Friday, March 16, 2007

Psst, have you heard the Secret?

The latest self-help/Oprah craze is called The Secret, and it reeks of bullshit. The central premise is the so-called "law of attraction," and it claims that if you think positive thoughts, positive events and things will be attracted to you. Check out the trailer, and notice how many great minds of the past "knew" this alleged "secret." It's a who's who of who's whos: Beethoven, Shakespeare, Einstein. (Let's not apply any critical thought and ask things like, "What evidence do we have that these people were familiar with this concept?")

I also love the people who say it will change their lives forever. If I cared about them enough, I'd revisit them a year from now and ask if their lives are better, and if so, if it's because of this hocus pocus baloney sandwich of crap.

Check this fun clip from Ellen. The guy says that if I think about getting out of debt, I'm still thinking about debt, and will attract it. He goes so far as to claim that this is the reason so many people are in debt. I'd like to suggest that people (in this country, at least) are in debt because of a consumerist credit-oriented culture. But that might be too obvious a connection. He says "start to see what you want rather than what you don't want." I could be stupid, but isn't "not being in debt" a thing that people want?

Oh, and that FedEx thing is a nice distracting gimmick that has absolutely nothing to do with the point. It has nothing to do with "seeing the universe in a different way." It's a simple cognitive issue. The brain focuses on the foreground element. The "arrow" is simply empty space between the letters that happens to make that shape. Yeah, it's cool, and ever since I first saw it (about 8 years ago) I can't look at the logo without seeing the arrow. But that's because I know it's there, and I think it's neat, so I focus on it.

===REDEEMING QUALITY ALERT===
That one guy did make a good point with his 3rd law, about taking action: Shit happens when you DO SOMETHING to make it happen. The only correlation between positive thinking and success is that those who think positively are more likely to take action to make things happen. It's the doing that makes it happen, not the thinking. However, it is important to know that thinking is a prerequisite for doing, and visualizing yourself succeeding can give you the drive to go out and get what you want, to make things happen. For example, if I want to get rich, I visualize myself dressing up this same concept in a new hat, writing a book about creepy motile cheese, and going on Oprah to take money from her idiot followers. Then I DO those things, and voila! I am awash in hundred dollar bills.
===END REDEEMING QUALITY ALERT===

I have two great examples. Ben and I once had a pretty hefty amount of credit card debt. We worked hard to get out of it. We didn't think about being rich, or winning the lottery, or getting a great job that paid us $200,000 a year for sitting on our asses. We worked to get out of debt. It took time, and it wasn't always easy, but we took action and made it happen. We didn't use little cellular magnets in our livers to make the universe send us money. We learned to reprioritize our financial habits. No big secret there.

*UPDATE* I need to make note of the fact that up throughout this time, not only did we not spend time sitting around visualizing our way out of debt, but I personally made frequent comments about how horrible it was, having all that money to pay off, and how horrible our (financial) life was and would likely continue to be. AND STILL, despite all this negativity on my part, we worked our way out of it.

My other example is more recent. I had a midterm exam last week, & had heard from a classmate that took the class a year previous that the exam was brutal. Granted, a new professor is teaching the class, but I still spent 2 days freaking out about it. But I also studied, and the exam wasn't that tough. So, what's the lesson here? The lesson is, it doesn't matter what you think. It only matters what you do. My thoughts were consumed by "Shit! I'm going to bomb this exam!" The action I took was to study, thinking, "I'll just have to try my best, & hope for a C." I haven't got the grade back yet, but after taking the exam, I'm counting on a high B to low A. So much for the big secret.

Goddammit, people can be stupid sometimes.

1 comment:

Rachel said...

Dude...SNL did a commercial on US debt thing that was HIlarious.

From NBC's site "A husband and wife worry that they’ll never get out of credit card debt, even after exploring many avenues. A spokesperson comes out to present his unique program for getting out of debt: Don’t buy stuff you cannot afford. The book sounds interesting to the wife, but the husband is very confused by the book’s premise. After further explanations, the husband is still confused, thinking that he should buy items first and get the money second. "

Jason and I quote it all the time (usually when one of us wants to buy something we can't afford).

PS: I don't know the details of the secret, but I'd be willing to bet money I don't have that it is a crock. Do you take credit cards?