If a secret isn’t secret, can it still be called a secret?
Over twenty years ago, I wrote my first book, titled “Escape Adulthood: 8 Secrets of Childhood for the Stressed-Out Grown-Up.”
Can I tell you a secret?
The secret to success and happiness is not a secret.
The recipe is really just hard advice none of us want to follow, so we keep searching for some magic wand, secret potion, or easy shortcut that doesn’t exist.
In my half-century of life, I’ve heard lots of inspiring stories. After a while, if you’re paying attention, you realize they are all the same. In one week alone, I heard about three people who achieved great victories after overcoming great odds: An athlete on the way to the NFL who got paralyzed. A woman who had both feet amputated. A guy who got busted for drugs and was sentenced to 65 years.
Sure, the details — the races, genders, backgrounds, and specific circumstances — are different. But the advice is always the same.
Always.
Change your attitude. Practice gratitude. Do hard things.
Simple. Clear. Straightforward.
But far from easy.
We are always looking for the hack, but there isn’t one.
To get from where you are to where you want to be requires a change.
You have to change your thoughts.
You have to change your actions.
That’s it.
Deep down, we know this.
But it’s hard.
It’s easier to trick yourself into thinking there must be some knowledge you don’t have. Some guru you need to find. Some hidden path you haven’t uncovered yet.
No. The secrets aren’t secret.
Change your thoughts.
Change your actions.
Easier still is to paint yourself a victim. If someone else is responsible for your suffering, it lets you off the hook. It excuses you from doing the work.
And hey, you can go with that strategy if you want. It’s pretty prevalent these days. I’m not saying you’re wrong about the cause of your problem. It just won’t do anything to help.
I don’t even know why we keep publishing “self-help” books. Everything that matters has been said. They have different authors, different titles, and words arranged in different combinations, but every single one of them is some version of this:
Change your thoughts.
Change your actions.
My first book is out of print. I am in the process of rewriting it. The original was written when I was in my twenties and is filled with things I believed to be true. This one will be about what I know is true, because I spent the last twenty years living out those beliefs.
And you know what? There’s a good chance I’ll include “secrets” somewhere in the subtitle.
Why? Because I know we can’t seem to resist them, and I really want people to read the book.
But the truth is this:
If you want to write a novel…
If you want to lose fifty pounds…
If you want to learn a language…
If you want to find your soulmate…
If you want to make the team…
If you want to improve your lot in life…
If you want to achieve that dream…
If you want to be more successful…
If you want to turn your life around…
There is no hack.
The only secret is not a secret.
The answer is that you have to do hard things.
Change your thoughts.
Change your actions.
You don’t have to do either, of course.
Just own the fact that even though you’d like life to be different, you’ve decided you’d rather not change your thoughts or actions.
Do yourself a favor. Be honest. Call a spade a spade.
But please.
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