I first read about “The Secret” on Erin Pavlina’s blog, and it wasn’t long before I saw it being mentioned on a few other blogs too. There were a lot of positive comments surrounding it, so I decided it was worth taking the time to watch it. It’s quite difficult to sum up the film, but at its simplest level it’s a documentary about how to achieve your goals and desires.
First Impressions
The first thing I noticed about the film is how well produced it is. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but it’s polished nicely and visually interesting. The other thing that stands out is the passion of the speakers. It’s clear that they care a lot about the subject, and that it’s clearly benefited them over the years. Most importantly they all have a sense of humility and gratitude which can be quite humbling at times considering how successful they’ve been. The film is also quite humourous in places, and it’s clear that it’s meant to be uplifting and fun to watch.
A Brief Overview
The film itself covers a lot of ground, but is broken into chapters which makes it easier to keep up with things. The first part of the film is spent explaining what “the secret” is and how it can be applied, and the other chapters deal with ways of using it in specific areas of your life such as health, wealth and relationships.
The film details several exercises for applying “the secret”, and they’re all thoroughly explained and demonstrated through various real-life examples. One particular example that stands out is John Assaraf’s “vision board”, which is a powerful reminder as to how well out subconscious responds to mental imagery.
“The Secret” is taught from an “intention/manifestation” (also known as “law of attraction” or “cosmic ordering”) point of view. I’d been reading about this paradigm on several websites, and even though it seemed very “new agey”, I decided to approach the film with an open mind. In it’s simplest form, the intention manifestation model states that “thoughts become things”, and that by acknowledging this you can learn to use it for positive change.
An example given in the film is debt. If a person thinks about debt, even if they think how much they hate it, they will attract more debt into their lives. By utilising the law of attraction, they think about getting cheques in the mail instead of bills, and so they attract cheques instead of bills.
So What IS The Secret?
Deciding exactly what “the secret” is perhaps the most thought provoking thing about the film. It may be easy to brush off the theories as “hokey”, but if you look a little deeper you’ll find there are lessons to be learnt no matter what your point of view is.
Even though the film is based on the “law of attraction”, the exercises can be used by anyone. A good example of this is the creation of your goals. Defining what you want, visualising the result as already achieved, reinforcing it with positive emotions, and then continually revisiting the visualisation is the kind of activity that will bring results regardless of your particular belief system.
Final Thoughts
If you’re interested in personal development, it’s well worth a watch. It’s informative, yet also funny and genuinely touching in places. Regardless of your views on the “law of attraction” model, there is plenty of learn from the film.
You can watch the film for $4.95 at thesecret.tv, or order the DVD for $24.95.
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[...] I watched online it a few days after I first heard about it, and then didn’t really do much about it until recently. I watched the extended edition a few weeks ago (and wrote a review) and I must say that the second viewing had a much greater effect on me. I only made a few notes the first time I watched it, but the second time I was struggling to keep up with all the new ideas I was having. Over the next few weeks I want to try some of these ideas more thoroughly to see how they work for me. It’s definitely worth watching, and even if you don’t believe in the Law of Attraction you can still get something out of the film. __________________ PhilNewton.net — Improving Every Day || Sodaware — My software development blog [...]