 I couldn't believe all the people who knew this. They were the greatest people in history. Do you know this secret? Give you everything you want. Happiness, health and wealth. What kind of a host do you want to live in? Do you want to be a millionaire? What kind of a business do you want to have? Do you want more success? What do you really want? Chances are at some point in your life you've probably encountered the law of attraction. Whether through a youtuber or influencer or a book, motivational speaker or even a friend, but where did this concept come from and what brought the law of attraction mainstream? In this video, I'm examining the movie The Secret, what caused that movie to release and the aftermath and how this film brought the law of attraction and the idea of the law of attraction mainstream and the cult following, literally cult following, following the release of the film. Hi, Madison here, back with another video exposing scammers. And if you like deep dives and like to analyze, don't forget to subscribe and click that bell so you never miss a video. And if you like this video, don't forget to give it a like. And before we get into today's video, let's talk about this video's sponsor, Care Of. I noticed in these past two months that over 2020, I had kind of stopped taking care of myself. Since gyms are closed, I kind of stopped working out. I've developed really unhealthy sleeping patterns and my eating has been sporadic at best. So this past month or so, I've really been trying to focus on doing little things every day to really take care of myself. I try and go on a 30 minute walk every day and to meditate. And when I found out about the company Care Of, I really resonated with what they do. Care Of, in my mind, is a reasonable and practical approach to taking supplements. You go on their website and answer questions about your diet, lifestyle, and health concerns, and they recommend you supplements to fit your lifestyle. After I took the Care Of quiz, I was recommended a calcium supplement, a prenatal and collagen. Funny enough, my doctor also recommended that I take a prenatal and calcium. So it kind of was the perfect fit for me personally and aligned right with doctor recommendations in my situation, which of course, you should always be sure of. I've been super curious about trying a collagen supplement and will continue to try it. And I loved how Care Of didn't push a ton of products on me and supplements that I don't need, but instead examined my lifestyle for very specific and simple approaches to taking supplements. After I took the quiz, they explained to me their reasoning for why they recommended each product for me. And it was all really simple and made sense to me. In the past, I've struggled with taking vitamins that my doctor has recommended to me, mainly because I just forget about them and that they exist and would just forget to take them. And as silly as it sounds, I've found Care Of's packaging to be really, really helpful when it comes to remembering to take my supplements. They have this adorable little dispensary system, and I put it just right on my counter. And every day when I go downstairs for a small glass of water and breakfast, they're just right there. And as I'm drinking water, I'm just like, Oh, and I just take a little one out. And it's really simple. And I actually find it really easy to remember to take my vitamins with Care Of. This is also really random, but I love the blender bottle that came with the collagen supplement. It is by far the best blender bottle I've had. It's super small, so it fits in anything and just is really good quality compared to my other blender bottles. I've been using the supplements for three weeks now, and I put two scoops of collagen in 10 ounces of oat milk every morning. I've struggled with any sort of powdered supplement in the past. I love weightlifting, but I used to always despise any sort of protein powder or supplement powder because of the intense artificial flavoring. It was always awful, and I would never drink them. And I would spend like $70 on a thing of protein and never have it. So I really like the collagen supplement because it's unflavored and just kind of blends in with the oat milk and tastes really good. The best part of the Care Of packaging is that their daily packs are made with eco-friendly compostable film. I also highly recommend reading their information on the website under Learn, where they explain in depth how their algorithm takes into account your personal goals and lifestyle as well as clinical research to only recommend products that will be the most effective. They're honest about their sourcing and supply chain. They have a large scientific advisory board, and overall Care Of is the best supplement brand that I could find because of their transparency and no-nonsense approach. Take the quiz yourself to see what's recommended to you and use my code HappyMind50 to get 50% off your first order. Also, please always check with your doctor. These products are not meant to treat or cure anything just to seamlessly fit into your lifestyle. I really feel like Care Of is a really practical, honest, and transparent company, and I really love the company, their ethics, and the approach they take to health. So thank you to Care Of for sponsoring this video, and well, let's get into the secret about the secret. First, let's talk about the movement that inspired it all, the New Thought Movement. The New Thought Movement is a spiritual movement that began popping up in the U.S. in the early 19th century. The chief tenants of New Thought are infinite intelligence, or God is omnipotent and omnipresent. Spirit is the ultimate reality. True human selfhood is divine. Divinely attuned thought is a positive force for good. All disease is mental in origin, which is really reminiscent of the movie Heal, if you saw my video on that, and right thinking has a healing effect, once again, really reminiscent of the movie Heal. The most fascinating part of the New Thought Movement for its time is that this movement was based on a variety of different religions and ancient philosophy. It seems like the movement largely grew because of its positivity take on things, but I feel like it takes toxic positivity to a whole new level and meaning. It literally teaches you that if you're always positive, always positive, and always have positive thoughts, that good things will happen to you. But if you have one negative thought, that's the cause of all your disease or suffering. I'm just imagining living in that mentality, and it seems so toxic to me. I feel like I would constantly be stressed out about my thoughts and whether or not they're positive and just trying to live in this delusional world of just pure positivity, which is, as we know at this point, really dangerous. And I just can't imagine this being good for you long term, personally. The New Thought Movement also emerged within churches, specifically the Unity Church and the Church of Divine Science. But many scientists and scholars have raised concerns about the New Thought Movement and the mentality that it produces. In scientific medicine, diseases can have a wide range of physical causes from abnormalities in genes and in cell growth that cause cancer to viruses, bacteria, and fungi that cause infections to environmental toxins that can damage entire organ systems. Human physical diseases are caused by physical issues. While it has been empirically supported that the psychological and social health of a person can influence their susceptibility to disease, for example stress can suppress immune function, which increases risk of infection, mental states are not the cause of human disease, as is claimed by the New Thought Movement. So that is the New Thought Movement and its beliefs and origins, a movement which ended up greatly influencing the secret. Rhonda Burns, the creator of the movie The Secret, cites the source for her inspiration for the film being The New Thought Book, The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Waddles. Other New Thought books Burn has purported to have read include self-help authors like Prentice Mulford's 19th Century, Thoughts Are Things, and Robert Collier's Secret of the Ages from 1926. So let's talk about The Secret. The Secret, a film that considers itself a self-help film. It always works. It works every time with every person. Uses a documentary format to present the concept of the law of attraction. So when you're looking at that thing you want and you're saying yes to it, you're activating a thought. And the law of attraction is responding to that thought and bringing you things that match that. AKA, everything in the universe can be influenced by you and the way you think. Now I do personally think that your attitude and outlook can affect a lot of aspects of your life, but more as a philosophy and a general approach and outlook on things. To say that you can affect the cosmos and cure your own diseases? The question that's frequently asked is when a person has a manifest of a disease in their body temple or some kind of discomfort in their life, through the power of right thinking can it be turned around? And the answer is absolutely yes. On November 23rd, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I truly believed in my heart with my strong faith that I was already healed. During the day, all day long, I would just say thank you for my healing. On and on and on I went, thank you for my healing. I believed in my heart I was healed. I saw myself as if cancer was never in my body. From the time I was diagnosed, which was November 23rd to the time I was healed, totally was approximately three months. And that's without radiation and chemotherapy. Now that's cold like, like that's that's cold like. You're going into dipping your toes into cold territory. The worst and also funniest part of this film is that the secret suggests that those in power have kept this secret from the general public. Why do you think that 1% of the population earns around 96% of all the money that's being earned? Do you think that's an accident? It's no accident. It's designed that way. They understand something. They understand the secret and you are being introduced to the secret. The government doesn't want you to know that you can better your life with your own thoughts. Like where does any of that make sense? And you can see how the secret has affected so many things today. Like conspiracy theories and businesses like Goop and motivational speakers. It has really bled into a lot of aspects of our society today. A lot of the teachers of the law of attraction in the movie The Secret aka Secret Teachers as they're called are really shady themselves. For example, James Arthur Ray was a huge part of the movie The Secret. And that's not wealth. It really isn't. You know, you can go after the money and you might get rich, but it doesn't guarantee you'll be wealthy. I'm not suggesting that money isn't a part of wealth. It absolutely is. But it's only a part. And then I mean a lot of people who are quote unquote spiritual, but they're sick and broke all the time. That's not wealth either. But they're sick and broke all the time. James Arthur Ray is a self-help, motivational speaker, spiritual guru, and also a convicted felon. Rhonda produced The Secret DVD in just weeks and she featured experts who not only teach this law of attraction that they call The Secret, but say that their phenomenal success is because they know The Secret. James Arthur Ray grew up as an insecure and awkward teen. In his 20s, weightlifting helped this self-described geek gain confidence. James says surviving a near-fatal motorcycle crash and almost going bankrupt forced him to focus on the life he truly wanted. Now he runs a multimillion-dollar corporation dedicated to teaching people how to create wealth in all areas of their lives. In 2011, James Arthur Ray was convicted of three counts of negligent homicide for causing the deaths of three participants in one of his new age retreats. At a new age spiritual warrior retreat conceived and hosted by Ray at the Angel Valley Retreat Center in Yavapai County near Sedona, Arizona, two participants, James Shore and Kirby Brown, died as a result of being a non-traditional sweat lodge exercise for several hours personally conducted by Ray, aka he took an ancient practice and tradition, exploited it, changed it for his own liking, and then caused two people to die from that. 18 others were hospitalized after suffering burns, dehydration, breathing problems, kidney failure, or elevated body temperature. And I don't think the movie The Secret really helped them that much. Liz Newman, another attendee, died on October 17 after being comatose for a week. The attendees, who had paid up to $10,000 for this retreat, had fasted for 36 hours during what was claimed to be a vision quest exercise before the next day's purported sweat lodge. What? During this period of fasting, participants were left alone in the Arizona desert with a sleeping bag, although Ray had offered them Peruvian ponchos for an additional $250, literally a gross disgusting scammer. This makes me so mad. And at the moment, I'm getting so frustrated when people use ancient traditions to exploit people. It feels like a really twisted version of cultural appropriation that's dangerous for all the participants involved. After this experience, participants ate a large buffet breakfast before entering the non-traditional structure built for what they had been told would be a sweat lodge ceremony. The site owner reported she learned after the event that the participants went two days without water before entering the structure. So A, literally a cult. B, literally dangerous. C, this proves to me at least that at least James Arthur Ray is a total scammer, total snake oil salesman who doesn't care about putting people in danger with his purported expert spiritual teachings. So if he was involved in the film and a ton of other shady characters were involved, you have to question everything about the film. Initially, the film was broadcasted by Channel 9 in 2007, but the film completely flopped. It wasn't until the film shifted to viral marketing that the secret really hit the mainstream. The secret was basically the law of attraction, but with a focus on wealth enhancement. When it comes to creating wealth, wealth is a mindset. It's all about how you think. I'd say 80% of my coaching that I do one-on-one with folks is about their psychology and the way they think. And I know when people are listening, they say, Oh, you can do what I can. Every person has the capability to change the way they're in a relationship and conversation with money, which was really different from the spiritual focus of the new thought movement. It was basically one long spiritual guru course on how to get rich film. One of the film's backers stated about the purpose of the movie, we desire to hit the masses and money is the number one thing on the masses mind, which to me is extremely telling about the intentions of the film. The number one purpose of the film was not to share a new concept or bring to light this law of attraction concept. The movie was meant to solely appeal to people. It was meant to latch onto people's emotions and desires. It was meant to sell. The choice to promote the film as a secret was also very intentional. Donovan Beniz, a buyer who specializes in metaphysics for Borders books stated we all want to be in on a secret, but to present it as the secret that was brilliant. The movie was advertised on the internet using tease advertising and viral marketing techniques in which the specific details of the secret were not revealed, which reminds me of like MLM and cult recruitment tactics, where recruiters tease you without fully revealing the whole thing. They just give you like little tidbits that sound promising and rope you in further and further until you're fully engulfed in this entire thing. And then and only then do you actually find out what the real purpose or cause of all of it is. The estimated domestic DVD sales in the US in 2007 exceeded $56 million and eventually topped $65 million. But the secret was not without its critics. Several critics wrote about the secret in relation to self-help in general. Julie Mason of the Ottawa Citizen wrote that word of mouth about the film spread through Polaris classes, Get Rich Quick websites, and personal motivational blogs. Jane Lappman of the Christian Science Monitor described the secret as a brand promoting secret related teachers, seminars, and retreats. That's literally what it is. If you look into every single expert in the secret, it's like this giant web system of self and cross promotion. People claim themselves to be experts because they were backed up by the secret, but the secret claims to be experts because of its expert teachers. So both of them are claiming validity in each other. Both of them are claiming authority because they've been promoted by each other. And every single secret teacher sells some sort of retreat seminar or book. So that's the movie the secret influenced by the New Thought movement. The secret going on itself to influence the entire self-help genre, spiritual gurus, and the law of attraction as we know today. Now if it was just the movie the secret that preached the law of attraction, it probably would have never gained as much traction as it did. But spiritual gurus selling courses hopped on the trend, continuing to spread it, as well as self-help and motivational gurus who are selling books and seminars. Oprah Winfrey is also a huge proponent of the secret. On the Larry King show she said that the message of the secret is the message she's been trying to share with the world on her show for the past 21 years. Book could be number one. I was really very excited about it because basically the message of the secret is the message that I've been trying to share with the world on my show for the past 21 years. The message is that you're really responsible for your life. You are responsible for your life. Author Rhonda Byrne was later invited to her show along with people who vow by the secret. It is the secret to creating the like you truly want. Make more money, lose weight, fall in love, land your dream job. Isn't that amazing? The law of attraction I would describe as the most powerful law in the universe and it is the law by which we are creating our lives. So whether we realize it or not, the law of attraction is working all of the time. Over time Oprah has probably been one of the largest proponents and promoters of the secret and law of attraction in general. On top of that Tony Robbins, one of the most famous or infamous motivational speakers, preaches the law of attraction often and even sells a course on the law of attraction. When you're absolutely certain that if I do this it's going to get that result and that result is going to change my life, you'll do it. It's sad because a lot of this takes concepts with some backing and blows it out of proportion and draws these larger conclusions that have zero backing. And it's hard not to believe that all of this is just to sell something when literally every single proponent of the secret and the law of attraction is selling some sort of something on their expertise. And most of it is marketed towards our greatest desires. Find the romantic partner of your dreams. Make the money that you want to make. Live the life that you want to live. All you have to do is take this course or buy this DVD or watch this seminar to unlock the secret. I even wonder if the movie The Secret has influenced get rich quick gurus who constantly say unlock the secret to blink. But these extreme beliefs and teachings, especially when it veers into the territory of you can alter the universe and cure your diseases goes right into major cold territory. According to psychology today, for the rare reader who is not familiar with the secret, it has a simple message which it calls the law of attraction. The message is that whatever you think about wealth, poverty, happiness, misery, love or isolation, the universe will deliver it to you. You attract to yourself what you imagine. The message has a clear appeal. It offers a one size fits all solution to life's large and small problems, all of them. But the secret takes the power of positive thinking far beyond the evidence. Its claim is that your thoughts cause the things that happen to you. If you think about a clear road home, the universe will deliver it to you. If you think about an empty parking space, the universe will manifest one in front of your car. If you think about having an income of $100,000, you shall have it. A beautiful wife, that too. The law of attraction sadly is not a casual claim. It s an unfalsifiable one. Consider this, what if you don t get what you want after thinking and thinking and thinking about it? Does that prove that the secret doesn t work? No, because maybe you didn t think enough about it, or you thought too many negative thoughts, or you didn t give the universe enough time to deliver it to you? Which is such a good point. If you believe in the secret, everything around you confirms that belief, like confirmation bias. And if something doesn t go the way that you want it to, all that means, according to the secret, is that you didn t think positively enough, you didn t think enough about it, or you didn t give the universe enough time. But if something good happens to you, then that just continues to confirm that the law of attraction is real and working in your favor. It s like your entire reality and perception begins to alter and change, all centered around the law of attraction, and everything confirming the law of attraction to you further. On top of that, instead of just dishonest, the secret may be downright destructive. Reality is, the secret promotes our culture s privileging of optimism and positive emotions, and it s refusal to acknowledge any suffering. Or on top of it, that suffering can exist without being the fault of yourself. As strange as it sounds, think about homeless people, or people who are suffering with intense diseases. The mentality that the secret produces is that it s those people s fault that they re suffering, that it s those people s fault that they re enduring any sort of pain, and that they manifested that. Think of how warped of a mindset, and how almost completely unempathetic of a mindset that produces, where you are convinced that homelessness is the person s fault, that disease is the person s fault. You lose all sense of empathy in that situation. In a way, I think law of attraction and the secret literally defines privilege, because reality is, you have to live in an extremely privileged world to not acknowledge suffering, or to believe that suffering is the fault of one s own thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and inner mind. The law of attraction normalizes a lack of compassion. Law of attraction founder Wallace Waddles even wrote himself, do not talk about poverty, do not investigate it, or concern yourself with it. Do not spend your time in charitable work or charity movements. All charity only tends to perpetuate the wretchedness it aims to eradicate, and give your attention wholly to riches, ignore poverty. Rhonda Byrne in the secret takes this a step further, saying if you see people who are overweight, do not observe them. If you think or talk about diseases, you will become sick. What you think or surround yourself with, good or bad, is what you bring upon yourself. So if you believe in law of attraction, not only do you not even entertain yourself with any sort of misfortune, but you can t have any sort of profession such as being a physician, a nurse, a hospital worker, a psychologist, police officer, paramedic, or do any sort of charitable work. This emphasizes this feeling of no support or a community that offers zero support, since you always attract what you think about. You have to avoid any type of support group for people with mental or physical illnesses. But research shows that support groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Weight Watchers, or Breast Cancer Support are beneficial. The secret creates this glorified infancy in a way. It promises that if we can learn to ask and receive, then the universe can be the idealized parent we never had, a parent who can read our minds and provide us with everything that we want. But without a doubt, the worst part of the law of attraction is that it discourages the kinds of practices that can help the most isolated and miserable among us feel some relief from suffering. The most transformative and healing moments in psychotherapy are those in which the therapist can step into the client s pain, can share in it for a time, so that the client can feel another s understanding, compassionate presence, and feels not so alone. This empathetic process requires the therapist to be willing to actively imagine and be impacted by the client s painful reality. This process is also powerful when one s friends and loved ones can do it. What happens to this kind of empathy if we believe that our futures are shaped by negative things we imagine? It is literally the definition of toxic positivity. Imagine going to therapy and telling someone all the negative thoughts and then having that therapist say, well that s your fault that you re thinking that way, just don t think that way at all, only think positive thoughts. I had a student named Robert. Robert was a gay man and he was taking an online course I have, part of which entails email access to me. And he outlined all of the grim realities of his life. In his job, all the people ganged up on him. And it was constantly stressful because of how nasty they were with him. When he walked down the street he said every block he was accosted by homophobic people who wanted to abuse him in some way. I began to teach him that he was focusing on what he did not want. I directed him back to his email that he sent me and said, read it again, look at all the things you do not want that you re telling me about. Literally the definition of toxic positivity, only its repackage as something that will bring you all the good things you want in the universe. So overall the secret is dangerous, cult-like, and just not based by very much science, data, and studies. And that s all for today s video. Shout out to my Patreon members up on the screen. Thank you so much for supporting the channel. If you want to join my Patreon, the link is in the description. We have a lot of fun on the Discord and there s just so many great people there. My merch is also right below this video and I ll catch you guys in the next one.