About the Contest

As part of OCD’s objective of highlighting niche communities on the Hive Blockchain, this week, the focus is on the Hive Book Club Community. As you would have guessed, the focus is on readers who share their passion for books.

If you fancy participating and would like to share your own passion, you can do so here.

Writer Who Is Also a Reader

I personally feel that there cannot be a writer who is not an avid reader; well, at least a reader. I mean, if you are a writer, then you would have had an inspiration from somewhere. Don’t you think? And if that is the case, everyone on the Hive Blockchain qualifies to join the Hive Book Club. Not sure about the others, but I sure am joining. Oh wait, I have already joined. 😊

Now, coming back to my preferences, I read a wide variety of books ranging from self-help, business, science fiction, horror (Stephen King. King of sleepless nights), non-fiction, and many more. However, if you were to ask me which of the genres I have read the most, it is easily self-help followed by horror. While I can talk about any of the books in each of the genres with equal ease, let me focus on self-help and one book which helped me the most.

I am talking about the book – The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, and we will get to know about it up close and personal in a moment. So, what led me to consider this book for the discussion? Let’s get to know why.

The Secret | Rhonda Byrne

Before reading this particular book, I had come across Esther and Jerry Hicks's teachings, which remind us that we are more spiritual (or spirit-like) than humans. And therefore, we realize our spirituality (not from a religious standpoint but energy standpoint), then we can accomplish and have a lot in this life. If I start explaining these points, then we would be discussing Esther and Jerry Hicks instead of The Secret. 😊. But just keep in mind that one of the concepts that they speak about is the “Law of Attraction” (LoA) which also forms the basis of the book – The Secret.

The name of the book comes about by the fact that there are things happening in our life, only and only because of ourselves. If we realize this and put our thoughts and energy to work for us instead of against us, we can accomplish a lot in life. This is the “secret”; an open secret rather.

Whether we know about our thoughts creating our reality or not, it works all the time. Hence it is an open secret. In other words, we already know deep down that the things happening to us is in line with our thoughts. Only we never believed we could control our thoughts. That’s where the challenge is.

I so loved the book that I went ahead and brought another book by Rhonda. It is called “The Power”.

Let’s talk about few concepts from the book.

Few Knowledge Bytes from The Secret

The book talks about the power of our thoughts and how we will attract what we think of. If we think of something with emotions, the attracting power is greater. Now, do you understand why most of us end up attracting more of bad than good? That’s because you couple your negative thoughts with fear (emotion) which makes it happen faster. If you can let go of the fear, then your negative thoughts should subside. Conversely, if you couple your positive thoughts with excitement (positive emotion), you should attract a positive outcome. This, in essence, is the LoA.

That which you think of, you attract.

The book carries enough and more examples of how we can make a life of our choice if we work on controlling our thoughts. Our thoughts are not on autopilot, as we are conditioned to believe, rather it is very much under our control. It is only a matter of taking control.

One particular example was quite interesting and changed my perspective to things. One of the challenges for us to achieve what we want is the “enormity” we attach to our wants. What do I mean by that? If I am a person with an average income and want to buy a Mercedes S Class, how would I perceive the car? I would assume that it would be a very costly and classy car that would be out of my reach. Isn’t that how we would look at the situation? That’s what we call attaching enormity to our ask. The ask is the car, but by calling it “costly” or “out of reach,” we attach enormity. When we attach enormity, then we end up subconsciously accepting that things are beyond us. So, what do we do?

Just reverse the thoughts. The book shows a simple way of doing this. As per the LoA, the effort spent on attracting a button is the same as that of attracting a castle. Both are the same. It is just the difference in our perspective. All we have to do is to change our perspective. Take a paper and draw a big circle. Now, put a small dot inside that circle. That dot symbolizes your ask. If Mercedes is the ask, then it is just a small dot in the scheme of things inside a circle. In other words, your ask is as tiny as it can be. Did that change the way you looked at your ask? It did for me. And I use this method ever since. I encourage you to try it out too.

And if self-help kind of books excites you, then do read The Secret. You will love it. 😊

Did The Secret Change My Life?

Yes.

The Secret came after the Esther and Jerry Hicks books but still had the same impact on me. The above example of shrinking our “asks” by making it a dot in a circle is something I learned from the book. That’s a whole paradigm shift in making us realize that it is just our perception that makes our asks appear big. In truth, every ask is the same, and every ask is easy for the Higher Power, God, Universe, or Soul to make it happen. And this is just one example in the book. There are many more life examples and practical exercises for readers.

I would highly recommend the book for those that are interested in reading books in the self-help genre.

How About The Secret Becoming A Movie?

The secret is already a movie. For those interested, you can take a look at the movie version on YouTube. It is made as a documentary-cum-contemporary movie. Since it talks about the way we should look at life, it will be interesting.

However, I would like it to be a movie with a role that is close to Jim Carrey’s in Bruce Almighty.
Remember the scene where Jim Carrey parts the soup? It is similar to the parting of the Red Sea in the Bible.

Here is the scene: