The problem with "The Secret" or the so-called "think positive so that things will be positive" movement is that when you tell a person to not think in a certain way - especially if they have a slightly perfectionist streak, they can from then on only think of what you told them not to. I once worked with a young woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer. During our initial meeting she confessed to me that she brought 'this' onto herself. When enquired about it, she told me that her father unexpectedly passed away two years ago. About six months later, the family was devastated again when her brother got killed in a traffic accident. Following these tragedies, as many of us would be, she became 'obsessed' with her health and ended up visiting various specialists with several health scares. It was during one of these visits that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was therefore convinced that it was her focus on 'the negative' that brought the breast cancer on to herself. In that moment, I felt the need to re-frame her story and asked her: "So rather than thinking that your vigilance made it possible for the doctors to diagnose your breast cancer at an early stage you feel that it was your negativity that brought this on to your self?" She stopped and smiled. And I smiled back to her.
