In this article I will discuss the latest work by Dr Wayne Dyer – the book “Stop the Excuses – how to change lifelong thoughts” and the CD set “Excuses Begone – how to change lifelong self-defeating thinking habits”. Both of these complement each other and their combined effect is greater than their parts. I have read and reread, listened and re-listened and each time I do, I get more out of them.

Back at the beginning of 2007, Rhonda Byrne’s CD set “The Secret” fell into my lap. Did it change my life? You bet it did –  I picked up the idea and ran with it, because I knew that this was the missing piece that would set me free. Since then, I have regularly run seminars, mentored individuals and written this blog to spread the word.

However,  many times I hear people say that the LoA doesn’t work for them – and it hasn’t worked for their friends either. And, while I believe them, I know something isn’t right with it either.

If we look at the principles that are taught in The Secret, they tell us that all we have to do is ask and it will be given. And that’s a quote from the Bible, by the way, so it must be right. However, if it’s not happening for you or me, and is definitely happening for those people who are the teachers in the DVD, what on earth is going on? Have they kept a little nugget of secret for themselves?  Or are they just not very good teachers? I don’t think either of those questions can be answered in the affirmative, by the way. They are clearly honest and open in what they tell us and they are obviously skilled teachers.

What, then,  is it that keeps us away from what we want? We have asked and shown gratitude. We have visualised down to the smallest item. We have put up our vision boards and written post-it notes everywhere around the house. We have even learned how to make positive statements instead of negative ones and worked on keeping our thoughts positive, too. And yet everything stays the same.

And, it is also true to say that the LoA always works – in fact, it’s doing it right now even as you read this article. I’ll say that again, just to make it absolutely clear – the LoA is working ALL the time – never stops, never fails.

And I can hear you wail “Why isn’t it working for me?” And again I have to say that it is working for you – just not the way that you think you want it to.

Something needs to change….

One of the books that changed Rhonda Byrne’s life and woke her up to the power of the LoA was by a man named Thomas Troward – an Englishman who worked in India at the beginning of the 1900s. He had studied Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and yet was also a committed Christian. He realised that the basic tenets of all those faiths were the same (or similar) and that they all spoke of an underlying something that worked like a force through our lives like an attraction mechanism. His contemporary, William James, the psychologist and philosopher, said that Troward was the greatest thinker of their time, yet the general public had not heard of either him or his insights – until now! So while it was not necessarily a secret throughout the last century it was certainly an idea whose time has now come into fruition in the 21st Century.

However – there is still a missing piece in the way that this idea is developed by Rhonda Byrne and the teachers in the DVD and book. They all state categorically that our thoughts become reality – and by focusing on what we want, we will get it. Troward said it slightly differently, and it is this difference that is the key. He said that we do not attract what we want, we attract what we are. In other words, like really does attract like. And Dyer’s book further emphasises this idea.

Therefore, before we can get what we want, we have to change who we are.

Recognising our negative thoughts and attitudes is one thing, but there is more to it than that. It seems to be almost impossible for the majority of us to give up our habitual ways of thinking and behaving – and yet, it is through those habits that we continue to attract what we say we don’t want.

Dyer calls these negative thoughts “memes” which are culturally transmitted ideas, usually from parent to child, but also from group to group. And parental memes are designed to transmit simple ideas to us, such as “be good and kind to everyone”. They also keep us in line as a good child or a good member of our society. However, the trick with memes is that with the above example, the child takes the idea of being good and kind to everyone and turns it into a directive by which to run their life. With often disastrous results.

I think that this idea of turning our memes into directives has profound implications for us – and until we “get” this we don’t have a hope of changing a thing.

One of my most influential (to me) spiritual teachers used to say that no matter how much freedom people say they want, the moment he asked them to give up being negative, they would walk away, preferring to continue in their negativity. In fact, they would argue for their entrapment. And it is this which we attract from – our negative image  of ourselves as victims.

And how can we surmise this? Just listen to the complaining that we can hear around us – it’s the fault of the government, the weather, other people’s demands, you name it. And our media keep it up – basically, there’s money in negative stories and in playing the blame game. And they keep us believing that we are helpless.

And that’s the real Secret.

We need to examine our thoughts – not the ones we think at the top of our heads, but the ones that run us from the level of habit.  A technique I use with clients is this – try it. Look at a photograph of your 19 year old self, then one from earlier, then back to a very young picture, and finally then another in your twenties. Look closely as yourself in the youngest picture and try to imagine what you were being told about yourself and thus believing it – the memes. Find out what your attitudes were and make a list. Do the same with the next picture and so on. Compare your lists – which attitudes have changed? All – any? If none have changed over the decades, then maybe it’s time to give them a good kicking right now.

It seems to be true that happy and well loved children make happy and attractive adults – unless some tragedy got in the way in later childhood and turned their tide. For the rest of us with childhoods neither glorious nor terrible, we have to turn our own tides. We have to recognise them first, though.

If you are repeating a constant pattern, once you recognise it, then ask what were the words that put that pattern in there? And whose words were they? I believe that we are all born to become our best selves. Doing that does require effort, however the payoff is really worth it. As  Oscar Wilde said the unexamined life isn’t worth living.

And if it makes us feel any better, most of the “Secret Teachers” seem to have had huge personal hurdles to overcome. And if they can do it – so can the rest of us. It just takes profound self-examination, honesty and love, of both ourselves and those in the rest of the world.

Don’t forget the love, it moves mountains.

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