Unless you've been hiding in a cave for the past year or you are not interested at all in anything alternative, spiritual or relating to personal development, you have without a doubt heard of or seen the movie "The Secret."

This has been a very well-done, extremely publicized and super-well marketed movie/documentary on the "Law of Attraction".

Brought to us by the same gang of people who did the very interesting movie "What the Bleep Do We Know," the Secret is probably the first high-budget, widely distributed movie on the topic, or actually on any "personal development" topic.

Today I'm going to look at this movie and give you my own, uncensored opinion, and try to answer the question: is the movie the secret good or potentially harmful?

First a few facts to realize how wide an audience the movie has reached:

- The movie has been a number one best-seller on Amazon.com

- The authors have appeared twice on the Oprah Winfrey show

- With all that publicity, more than 150,000 people have viewed it online and over 700,000 copies of the DVD have been sold in the US alone.

That may not seem big in comparison to a Hollywood production but when you think that all of it has been done through viral marketing it's rather impressive.

So what's behind the buzz?

First you have a powerful movie, in terms of production. A lot of resources and efforts have been put to create a documentary of that caliber.

As for the content, if you've read "Think and Grow Rich" and the other classics of the genre, you know that the concepts shared in The Secret are not new.

The Law of Attraction

The idea is how your thoughts create your reality. It's the law of attraction and abundance. How by thinking about what you want instead of what you don't want you can magically attract everything you want in your life.

The movie appeals to the materialistic desires of the US population. There are examples of people "manifesting" checks in the mail (with really no context of how it happened!). You see people thinking of mansions and expensive cars and see them appear almost as if by magic!

Here's what I think:

- The basic idea behind the movie is good

- The movie presents some important concepts that really should be part of everyone's "mental habits"

- The concepts of the movie, however, when taken to an extreme can be potentially harmful or misleading

- The movie puts too much importance on simple "thoughts" and not enough on the real way to make things happen.

Here's what's missing:

It's not really your thoughts that create your reality, it's your actions and your decisions.

While it's true that it's your thoughts that lead to taking action, it's ultimately your actions that determine the course of your life.

The movie presents two contradictory systems, in a way.

First, you get to think that just by "thinking" alone you can create anything you want in your life.

You see the little best spiritual movies who wants the bike, he believes he will get it, and BANG, it appears at his doorstep.

You see a man who magically gets checks in the mail for no particular reason.

But then later in the movie, they talk about action. They say that visualizing is not enough... that you've got to "act on it."

So is it really your thoughts that create your reality, or your actions?

The Secret really leaves you believing that your thoughts are powerful enough to create anything.

But then it warns you that you have to take action... So if you have to take action, doesn't this render this "magical thinking" process flawed and irrelevant?

There are two conflicting systems there!

It's your decisions that create your reality

So is it just the positive vibes and the power of belief that allows us to control our lives... or is it that this positive thinking helps us to take the right action, which ultimately is responsible for our reality?