Psst...I Have A Secret (Don't Tell Anyone!)

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"Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead." ~ Benjamin Franklin

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You're not going to believe it, but I found it.

The secret .

The path of financial riches and spiritual enlightenment. This secret is the secret behind all secrets. This is so big, just so monumentally big. I mean huge. Significant. You'll be beside yourself with excitement. You'll pee your pants. If that's the kind of thing you do. When you hear amazing secret news.

It's like Area 51 revealed. You know, the place where they have aliens from other planets. Out in the middle of the desert. Because that's most like what we imagine the home planet of aliens to look like, based on every science fiction movie or show we've ever seen. You know, desolate, dirt, sand, craggy mountains, forbidden desolate landscape. One of those places Kirk or Picard would beam down to, and explore, only to lose that one crew member you've never seen before in the show to some crazy sand monster who loves to eat sandy-haired white guys who have the audacity to beam to some dusty planet along with Kirk (regular), Spock (regular) and McCoy (regular). Don't these guys ever watch TV?

But anyway. What were we talking about?

Oh yeah - secrets! This is huge! But I said that.

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"I think I've discovered the secret of life - you just hang around until you get used to it." ~ Charles M Schulz

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"The Secret has been passed down through the ages... coveted, hidden, lost, stolen, bought for vast sums of money, and known by some of the most exceptional people who ever lived: Plato, Galileo, Da Vinci, Beethoven, Edison, and Einstein, to name but a few.

The Secret book reveals how you can change every aspect of your life. You can turn any weakness or suffering into strength, power, unlimited abundance, health and joy.

Everything is possible, nothing is impossible. There are no limits. Whatever you can dream of can be yours, when you use The Secret."

~ From The Secret Book (http://thesecret.tv/thesecretbook/)

So there's a secret, that's been hidden since the beginning of time, that every notably amazing person in history has known, that only now is being revealed to each of us.

Wow.

On this, I'll cut to the chase: The secret is the Law of Attraction.

You get what you think about.

There it is. Just saved you a bunch of time and money. Send me an email and I'll tell you where to send your money - I take PayPal, Visa and of course wads of non-sequential hundreds in an unmarked untraceable briefcase.

Psst... I'm invoking the secret now.

Ahem.

Nothing. K then. What's next?

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"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." ~ Albert Einstein

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"Ethel, you just worked the vacuum cleaner, chased the kids, ran four miles to the grocery, re-arranged the living room, planted a tree, worked a sabre saw, installed bathroom cabinets and competed in a triathlon...and yet you smell like fresh gardenias! What's your secret?"

"That is my secret!"

The "Secret" is pentadecalactone, talc (hydrous magnesium silicate), cyclomethicone, and behenyl alcohol....see photo at right:

Psst... You smear it under your armpits.

What, pray tell, is Victoria's Secret?

Psst. She doesn't wear many clothes. And guys like women who don't wear many clothes. But we like it more when the limited clothes a woman wears teases us, and makes us think there's something magical going on, beyond the skimpy wisp of fabric between us and her not having any clothes.

And that skinny wisp of fabric is ... you guessed it. The Secret. Part troix!

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"The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age." ~ Lucille Ball

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I just thought I'd have some fun with this subject. There seems to be some unspoken draw when it comes to secrets in our culture - as if someone knows something I don't that makes all of this living business so much easier. It'll make me lose weight, get a bigger penis, get more women or men, learn the secret for financial success, and discover the hidden secrets of the universe. Just listen to what I have to say. Because I have the "secret".

It'll actually be interesting to me if this hub ends up having a large number of hits, just by its title.

One of the more interesting cultural phenomena has been the Post Secret hub and books. Created by Frank Warren, it started as a project on Blogspot years ago where people could anonymously mail in secrets written or illustrated on a postcard, which was then scanned and posted. It serves as a way for people to publicly share their innermost secrets, without really telling anyone close to them. Thousands of secret postcards have been posted, followed by books,

They're fascinating in so many ways - some inspiring, more of a negative nature, and nearly all raw, authentic and unassuming. They both fulfill a voyeuristic side of us, akin to checking out a traffic accident, while also giving many people needed validation for their feelings, so they know they are not alone. In fact, the site has a link to a Suicide Hotline.

It's success also points to how difficult it is for too many of us to be truly authentic, and that's a travesty.

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"The secret of being boring is to say everything." - Voltaire

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The true secret is that there is no secret. There is no magic pill. There is no magic potion, no magic formula, no fix-it solution to make us lose weight, get better self-esteem, quell the anxieties in our chest, or make all of our relationships close and loving. We hold the power and the responsibility for who we are and who we become. Why do we assume someone else will do it for us?

That said, I'm going to offer my best "secrets" (which of course are no secrets at all) to making all this living business just a little bit better:

1. Be honest. All of this manipulating, story-telling, and image posturing is just too much wasteful work. If for no other reason, we should be our authentic selves because it's too much work being someone else. Life is short; just tell your truth.
2. Be realistic with ourselves and others. We all need people to look up to, who have done things to which we aspire; that doesn't make them perfect. To this day, I’m still in a bit of awe about the strength and integrity of Abraham Lincoln. Amazing man. Not perfect, but amazing, especially given the context of the decisions he had to take and the people he had to take on in order to do it. But if someone told me he was depressed, picked his nose or he ate dog food, it wouldn’t dispel my opinion of the guy – I never EXPECTED him to be without flaws. Follow my point?
3. Listen, be open, and always in search of ways of making our lives and our world better. This means being able to be wrong, to be inquisitive, and to have as a continuing life aspiration to always be improving. There is no end date to learning.
4. Get back up. Again, and again. Nothing is ever hopeless. Ever.
5. Accept struggle as part of life. Why do we have this ridiculous notion that we can move from one deliriously happy moment to the next? Like yin and yang, struggle shows us the path to happiness. It is the inversion of arriving. When you struggle, know that on the other side is good stuff. When your kids struggle, they are growing in strength and self-reliance.
6. Be okay with here and now. All life is lived in the moment we are in. We tend to spend far too much time in the past (our identity) and our future (our aspirations); but the future will look exactly like our past if we don't change something in the present.
7. Take your focus off of yourself and onto another who needs help. There may be a circumstance right now that will either go well or poorly, directly as a result of your action or inaction.
8. Be an informed optimist. Accept there is some validity to the Law of Attraction - you become what you think about. Think about what you want and you draw yourself to that outcome.
9. Always, always have a sense of humor. Embrace irony and satire. Be silly.
10. Love.

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"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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