Oprah's Bad Idea

Have you heard about The Secret? Oprah did two shows about it last week (or maybe it was the week before?) Anyway, The Secret is the idea that if you visualize what you want and think about it hard enough, you'll get it. Your thoughts can actually change the physical properties of things to give you what you want. Want money? Buy a lottery ticket and think hard! Want to be thin? Visualize it, don't think about being fat, only about being thin. Don't even look at a fat person. What a great secret!

I'm all for the power of positive thinking. Faking that I know what I'm talking about is a huge part of my work life (and, for that matter, my blog life.) Of course, the opposite of this is true as well, so all those fat people were thinking too much about their weight. And all those people with cancer? Must not have been so mentally healthy. And now that they have cancer, can they cure it with happy thoughts? "You cannot 'catch' anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is inviting it to you with your thought." Uh huh. Oprah is generally pretty hit or miss for me, but this one really misses. I wonder if she actually read the book and thought this through?

Here's a link from Salon.com going into more detail. And another from Newsweek. Here's a quote from the Newsweek article:

Its explicit claim is that you can manipulate objective physical reality—the
numbers in a lottery drawing, the actions of other people who may not even know
you exist—through your thoughts and feelings. In the words of "author and
personal empowerment advocate" Lisa Nichols: "When you think of the things you
want, and you focus on them with all of your intention, then the law of
attraction will give you exactly what you want, every time."

People seriously believe that? What about AIDS? Africa? World Peace? Crack babies? The Secret is the number one selling book on Amazon.com right now, there are a lot of people who are gonna be awfully disappointed soon.