bias Applies to Positive Thinking?
So, when you start training your brain to think positive, you start seeing myriads of reasons to be positive wherever you look.
When you consciously set a goal or purpose to strive towards, you start seeing things that align with that goal that maybe you would have previously missed.
Positive Thinking; Affirmations
Upbeat, happy people are great to be around.
They make us feel good.
If we have always been quite a negative person and we suddenly are focused on what we have to be grateful for, our energy changes. Other people find us more attractive to be around as they can laugh with us. So our relationships and friendships improve.
If you start to repeat affirmations to yourself, you will feel better. Your brain will focus on the positive, and you will be able to overcome things more calmly and be less impacted in a negative way when obstacles do happen.
Affirmations are a great tool to use for coping with life. I have found them at times to be invaluable.
The damage comes due to the extent to which The Secret postulates positive thinking and what it calls The Law of Attraction (LoA).
Also, I would argue, as have others, that it is not a LAW but a Principle of Attraction. A law is irrefutable. Set in concrete. Unable to be changed. Absolute truth.
There are principles related to attraction, that have mitigating factors and depend on circumstances. Talking about a principle of Attraction is a very different statement than referring to a Law of Attraction.
I believe it was deliberately presented like this to add credence and authority to the book’s stance. By stating it is a ‘law’ it puts it alongside such things as ‘laws of nature,’ and aligns it with science.
But, how ‘The Secret’ teaches this principle takes it to another level that I believe is very damaging.
The book says people have to combat ALL negative thoughts.
But: Negative or doubting thoughts are important. We need to take notice of them.
Negative thoughts or doubts can be the first indicator that alerts us to the fact that maybe we need to broaden our outlook, our scope or how we are looking at something; or even, that we may need to mistrust the information.
Candace Mills a Developmental Psychologist published a Thesis in 2013 exploring how crucial it is for children developmentally to be able to learn how to critically identify information from sources that are ignorant, inaccurate, incompetent, deceptive, or distorted. It is essential that children recognize and learn how to doubt and learn how to think when examining information critically.
If we examine a doubt we are having and look at it critically from all different angles we can either see it: As doubt stemming from anxiety with no real substance; or we may recognize that there is substance to our suspicions.
The book teaches that if you get sick or if you have an accident or if you are homeless — YOU caused it.
Your thoughts. Your actions. ONLY YOU are to blame.
Wow. A truck hits your bike, and you now have quadriplegia. You must have been having negative thoughts to have created this situation. You brought it into being.
You are sitting starving to death in Africa along with thousands of others. You need to visualize a beautiful meal and if you do it hard enough and believe it — it will happen. If you starve and die — you created this to happen. You made this happen in your life. (Forget about, wars, politics, drought).
Following the same line of thinking, all the victims of 9/11, the Holocaust, all the children in cancer wards have all created their reality and deaths.
Can you not see how ridiculous and outrageous this is when taken to this extreme?
Also, ironically, by following this teaching in The Secret — by focusing on the one goal that you have decided you will MANIFEST into being, this may KEEP YOU AWAY from seeing all the other opportunities that may be presenting themselves to you.
You are either rejecting them or not even seeing these opportunities, as you are so focused on ONLY obtaining the goal YOU think is right for yourself.
How many people have had devastating and painful things happen to them that have brought them to their knees and then they have risen again in a completely different direction, that they would never have envisioned for themselves without the first loss? This new direction could also bring unexpected blessings and opportunities.
What about healthy anger?
Healthy anger is the type of anger we have at people and situations that create activism and movements for change, and this anger alerts us as to when people are crossing our boundaries.
It is important to recognize when we are having angry thoughts. When we are literally ‘steaming’ with anger over that person who always ‘talks over’ others at meetings, or who takes credit for work that is not their own to gain a promotion.
This anger is vital to FEEL and allow.
Imagining bad things happening to a person whom we are legitimately angry with actually is a healthy way of acting out our anger. It can stop us from acting out on thoughts of harming the person. Our dreams and fantasies (kept in check) can be a healthy outlet for our anger.
If we suppress angry thoughts, because we believe we must only ‘think good thoughts’ — then that suppressed anger will stay in our body, our cells, and can create illness and even lead to depression.
Feeling and acknowledging our anger can help us plan ways to legitimately confront or deal with that person from work or rectify wrongdoing that has hurt someone else. Our passion gives us the energy to ‘spur us on’.
Energy from anger does not always have to be destructive.
Anger can also be energizing and motivating.
Labeling certain feelings and thoughts as good or bad is dividing them into a dualistic reality that is not healthy. People and life are more complicated than that. There are many shades of grey. There is a continuum of goodness and badness.
The website, The Law of Attraction states that
Dr. Neil Farber, writing in Psychology Today, says that the Law of Attraction as postulated in The Secret:
Quantum physics is a branch of physics challenging to understand especially for someone without a scientific background. To put it extremely simply, it deals with physical phenomena occurring on a microscopic scale (like the motion of electrons).
The Ethical Nag when answering the question “Can quantum mechanics explain the law of attraction?” stated:
“Like attracts like” in regards to being attracted to people we seek out as friends who may have similar beliefs and values to ourselves is understandable. Understandable because we have more in common in relation to views, hobbies, interests, work life or education. It doesn’t exclude the fact that sometimes we become friends with someone that on the surface we have nothing in common with, but our friendship with them enriches both our lives.
In The Secret, the law of attraction is lumped in with laws of nature implying it is absolute and science. However, this is wrong. There is no consensus amongst scientists as to the author’s claims.
Michael Shermer writing in Scientific American in 2007, debunked why “like attracts like” as explained in The Secret cannot be correct.
The absurdity of the author claiming thinking a thought attracts that thing to you is made very clearly by Todd William on Quora when he quotes from The Secret:
In the book The Secret, Jack Canfield proposed, “Our job is not to figure out the how.” and “…trust that the Universe will figure out how to manifest it.”
Following this advice means people are not likely to make detailed and consistent plans and steps to take toward their goals.
All the empirical evidence to date shows that not planning or taking actions makes goals LESS likely to succeed, not more.
Entrepreneur Asia Pacific in 2018 published an article which outlined 16 actions to take to achieve any goal.
One of the most disturbing things I found in the book was the emphasis on material goals or money as a primary purpose or intent.
Is becoming wealthy the best purpose in life we can make for ourselves?
I think enough has been written and said about the role of money in making people happy.
Andrew Jebb, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University, used survey data from the Gallup World Poll (collected from more than 1.7 million adults ages 15 and older from 164 countries) related to the correlation between money and life satisfaction.
It turns out there is a saturation point at which money no longer has any bearing on people’s satisfaction and happiness in life. In fact, after this point, reductions in life satisfaction and lower emotional wellbeing was recorded.
This was postulated as being because after needs are met, success becomes measured by material gains which lead to reduced satisfaction in life.
Now, there is nothing wrong with money. Having money can give us the means to help a lot of people, besides ourselves. However, setting it up as the main purpose in life in my belief is dangerous. So many other things give meaning, satisfaction, and purpose to one’s life.
What about support groups, charities, helping out others and extending ourselves to friends and family?
Multiple studies and research has evidenced that giving to others is a mutually beneficial way to create meaning in our life as well as developing relationships and connection and giving purpose to life.
However, in The Secret the advice is:
There is plenty of research to show that support groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), Weight Watchers, Psychiatric support groups or Breast Cancer Support can be invaluable in helping people in recovery.
However, if you follow the advice in The Secret, it teaches that these will bring negativity in your life.
I have found attending self-help groups in the past helpful to a point. I do think that sometimes, for some people, when used for years on end, they can become a reason people remain, victims, if they only identify with their illness, and do not heal. But, this is situational and does not apply to most people.
Many people continue to find recovery groups beneficial and invaluable in their healing journey.
The book also offers numerous quotes from so-called ‘ancients’ and other famous people that are claimed to have known the ‘secret’ and become successful in their lives.
These quotes are a powerful drawcard for the book and something that people believe gives it credence.
However, very few of the ‘quotes’ are attributable.
Investigating them is difficult.
There is little evidence that the people even made many of the quotes claimed to make them.
Some quotes are allegedly entirely taken out of context and misapplied.
An example of this is a quote contained in The Secret from Winston Churchill’s book My Early Life which appears to support her hypothesis. The quote she said he made is “You create your own universe as you go along.”
However, it is something Churchill wrote as an example of the “absurd propositions” of metaphysicians. Only a few lines later in his book he wrote “These amusing mental acrobatics are all right to play with. They are perfectly harmless and perfectly useless. I warn my younger readers only to treat them as a game.”
So, he was ridiculing the concept, not supporting it.
Other quotes in the book claiming to be from various people cannot be found or located at all when searching for them. Why did the author not attribute where she found all these quotes if she wishes to be credible?
My eldest daughter belonged to a network marketing company for five years. During this time she worked her way up to the top 1% of earners in the company. And without going into the whole long story, or my own beliefs about network marketing, suffice to say my daughter applied all the strategies religiously. They were all based on the Law of Attraction (LoA).
Think positively. Reject all negativity. Work and live as if your goal has already occurred. Live your life like a millionaire. Visualize. Do the vision board. Never speak negatively. Never think negatively. Banish all doubts. Banish all doubters from your life.
Once she realized she was:
she only just got out in time, to recover.
She truly believed, that if she only BELIEVED enough, worked hard enough, and rejected all who wouldn’t support her — she would attain success.
Because this is the Law of Attraction as it is taught not just in the book The Secret but by many network marketing companies.
Thankfully, she realized the cost before it was too late and got out. But, she lost multiple friends once she decided it was not for her anymore. They rejected her outright due to her choice to leave the company as appearing ‘negative.’
It was a very cult-like experience for her, and it took her a while to recover from the experience. Fortunately, she has been able to separate the positive things she learned, and keep them away from those teachings that were more extreme.
But this is the problem. It can leave people broken.
People are left broken shells in the wake of pouring in their whole selves, their hearts, minds, souls and beliefs, 24/7 in the desire and hope to achieve an outcome.
If it doesn’t happen they are left thinking:
WHAT is WRONG with ME?
They can feel crushed. Unsupported by the universe. Rejected by a God of their understanding. Unworthy. They may think, “But what about all these other people who realize their hopes and dreams?”
People think: Maybe if I borrowed more money, or sold my home, or stop associating with people who raise doubts about what I am doing, then maybe I will get what I want?
People will do extreme things if they think it is entirely in their power to achieve what they want to make.
But, what if you don’t?
The way back to recovery from this can take years. People shatter.
They feel guilty for having angry thoughts. They wonder why they are depressed.
They then reject many of the useful concepts the book highlights that are good in themselves, and helpful as tools for a happier life, instead of only rejecting the EXTREME ideas.
Going by the many 5 star reviews of the book on Amazon the book appears to have helped many people. Why is that?
I cannot say that the author intended to harm people when she wrote this book. I prefer to think that she found something helpful that she applied in her own life and she wanted to share with the world.
However, I do disagree with how she has presented the information.
And more importantly and sadly, it left people shattered and disillusioned, blaming themselves after throwing themselves a hundred percent behind a goal, applying all the principles stated religiously, and then when meeting failure feeling even more disillusioned and rejected than when they started.
If you have found yourself in this position, forgive yourself. You have been the target of misinformation and false advertising. Pick yourself up and move forward.
You are resilient. You are strong.
You have shown you can set your mind to something and work hard towards it. Just because this has not worked out, well you are not the only one who has applied the principles and failed. Many of the principles it teaches have set you up to fail.
Explore and find information that is empirically tested and proven to help you move forward and reach your goals.
Be comforted by the fact that accurate information and guidance is out there.
Like a lighthouse, that provides a beacon to guide you to safety through to the port, you will then be able to apply the information to help navigate your way and try to avoid some of the pitfalls.
Press forward. Ever onward. Life is precious but not easy, and you do not have to navigate it alone. You will find others who can be supports along the way.
Positive Thinking ‘Without the Steroids’
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