Pajiba

This is all good information, but it's all been done before. The Secret, The Power of Positive Thinking, Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends and Influence People, and many others.

Oh, and I second the sensation of being read to. Love it. One of the sexiest things my husband does for me is read to me.

My sister has preached that "Secret" bullshit for years. She's now in the middle of a contentious divorce. Fail!

Well, did you want her to fail? Because if I understand these sorts of thing accurately, by wanting it hard enough (more than she wanted to succeed), you caused it to fail.

Listen, I get that some folks might not be into the positive thinking sort of thing. But in reality, this is what humans do. We focus on those events that skew to our worldview. Regardless of the actual number of good or bad events, we only remember the ones we want to. Got a happy, shiny disposition? Then you see things as happy and shiny. Want to be a gloomy dick? Then your view will turn out the same, because you are focused on it.

Sheesh, if a few folks want to make themselves feel better by trying to address such negative feelings, let them. Of course, they can never get on the Internet again....

Are the pajiba overlords conducting some sort of experiment? Are they trying to see how big a flame war they can start? Well, let me jump in.

The only good piece of advice among that drivel is the following:

If you want something in your life to change quicker, you simply need to give it more attention

But that's common sense, and it's only a start. Unless you actually change something in your life, no amount of magical thinking is going to improve things for you. Quantum mechanics doesn't tell us that our thoughts affect the events in the macroscopic world, there are no life-energy fields around us that interact with the chakras of others, etc.

And no, I didn't type the above just because you didn't wish hard enough for all comments to be positive.

The Secret people tend to take common sense and twist into something more magical, though. Yes, there is benefit to positive visualization. It gives you focus and helps you define the stepping stones to getting what you want. But all The Secret people usually tend to stop at that stage. There has to be follow through. There also has to be a healthy dose of reality, to know that when you are in a shitty economy, sometimes no matter how hard you work and smile, that billion-dollar job is NOT going to appear on the horizon any time soon.

Sure, reach for the stars. Just don't get oxygen deprivation from sticking your head into outer space.

Who's talking about The Secret? There's nothing about The Secret here? In fact, the Hicks hate The Secret lady. Because she took their idea and turned it into a marketing scheme. All of your arguments seem to be saying, "You know what's wrong with Jews? They sure aren't very Christian."

What's wrong with positive visualization? What's wrong with focusing on good things? Sure, if you stop there, nothing good will come of it. You can wish and one hand and have a pony shit in the other, and it's not going to make your dreams come true. They don't advocate sitting there and wishing. That IS what the Secret preaches. You can say, "I want more money." But if you sit there, it's not going to rain dollar bills. But if you say, "I want more money." while applying for jobs, it will give you a positive outlook, and that might make you more cheerful, and who knows?

The best part about being positive is that no matter what you people say, it's not going to affect us. You can be miserable, and angry, and surly, and so sure of yourself, and you're you. I'm happy, and successful, and content, and I'm me. Guess who wins? Angry person yelling on the Internet? Or happy person sitting on the beach?

Meditate on that, assholes.

For anyone interested in learning more about the Secret and the "Law of Attraction" I suggest doing a search on the JREF, or the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

The "Law of Attraction" (think positive thoughts and positive things will happen to you) is bullshit and I can give you one simple example to demonstrate. In actual science, opposites attract, not things which are alike. Negative charges are attracted to positive charges. Protons attract electrons. There is no "Law of Attraction" in science. It's a nonsense newage (rhymes with sewage) idea cooked up to make people feel better about their lives without doing any actual work to improve themselves.

However, my strongest objection to the Secret bullshit (other than there's zero evidence it actually exists) is the moral cesspool it represents. If you want positive things to happen to you think about positive things. But is bad things happen, then it's your own fault for focusing on bad things. Yeah, tell that to a rape victim. Tell them that it was really their fault because they weren't thinking positively enough. Fuck that, and fuck you.

There's nothing wrong with trying to change your life for the better. There's nothing wrong with focusing on specific problems and having a positive outlook on life. But suggesting that magical thinking and other likeminded bullcrap will get the job done is naive and unproductive. You may feel like you're making progress but that's all the Self Help industry is designed to do: make you feel better, not actually help you become better. Real change is hard and it requires a lot of work. Self Help and the Secret gloss over that and feed people easy answers to difficult problems.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the "Law of Attraction" really works. After all, it certainly attracts the gullible's money.

While we're playing fun with science, here's another practical demonstration. Jumper cables. You know, the ones you hook up between car batteries when one is dead and lifeless. When you hook up a battery, you hook positive to positive and negative to negative. This controls the flow of energy from one to the other. Of course, as Dr. Science suggests, you could hook them negative to positive. Then try starting your car. The battery explodes.

But what do I know? I'm a retarded kindergarden teacher.

However, my strongest objection to the Secret bullshit (other than there's zero evidence it actually exists) is the moral cesspool it represents. If you want positive things to happen to you think about positive things. But is bad things happen, then it's your own fault for focusing on bad things. Yeah, tell that to a rape victim. Tell them that it was really their fault because they weren't thinking positively enough. Fuck that, and fuck you.

Really? I wouldn't take it that far. First off, not too many positive-thinking books say bad things are the fault of the reader. Quite the opposite, in fact. Any that do, well, they aren't very good on the self-help tip, are they?

As far as your "evidence" comment, I would liken such methods (in effect, rather than intention) to the concept of the lucky charm. A gambler suddenly hits a jackpot after several losses when some arbitrary event happens (say, a piece of gum stuck to his shoe). He immediately forgets all the losses, and only focuses on the wins, even though statistically he is still in the same boat he always was in. The difference is he isn't killing himself over every failure, instead focusing on the successes. That has to be somewhat healthier than walking around mumbling how life sucks, right?

I am not arguing that positive thinking works in that one person's thoughts can change the universe. I am saying that if a person does focus their energies on the positive, they will perceive their world as better. And while some folks can just flip a switch and deal with it, some cannot, and they need some structure to work with. That is what they seek in these books. They may not get it, but I for one am not going to mock them for trying.

Does this positive thinking idea remind anyone else of The Music Man?

First, I'd like to clarify why I interchanged the book the Secret with the "Law of Attraction" (LOA from now on) and this book. I'm aware that they are different books, written by different people. However, the secret of the Secret is the LOA. They're both about the same bogus concept. As for the car battery, this just proves my point. The reason your battery explodes is that you've completed a circuit, the negative electrons con flow unimpeded and the energy spins through the system uncontrolled until it goes boom.

As for Vermillion's assesment, I agree partly. This is nothing more than a fancy rabbit's foot or other lucky charm. And it works the way all lucky charms work: people notice the hits and ignore the misses. It's a phenomenon called confirmation bias. But I disagree with the assertion that I said we should go around saying life sucks. Apparently Vermillion didn't read my second to last paragraph where I said that people can change their lives for the better, it just takes more work than the Self Help industry would have its customers believe.

In many ways, I see this type of marketing mirrored in the dieting and diet book industry. There are hundreds if not thousands of diet books out there peddling different diets like the Atkins to the South Beach diet. Yet, you don't need to read a book to lose weight. There is a simple, easy to understand method that is as close to fulproof as possible. Here it is: eat less, exercise more. That's it. Nothing fancy. The diet industry doesn't push this method (if you could call it that) for two reasons. One, it's hard and it takes a lot of commitment to stick with it and get permanent results. And two (and this is the important reason), you can't sell it. Sure, diet books will mention exercise and healthy eating, and then spend the rest of the book telling you why you shouldn't be eating all that bread.

I see most Self Help books and diet books like this (not all of them of course, but most). They sell easy sounding solutions designed to make them money. One of the most despicable aspects of the recent LOA books is that if they don't work for you, it's not the author's fault for hocking a bad product, it's your fault for not wanting to change enough and "attracting" all the negativity to you.

The fact is real change is hard. Most people would rather be stuck in a comfortable rut than take a hard look at their life and their decisions and do something to change their situation. To use another analogy, it's like Homer Simpson laying on the couch watching TV. The current program ends and something horrid, like figure skating comes on. Naturally, Homer doesn't want to watch this and he searches frantically for the remote. He finally spots it, lying on the floor just out of reach. He strains and stretches, trying to reach it without having to get up. Ultimately unsuccessful, he collapses back against the cushions and decides that watching figure skating isn't that bad after all.

Most people are like Homer. They would rather be in a bad situation and be comfortable then change their life. At the same time, they realize that something is wrong and want to change, but not put in the hard work. Self Help and dieting books give them an easy out. They feel like they are doing something positive, like they are changing their life, but really they are really just settling back into those cushions.

I would recommend checking out SHAM: How the Self Help Movement made America Helpless by Steve Salerno. Maybe Pajiba can review that book next.

If you believe this horseshit, then I don't think you understand anything accurately.

Well, if you have read the rest of my comment, instead of reacting so rashly, you would have already known I didn't think the stuff worked the way it is advertised. And you were the one who put her personal matter up for discussion; I simply addressed the point you were making, namely that your sister's use of such things was doomed to fail.

It did seem incongruous to me that, for someone you claim to care about, you have a bit of "nyah-nyah" tone in your original post. If your sister really felt things were that bad, do you really think mocking her attempts to fix them is the proper way to address it? Frankly it makes you sound petty and eager to rub such a trying experience in the faces of those in similar straits.

Apparently Vermillion didn't read my second to last paragraph where I said that people can change their lives for the better, it just takes more work than the Self Help industry would have its customers believe.

I did read your last paragraph. I don't believe I said anything to the contrary. My thing was that some people DO need more than just an attitude of "deal with it and move on". They need some sort of catalyst to do the work and make the change you mention. These books simply fill that need. Are they really effective? Depends on the person. If someone is dead set against the book being effective from the beginning, or thinks that the book is a quick fix to everything with no real effort, it isn't very likely to do so. But if a person is open to the idea, such items are far more useful. They become a step-stool instead of a crutch. True, the person could conceivably do the same without the book. But they felt the book was what they needed, and if it does work for them, who are we to judge?

Much like anything in this life, a large majority of self-help books are plagiarized money grabs. But that fact doesn't diminish the need for such things, and it doesn't invalidate those who are indeed helped by such media. Really though: if a person manages to get a more positive disposition and outlook on life, and makes the change that they wanted, does it really matter if they did it by the book or all on their own? It's their money, their lives, their choices. What works for them is for them.

And scoffing at them certainly isn't going to help anymore than a kooky book can.

Wow, Jen Ji, you sure touched off a shit storm, no?

I guess a lot of folks REALLY hate this type of stuff, but they'd do well to remember that this is a Canonball Read review and not an intellectual-snarkitudinous/name droppage/book list must-have type of article. You put a lot of work into it, so good on you.

I'm also on Vermillion's side - I don't buy into the happy/happy sunshine kazoo theories, but if I didn't do my best to remind myself not to dump my shitty moods all over my kids, I'd be the worst mom ever.

As someone who has been at least as low as any of you depressed folks (and clinically lower than the vast majority for three full years in my twenties) I can say there's nothing wrong with forcing yourself to sing 'Up Up and Away' if you are out of ideas.

People do not want to believe in this because we are a society of blame and this takes all of that away. Most do not want to look internally as to why certain things are happening in their lives, positive or negative. People look for an external reason; we look for someone/something to blame and then expect someone else to fix it, this not original in the least. So scoff at it all you want, be cynical, be lonely, and be negative. You do this not because it's comfortable but because you simply don't have the balls to realize that you hold your life in your OWN hands, and you are the ONLY person responsible for you, your actions, and your outcomes.

All this freakin' hard to swallow therefore most feel threatened by it, and then attacks it, like most every chicken shit is doing here. So be it.

I'm imagining a world without any condescending new-age sheep. God, I hope this "Secret" thing works.