I got The Secret last year and shared it with my friends. Though excited at the time - we loved it and got very fired up - some months later, I see no real change in my buddies - if anything their old cars are older; they are still in the same houses they’d rather not be in given an option and they still need me to buy them a pint from time to time. You get the idea.

Don’t get me wrong, my love affair with American-style personal development programmes isn’t over and this isn’t a bad case of sour grapes. It’s just that - as the pumped-up vapours of passion-driven law of attraction and manifestation energy have evaporated - the good sense I’m occasionally fortunate to glimpse has returned to the landscape of my perception.

And no, I’m not criticising The Secret as some others are because it’s not right to not work hard to get what you want or because it panders to the most basic, materialistic urges in pseudo-spiritual new-agers. No, not either of these; because focussing on your intentions - for as long as is required to make them manifest - IS hard work; and wanton satisfaction of your most basic wordly desires can work wonders for spiritual development (see: “Buddha”).

For me, The Secret fails humankind (yes), because it creates wanting. Whilst posing as a way to happiness, it creates the exact opposite - a state of mental unrest and longing - however pleasurable or modest.

When we want, we are no longer content in the moment where we belong - where all happiness is. Put another way: you can’t be happy later on in your life (when all that stuff you are busy manifesting shows up); you can only be happy now. In this moment - NOW!

And by the grace of God (or whatever other thing you beg to or praise in your worst and best moments respectively) that is only right. All have access to the joy of the moment right now - whatever their circumstances - regardless of what the future (and past) hold.

So please don’t wait to be happy - when pay day comes or when the mother of all manifesting gives birth a la Secret - do it now.

Love that strawberry!