Is There Really a Secret?
By: Dr. John P. DeMann
‘Those who are financially abundant did more; they too took action, right action, to become wealthy. Abundance is really important and I agree we need to have an abundant
mind set, but in order to receive abundance there has got to be value to something you offer.’ Dr. John P DeMann
Having been in the field of human development and peak performance now for over 23 years I have had the opportunity to see many theories and systems come and go. Most of the programs that have been created are great and have worked for many, but the majority of people who read about them or listen to them really never get from the program what it was intending to give. My whole career in coaching and developing human potential I have been searching for the answer to the question; why do so many programs look good and work so well but few people ever benefit from their desired outcome?
To answer this question I will use two problems many people face; weight loss and financial success. To begin let's look at weight loss since today it is the number one request I see in the coaching arena and literally 90 plus percent are people who come to me after trying so many programs where some of them have almost lost their life. Many of the programs out there are literally dangerous; however there are many weight loss programs that are healthy and good for you.
The Secret, the new movie and book, claims to have the answer to success in life and it has been a great success in sales. Many are looking at this program, concept, idea or whatever you want to call it as the holy grail to personal development. The truth is that this books message is not new it has been talked about for thousands of years and has not been the secret it's author and marketer's claim it to be. To name a few who have shed a great light on its idea I will list some of the most popular authors who have written about the secret: Napoleon Hill, Eric Erickson, Norman Cousins and Dale Carnegie who all have written extensively about this so called secret.
I have to admit that in the last few months since the secret made its debut I have asked most of my clients about the concept and looking back at the past 23 years I have thought about all the clients I have worked with and every single one of them knew what this so called secret was. The sad truth is that many of them never put the secret to use because truly the secrets idea is something that is really the problem in the first place. What do I mean by this; well the fact is the secret is nothing but knowing what you want and taking action till you get it. I find it sad that people are actually believing there is some kind of magical force that happens when you put a thought into your mind and once that thought
takes hold you will find yourself automatically having what you want. It is not that simple yet the truth is the answer to getting what you want is.
What happens when we think of something long enough? The answer is that the thought will eventually become a part of your automatic thinking. Just like when you drive a car you eventually do not have to think about it, you just automatically do it, in fact you can
actually do several actions without even thinking about it if you have done it long enough. Here is the problem though, if all you do is think about what you want and even if you start to take action to receive what you want, the action you take must be the right action and it must be taken to the point that it becomes an obsession if you want to see the results you desire.
In weight loss the truth is people will start the weight loss process and they may make it for awhile, but eventually they begin to stop taking the action required to complete the process which in weight loss is truly a life style change. Or they may begin a weight loss program and they may even lose the weight, but because the program was not effective in the long run, like the all protein diet or the all liquid diet, they actually hurt their ability to burn fat and in the end they end up fatter then when they began the program. The fact is when anyone wants to lose weight they must not only think about it religiously, like the secret tells us, but they must also be taking consistent action, right action, that allows them to lose the weight and continue to stay lean for a life time. This requires the proper diet and it requires their ability to live a whole new life style.
With money we can sit all day long and think about attracting money into our lives and I will tell you from experience and from watching others who have gained a fortune that sitting there trying to attract millions will never work if that is all one thinks they need to do to become financially abundant. Those who are financially abundant did more; they too took action, right action, to become wealthy. Abundance is really important and I agree we need to have an abundant mind set, but in order to receive abundance there
has got to be value to something you offer.
In my practice not once have I seen anyone achieve financial success with a mindset that
follows the typical mindset of most personal development seekers today which is; I want to be rich! The truth is that this mindset will never bring riches and I actually have seen many rich people fail because they fell into this mindset after they became financially abundant. One example we all have seen is the lottery winner who in 5 years is bankrupt. The statistics are staggering; something like 70 plus percent of lottery winners are broke or back to where they were within 5 years of winning the lottery, why? The answer again is in their action, they never took the right action to keep the money.
To be a success at any endeavor requires something for sure and that is a passion for
giving something of value back to the world. If we think that life is going to make us rich
because we think rich we are badly mistaken or if we think we will achieve the body we have always dreamed of thinking of that body, again we are in for a horrible surprise. Again, it is important to think about what we want and to think in such a way that gives us the self-confidence to know we can get it, that is what happens when we think as if we are already rich, we develop a mindset that we are capable of doing what is required to
become rich, but to think we can sit there and literally attract wealth like we are magical or that we have the powers of a jet-I knight is only selling ourselves a justification from the truth.
Justification is mans biggest enemy when it comes to success. Whenever we cannot achieve what we set out to achieve it is much easier to blame something or someone else for our own inability to attain what we want. It is a natural process, justification, because it keeps us from becoming depressed when we are unable to achieve something we desire. It is the protection given to us for those outcomes we were not provided the genetic makeup for. However, we tend to take justification today a bit too far and we began to allow justification to rob us of the lessons we can learn from the failures we experience.
If we really want to have a wonderful life and we want to experience abundance we are going to have to be honest with ourselves and recognize that there is more to achieving what we want then some magic process that will bring money, health or whatever it is we want in our life without the needed action to attain the desires we wish to have. The first step to attaining what we want is to have a deep passion for the action that is required in order to get what we are after. If this is money then we need to have a deep passion for an activity that will generate the money we desire. If this is weight loss then we need to have a deep passion for the activities that are going to help us lose the fat. The attraction in other words is something we can give back that has the value that meets the abundance we are after in financial reward or in our health and fitness. We get rewarded for our actions or punished for them or lack of them, if anyone thinks all they have to do is sit there and put on a dream board a picture of a house they desire and they do nothing to attain the required financial needs to attain the house. They will not be rewarded and if they sit too long doing nothing they may even be punished because they will fail to pay the rent or mortgage on the house or apartment they already have.
Many buy programs that sell hope; in fact the percentage of people who ever read past the first chapter of any book is only 10%. This tells us that the book itself gave them enough comfort and in that comfort they failed to take the action to read the book let alone take action the book recommends. Many also look for the easy route as this is a natural instinct. However, this instinct is to get us to use our head and come up with unique and creative solutions so we can get more from the actions we take. The problem is that many people are actually taking no action or very little and it is not enough to get any results they are after. Another statistic says that most self help books that are sold are the ones that put the blame on something other than the person who is reading the book. In other words we are often afraid to hear that it might be our own fault that we went bankrupt or that we put on 50 pounds after getting married or getting the job that keeps us away from the gym and a good diet because the act of going to the gym or eating healthy is not as easy as it once was.
Folks we get from life what we put into it and there is something to putting the idea of success in our thoughts and internalizing these thoughts, but it is only going to benefit us if we eventually take the action required to attain what we are after. Many may say that in health we often see people who never get sick or have spontaneously recovered from a life threatening disease using thought. It is true that thought can help us heal and keeps us healthy, but this is because the stress that negative thinking places on our bodies creates a natural release of unhealthy chemicals that create the unhealthy environment that creates disease and the attainment of adipose tissue, but remember that positive thinking can only do so much. Positive thinking can get us to go to the gym if we use it the way it is suppose to be used, positive thinking however will never remove the weeds from your garden if all you do is say; there are no weeds, there are no weeds... There will be weeds in your garden if that is all you do, if you want to get rid of the weeds you must go and pull them physically!
My goal of this article is to help you see that life rewards us for what we do. Reward here can be both positive and negative, what I am saying is that whatever we do we will receive an equal result from the actions we take. It is important to recognize the importance of thought and I want to be sure to say thanks to the people who brought the Secret to light, including all of those gifted people from the past and in no way am I saying they are being dishonest or are wrong in what they teach, I only want to make sure
everyone knows there is something more to just thinking a thought. It is of course the most important part of the process as it is the start of all creations, but we need to remind ourselves that to make our creations a reality we need to put the thought process into physical action if we are to see the results we desire.
Thanks a Million,
Dr. John P. DeMann, PCC/ICF, CPEC, PPC
Journal of Human Potential
JHP: Volume 1 Issue 9
By: Dr. John P. DeMann
