The Secret - Rhonda Byrne

The Secret is a self-help book written in 2006 by Rhonda Byrne that is based on the Law of Attraction theory that describes how thoughts can affect our lives in a variety of situations.

Gender

The Secret is from a Self Help book. This literary genre is the one that brings together those works that are intended to take the reader by the hand while working to achieve the goals you want to achieve. This type of literature has been seen since ancient times when authors began to try to explain about personal well-being and the impact that this type of thinking has on goal achievement.

Title-Content relationship

The title of The Secret is intended to make the reader understand that there is important information that has been kept away from public knowledge and that can change your life once you know it. The concept of this book is to give the reader the secret of how to achieve everything that arises using the power of the mind and positive thinking.

Book summary and synopsis

The self-help book The Secret refers to the "Law of Attraction", a popularized pseudoscientific theory that the human process of ideation has a direct influence on the results of encounters and events in the world. In his book, Byrne applies this theory to different aspects of life, clarifying how he thinks it forms a program to tackle any problem.

The ideas behind the book, as well as the book itself, have been labeled as pseudoscience by members of the scientific community, within the genres of popular philosophy of the New Age and New Thought, which began in the early 20th century .

Byrne explains the Law of Attraction. Put colloquially as the similar attracts the similar, it states that our thoughts directly create our lives because the thoughts are embedded in the "energy" that constitutes the universe.
The rest of the book constitutes Byrne's personal elaboration on the "secret."

Occasionally he refers to quotes from scientists and naturalists such as Albert Einstein, Carl Jung, and Ralph Waldo Emerson to support his thesis. Byrne begins his argument from the axiom that everything in and around us is made of energy, down to the level of the atom. Therefore, energy is the basic building block of everything we see and experience.

Next, Byrne claims that the energy is vibrational and travels at different frequencies. In this way, our thoughts are magnetic, attracting and repelling different frequencies. When we have a thought, it is transmitted from us to the surrounding universe. Byrne likens it to the transmission tower, which sends and receives radio frequencies that carry information with which it builds more complex things.

Byrne claims that similar frequencies attract each other, while people and events that vibrate similarly to us naturally become magnetized to us. She argues that it is as simple, neutral, and predictable as Isaac Newton's law of gravity, regardless of whether the individual knows or believes in its existence.

Byrne provides examples of categories of thought to which secrecy applies. The first two are good and bad thoughts. Although the Law of Attraction does not discriminate between good and bad thoughts and does not care if we want something or not, it propagates the waves that we emit, thus attracting the objects of desire.

Byrne claims that most people think primarily of denials of their wishes; For example, someone who wants to be rich thinks about the difficult situation of being poor or middle class. Instead, he argues that people should think about what they want, triggering a positive feedback loop.

Byrne discusses the categories of conscious and subconscious thinking, borrowing from Freud's system of organization of the human mind. Notice that the Law of Attraction is effective not only for conscious thought, but also for the unconscious. For example, if we want to be rich, we could say that we want a lot of money, but we harbor reservations or subconscious doubts. The universe also takes these energies into account, reporting its result.

Byrne cites a study whose findings seem to show that the average person has about 60,000 different thoughts per day, most of which are involuntary. All of these thoughts make a lot of issues to work with when we try to be aware of the energy we are emitting. Once we get our thoughts back, Byrne argues, we get a tool that accelerates progress toward our objects of desire.

Byrne concludes his analysis of the applications of the Law of Attraction by giving examples of how to attract desired relationships with others. First, she asserts that we must live ourselves. Most people are conditioned to put self-love at the bottom of the wish list, mentally highlighting thoughts that emit negative energy. A distinctive feature of loving yourself is treating yourself the way you want to treat others.

Second, Byrne asserts that we must realize our love for each other, even for strangers. People who complain attract more and more negative energy, grouping them with other people who think negatively. Finally, Byrne urges his audience to make sure that his actions are consistent with his wishes. If we act as if we already have what we want, we will gradually realize that ideal without needing to worry or despair.

Analysis

Although Byrne's book is far from scientific, making illogical leaps about the nature of the mind that are inconsistent with many contemporary ideas gleaned from solid evidence, it presents a compelling argument that resembles the karmic system of eastern religions. Reapplying the idea of karmic energy to the fluid, chaotic, and modern world, he presents a rule book by which he hopes his audience will learn to live.

The book has had the support of important personalities from around the world that include the American businesswoman Oprah Winfrey, however, it has also had a significant number of detractors. These mainly claim that the book focuses too much on the acquisition of material things, which somehow contradicts the origins of the Law of Attraction.

Phrases

• "There is no desperate situation. All the circumstances of your life can change! "
• “You become what you think about the most… But you also attract what you think about the most. "
• "The truth is that the universe has been responding to you all your life, but you cannot receive the answers unless you are awake."