If The Secret Worked - Why a Sequel?

One of the sad parts of that [people taking it seriously] is then they blame themselves when they fail to achieve all the money, the perfect relationships, the perfect health that was promised, because if they don't achieve it they are not trying hard enough, they are not focusing their thoughts well enough ... In this way of thinking, there is no such thing as economic conditions that are condemning many people to hard lives; there is no such thing as diseases that strike people independently of how nice their thoughts are; there is no room for earthquakes, tsunamis, oil spills, any kind of disaster, because anything that happens we really have brought on ourselves.

You will instantly recognise that the book that Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World is talking about :  Rhoda Byrnes pernicious little book The Secret.

Kate Youde in The Independent quotes Ehrenreich (whose book, I must say, sounds like one I want to read!) talks about how Byrne's latest book, The Power, is predicted to be even more successful (if  by "success" your are referring to numbers of copies and amount of money made), than The Secret :

 ... facts

19 million number of books sold worldwide

2 million copies of the DVD sold around the globe

32 number of languages the DVD is available in, including Turkish, Bulgarian and Icelandic

286,0000 number of fans on Facebook

1 where the book came on The New York Times bestseller list in March 2007. The film was also number one on Amazon.com's DVD chart in 2007

We talked about this book some time back and readers of this blog couldn't come up with a single instance of Byrnes' hokum actually working, but there's little doubt that gullible readers in Malaysia will snap this up.

Have You Learned The Secret?

Are you one of the people who has kept Rhonda Byrne's The Secret at the top of the best-seller list for months?

If you are, I would love to know if it has changed your life for the better (as indeed it is supposed to do). The results of the survey are for an article I want to write.


Now then, that was the easy-peasy part. The harder part is this - if you checked either of the two boxes saying that the book had changed your life for the better, I would love you to give me a concrete example of how it did that.

And yes, you can put in any comments about how you found the book or other similar titles.

I have (temporarily) switched off my default-mode cynical inner voice today and would love you to prove it wrong.

*Uggh 'scuse the spelling mistake in the title. I do know better but don't know how to change it!

If Happiness Bit You On the Nose ...

Do any of us actually know what happiness is? This is the fundamental question asked in Daniel Gilbert's book.

Stumbling on Happiness is not a self-help book, but a psychological study, ... and it's just won this year's Royal Society Prize for Science Books. I liked this review of it by Malcolm Gladwell (author of Blink and The Tipping Point) which I found on Amazon. It does rather sound like a must-read:

Stumbling on Happiness is a book about a very simple but powerful idea. What distinguishes us as human beings from other animals is our ability to predict the future--or rather, our interest in predicting the future. We spend a great deal of our waking life imagining what it would be like to be this way or that way, or to do this or that, or taste or buy or experience some state or feeling or thing. We do that for good reasons: it is what allows us to shape our life. And it is by trying to exert some control over our futures that we attempt to be happy. But by any objective measure, we are really bad at that predictive function. We're terrible at knowing how we will feel a day or a month or year from now, and even worse at knowing what will and will not bring us that cherished happiness. Gilbert sets out to figure what that's so: why we are so terrible at something that would seem to be so extraordinarily important?

In making his case, Gilbert walks us through a series of fascinating--and in some ways troubling--facts about the way our minds work. In particular, Gilbert is interested in delineating the shortcomings of imagination. We're far too accepting of the conclusions of our imaginations. Our imaginations aren't particularly imaginative. Our imaginations are really bad at telling us how we will think when the future finally comes. And our personal experiences aren't nearly as good at correcting these errors as we might think.

The other short-listed books were:

Homo Britannicus: The Incredible Story of Human Life in Britain by Chris Stringer
In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind by Eric R. Kandel
Lonesome George: The Life and Loves of a Conservation Icon by Henry Nicholls
One in Three: A Son's Journey Into the Science and History of Cancer by Adam Wishart
The Rough Guide to Climate Change by Robert Henson

Update:

Grateful I am indeed to Rol who sent me the link to a YouTube video of a talk by Daniel Gilbert. It is very well worth watching to learn the secret of true happiness ... which is not what you think it will be and not what Rhonda Byrne would like you to think it is. Unlike Byrne, Gilbert is actually able to provide you with some evidence beyond the mere anecdotal to support what he's saying.