The Secret About Secrets

Pssst. Want to know a secret? I know a secret. Do you know the secret? Did you know there are 10 secrets? In fact, there are 10 secrets to just about everything on the face of the earth. Funny enough, not one of them is a secret.

Search on Amazon and you'll come up with 870,000 books with the word "Secret" in the title. How can there be 870,000 secrets? The truth is there can't be. Even the movie The Secret wasn't a secret. It was a rehash of the old adage that what you think about you bring about. The secret to abundance is not a secret. It never was. Oh, I suppose it could've been considered a secret since it was hidden inside a book -- you know, the last place most people would ever look.

Go ahead and Google "The 10 Secrets to..." and you will be met with 69 million search results. There are 10 Secrets to Better Love Life. There are 10 Secrets to Success. There are 10 Secrets to Finding Happiness. There are 10 Secrets to Marketing. Even Victoria has a secret. There are also 10 Secrets to Giving a Good Scientific Talk, Better Blogging, Social Media, Wedded Bliss and my favorite The 10 Secrets to Understanding Women (probably the only one that is a secret).

Why do we fall for headlines that feature "The Secrets to..." of anything? Are we trying to compensate for our ignorance by claiming it was a secret - which lets us off the hook for not paying attention up until now? I would hazard a guess that it's because we're just too lazy to crack open a book and find out the so-called "secrets" for ourselves.

Personally, I'm getting a little tired of marketers who treat us like idiots. I know the difference between a secret and a fact. A fact is something conclusively proven. A secret is what the marketers use to get you to look at their advertising and to force you to open your wallet to overcome your surprise, shock and wonder.

Wake up and change your attitude. Don't fall for this stuff. There are no secrets -- except the number of times you fell for someone's "secrets." And that, shall remain a secret, won't it?

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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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