Get Happy, Be Happy, Stay Happy

I just received an e-newsletter from Belleruth Naparstek of Healthjourneys. Belleruth is a psychotherapist and a pioneer in getting guided imagery into mainstream healthcare. I had the pleasure of hearing her speak at a conference. She is witty, friendly and compassionate. Her warm, soothing voice is amazing — perfectly suited for creating guided imagery recordings.

If you’re interested in guided imagery, here’s your chance to try it for free. See the details below. I’m posting the entire newsletter because it’s full of great news — plus you’ll get to see her fun personality. Enjoy!

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Free Stress Imagery Download for New Subscribers

Cindy tells me that we’re now offering a free download of some handy, 15-minute, stress-relieving imagery, to whomever signs up for a subscription for this here e-newsletter (which is also free, by the way). ImageryNews is our primary way of getting immediate, online word out to you about new stuff we’re doing; the latest research in guided imagery, meditation and hypnosis; new training and learning opportunities; cutting edge practitioners; special sales; and exciting, enviable new programs in the field (which we hope you will shamelessly imitate or improve upon, if you’re a clinician; and demand the likes of at your hospital or clinic, if you’re a health consumer).

The sign-up page for the enews and the free download can be found over here. So do tell your friends, family and colleagues about this – especially those who could use a little portable, self-administered stress relief flowing into their ears PRN (on an as-needed basis), via their iPods or MP3 players or the like.

Seven Free Imagery Downloads for Kaiser Permanente Members

And this reminds me: I just got back from San Francisco, where I learned Kaiser Permanente has begun some very exciting, nation-wide, new media initiatives. Any KP member – all 9 million of ‘em - can get free downloads of seven specifically selected Health Journeys guided imagery recordings – downloads that would cost anywhere from $10.98 to $12.98 on this very site. This is part of a new, broad-based initiative, using downloads, podcasts and streamed teaching modules to deliver health information and digital interventions to people, right at the screen.

For their free downloads, they’ve chosen imagery to help with:

* stress
* insomnia
* weight loss
* surgery
* pain
* pregnancy & labor
* menopause

Members just do whatever it is they have to do to get on their doc’s home page, where they will find the “Healthy Living Resources” on the left nav bar, click on “Podcasts” (we’re hoping they’ll change the terminology, ’cause it’s not really a podcast…), and find the link to the Health Journeys library at the bottom of the page. If this gets too confusing or if you hyperventilate at the very thought of navigating the internet, you are invited to call the technical folk at 1-800-556-7677 or email them your bafflements.

This is an awesome service for an HMO to be providing, and we’re delighted and proud to be part of it.

… And a rapidly growing pre-surgery program…

In addition, the Northern California regional office of KP gives out CDs of our Successful Surgery imagery to members anticipating surgery. It started out small (at Kaiser Santa Rosa Hospital), thanks to the ingenuity, dedication and drive of the fabulous Brad Larsen, a nurse-anesthetist who one day got tired of talking about how nice it would be to give out imagery to pre-surgery patients, and just started a pilot program with some built-in evaluation & research. (We actually featured Brad over at our Clinician’s Corner in our dazzling gallery of Practitioners We Love.)

Brad’s program worked so well, it got rolled out to the whole region – thanks to a very committed effort by that dynamic duo, David Sobel MD, Director of Patient Education & Health Promotion, and Harley Goldberg, DO, Director of Complementary & Alternative Medicine. Now, more and more practitioners and hospitals – and patients – are coming on board by leaps and bounds. We see orders coming in from many departments now – from E.N.T. to plastic surgery; sigmoscopy surgery to urology; gastroenterology to OBGYN; anesthesiology to health ed. It’s very exciting to see usage expanding geometrically as word of mouth spreads. We’re pumped.

And always, a tip of the hat to Blue Shield of California

Blue Shield of California, of course, started this whole pro bono trend of distributing guided imagery CDs to HMO members – at least they were the first on a really large scale. In fact, they’ve been doing this for 8 or 9 years now, and currently they’re giving away eleven different CD titles to members, free of charge, as part of their regular, patient education efforts.

The Blue Shield CDs include stress, surgery, weight loss, smoking cessation, healthy heart, asthma and chemotherapy.

It was Blue Shield who proved beyond any doubt that an HMO could do WELL while doing GOOD: they went back over their records and found that they saved a small fortune in average procedure costs (like over $2000 per procedure) in those hysterectomy patients who elected to use the free imagery, as compared to those who chose to do without. And they continue to get buckets of grateful notes, emails and voicemail messages, attesting to the degree of “brand loyalty” as they say, that a program like this generates. (The most anxious pre-surgery patients use the CDs the most and benefit the most dramatically, we found, here and elsewhere.)

This is a win/win/win that makes everybody happy: the members get a free audio tool that reduces their anxiety and gives them a feeling of empowerment, which makes a big difference in how they feel, and often how they do, too (blood loss, healing time, pain meds, etc); the HMO saves on costs, and has happier, more loyal members; and our company gets to distribute its stuff to a far wider group of people who need it, and through some built-in, steroidally powerful distribution channels. What could be bad here, I ask you?

You can find Blue Shield’s description of guided imagery and why it’s a good idea to give it a try over at Health Journeys. This highly successful program with a huge shelf life was the result of the brilliant work of a whole team of incredible people, led by Deborah Schwab, MSN and Dana Davies, MPH.

A workshop on imagery for Parkinson’s Disease

Next stop is Tallmadge, Ohio on April 21st, at the annual meeting of the Northeast Ohio Parkinson’s Foundation, to talk to people with PD, their care partners and providers. This educational day goes from 10 am - 2 pm, and I’ll be presenting first thing in the morning, on the power of guided imagery to help reduce PD symptoms, support healthful sleep, and promote greater energy, motor control and motivation.

Our new guided imagery for Parkinson’s Disease is getting strong feedback, and we want to get the word out that imagery can help with some of the symptoms of this condition – especially with mood regulation, fatigue, cramping, freezing, tremors, posture and self-esteem. For more information about this event, call 800.630.3193.

Our Stress Less Gift Pack

We can’t keep our Stress Less Gift Pack in stock, it seems. It really is a great gift for anyone in need of a little care and feeding (emotionally, that is) with its combination of aromatherapy (lavender, chamomile and sage, in the form of body lotion and body wash) and imagery (superb hypnotherapist David Illig’s and my CDs). If you have time, do check it out and send it to your favorite tense person!

OK, that’s it for now. Take care and be well!

All best,
Belleruth
Healthjourneys.com
800.800.8661

Connie L. Schmidt, of “Cosmic Connie” fame, wrote a piece about The Secret for the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. The condensed version, called The Wrath of the Secretrons, is now available for your reading pleasure.

Congratulations, Connie! By the way, you look much nicer in four-color!

The Secret and several of its Law of Attraction teachers rely on what physicist Murray Gell-Mann calls quantum flapdoodle to prove the Law of Attraction. Mangled quantum mechanics is also at the heart of What the Bleep.

But a gullible public isn’t the only problem. Apparently, not even physics students may be able to convincingly confront the wacky ideas popularized in these films, as well as in the plethora of books on “creating your reality.”

“It’s not the student’s fault. For the most part, in our teaching of quantum mechanics we tacitly deny the mysteries physics has encountered,” writes Fred Kuttner, a physicist and one of the authors of Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness.

This book couldn’t have come at a better time. (Hey! I wonder if I attracted it?!)

Physicists properly join today’s arguments involving the teaching of Darwinian evolution. There is, however, a social issue closer to the responsibility of physicists: Quantum physics is increasingly invoked to promote pseudoscience.

Such promotions may start with correct statements of the intriguing implications of quantum mechanics, move to legitimate hyperbole, and then go off into complete hype. Take a recent “international hit” movie as our case in point. It’s strangely titled “What tHe #$*! Do wE (k)now!?” (What the Bleep Do We Know!?). Time magazine described it as “an odd hybrid of science documentary and spiritual revelation featuring a Greek chorus of PhDs and mystics talking about quantum physics.”

Early on, the movie illustrates the uncertainty principle with a bouncing basketball being in several places at once. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s recognized as pedagogical exaggeration. But the movie gradually moves to quantum “insights” that lead a woman to toss away her antidepressant medication, to the quantum channeling of the 35000-year-old Atlantis god Ramtha, and on to even greater nonsense.

Most laypeople cannot tell where the quantum physics ends and the quantum nonsense begins, and many are susceptible to being misguided. According to polls, well over half of the people in the US and England have significant belief in the reality of supernatural phenomena. Robert Park, in his book Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud (Oxford University Press, 2000), states the problem well. “Many people . . . seek a certainty that science cannot offer. For these people the unchanging dictates of ancient religious beliefs, or the absolute assurances of zealots, have a more powerful appeal.

“Paradoxically, however, their yearning for certainty is often mixed with a respect for science. They long to be told that modern science validates the teachings of some ancient scripture or New Age guru. The purveyors of pseudoscience have been quick to exploit their ambivalence.” We should not underestimate how persuasively physics can be invoked to buttress mystical notions. We physicists bear some responsibility for the way our discipline is exploited.

The human implications of quantum mechanics that fuel popular discussion arise in the measurement problem and in entanglement. The measurement problem and entanglement is at least how we refer to these topics in a physics class, where we rarely go much beyond their mathematical formulation. Elsewhere, the same issues are legitimately discussed more broadly in terms of the nature of reality, universal connectedness, and consciousness. But we don’t distract physics students with excursions into issues that extend embarrassingly beyond the boundaries we define for our discipline. Science historian Jed Buchwald notes, “Physicists . . . have long had a special loathing for admitting questions with the slightest emotional content into their professional work.”

Accordingly, unlike the biology student able to defend evolution against intelligent design, a physics student may be unable to convincingly confront unjustified extrapolations of quantum mechanics.

Read entire article: Teaching Physics Mysteries Versus Pseudoscience

Buy the book (20% discount available from Oxford University Press)

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Marcus Buckingham, coathor of Now, Discover Your Strengths, the bestseller that introduced me to the strengths movement, has written another eye-opener — Go Put Your Strengths to Work. The book provides a six-step plan to help you go beyond knowing what your strengths are to actually applying them for maximum success.

And it is up to you!

Unless you are already surrounded by rare, strengths-oriented individuals, no one else gives a fig about your strengths. Which is tragic. Imagine a world where everyone lives, works and breathes from their most powerful, talented, gifted self.

Wow.

Back when you were young, your strengths were to be trusted. You might not have had a name for them — you might not even have labeled them strengths — but when you were a child, you listened to them. Then somehow, sometime between then and now, your childhood clarity faded and you started listening to the world around you more closely than you did to yourself. You had to go to college and find a job, and with the job came the urgent demands of customers, colleagues, and bosses. The truth you now face is that these people aren’t very concerned with your strengths; they’re much more interested in what you can get done for them.

But so what? Faced with the world’s indifference, you’ve got two options: either resign yourself to a life in which your strengths are largely irrelevant; or, instead, learn how to make them relevant. Learn how to put them to work. It’s your choice.” — Marcus Buckingham

The six steps:

Step 1. Bust the myths. So what’s stopping you?

Step 2. Get clear. Do you really know what your strengths are?

Step 3. Free your strengths. How do you make the most of what strengthens you?

Step 4. Stop your weaknesses. How can you cut out what weakens you?

Step 5. Speak up. How do you create strong teams?

Step 6. Build strong habits. How can you make this last forever?

Are you ready to join the movement and really thrive? And, in doing so, help our planet heal and thrive?

StrengthsFinder 2.0 is the name of a new book and the upgraded edition of the online StrengthsFinder assessment.

I took the previous version several years ago at the request of my employer. The assessment analyzes your instinctual patterns and reveals your five most powerful “signature themes” of talent. Talents are your naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior that have been in place since childhood. Think of these talents as powerful T1 lines, in contrast to slow dial-up connections. (See my post Discover your natural T1 lines)

Last month I bought the new StrengthsFinder 2.0 book and took the updated assessment. I was curious to see if any of my signature themes had changed. They have. Only two are the same — Ideation and Intellection. But in my personalized report, I can still see the patterns from the missing three woven within my new themes. Interesting.

Here are the top 5 themes revealed the first time I took the assessment:

• Ideation
• Context
• Inclusiveness
• Intellection
• Maximizer

Here are the top 5 themes revealed from taking the updated assessment:

• Ideation
• Connectedness
• Individualization
• Learner
• Intellection

Other StrengthsFinder assessment takers report (in the online forum) that their themes have changed as well. I’m waiting for someone from Gallup to explain why the differences. I assume it’s because the updated assessment is able to give a more accurate picture. I don’t think any assessment can be 100 percent accurate — it can be only as accurate as what’s fed in, right? It’s not a magic.

If you’re interested in seeing a sample report, you’re welcome to read mine (PDF).

What are the elements of a good life? What makes people happy? Grab a pen and write down the essential ingredients.

What did you write? Having lots of money? Shaking riches out of the cosmos à la The Secret?

Now hang on to your hat, because among the biggest findings in happiness research is that once a person’s income is above poverty level, money doesn’t buy happiness. And that altruism makes people happier than does endulging the self. And that the strongest determiner of happiness is, drumroll please, meaningful relationships. (Where have we read this before?)

I love what is coming out of positive psychology and the strengths movement. It’s empirical validation of what many have known all along. And it hasn’t been a secret.

Though not denying humanity’s flaws, the new tack of positive psychologists recommends focusing on people’s strengths and virtues as a point of departure. Rather than analyze the psychopathology underlying alcoholism, for example, positive psychologists might study the resilience of those who have managed a successful recovery—for example, through Alcoholics Anonymous. Instead of viewing religion as a delusion and a crutch, as did Freud, they might identify the mechanisms through which a spiritual practice like meditation enhances mental and physical health. Their lab experiments might seek to define not the conditions that induce depraved behavior, but those that foster generosity, courage, creativity, and laughter….

The field’s roots go back at least to 1962, when Brandeis psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote about what a human life could be at its greatest in Toward a Psychology of Being. His “humanistic psychology” became the discipline’s “third force,” following psychoanalysis and behaviorism. “The fundamental difference between humanistic psychology and positive psychology is in their relationship to research, epistemology, and methodology,” says Ben-Shahar. “Many who joined the ‘Third Wave’ were not rigorous. Humanistic psychology gave birth to the self-help movement, and lots of self-help books have come out with concepts grounded in emotion and intuition. Positive psychology combines those things with reason and research.”

Read the entire article, The Science of Happiness, Harvard Magazine.

May the research continue in full force!

Okay, I know I’m supposed to be taking a break from talking about The Secret. But I still find myself going over to Cosmic Connie’s blog to see what interesting things she’s found in the New Wage world. The Secret is giving her lots of material, I tell ya.

I also pop over to Blair Warren’s site to see what’s up. Blair participated in a Secret discussion with Kevin Hogan, Dave Lakhani and Bob Beverly last week. So I just found out that the recording of the call is available now at The Truth Is The Secret blog.

Get the recording here

According to Dave Lakhani’s post, more than 775 people were on the call! I’m happy to say that I was one of them. The discussion was excellent.

The purpose of the discussion was to take on some of the real inaccuracies that were presented as fact in the movie and the book. Some of those ideas that were presented as fact:

• The Secret is a law like gravity
• The people of Rwanda are subconsciously attracting genocide because they have a fear based mindset
• That children invite their rape and murder subconsciously
• That looking at fat people makes you fat and that if you don’t believe food will make you fat you can eat all you want and it won’t
• That the major minds of the world Einstein, Emmerson, and many more knew The Secret and practiced it

I hope you can tell by these bullet points why I am so opposed to The Secret!

It’s really a shame, but those who are speaking out against The Secret are getting tons of flak — particularly from people in the personal development field who teach motivation and success principles. I’m almost positive that most of these people DO NOT promote the ridiculous teachings from The Secret (as outlined in the bullet points), but for some reason they’re aligning themselves with The Secret.

Anyway, don’t get me started.

Download the recording here

Over the past several decades psychology focused on what is wrong with us. That is changing, thanks to the efforts of pioneers in the new field of positive psychology. It’s high time we began to study human goodness and excellence.

What is Positive Psychology?

The field of positive psychology was christened in 1998 as one of the initiatives of Martin Seligman in his role as President of the American Psychological Association (APA). The trigger for positive psychology was the premise that psychology since World War II has joined forces with psychiatry and focused much of its efforts on human problems and how to remedy them. The yield of this focus on pathology has been considerable.

But there has also been a cost to this emphasis. Scientific psychology has neglected the study of what can go right with people and often has little more to say about the good life than do pop psychologists, inspirational speakers, and armchair gurus. More subtly, the underlying assumptions of psychology have shifted to embrace a disease model of human nature. Human beings are seen as flawed and fragile, victims of cruel environments or casualties of bad genetics, and if not in denial then at best in recovery. This worldview has even crept into the common culture, and many of us have become self-identified victims, trying to survive but not to flourish.

Positive psychology proposes that it is time to correct this imbalance and to challenge the assumptions of the disease model. Positive psychology calls for as much focus on strength as on weakness, as much interest in building the best things in life as in repairing the worst, and as much attention to fulfilling the lives of healthy people as to healing the wounds of the distressed. The concern of psychology with human problems is of course understandable. It will not and should not be abandoned; people experience difficulties that demand and deserve scientifically-informed solutions.

Proponents of positive psychology are merely saying that the psychology of the past sixty years is incomplete. As simple as this proposal sounds, it demands a sea change in perspective. Psychologists interested in promoting human potential need to start with different assumptions and to pose different questions from their peers who assume a disease model.

The most basic assumption that positive psychology urges is that human goodness and excellence are as authentic as disease, disorder, and distress. The concerns of positive psychology includes three related topics: the study of positive subjective experiences (happiness, pleasure, gratification, fulfillment, well-being), the study of positive individual traits (character, talents, interests, values) that enable positive experiences, and the study of institutions (families, schools, businesses, communities, societies) that enable positive traits and thereby positive experiences.

The Values in Action (VIA) Classification of Strengths is the first major scientific project deliberately undertaken from the perspective of positive psychology.

Take the free VIA Inventory of Strengths

The VIA Inventory of Strengths is a 240-item self-report questionnaire that is intended for use by adults. It measures the degree to which respondents endorse each of the 24 strengths of character in the VIA Classification. It takes approximately 30 minutes to complete. A report is immediately generated indicating 5 top strengths, a description of each, and a comparison of your scores to others who have taken the test.

Dr. Martin Seligman and Dr. Chris Peterson, along with other top scholars in the country, led the research effort to create the VIA Classification. They found surprisingly strong agreement worldwide with regard to six general categories, or “virtues”, which were labeled: wisdom, courage, justice, humanity, temperance, and spirituality. They then defined the paths by which each of these virtues are expressed resulting in 24 “character strengths” that are distributed across the six virtue categories.

The 24 character strengths

Fat men don’t commit suicide.

That’s great news for Santa Claus and other lovable chubbies. I’m not making this up. I received this intriguing tidbit in today’s issue of Medscape Psychiatry & Mental Health MedPulse.

Obesity Linked With Decreased Suicide Risk in Men

Consistent with the suicide findings, mental health-related quality of life improved as BMI increased, the authors note.

“Although obesity cannot be recommended on the basis of its detrimental effects, further research into the mechanisms of lower risk among overweight and obese men may provide insights into effective methods of suicide prevention,” the researchers conclude.

So maybe there really is something to being “fat and happy.”

Body mass index (BMI)

The International Rescue Committee seeks to bring attention to forgotten or neglected crises and to pressure governments and international organizations to take action to help and protect refugees, displaced people and other victims of conflict.

IRC advocacy is fueled by an understanding of situations on the ground and in the field that comes from working on a daily basis with people affected by war and violence. It is rooted in a tradition of speaking out on behalf of the oppressed and forgotten that dates back to 1933.

Gender-based violence (GBV) is a serious human rights and public health issue, one that disproportionately affects women and girls of all ages, from all cultures, countries and socio-economic backgrounds.

GBV takes many forms, including rape, domestic violence, forced marriage, exploitation and harassment, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, human trafficking, and genital cutting. It impacts women and girls’ physical, emotional, psychological and social well-being.

Women and girls are particularly vulnerable during armed conflict, when rape is used by fighting forces to terrorize, destroy and humiliate communities. Women may be forced to exchange sex for their very survival. And when war forces them to flee their homes, the risk of rape follows them and the threat of domestic violence grows.

IRC’s GBV programs aim to meet the safety, health, psychosocial and legal needs of survivors of gender-based violence. IRC partners with communities and local institutions to promote and protect women and girls’ human rights and empower them to enjoy these rights.

IRC’s programs also strive to prevent GBV, in part through community education and action to change beliefs, attitudes and practices that condone and perpetuate violence against women, and in part through advocacy to ensure that the rights of women and girls are recognized and protected at the national and international levels.

Source

I think I’m done with The Secret now.

• I’m done processing my own intense reactions.

• I’m done speaking out about the errors. I’ve stated the bottom line several times: Science has not proven the Law of Attraction. And believing and practicing the LOA as taught in The Secret film and book can be destructive.

I’m glad there are many others who are speaking up and will continue to do so. I might jump in on occasion, but I’m ready to switch gears — for real this time! I hope

Maybe I should arrange for someone to monitor my blog and fine me $100 each time I mention The Secret. The money collected would go to the worst organizations on earth. I have several in mind…

Why have I been so incensed about the LOA teachers claiming that science proves the LOA?

Number one, it doesn’t. False claims really bug me.

Number two, I think that it’s wrong to lie about the science and manipulate people into buying books and programs.

Number three, I think the teachers making the claims are doing a huge disservice to the scientists and organizations who are doing research in the related fields. Most are already seen as crackpots or pseudoscientists. Ridiculed and rejected by “real” scientists. I happen to disagree and I want the research to continue and go mainstream! But not with the baggage that The Secret has created.

Why do I believe that The Secret teachings are destructive?

Because I’ve personally witnessed the damage and destruction. Perhaps one day I’ll write about my experiences. I can’t right now because it would be too easy for readers to figure out who the players are. I could get sued. I could create more damage than there already is. I could open yet another can of worms. Do I really want to deal with all that? No.

So… I’m done. At least for awhile. My poor horse needs a rest. My sword needs buffed and polished. Other things need my attention.

“The Impossible Dream” from the Broadway musical Man of La Mancha is one of my favorite songs. The lyrics capture who I am when I see something egregiously wrong. And just like Don Quixote, sometimes I find myself fighting a windmill. Will this be the case with my effort to expose the errors of The Secret? Only time will tell.

(I like the Luther Van Dross version.
Would love to hear a Blake Lewis rendition!)

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know if I’ll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star

In a post about The Secret several weeks ago, I predicted a backlash, “and not just from the usual quarters.” Since then we’ve witnessed that backlash. Read the post here. Pretty psychic, huh?

But I never would have guessed this one.

I was surprised by this critical review of The Secret (PDF) by prominent A Course in Miracles teacher Greg Mackie.

From the little I knew about ACIM, I thought the teachings were similar to those presented in The Secret. In fact, I know several people who are students of both ACIM and Abraham-Hicks.

But Mackie says, “The Secret is about as far from the Course as you can get.”

Mackie’s comments about the thought system of The Secret echoes what many critics are saying: It’s all about you.

“What struck me most about The Secret was the complete absence of anything that is truly greater than you. It is a hymn to what Robert has recently called the “unfettered self”—a self that doesn’t answer to God, to others, to anything except its own desires.”

Mackie dismantles the thought system, point by point, with piercing insight about the film’s egocentric message.

Read the article (PDF newsletter) A Better Way, A Course in Miracles and The Secret, February 2007

Bill Harris of Centerpointe Research Institute. Featured in The Secret. He da man!

His explanation of the “Law of Attraction” is the way I understand and practice it. No magical thinking. No mangling of quantum mechanics. No universe as a great catalog in the sky. No philosophical train wrecks. No clash with science. No channeled entities.

Bill recently wrote a lengthy article laying out the nuts and bolts of creating the life you want. The title alone tells a story: Two Parts of The Secret No One Talks About — and Why The Secret Won’t Work Without Them.

If you’ve watched The Secret or read the book, please, please read Bill’s article. If the only thing you know about the Law of Attraction is what you’ve learned from The Secret, please, please, please read this article. It may save you from severe disappointment or disaster. (Yes, I’ve seen both outcomes in the lives of those who practice magical thinking.)

But wait! There’s more! Read Bill’s three-part article Do You Believe in Magic? published in his Mind Chatter newsletter last year. It is actually quite an indictment of The Secret.

Part one (PDF)

Part two (PDF)

Part three (PDF)

Why Bill agreed to appear in the film is beyond me. Why he created a free online course featuring seven stars from The Secret when he clearly disagrees with some of them is beyond me. My hope is that he is trying to bring some sanity and clarity to the whole affair. (Thanks to Calista McKnight and Bill Collier for these links!)

***

For more enlightenment, be sure to read the scoop about the so-called Law of Attraction from another Secret star, physicist Fred Alan Wolf. You’ll probably be shocked. Wanna know what physicist Fred Alan Wolf thinks about the Law of Attraction?

Finally — the big, big guns in the enlightenment, transformation and manifesting arenas are speaking up and out about The Secret. I can see why. The difference between the A list teachers and the B, C, D and F list teachers is huge. Not that I agree with the A-listers — what they teach is a matter of faith as well.

Look for more big names to start weighing in. This is gonna get really exciting!

I did some poking around on the Internet this morning and found an amazing site about Spiral Dynamics. Now we’re talking! I’ve heard about Spiral Dynamics in association with Ken Wilber, author of A Theory of Everything (2000) and Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World (2006). I haven’t read Wilber, but his books are popular in self-development circles. I’m looking forward (sorta) to his comments about The Secret next Monday (see blog post).

Back to Spiral Dynamics. I think I’ve found my new love It ties in perfectly with my passion for understanding our world. It helps me better understand the wide range of reactions (including my own) to The Secret and its cast of LOA teachers, for example. Check this out:

People think in different ways. A brother and sister, husband and wife, manager and employee, corporation and stakeholder, agency and client might have very different world views and values. People in adjoining cubicles or families living right next door to each other sometimes don’t seem to be dwelling in the same psychological neighborhood. Colleagues in an organization have wide ranging ideas about vision, mission, and purpose; most are doing their best. Countries sharing one planet often seem to be in totally different worlds with their policies while talking of peace, prosperity and freedom. Why?

Spiral Dynamics is concerned with why we cooperate, collaborate and come to conflict over differences in values and the deeper value systems that form them. It’s a map to the emerging nature of human nature. SD is a point of view and a way of thinking that provides a way to chart differences in leadership, learning, management, social structures, economics—and virtually every other area where human thinking has an impact. Moreover, it suggests how to cope with those differences more effectively.

“Spiral” captures how people develop diverse worldviews and the characteristics of those views. It’s a metaphor for the emergent, cyclical double-helix form envisioned by Dr. Clare W. Graves, the scholar whose elegant work forms the foundation of SD.

“Dynamics” explores the process of human emergence and how living systems evolve, grow and change. Graves called his a bio-psycho-social systems view; all four of those elements is a process.

Together, Spiral with Dynamics provides a framework for tracking the evolution of worldviews and a scaffold on which to stand while analyzing situations and planning the most appropriate actions. It allows us both to differentiate the things that make us diverse and to integrate the things which draw us together, thereby creating a fuller picture of who we, Homo sapiens, are as active participants in our world.

For an insightful, delightful and apropos discussion about gurus, be sure to read The Guru Question.

Okay, I’m off now to get a glucose infusion. My brain is toasted after attempting to understand and absorb all this new stuff in 60 minutes!

Hey shy guys! Are you afraid to meet women? Do you imagine the worst just thinking about it? You’re not alone. It’s harder than ever today for guys to meet and connect with women.

What you need is confidence… and a roadmap.

Actually, confidence is what everyone needs to be in the driver’s seat of life. What is confidence? If you don’t have it, how do you get it?

For my You! Unplugged! Show, I talked with author and coach David Portney about the most common problems men face when meeting and dating women in a society where the rules have changed!

To help shy guys gain confidence and gently walk through the fear to meet women, David recently published the book The Shy Guy’s Road Map to Super Confidence With Women.

Listen to the interview…

“It’s estimated that 27 million people are in slavery
around the world”

Twenty-seven million slaves — men, women and children. This is year 2007. Doesn’t that blow your mind? Pierce your heart?

From The Amazing Change site:

Many people find it hard to believe that slavery still exists. Whether it’s bonded slavery with men, women and children toiling on plantations, in rice mills, brick kilns and many other industries; or, the deplorable and prevalent trade in humans to serve as sex slaves, slavery is flourishing in many parts of the world. It is still every bit as ugly as it was 200 years ago and it must end. In the nineteenth century, Frederick Douglass and some other former slaves and abolitionists understandably objected when people extended the term ‘slavery’ to factory workers and other groups who, even if brutally exploited, were not deprived of membership in a family and did not pass on to their children an inherited status as private property. Scholars, reformers, and diplomats still debate the inclusiveness of the term ‘slave.’ The issue has become more complex given the fact that inmates of the Soviet gulags or Nazi concentration camps were totally expendable in the eyes of the authorities. Chattel slaves [i.e. regarded as an object of personal property; owned] at least represented a valuable investment, an investment of rising value in much of the New World, but that slightly protective aspect of chattel slavery was absent from twentieth-century “state slavery” and does not apply to many millions of bonded and coerced workers in today’s so-called developing world.

The Amazing Change campaign:

In conjunction with the release of the film Amazing Grace, Bristol Bay is launching an integrated social justice campaign called The Amazing Change aimed at:

• Increasing literacy about the historical issue of slavery and the abolitionist movement;
• Raising awareness about modern day slavery and other forms of oppression;
• Motivating people to get involved to abolish slavery;
• Raising a new generation of youth who care about suffering in the world and become abolitionists;
• Engaging new activists in a life-long journey to invest their time, influence and resources back in the world;
• Providing much-needed funding to organizations that are working to abolish slavery.

Together we can end slavery! Together we are The Amazing Change!

Take action now and make a difference in ending human suffering

Crikey! If you use credit cards, read What Credit Card Companies Don’t Want You to Know by David Bach, The Automatic Millionnaire.

Of all the games the credit card companies play that end up costing you thousands of dollars (late fees, over-limit fees, transfer fees, and so on), it’s always been the interest rate game that hurt the most — until now.

There’s a new, completely legal game they’re playing, and it can literally wipe you out financially if you’re not careful.

The Universal Default Clause

If you own a credit card, you know by now that if you’re late with a payment the credit card company will charge you a late fee in addition to raising your interest rate. But did you know that they can raise your interest rate if you’ve made a late payment on any of your other cards, including those issued by other companies?

Not only that, but your interest rates can skyrocket to 30 percent or more if you make a late payment on your car loan, mortgage, or even your phone bill!

“How can that be legal?” you may ask. The answer is found in the fine print of your credit card agreement, and it’s called a universal default clause. According to the Institute of Consumer Financial Education, currently almost 40 percent of credit card issuers apply this policy to their customers.

Read the entire article

Here’s the real secret: Science has not proven the Law of Attraction.

No matter how you slice it or dice it, the scientific proof isn’t there. I’m talking about the Law of Attraction as taught by The Secret film and book. I’m not talking about alternative definitions that the film’s LOA teachers espouse (you have noticed all the differences, right?). I’m not talking about any positive take-away messages that are woven into the film. I’m not talking about the stuff in the film that has been proven as helpful.

The Law of Attraction is a set of beliefs. Beliefs — not proven facts.

I’m a member of the Institute of HeartMath, the research organization that James Arthur Ray has cited in media interviews as providing the science behind the Law of Attraction. It’s true that HeartMath has done amazing research on emotional physiology and heart-brain interactions. The results are mind-boggling (please read the research yourself). But their work does not prove the Law of Attraction.

And I was hoping that they agreed! The only way to find out is to ask, so I emailed them. Here is their official statement about The Secret and the Law of Attraction:

The Secret is providing spiritual inspiration and encouraging people to believe more in themselves which is important, as long as they don’t interpret The Secret as transformation through positive thinking. For people to come into empowerment there’s a lot more that has to be done. They still have to deal with emotional management and connecting with their heart more to help them manage their emotions, which can be done with practice.

No mention that HeartMath research proves the Law of Attraction. Don’t you think they’d be jumping on the bandwagon and cashing in on The Secret opportunities if they agreed with Ray?

And what about the claims LOA teachers make that quantum physics proves the Law of Attraction? Remember, these teachers are not physicists. Also remember that physicists RIGHT NOW are still trying to figure out the incredibly strange quantum world — no one has it figured out!

Read what Fred Alan Wolf, one of the physicists in The Secret, has to say about the Law of Attraction. I hope hearing it from Wolf will start to convince people that science has not proven the Law of Attraction.

Case studies don’t prove it. Anecdotes don’t prove it. Personal experience doesn’t prove it. Millions of people believing it doesn’t prove it