The whole law of attraction thing comes from a nineteenth century healing technique and is a reaction to Calvinism and "The secret" is basically other peoples ideas repackaged and made popular by business and now Oprah.

sociologist Micki McGee writes
"continuous and never-ending work on the self is offered not only as a road to success but also to a kind of secular salvation." The self becomes an antagonist with which one wrestles endlessly the Calvinist attacking it for sinful inclinations, the positive thinker for "negativity.'"

It can make people feel guilty for their lack of positivity or shift blame from the real underlying reasons.

Take the credit crunch and the sub prime morgages. Do you think that if business taught to invest within there means instead of that one only has to think a thing or desire it to make it happen we'd be in all this financial mess?

There's a book about positive thinking it by Barbara Ehrenreich Called "Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World"

But! She does... "not write in a spirit of sourness or personal disappointment, nor do I have any romantic attachment to suffering as a source of insight or virtue. On the contrary, I would like to see more smiles, more laughter, more hugs, more happiness… and the first step is to recover from the mass delusion that is positive thinking".

I'm not saying be a miserable bastard but have some realism otherwise you're just lying to yourself instead of dealing with your problems. You need to be able to identify problems with yourself so you can grow and take right action to address these problems but just wishing for stuff won't make it a reality.

Here's an interview with Barbara Ehrenreich that lays down her argument quite nicely

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/...e_bright_side/