The Secret: Book Review; V2 Issue 1

Title: The Secret

Author: Rhonda Byrne

Publication details: Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, Great Britain, 2006

Number of pages: 198 pages

If a book starts with an alluring promise of its contents giving you anything you want: happiness, health, and wealth, it is difficult to resist reading further right?  So not surprisingly I could not stop reading the book ’The Secret’. Rhonda Byrne when faced with a very difficult time in her life learned about ‘The Secret’ and overcame every single one of her difficulties using its principles. In gratitude she created a DVD to share this knowledge. When this DVD became hugely successful she created a book by the same name.

“The Secret is the law of attraction." According to this everything in the Universe vibrates on a particular frequency. When you think in harmony with the frequency of something, you attract it to you. If you think about health, you become healthy. If you think instead about your illness, you become more ill. You attract what you think about. It says “It is impossible to bring more money into your life when you are noticing you do not have enough, because that means you are thinking thoughts that you do not have enough….and you will create untold more circumstances of not having enough money. You must focus on abundance of money to bring that to you.”

And the book tells you how you can find out what you are thinking … “To know what you are thinking, ask yourself how you are feeling…. It is impossible to feel bad and at the same time have good thoughts.”  The steps to utilizing this law in life are simple. Know what you want and ask the universe for it. Feel and behave as if the object of your desire is on its way. Be open to receiving it.

A child cured of Hepatitis, Jack Canfield the author of ‘Chicken soup for the soul’ attaining a hundred thousand dollar a year lifestyle from a eight thousand one, a woman attracting the perfect partner by acting as if she already had one… are all inspiring personal examples cited in the book of the power of positive thinking in the areas of health, money, relationships respectively. It provides various tips for practicing ‘The Secret’. Some of them are using secret shifters like pleasant memories to shift your frequency from negative to positive, being thankful and grateful to all that you have, expecting the things you want, creating your day in advance the way you want it to go. For instance for relationships to improve it talks about not complaining about other people but focusing on what we appreciate about others to get more of that from them.

No doubt it is essentially a beautifully packaged and marketed book with ideas on positive thinking that are centuries old. But then there are some things that we know and still need constant reminding. The principles detailed in it are summarized at the end of each of the chapter for ease of reference. The book has pertinent quotes from many sources and contributors -scientists, doctors, life and business coaches and metaphysicians from both past and present.

One flaw I see in the book is that it does not talk about taking action to improve a negative situation. If I am overweight and I keep overeating instead of moderating my food intake and exercising, I doubt whether I will lose weight. Also it does not make sense that innocent people who are victims of tragedies attracted the same. However, you can neither prove nor disprove the law of attraction. It is something akin to faith. If you do not receive what you asked, you know you did not have enough faith. And only you can know it. No one else can.

There it’s not a secret any longer. But to practice this you need to know its nuances which only the book will give you. From getting a cup of coffee to being cured of cancer, the book claims ‘The Secret’ can work for anything. I am beginning to believe in its power. I tried the book’s principles on a few small things and guess what it worked! So it makes me wonder why it should not work on bigger things. All I need to do is tune my frequency to what I want in life. That’s what I am going to do. What about you?