Archives April 2022

With all the hype and publicity about "The Secret" nowadays I thought I'd take a few moments and let you know about "The Secret" from the 1950s. The Strangest Secret was originally a CD recording by Earl Nightingale given to a seminar of insurance agents in his absence while he was away on vacation. It went on to sell a million records with very little publicity and some say became the foundation of the personal development industry.

So what's the Strangest Secret anyways?

The Strangest Secret is that, "we become what we think about." That's it. The beauty is it's simplicity. It's like Ernest Hemingway's "fewest best words" writing style. If that was all that the message said, that would be enough.

Earl Nightingale was not the first to discover this message either. Many of the great thinkers of our past had made a similar discovery of how our thoughts affect our lives. This goes for both positive thoughts and negative thoughts as well. Norman Vincent Peale in the Power of Positive Thinking made a similar discovery and helped millions change their thoughts and habits and lead better lives. Plastic surgeon and author Maxwell Maltz explained all about how our thoughts and self image had a lasting impact on our results in life in his book Psycho-Cybernetics.

So how do we become what we think about?

The Strangest Secret is that we become what we think about. What exactly does that mean and how does that affect you? If all you feed your mind is negative thoughts and feelings of sorrow and how you never get a break in life, you shouldn't be surprised when you never get a break in life or get stuck on all the red lights when you're already late for work. It's because that's all your thinking about and what you think about you attract.

If you think about negativity, you will attract it. If you think about positivity, that's precicesly what you'll get. That's the way the law of attraction works.

The one concrete idea that Earl uses to get this message across is that your brain is a field and you can choose to plant corn which is a healthy crop or you can plant nightshade which is a deadly poison. Which would you rather plant? This is what you do when you feed your mind with negative or positive thoughts. If you think negatively you will be essentially poisoning yourself day after day as long as you keep thinking this way. So you have to plant better crops or thoughts if you want to get more out of life.

But, on the flip side, if you think positively and fill your brain with positive thoughts and seeds you can expect to get positive results in your life. It won't happen overnight. It didn't take you a day to form a habit and it will take more than a day to form a new positive habit of thinking positively and reaching your goals.

So the secret of The Strangest Secret is that you will become what you think about and that if you think bad things keep happening to you they will and vice versa. It's amazing how much control we actually have over our life and our own circumstances. And if you don't like the circumstances in your life now, there's a way to change them too...