The Secret’s Missing Ingredient

Have you seen the movie ‘The Secret' yet? Hopefully, you have at least heard of it. It is the #1 movie on USA Today and Amazon.com and books related to the movie litter the top 20. The cast of the Secret was on the Oprah show a couple weeks ago, which was her most popular show to date. Typically, she gets about 2 million website hits after a show but this one earned her 5 million!The Law of AttractionIf you have not seen it or heard much about it here is a synopsis. The movie features interviews with some of the top people in the self-help world. The Secret is that you can have anything that you want. The premise of the movie is based on ‘the law of attraction'. This, according to the cast, is the ability to call opportunities to yourself by focusing your thoughts on what you want.

The movie promotes the idea that if you want a new job, more money, better health – you need to constantly think about those things and they will come to you. Essentially, you get what you focus on. The movie also warns that this is true for the negative aspects of life as well – more debt, more problems, more stress will come your way if that's what you decide to think about.

Whether or not this is true is beyond anyone's ability to prove or disprove. I do know that there is a lot about our universe that we don't understand and I try not to discount possibilities simply because I can not understand how they can be true. In fact, I believe that to do so is arrogant.

Still, even if you accept the law of attraction and begin to focus on what you want – there is a missing piece of the puzzle that was mentioned in the movie but was not emphasized enough. That is the need for ACTION. Even if you have the ability to call opportunities to yourself, if you don't act on those opportunities nothing will happen.

The Brain's Filter A part of the brain called the hippocampus is largely responsible for what we decide to focus on in our environment. We are constantly filtering out the majority of the stimuli that comes our way and only paying attention to that which we deem important in that moment. To me, this can explain much of The Secret.

For instance, if you continually focus on problems and stress, you will find those things in your environment that support your negative viewpoint – and this will produce more problems and stress. If instead, you constantly think about specific opportunity, you will focus on things that come your way that support this positive viewpoint – you will notice when opportunity comes knocking.

Whether or not you have the ability to create opportunity as proposed by The Secret, doesn't really matter. You still have to focus on opportunity in order to notice it when it comes around. But more importantly, you have to ACT on that opportunity – there is no reward in life without some risk.

The phenomenon of The Secret is that its message gives people a sense of power over their future. Who doesn't want that? You can go to http://www.thesecret.tv for more information.