It Is No Secret:
Reclaiming Your Attention From Magical Thinking
Part 1 of 2
By Don Elium MFT
Few ideas have gripped the imagination in self-help and spiritual pop culture, like the "law of attraction." Popularized by The Secret, this notion suggests we can bring something into our lives by thinking about it intensely enough. It's an alluring promise wrapped in optimism and possibility. And for those in pain, it can feel like hope.
But for many therapists, scientists, and trauma-informed thinkers, that same promise rings hollow—or worse, more painful.
The problem isn't hope itself. It's the confusion between perception and cause, between noticing and summoning something. The Secret blurs the line between attention and attraction, implying that the mind is a cosmic ordering service. Focusing hard enough on what you want—health, love, money—will bring it to you. It can unintentionally drift into Magical Thinking, the belief that one's thoughts, feelings, or intentions can directly create external events without any physical or logical connection. It often arises to make meaning or control in uncertain, painful, or overwhelming situations. It is not wrong and can help to get through hard times. But as a belief in the hardest of times, outside of one’s influence and control, it can leave a painful scare of self-inflicted blame and shame.
This can lead to quiet cruelty. People in unbearable situations start to wonder if their suffering is their fault or if their hardship persists because their thoughts aren't pure or positive enough. It becomes a spiritualized self-blame.
If I tell you to think about red cars, you'll see them everywhere. Not because you conjured them from the ether but because your brain is now scanning for them. This is a well-documented cognitive bias called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon or frequency illusion. Your mind didn't summon more red cars; you just noticed more of what was already there.
That's not the universe bending to your will. That's the power of your attention participating in the universe of what is happening beyond your control.
This is where the distinction matters deeply—especially for people in pain. Your thoughts don't create the reality of what is happening around you; they help you navigate it. Where you place your attention shapes what you notice, prioritize, and move toward. This is not magical thinking. Its pattern recognition is filtered through meaning.
In neuroscience, this is called the reticular activating system at work. In trauma therapy, it is referred to as neuroception or attunement. You tune in, feel your way, and notice.
Sometimes, yes, something stirs on the other end. A signal aligns. A phone rings just as you think about the person. But that's not proof of cosmic vending machines. It's a sign that you're emotionally connected to the world, embodied, and perceptive.
In fiction, the characters aren't manifesting magic; they're learning to read the room. And in real life? So are we.
Neurological understanding helps see and understand where some points of view or beliefs unintentionally skew a person into internal loops of things out of their control, into it being their fault. Hard times can happen, and it is not your fault. And you can adjust your point of view to help you out of the Magical Thinking loops: this challenging time is not my fault, but it is my responsibility to do the best I can with the actual situation of what is happening that is out of my control.
In this way, working with Life, there is an opening to influence how you see it and what you can do to go with it instead of against it.
This is what it means to be human.