Beyond The Secret

Last night I attended Beyond The Secret, at UCLA. It was a taping for the “live event” that happens tonight, January 15th in 400+ theaters around the country.

It will play as if it is a live event. Great idea, amazing concept. Holli Walker had the idea to create this event and bring the speakers together to continue the discussion of The Secret. Congratulations to Holli for bringing her concept into reality.

The movement that has been created by the movie The Secret is impressive and obviously many people have been affected by it. I love that The Secret opened minds and fueled a movement for positive thinking.

Is positive thinking enough to create real change? From my perspective, positive thinking is a great place to start and we can all use a reminder now and then to stay positive in a negative time. My expectations of Beyond the Secret were a result of nothing more than the name of the event. I expected something new, different, unique, powerful, or creative. Some science, some breakthroughs, some action.

I attended the taping hoping they would take us in a new direction.
And I am hesitant to say anything negative about it, since the focus and intention was simply to discuss the Secret, not to create a revolution, or inspire action.

Les Brown was interesting, repeating the quotes that make us go, “oh yea”.
Bob Proctor was great, he is a fascinating and energetic man with a great message.
Marcia Wieder is, I suspect, a mind boggling, life changing speaker. From the few minutes I heard, she is someone who could blow your socks off.

So, put together a panel of people talking about positive thinking, saying the same things that have already been said in the same way it has been said, and you have Beyond the Secret. All this done with no interactive element, no energy, no context, and no action.

This event could look different once they edit it, add wildly screaming and applauding sounds from the audience and put in the movie magic that makes an event have a pulse. Beyond the Secret will be interesting to most people and will serve a purpose. But I just love to see people getting inspired, excited and taking action. If you could give some of the top speakers a chance to stand up, grab the audience and shake them up, we would have had something.

Putting a panel of people in chairs (one of which never opened his mouth the entire time) to answer old tired questions is boring. Taking questions from the audience that are pre-written and read off a card is uninspiring. What? The panel cannot take real questions? These panelists are brilliant people who were prevented from showing their greatness and giving the country some true inspiration.

And with that said, I know I will probably get some negative comments if I do not glow about Beyond the Secret, but we know that energy is everything. And infusing The Secret movement with some new life and energy would have been powerful.

Go see it anyway, it won’t hurt.

Wendi

PS- Great move to put Leeza Gibbons on as host. I have been on her radio show  dozens of times and she is a brilliant host and has a great style. She does an amazing job. Larry King was unable to make it and she is a great replacement.