The deadly consequences of Rhonda Byrne’s "The Secret"
The dark history of dangerous messaging, lawsuits, and deaths connected to one of the most popular self-help books.
TW: victim-blaming, homophobia, negligent homicide, suicide, rape, cancer, fatphobia
I was first introduced to Rhonda Byrne’s “The Secret” the same way most people were: during my daily watch of “The Oprah Winfrey Show”.
In 2006, platinum-blonde Rhonda Byrne sat across from Oprah and explained to her how every single thing in her life had changed because she discovered the secret to life and is sharing that secret with the world with her book, “The Secret”.
What transpired after the show was an absolute snowball effect. The book sold 30 million copies with millions of people believing and living “The Secret”; everyone that was associated with it rose to fame; and then the inevitable happened: lawsuits, harm, and even homicide.
So how did this all happen?
You only need to look inside the book itself to understand. While Oprah touted the book on her show as being the one thing that could change your life for the better, it doesn’t take a genius to read the text and see it for what it truly is: a toxic-positivity manifesto that manipulates its readers into blaming only themselves instead of the systems they live in. And that leads us to the greatest secret of them all, that “The Secret” not only harms individuals, but all of us.
How the book was manifested
In the introduction of “The Secret” Rhonda Byrne, she shares that while she was going through a hard time in her life, her daughter gifted her the book “The Science of Getting Rich” by Wallace D Wattles. The book, first published in 1910 is something like an OG self-help book that spreads the message that you can attract wealth by changing your mindset.
This was what Oprah would call an aha moment for Byrne. She dedicated her life to spreading this “ancient” wisdom, by first making a documentary about people living with this mindset, which she then turned into this book.
What are Byrne’s qualifications to teach the world about manifestation and quantum physics? Unless you count being a television producer a qualification, then nothing.
Regardless, the book became a world-wide phenomenon, has sold 30 million copies, and was even turned into a fictional movie starring Katie Holmes back in 2020.
Byrne’s financial success was soon followed a series of lawsuits and complaints.
In 2006, author and holistic healer, Vanessa Bonnette, sued Byrne for over 100 instances of plagiarism of a book that she published in 2003, Empowered for a New Era. You can see all the instances in which Bonnette points out this plagiarism on her website (including instances of copying exact metaphors). Byrne counter-sued and the two ended up settling out of court.
In 2011, the director for The Secret documentary filed a lawsuit against Byrne, suing her for $340 million stating that she cheated him out of millions that were rightfully his.
One couple who was interviewed for “The Secret” documentary also claimed that they were shut down by Byrne when they wanted to talk about the negative sides of the law of attraction: “There were two key points we wanted to make sure got into the movie, but when we tried to bring them up Rhonda steered us away from them.” Gay Hendricks said. These points were that you needed to practice manifestation from a place of integrity and that manifesting too much too quickly can be detrimental.
Despite all of this, Byrne has remained consistent and hasn’t changed her message, brand, or product at all (which is a feat, I’ll give her that). She has since written 11 more books and is currently swindling “The Secret Manifestation Cards” on her website.
Compared to the rest of the experts Byrne collaborated with on “The Secret”, she got out easy. But before we get into the lasting impacts of the book, let’s dive into the book itself.
What is this ancient Secret?
The book itself is set up like a series of Instagram captions. Throughout the book, Byrne quotes (and sometimes misquotes ie. Ralph Waldo Emerson) “experts” about different aspects of the Secret. After each quote, Byrne writes a paragraph or two reiterating the same point. It makes for a painful reading experience, and like most self-help books, this 199 page book could have been a blog post.
To make this reading experience even more enraging, the use of exclamation marks is unprecedented. We’re talking about an exclamation mark every other sentence. As someone who is vehemently against exclamation marks as a whole, I wanted to throw the book across the room.
But to be fair, the main reason I wanted to throw this book was due to the messaging throughout.
Positive thinking will give you whatever you want
The thesis of the book is that positive thinking can make anything and everything possible due to the law of attraction.
“There isn’t a single thing that you cannot do with this knowledge. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are, The Secret can give you whatever you want.”
In this book, this “whatever you want” can include healing from all disease and illnesses (including cancer and depression), accumulating all the wealth in the world, and even ending homophobia.
One story presented is a man who was experiencing homophobia at work and used the secret and the power of positive thinking in order to cause his homophobic co-workers to quit or be moved to different departments.
While the idea of thinking positive thoughts can help you navigate life in a healthier way isn’t a problematic point in itself. However, when presented in this way, it’s incredibly dangerous. When the message is that whatever is happening to you (whether it be your health or systemic issues) is your fault due to your mindset, then that puts all of the ownness for change on an individual.
In terms of systemic issues such as homophobia, it is not the victim’s fault for other’s hate nor is it the responsibility of that person to get rid of that hate.
The book states that, “They can use their free will to choose their thoughts. They have the power to intentionally think and create their entire life with their mind.”
The audacity is strong to ask a person experiencing hate crimes not to be bothered by it and have a better attitude about it. Not to mention, getting rid of that hate is not possible by thinking positively about it.
In the book, Dr. Joe Vitale is quoted as saying:
The darkest part of this whole thing is that this says that suffering is something you cause to happen to you. Due to this, change is only possible within individuals. This type of thinking consequently states that because of this, aid and collectivism is pointless.
Thinking beyond individual struggles (though most individual struggles stem from systemic issues), the book goes on to say that in order to protect your own positive thoughts, you shouldn’t think about these systemic issues at all:
“You cannot help the world by focusing on the negative things. As you focus on the negative events of the world, you not only add to them, but you bring more negative things into your own life at the same time.”
Not only is this thinking incredibly privileged, but it’s also misleading on what is causing many struggles in people’s everyday lives. And it becomes dangerous when we use this type of messaging to stop any kind of systemic change from occurring.
Hale Dwoskin is quoted in the book saying: “Anything we focus on we do create. So if we’re really angry, for instance, at a war that’s going on, or strife, or suffering, we’re adding our energy to it. We’re pushing ourselves, and that only creates resistance.”
The book discourages any kind of resistance because resistance is always (in their minds) negative. And I think that’s by design. As we will see later on, those involved in this book are all wealthy individuals. Some have faced obstacles, even systemic ones, in their life. This is not meant to take away from those at all. However, all of them are currently profiting from a system that depends on those suffering to not resist.
Rich people aren’t evil
This messaging, and the author’s motives, become super clear in the book’s section about money. The core thesis about money is consistent with the rest of the book: you need to think positively about money and the people who have money in order to attract money.
The book states that thinking that only evil people have money or have done bad things to get that money, will keep you poor.
Bob Proctor states, “Why do you think that 1 percent of the population earns around 96 percent of all the money that’s being earned? Do you think that’s an accident? It’s designed that way.”
We’ve seen this messaging before in books such as “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki and “You are a Badass” by Jen Sincero. And like those books as well, this book encourages people to stop thinking that you can’t afford things. Instead, think you can afford it and that you can buy whatever you want.
I’m not wealthy by any means, so I guess take what I’m about to say with a grain of salt, but I don’t think buying extravagant things (they always use an example of a fancy car) is the best way to go about becoming rich or having a better relationship with money.
While this type of messaging can be detrimental to people’s bank accounts, the most dangerous messaging in this whole book (in my opinion) was in regards to physical health.
You can think away all disease
The first egregious health claim this book makes is that being overweight is due to people thinking “fat thoughts” and that people can achieve weight loss through thinking “thin thoughts”.
Byrne continues to advise people to print out photos of either you at your desired weight or people who are at your desired weight and to look at them often so that you’re constantly thinking about losing weight. She says that this is how she maintains her “perfect” weight of 116 pounds while still eating anything she wants. This advice is akin to thinspiration that can be not only detrimental to individuals with disordered eating, but also encourage it.
Something Byrne doesn’t seem to understand, and what most people in the self-help industry don’t seem to understand is that being “overweight” (whatever that means) is not something that people need to change. Weight and health do not always correlate and that anti-fatness derives from anti-Blackness.
The main thesis surrounding health in this book goes beyond weight and are literally life-threatning ideas. The book claims that all diseases can be avoided through thinking:
“You cannot ‘catch’ anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is inviting it to you with your thought.”
The science behind infectious diseases, genetic diseases, or really science of any kind is completely avoided and ignored in this book. Science would be inconvenient here, so the author just ignores it. Which, I suppose, is in line with Byrne’s primary message.
One story that has a proven history of being actually dangerous is a story shared about a woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer and from the beginning just believed that she was already healed. Instead of doing any treatments, she watched funny movies so she could laugh. Because of this, the book claims, she was healed from cancer in three months. The book goes on to say that all incurable diseases can actually be cured through laughter.
This message went on to encourage one of Oprah’s viewers to try to heal her own cancer with her mind. Oprah went on a PR show to try to cover the damage, but the damage of encouraging this book was already done. You can’t help but wonder how many other people out of the more than 30 million who have read this book heeded Byrne’s advice and stopped treatment.
The damage of the book also continued past its initial publication and popularity through the work of the experts featured in the book.
The deadly impact of the Secret
Almost two dozen “experts” are quoted throughout “The Secret” and these quotes make up at least 50% of the content in the book. So who are these experts? The list contains a former MLM rep, chiropractor, a Feng Shui master, authors, etc.
I spent time doing research on every single expert given a spotlight in this book. I was expecting to find a few of their own secrets, but I found that almost half of them had a secret they wouldn’t want to share including many lawsuits and even a homicide.
So let’s dive into all of these expert’s secrets:
John Assaraf, business coach, faced a lawsuit with his company OneCoach with a business claiming they did not receive promised services.
Michael Beckwith and his Agape International Spiritual Center filed for bankruptcy after facing lawsuits for owed money and after its pastor was convicted of raping three women.
Lee Brower, a life coach, was sued for fraud after scamming 150 individuals into investing $60 million in a real estate scheme.
Jack Canfield, creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul, has turned to multi-level marketing schemes (Young Living) and has been accused of family abandonment by his son.
Marie Diamond, Feng Shui master (yup), faced a lawsuit against her and her company Double Happiness Productions for breach of contract.
Loral Langemeier, financial educator, was charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2022 for selling securities in unregistered oil and gas offerings.
Bob Proctor, self-help author, has complaints that his coaching services are overpriced and lack transparency (par for the course in the self-hep industry). More damning the lawsuit he faced from a former employee who sued him for fraud and breach of contract.
Also, upon looking into Bob Proctor’s company, Proctor Gallagher Institute, I immediately saw that it closely resembled a pyramid scheme model. Individuals pay anywhere between $18,00 and $32,000 to become a certified consultant who are then able to act as coaches through the Institute. Other courses through the Institute range from $2,000-$10,000. There is also an Inner Circle program that I was unable to find a price for, so I can only imagine.David Schirmer, an “investment guru” currently has the Australian Securities Investment Commission investigating his business activities due to complaints of him owing investors money.
Denis Waitley, a self-proclaimed doctor and PH.D., had a report filed against him when he was a director of Usana, a direct-selling “health” company. The report found that his credentials were false. Usana has also faced lawsuits for exaggerating business opportunities and operating as a pyramid scheme.
Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God was accused of plagiarizing a story told in a blog post in 2009.
However, the worst “expert” of them all has to be James Ray. James Ray is a self-help coach whose qualifications include the fact that he used to be a telemarketer at AT&T. Claims of unsafe practices through his self-help coaching started back in 2000. Former students broke their hands during a quasi-martial arts exercise, one student almost lost an eye after being shot by an arrow, and one woman jumped to her death after attending a seminar with Ray.
All of these reckless instances led to the tragic deaths of three people during one of Ray’s wellness retreats. During this retreat, Ray made participants fast (including no water) for 36 hours and then held a “sweat lodge ceremony” in a structure in the middle of the Arizona desert. This led to three deaths and 18 hospitalizations.
He was charged for negligent homicide and was sentenced to two years in prison. But don’t worry, he launched his self-help business as soon as he got out and sells coaching sessions ($5,000), live courses ($4,497), and live events ($797).
In just one book, the number of examples of what can happen when people blindly trust self-improvement “experts” is harrowing.
While people may joke about the ridiculous messaging and trend of “The Secret”, the reality is that when the book first came out, its messages were taken very seriously by many people around the world. Many people still take this messaging very seriously. Byrne hardly said anything new in this quintessential book on toxic positivity and this messaging has continued to be perpetuated through thousands in the self-help industry since.
“The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne is the perfect example of just how serious and deadly this kind of messaging and this kind of blind trust of “experts” within the self-help industry truly can be.
If you want to see my unfiltered, first-reaction thought to “The Secret”, check out my reading vlog, which is available to all of my paid subscribers.
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