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Part 1 of 3

"Without Two Important Principles The Secret Won’t Benefit You

By Bill Harris June 18th, 2007 
Source Dream Manifesto

"Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’ve heard of the hit DVD movie, The Secret, which I was fortunate enough to have participated in. The Secret has developed into quite a phenomenon. Many of the teachers who appeared in it have appeared on Oprah! and Larry King Live, and several other national television programs. Hundreds of thousands of people have watched the DVD, and those who have are hungry for information on how to implement what many people call the Law of Attraction. I want to share my take on The Secret and the Law of Attraction, and talk about what you can do to put these principles into action in your own life.

As powerful as The Secret is, there are a few things - a few very important things - it either leaves out, or de-emphasizes. I want to discuss these things, because once you understand them you’ll have the maximum ability to use these important principles to take change of your life. Without them, The Secret won’t benefit you at all.

My belief is that there is a way, no matter who you are, and regardless of your past or present circumstances, to master your life, to master your mind, and to create anything you want in life. The Secret describes a part of how to do that. It’s a very important part, but it’s still just a part. I want to tell you about the other parts, and share some of the practical details, the “how-to,” of what I and the other teachers talked about in The Secret, because there’s more to The Secret and the Law of Attraction than just putting something out to the universe and hoping to get something back.

As the people who made The Secret have said, it’s true that for thousands of years a certain small segment of the population has known about and used this secret, and that those who’ve known it and have used it have prospered in extraordinary ways, and have influenced the world in ways that have seemed almost magical to those who don’t understand this secret. But you need to know more than generalizations about this secret in order to fully implement it, and I want to share some of that with you.

Before I get into some of the nuts and bolts, I want to tell you about two aspects of this secret that were not emphasized in The Secret DVD and book. I’m sharing this with you because these two additional aspects of The Secret are crucial, and if you leave them out, The Secret doesn’t work.

What you focus on creates your life - but it ain’t magic!

Let’s start out, then, by acknowledging that it’s true that you create in reality, in one way or another, whatever you focus your attention on. Your life is going to be an outcome of where you predominantly place your attention. There are, of course, as I said, some things you need to know about the how-to of this in order to get all the benefits, and I’ll talk about that in a moment. What is unfortunate, in my opinion, is that all too often people think that all you have to do is focus your attention on what you want, and then, in some magical way, you’ll get it.

I will say that the way this law works does seem like magic, especially when you first use it and see your results suddenly change from dismal to successful, but there is no magic involved, and without the second two principles I’m going to share, you’ll end up being nothing but a wishful thinker, wondering how long this “Secret” stuff is going to take. I know because I get many letters from people asking me how long it’s going to take, and I have to truthfully tell them that if all they do is focus their attention on what they want, it’s going to take forever.

So let’s look at these other two principles I mentioned, and then we’ll get into some of the nuts and bolts of how to focus your mind in a way that really works. The first principle you heard a lot about in The Secret DVD - the fact that what you place your attention on you tend to create or attract into your life. However, if you stop there, not much happens. After you place your attention on what you want to create or manifest, you have to use the second principle, which is to then take action to get it.

Forget About the Wish Fairy
Yes, I hate to break this to you, but if you want money - or anything else, for that matter - you can’t just wish for it. Whether you want great relationships, a fulfilling career, good health, or anything else, in addition to focusing your attention on what you want, you also have to take action.

And the action you take also has to, in some way, be of value to the world, and to other people. You could act your ass off, but if your action has no value for anyone, you won’t get anything back. This is why they call it the Law of Attraction. You get back what you put out. To get value, you have to give value. That’s the way it works.

For some of the people who come to me, or the other teachers you saw in The Secret, life isn’t working so well. I know what that’s like, because I used to be one of them. Such people aren’t making much money, usually. They very often aren’t in a fulfilling career. Their relationships aren’t satisfying. They don’t feel happy and peaceful. Their health may not be very good. Many of them feel very lost in the world. They sometimes feel like, well, like losers in the game of life.

Often such people don’t have the skills that allow them to offer a lot of value. That doesn’t mean that they couldn’t develop those skills, or in some other way figure out how to create value in the world, but at the present time they either don’t have the skills or don’t know how to use them to create benefit for others.

You see, the problem is that such people - and remember, I used to be one of them, so I understand the thought process - such people would LOVE to find out that there’s a magic way to become prosperous, popular, respected, happy, and loved. Then, when someone comes along and tells them to just “put it out to the universe” it almost becomes a cruel joke, because to create the kind of life I just described, you have to do more than just think about it or wish for it.

I want everyone who feels lost and discouraged about creating the life they want to know that while you can’t JUST focus your attention on what you want, it isn’t that difficult to add these other two principles, and, having added them, you can learn how to have everything you want in life. It isn’t magic, and it isn’t difficult, but there is a price to pay. My career, once I found it, albeit late in life, is about showing people what that price is, and then showing them the easy way to pay it.

Here’s How It Works…
So let’s look at the first principle, what most people think of now as The Secret - the idea that what you place your attention on is manifested in reality. This is a solid, real, principle, but it isn’t magic. Here’s why this principle works - if, of course, you use the other two principles with it.

When you focus your attention on something you want to create or attract, several things happen. Your mind is a very powerful goal-seeking mechanism. You just have to give it a goal, and it gets busy figuring out how to get it. When you focus on something, your mind takes it as an instruction to figure out how to create or attract whatever you’ve focused on. In fact, right now, you’re already using that power. The problem isn’t a lack of ability to manifest what you focus on, but rather a lack of conscious and intentional control over what you focus on.

In other words, most people focus their mind unconsciously and unintentionally. Their focus runs on autopilot. Your mind was pre-set to focus in a certain way during childhood, and now it just runs on automatic. Depending on what happened while you were growing up, your mind focuses a certain amount of the time on what you want, and a certain amount of the time on what you want to avoid. Either way, though, it attracts or creates it.

Here’s how it works. Now remember that this first principle works in conjunction with the other two - taking action, and making sure the action is of value to someone. So when you focus on something you want to create or attract, a number of things happen. First, you get ideas about what actions you could take. If you want to attract a glass of lemonade, you think about having it, and your mind immediately suggests that you go to the kitchen, if you have some lemonade there, or take a trip to the supermarket to buy some, if you don’t. Instantly, you get ideas about what action to take in order to make your idea a reality.

Turning Wishes Into Lemonade
You can probably see that sitting there visualizing lemonade without doing something about it is a belief in magic, and if that’s all you do you’re not going to get lemonade. Even if someone walks into the room just as you think of lemonade, and you ask them to get you some, you’ve still taken action. And, if by some coincidence you thought of lemonade and right then someone walked into the room and said, “I was wondering if you’d like some lemonade?” this is not happening because you thought about lemonade. A lot of magic-believers would like to think so, but you could sit there every day and think about lemonade, and it would be a long time before that method would work again.

Scientists have a name for this. It’s called a coincidence. People who believe in magic turn coincidences into evidence, but that doesn’t make it so, and you can easily prove this to yourself by thinking of lemonade the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that, and finding out what happens. What will happen is that no lemonade will manifest the next day, or the next, or the next, unless you get up out of your chair and take action to find some.

How to find all the resources you need
So the first thing that happens when you focus on getting something is that your mind generates ideas about how to get it, ideas about what actions you could take to get it. The second thing that happens is that you begin to notice resources you could use in getting what you want. You might notice people who could help you that you weren’t noticing before. You might suddenly become aware of information, books, seminars, TV shows, or whatever, that previously you had not noticed.

Perhaps you’ve had the experience of wanting to learn about something and going to a bookstore. Suddenly you see all kinds books about the subject that you never noticed before, and would have just walked right by if you hadn’t told your mind to notice them.

Let’s say you’re driving down the street and you decide you want an Italian meal. If there are any Italian restaurants on that street, will you notice them? Of course. Would you have noticed them if you hadn’t focused your attention on Italian food? Probably not.

When you focus your attention on something, your mind develops a kind of radar that causes resources to wave little red flags at you, and to almost jump into your arms, or at least into your awareness. But again, you can see how this relates to taking action, because these resources you notice are useful only if you use them.

Okay, so far, by focusing on what you want, you’ve begun to develop some ideas about how to get it, and you’ve started noticing resources you could use. Next, focusing on what you want causes you to become motivated to act. Because you’re thinking about what you want, and about how you’ll feel when you get it - good, probably - you become motivated to do something, to take action.

You can be a high-quality person
And, finally, focusing on what you want causes you to tap into or develop certain internal qualities that help you to get it, such things as courage, or persistence, or focus. Because you’re focused on what you want, and are thinking about the benefits of having what you want and imagining how good it will feel, you’re more likely to be persistent, to focus your attention, to be disciplined, to be self-reliant, to take personal initiative, to use your imagination, and to be enthusiastic.

Those who focus on what they want develop all of these personal qualities, and, depending on what qualities are needed in order to create what you want, possibly others. And, the more and the longer you focus on what you want, and the more positive emotion you add, the more these qualities become part of your personality.

So focusing your mind in the way described in The Secret causes you to have ideas, to notice people and resources that could help you, to become motivated to act, and to develop internal qualities that will help you act to get what you want. You can see, then, how incredibly valuable focusing your attention on what you want can be. If you’ve ever wondered why some people seem to have so many ideas, how they seem to always find the resources they need or the people who can help them, how they stay motivated, and how they seem to have all these amazing personal qualities, now you know. They did it by continually focusing their attention on what they want and then taking valuable action.

To be continued…

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