I have been working in the personal development field for a long time now, with myself, private clients and students. I have traveled the Artist's Way, learned from Deepak Chopra and learned NLP, CBT and EFT.  I have been coached, theraped and mentored and have offered these services to others.  I have successfully managed to be a single WAHP  (Work at Home Parent) for 10 years working in this field.  

I learned and taught that our thoughts create our reality. That we need to take responsibility for what is happening to us and that no one can make us feel anything, and we create our own feeling state. I learned and taught that  that I could attract it so I did.

I watched The Secret when it first came out and loved it. I read Louise Hay, Napoleon Hill and have seen many trends come and go.  But there is one trend that has never changed.

The reality is that most people who watch The Secret or something similar, are inspired and and believe that this new insight will change their lives but when this doesn't happen, they soon revert to old styles of thinking.  They then buy the next product that offers the secret. 

Why is this?

Well, lots of people have a huge dissonance between their desired world beliefs and their actual personal beliefs about themselves and this results in confusion.  This means that the actions they take and the efforts to attract different things in life are not in line with either their desired world beliefs or their personal beliefs. They become victims to anyone who claims to be able to sell them the next hyped up solution.  When these fail, they end up feeling worse than ever, like a complete failure. This just reinforces the negative self beliefs and makes them search for something out there that will help them.

The internet marketing and MLM industries are case in point.  They become entwined with personal development and spirituality.  The personal development is sold alongside the moneymaking package making people believe that the products are ethical and credible and people buy them thinking that it will solve their problems.  However, for  faulty thought patterning to change, people need to work at a very deep level and often need intensive one to one support of one kind or another over a period of time.  This level of support is not given to the consumers of the money making products and so the cycle continues.  The hungry and needy and desperate continue to line the pockets of the very wealthy.

More recently, I have seen a new generation of gurus who are claiming to be giving back and wanting to teach people how to overcome this problem.  It will be interesting to see if this is the case.  I am fascinated by what makes people tick, what drives their decision-making and what makes some of them eventually really take stock and decide to address their underlying problems.  I think The Secret has created a big platform for people to sell 'I can show you how to make it work' products to victims of low self esteem.  This happens in money making arenas and in the personal development industry.  I think this is a part of the western economic crisis as people have gone into debt to try and grasp the holy grail.  The problem is they are grasping at something external.  

Not much of a secret really.