The Secret

According to the item titled “Mind Over Med­icine” that recently appeared in IRON MAN, 45 percent of primary care physicians have given patients placebos. The reason is that if patients believe that something they’re taking will improve their condition, the condition often improves. It’s a case of the mind controlling the body—and that’s essentially what The Secret by Rhonda Byrne is about.

In bodybuilding you often hear the phrase, “Believe and you will achieve.” No doubt you’ve read the stories of Arnold imagining his biceps as huge, peaked mountains. Making things happen, including physical changes, has a lot to do with your heartfelt beliefs and mental images.

The Secret is full of testimonials from people explaining how believing something would happen made it so—everything from curing bad eyesight to getting parking spaces close to the entrance of a shopping center. While a lot of the aligning-the-universe-to-make-your-life-better rhetoric is rather esoteric, I’ve seen it in action.

My husband recently showed me a slightly raised brown spot on his foot. Our dermatologist recently told us to watch for strange molelike growths on our feet and legs, as that’s often where melanoma, the fatal skin cancer, starts. We were concerned. After three months it hadn’t gone away, so he decided to make an appointment with the dermatologist. As fate would have it, I had given him The Secret to read, even though he’s quite a skeptic, and I knew he might shrug the information off with a laugh. He finished the book in two days and decided to try the advice. He began visualizing the spot on his foot peeling away like a scab. He used that visualization technique every night before bed. Result: It peeled off after five days, just as he had visualized. We were amazed, and we cancelled the dermatologist appointment.

That’s not to say you can cure disease or that you should attempt to self-treat serious conditions with visualization instead of doctor-prescribed medication or surgery. It’s just an anecdote to show you the power your mind has to make things happen.

On the flip side, having negative beliefs or a bad-luck disposition can make bad things happen. Ever hear of a self-fulfilling prophecy? How about a psychosomatic illness? We’ve all known people who thought they were cursed—and sure enough, bad things happened to them over and over. Was it the universe aligning to fulfill the mind’s visualization? The Secret says absolutely.

Many of those quoted in the book tell of how they created fortunes by believing and acting as if it had already occurred. Go back to that last sentence and substitute “muscular physiques” for “fortunes.” Have you ever laughed at the skinny guy in the gym hitting poses and acting as if his physique was 250 pounds of raw muscle? Maybe he was on to something. Believe and you will achieve. It’s something to take seriously if you want to reach your goals in the gym and in life.