Today and Me and The Secret

The Today segment on The Secret featured James Arthur Ray, one of the personalities from the DVD, and Dr. Gail Saltz, a psychiatrist and frequent Today contributor.

Gail pretty much scoffed at everything James had to say (she rolled her eyes at one point). He continued to make his points politely.

Matt Lauer noted that The Secret creator, Rhonda Byrne, had been invited to participate but backed out at the last minute. We were left to draw our own conclusions as to why. The New York Times reported on Sunday that Byrne and two contributors from the original DVD, Esther and Jerry Hicks (of abrahamhicks.com), have since parted ways.

Today reported that The Secret is nothing new, and it's not. People (Norman Vincent Peale, Catherine Ponder, Frances Scovel Shinn, Robert Collier, Joseph Murphy, and many others) have written about it for decades. I know a woman who joined the sales program at one of the major brokerage firms on Wall Street, and Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill was required reading.

The bottom line for me is this: Many years ago when I started reading these authors, a woman told me that she'd let her psychiatrist know of my burgeoning interest in The Law of Attraction. She said he laughed his head off.

"Tell your friend all she's doing is making somebody else rich," he said.

At the time, I was in a rotten job, living in my parents' basement, and had just come off a series of embarrassingly bad relationships. Today, I'm happily married, I live in my own lovely home, and I'm the mother of two children I hope will leave this world better than they found it. I love my work so much I lose all sense of time.

The woman in psychotherapy is still in psychotherapy. She probably paid for her doctor's house in The Hamptons.

Look, if you need psychiatric help, by all means get it. If you need medical attention, get it. But please don't dismiss the power of knowing what you want and believing you can have it.