My Thoughts and Experiences With "The Secret" and The Law Of Attraction

What I understood from the film "The Secret" is that the law of attraction brings similar things together and the images that you hold in your mind and the thoughts that you think will create your reality. 'Fair enough' I thought, but it scared the crap out of me! All I thought about each day was how I was going to die from these physical symptoms of anxiety caused by fear, so did this mean that I was nearing death? Was I taking the shortcut to something that I deep down didn't want? I also remember having these intense images of awful experiences potentially occurring in my life over and over again, and if our thoughts and images become reality I was on the path of self-destruction! I thought to myself, 'Thanks Robyn (fiancee) for buying me this video that just boosted my anxiety levels a few more notches!' The law of attraction was supposed to be as consistent and ever present as the law of gravity!

Now, before you present this kind of a movie or book to someone suffering from an anxiety disorder like I was, you have to understand how our 'special' brains think. Firstly, we anxious people are desperate for a cure and will do anything to get rid of what we are going through. Secondly, we want a QUICK cure and we don't have the patience to re-condition our minds and change our lifestyles to create our desired result (this can't be true though, right?). Lastly, we will try ANYTHING once and then quickly label it as something that helped a bit and we might continue with it as long as it provides us with consistent relief, or it sucks and no one should try it.

"The Secret" has three major steps to follow if you are going to manifest what you want in your life. These steps are... ask for what you want, believe that you already have what it is you asked for, and feel what it would feel like if you have already gotten what you asked for. I don't know what your own experience is with people around the time of "The Secret" movie, but many of my friends hopped right on the 'law of attraction' bandwagon and started becoming strangely upbeat. One of my friends from long ago by the name of Kim had a weight issue and must have been a good 80 pounds over-weight; she had tried different diets, working out with different trainers, and even went to fat camp! Nothing worked - well, to be honest she never stuck to anything for a long enough time for it to work for her. She had seen the movie nine times, and even had a shirt with "The Secret" plastered on it. I didn't need to ask Kim what she thought of the movie because she was beaming with this newfound attitude. She told me she did the three steps that was on "The Secret" day and night for a few weeks now, and felt like she was losing weight already. I had to have a talk with Kim because I cared deeply for her. "Kim," I said as we sat down to have a cup of tea at the park, "you're not losing weight sweetie, in fact I think you may have gained some weight." I burst her bubble then and there and felt awful about it at the time, but I had to say it. She was living in a world that was full of delusion and I had to get her back on the right track. Her diet was awful and she rarely exercised and even took her car to the grocery store one block away from where she lived. I knew there was no shortcut to losing weight and getting fit, so when I saw someone that thought that just by thinking and imagining their goal in their mind they would get what they wanted by no physical effort at all, I had to slap that person in the face and bring them back down to reality so that they could get back on track to achieving what they wanted.

A lot of what "The Secret" offers are time tested psychological tricks that help keep a person motivated, which I thought was pretty cool, but I had to look deeper into the movie to see how it could help me overcome my own battle. "The Secret" puts an effort into making a connection with Jesus and quantum physics and so on to make people believe that their minds have these incredible frequencies and wave-lengths. I thought to myself, 'Wait a second, I've been thinking such scary negative things for years now, and if anybody should be six feet under by now it should be me if this were all true,' but I wasn't.

As skeptical as I was when I first heard about the law of attraction, I now have taken some of the pieces from the movie and used it to recover from an anxiety disorder and also lift my tennis ranking to a new height at the age of 33. To anyone who is reading this book or watching this movie who may be going through a difficult time in their lives, I can only say try not to get in the habit of looking at people who may seem more fortunate than you as simply lucky. The mind-set of being 'unlucky' or less fortunate creates your unwanted reality and makes you feel like this world is very cruel. Don't be at the mercy of events or circumstances or even other people, understand that you are the cause, just as I was, and your present reality is in fact the effect. The sooner you realize this the sooner you will be able to turn your life around.

Shortly after I recovered from my anxiety disorder, I met up with Kim to have a talk with her. I told her to keep up the positivity that she had developed as a result of watching "The Secret". But I also told her that she needed to put some action into her mind-set. It is one thing to think positively about the results we desire in our lives, but it is another to use it as a catalyst for action, which is what I did. I don't consider myself lucky. I consider myself to be a success because of what I was able to do to overcome my anxious and fearful thoughts that strengthened my anxiety disorder during those years. The ideas behind "The Secret" are sound, but you have to be careful that you make sure you use the positive thoughts and ideas about the law of attraction with some real action taken towards your goals, whatever they may be.