a young guy (me) to share his viewpoint about life

after reading the book The Secret, i get to account my current condition to my own thought and desire rather than any other things

simply put, The Secret raises the law of attration as the explanation of why we are in our present situation, and i think it is pretty sound. those who think they will probably fail will in reality fail, those who are less determined with their goals will be eliminated by the more determined, those who are after materialist desire will eventually get what they want, no matter they used hard cash or credit card in the course of getting the materials

the above eloberation is obviously over-simple and with loopholes... anyway, the thing i want to say is that we really need to set up our life-goal(s) in order to get ourselves concentrated on them. if we do not know what we want, we dont know what to do. the law of attraction will not work well on a person who has no settled target, becos the person's mind is a mess that no single desire is strong enough to motivate him/her to take a step

so, recently i set myself three life-goals. i think they are the most important to me. just me. i work them out with reference to some of my previous life experiences

first, progress/development. from childhood on i like taking drills. i will go to the basketball court alone to train my skills. i will go and do various trainings spontaneously. i know development/progress is an important theme in my life. in retrospect i was very happy whenever i found i was getting improvement in the fields that i did place effort on

second, relationship. i did not care it before. i was more or less an actor/performer, i always thought i got something to show people and i got the potential to be one of the greatest man in human history (i imagined i would be the youngest nobel prize winner), so what i was always seeking was in fact audience rather than friends. audience/spectators/bystanders never have close relationship with the performer, if one is inimate with me then he or she is not my audience. so to some extent i did isolute myself from the people arround me. i get to know the so-call having something to show the world is just a stupid useless idea out of vainity. warm, solid relationship is far more important.

third, financial free, in actual number asset worth of multi-millions dollars. i dont want to be bill gate or buffet, truly. all i want is to get financial free and so, get more spare time, and be able to do more high-consumption things in the spare time.

i have been working on these three goals (well, with uneven efforts) over a period of time. i found making clear my life-goals has the meaning that i know what is important and unimportant to me in my daily life. say, when i got into a row with the taxi-driver, i would quickly get it out of my mind since i immediately understood it had nothing to do with my goals. when i found an interesting online game, i would feel meaningless with it again becos its not related to the goals.

i am very happy that i get to understand what i want and get to be concentrated on them. i am more and more confident with my future in which all my three goals are realized. and, goals will change, i will keep reviewing and evaluating my goals yearly

it is a long essay, just to share what i have been recently working on

is this supposed to be an essay for some school application?

yes there are some good elements of this law of attraction business.

however i am glad you see some of the oversimplification and the contradictory elements of the book.

if two people are intending opposite things.. which one will prevail?

best of luck to you with all your endeavors

lettuce,

it is not written for applications, but it sounds a good idea to use it in some applications/interviews

roadster,

yes, The Secret is inspiring, but it is not a thorough studies or an academic research, it is not to prove an idea is right ot wrong through strict systemic method, it is just to remind us something important to your life development

there are some explanations on the internet about the two people going for opposite things question ... one says, there is supposed only one mind in this world which is yours, so it is you who keep thinking the other person is thinking the ideas opposite to yours, if you dont think so the other contending minds simply are not existing

well, i dont go for the above explanation, i will rather say it depends on whose thought is stronger and some other external factors

Originally Posted by stackey

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The Secret
Stopped reading here.

Originally Posted by eidolon

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Stopped reading here.
Why?

Hmm, you should let go of pseudo-science if you intend to be a relatively decent grownup. If I were you I'd invest my energy in the consumption of elicit substances and the pursuit of *****. If you insist on reading maybe try some decent philosophy, relatively proven science or recognized novels.

I you wanna go for that Nobel prize maybe start by developing some critical thought, people who believe in "the secret" don't win Nobels, they can barely tie their shoes without help.

Originally Posted by Fuuma

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If I were you I'd invest my energy in the consumption of elicit substances and the pursuit of *****. If you insist on reading maybe try some decent philosophy, relatively proven science or recognized novels.

Cant believe id say this but ... yea what he said..!

Your avatar makes it so damn hard to focus on reading what you have to say.

I gave up after reading the first sentence three times.

Originally Posted by Stazy

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Why?

Because "The Secret" is a justification for the rebirth of 80s materialism by that same generation under the guise of new age philosophy. I could elaborate on connections to cult behavior and various older groups that ran "conferences," or how it is something for people who have failed in almost every aspect of their life, but there's no point. The self-deluded are impervious to reason.

Originally Posted by Fuuma

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Hmm, you should let go of pseudo-science if you intend to be a relatively decent grownup. If I were you I'd invest my energy in the consumption of elicit substances and the pursuit of *****. If you insist on reading maybe try some decent philosophy, relatively proven science or recognized novels.

I you wanna go for that Nobel prize maybe start by developing some critical thought, people who believe in "the secret" don't win Nobels, they can barely tie their shoes without help.
i will say The Secret is worth reading, but i will not go for all the points it told. the truth is that i started to develop a more positive and aggressive mind after reading the book. that's why i set the three goals and put effort on them. i did see some progress after i got to concentrate on the goals. in one sentence, i think The Secret helped me. i will recommend this book to people though obviously it is not a perfect work.

about the elicit substances and the *****, i do pursue them, and they can be included in my three goals (progress in analytic skill, relationship with girls)

Originally Posted by stackey

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i will say The Secret is worth reading
It's not, it never has been, it never will be. The book it is based off of is better, and it was not the first, and two books that came out less than two decades later were better.

the truth is that i started to develop a more positive and aggressive mind after reading the book.

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Those two things rarely go together. You probably think you had an epiphany, and maybe you did in your own way, but the source of it is twisted, and you could have gotten it in other ways.

i did see some progress after i got to concentrate on the goals.

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You started focusing on something and saw progress? No ****? That's amazing.

about the elicit substances and the *****, i do pursue them, and they can be included in my three goals (progress in analytic skill, relationship with girls)

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You need progress as a human being more than anything else.

Originally Posted by eidolon

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It's not, it never has been, it never will be. The book it is based off of is better, and it was not the first, and two books that came out less than two decades later were better.

Those two things rarely go together. You probably think you had an epiphany, and maybe you did in your own way, but the source of it is twisted, and you could have gotten it in other ways.

You started focusing on something and saw progress? No ****? That's amazing.

You need progress as a human being more than anything else.
i am positive, before i could not get rid of the fear of losing games/failing to do something, now i will keep telling myself i can make it, i can do better, and the result is that i have really done better

i am more aggressive, say before i will set my goal as finishing half of the marathon, now i will set the goal as complete the whole route, becos i know if i keep thinking finishing half is enough, the result i get will be finishing half. as the quote from micheal jordan in my signature goes. i will not chase my life-goals half-heartedly.

about the concentration business, i dont mean i sit there and keep thinking the goals hard, then they will be realized. i will do practical drills on the goals. say, i am after a six-pack ab now, so i do follow some guidelines that i found on the internet and keep doing the exercises everyday. i also keep working out on other parts of my body, and i find my chest muscle is significantly bigger.

i dont know whether the other books are far better than The Secret or not (i may check them out later), i only know now i feel myself's getting ahead toward a good direction, it feels great

The Secret is for the Stupid.

Originally Posted by stackey

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i am positive, before i could not get rid of the fear of losing games/failing to do something, now i will keep telling myself i can make it, i can do better, and the result is that i have really done better
So you got therapy, which you probably need, from a ****** book and movie?

i am more aggressive, say before i will set my goal as finishing half of the marathon, now i will set the goal as complete the whole route, becos i know if i keep thinking finishing half is enough, the result i get will be finishing half. as the quote from micheal jordan in my signature goes. i will not chase my life-goals half-heartedly.

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None of this has anything to do with The Secret. Most people with common sense recognize how these amazing intricacies of life work (like, when you do something... you are more likely to get the result you were looking for from that something than if you did nothing).

about the concentration business, i dont mean i sit there and keep thinking the goals hard, then they will be realized. i will do practical drills on the goals. say, i am after a six-pack ab now, so i do follow some guidelines that i found on the internet and keep doing the exercises everyday. i also keep working out on other parts of my body, and i find my chest muscle is significantly bigger.

i dont know whether the other books are far better than The Secret or not (i may check them out later), i only know now i feel myself's getting ahead toward a good direction, it feels great

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Having intangible success does not mean the source of that success was not flawed.

You want six-pack abs, you found a guide, the guide told you to do exercises. What you appear to be unaware of is the fact that abdominal definition is predominately a result of your diet and the amount of body fat you carry, because growth of the abdominal muscles is physiologically limited. Most people who have some muscularity have pretty well-developed abdominals -- they just can't see them. So now you're doing what you have been told is correct: a bunch of exercises to work those muscles, which leads to those muscles getting slightly bigger, and the result will be that you still have no definition and instead look bulkier since the increased muscle mass is still covered by the fat you have yet to lose from making the necessary dietary adjustments.

You want success in life, so you go to something that comes from people who couldn't make it anywhere else, who couldn't do anything but tell other broken and deluded people what to do. You're getting advice about (and this is what it amounts to) avoiding failure from failures. The people that should motivate you are not likely to write a book about motivation, the people who you want to live like are not likely to tell you how to live.

I'll go off on one of my tangents here. I like to go to free stuff at hotels. It entertains me because I am easily amused, I appreciate free continental breakfasts, it's a good way to start off a Sunday morning when there's no football. A favorite of mine is WizeTrade. It's an expensive ($4,000, iirc) product that plots two exponential moving average charts to "time" the market. My dog, given sufficient reading materials, could probably do this with data from finance.yahoo.com. Why do they charge $4,000? Because people don't know the product is actually "doing" (even though infomercials spend 90% of their time "explaining" the process), and even if presented with the undilted reality of the product they are clueless when it comes to material that is covered by first year finance majors.

The guy who was pitching the software one of the times I went out to a Hilton about 5 minutes from my house claimed he ran a successful private wealth management firm in North Florida, and he quit because WizeTrade was so successful for him that he was making more money running it than owning his firm. Does this sound like bullshit? A guy running a "conference" for 18 people at a Hilton, 17 of whom barely speak English, and 1 of whom is an obnoxious Jew who has been concentrating solely on that only free box of Frosted Flakes at the brunch table for 40 minutes, is so successful that he quit (didn't sell, but quit, which makes no sense) his private wealth management firm and... came to do this?

He got a phone call, walked off to the side of the room while the other people there talked, and I listened to him argue about having to do another one of these in a few hours in another county.

Do you know what the power of belief is? It's the power to self-delude. I don't think these people were stupid. They, mostly, appeared to be employed doing physical labor -- some of them were landscapers, the woman sitting in front of me told me she worked at the hotel as a maid. Maybe they don't understand the basics of investment, but they should have been around the block enough to get some red flags from the guy giving the presentation.

These people wanted to believe that they would be successful with the program, they wanted to believe this man. If I could have given them a copy of A Random Walk I would have, but they believed, and as I said earlier: the self-deluded are impervious to reason.

About half of them bought the system. You bought the system. You read a book that has, through an incredibly convoluted process, diluted very old philosophy texts and repackaged them again and again to create some kind of vague ("it just feels right"), attractive justification for pure materialism. You don't know who you are, and that's a pretty common thing, but you went to a well that's poisoned to try and find the answer.

Go read some Descartes or some ****, The Secret isn't going to do anything but distract you more from the fact that you don't have what you really want (contentment).