What I Just Read

The Secret has been widely criticized for being unoriginal. And, well, it is. I don't think author Rhonda Byrne would deny that she borrows heavily from the pioneers of 19th and 20th century positive psychology, including Wallace Wattles, Charles Haanel and Napoleon Hill. And much of the content of The Secret is an amalgamation of quotes, concepts and input from some two dozen modern positive psychology practitioners, including Lee Brower, Morris Canfield, John Gray and Hale Dwoskin. Okay, so the book is derivative. So what? It's not a crime to rehash things, as long as doing so provides value to readers. And the primary gift of this book is that it presents useful psychological concepts like visualization, gratitude, mindfulness, and the Law of Attraction in a friendly and easy-to-understand way. The central idea of The Secret is the notion that thoughts are things. Thoughts have weight, they have force, and they cause things to happen. If you really think about it, all inv