Millions around the world have been exposed to "The Secret" which says that a universal "law of attraction" governs the universe. What you think about is what you attract. If you are worried about bills and betrayal, you will manifest those things in your life. If you envision wealth, health and happy relationships, those things will come into your life.

For the skeptical among us this "law" is little more than a poison pill designed to ensure that the sick, poor and abused blame themselves for their misery. There is some truth in that assessment of the "law of attraction". There is also some truth in the notion that "thoughts become things". We have all met those who let minor annoyances become terrible vexations at great personal cost. The man who can't read who never finds a way to learn, the woman who remains with an abusive husband because she can't face setting out on her own.

I think there is a solid foundation for The Secret which makes its platitudes instructive and more meaningful. It is the same foundation that makes NLP and Hypnosis useful to therapists, doctors and business people. It explains a fundamental thing about human biology and the human mind.

80-90% of the actions we perform each and every day are entirely unconscious

This may seem hard to believe. But if I tell you to go get yourself a glass of milk, you will stand, find a glass, go to the refrigerator and get the milk, put the milk in the glass all without thinking much at all. All those operations, including which foot to move first, which hand to get the cup with, which cup you select are all chosen by the subconscious driving a body which is not conscious at all.

This may not seem to be a very powerful thing. But Magic Johnson trained for years to master a set of unconscious reactions that made him a pro basketball player. On the court he did not have time to think . . . His conscious mind told him which players to go up against and which basket to shoot for. It told him the skills he had to master. It was his unconscious mind that played every game. It was the unity of his conscious and subconscious objectives that made him a millionaire.

How does this apply to NLP, Hypnosis and The Secret? All three of these "tools" make use of the fact that most of the things a person does are unconscious

Therapists use Hypnosis to help people quit smoking because they know that choosing to pick up a cigarette is almost never a conscious act for a smoker. To try and use the conscious mind to control that activity, the conscious mind would have to be on guard twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It is unfeasible for the conscious mind to fight against the unconscious for very long. So hypnosis targets the part of the mind that is responsible for actually executing the undesirable behavior. The "triggers" for smoking are associated with new behaviors that are more enjoyable and more healthy.

NLP professionals can detect lies in most circumstances because they know that it is the unconscious mind that has to make up and deliver most lies. The unconscious automatically tells a "truth" in a way that looks different from a "lie". When an NLP trained professional has questioned someone enough to what they look like when they tell the truth, they are in a great position to know when they are telling something other than the truth.

The Secret is a "magical wrapper" for the idea of the unconscious

If you carefully focus most of your conscious thoughts on what you want, your subconscious will tend to try to get it for you. In effect you are an athlete playing a very complicated game called life and you are making sure your subconscious knows exactly what basket you're aiming for. Your subconscious will devote its attention to your objectives. Many of the millions of operations it undertakes and observes each day will change. When positive results from those millions of operations undertaken every single day occur, it will seem like magic.

And who knows . . . maybe it is. What is magic anyway?

Finally, the most important aspect of The Secret is probably not that the law of attraction works. It is the opposite. Wishing bad things would stop happening almost never works.

A person who focusses their attention on what they don't want, who pays attention only to what they want to avoid, has no basket at all in the "game" of life. He's just out there twenty four hours a day trying "not to get hurt".

Since life is full of fender benders, illnesses, job hassles and death, playing not to get hurt is a waste of time. Your focus has to be on the things, people and experiences, that will make the scrapes and bumps of life something you can happily ignore. When your life is filled with what you love, you will have pushed out most of the stuff that made you miserable and you'll probably be able to live with what little is left.

The true "Secret" is that you and your unconscious mind must act together for you to be successful in achieving your objectives. You can't quit smoking if your subconcious doesn't see the point. You can't lose weight if your subconscious sees no good reason to. Focussing on what you want works because it gets you and your subconscious on the same team and shooting for the same baskets.