The Secret and the Law of Attraction: The Books Behind It

The Secret (2006) made the law of attraction famous: the idea that what you focus on, you draw into your life. Rhonda Byrne has said her starting point was Wallace Wattles' 1910 book The Science of Getting Rich. That book, and most of the classics behind The Secret, are free to read legally today.

That is the short version. The longer version is more interesting, and more useful to you if you are deciding what to read next.

Most pages about The Secret do one of two things. They summarize it like a sales page, or they mock it and anyone who liked it. This page does neither. You will get a plain account of what the book says, where its ideas came from, what it got right, and the part it got badly wrong. Then you get a reading list that starts with books you can download today for nothing.

What The Secret actually says

The Secret began as a documentary-style film released in March 2006. Byrne, an Australian television producer, followed it with a book in November of the same year. Both feature a cast of teachers, authors and speakers who each explain one piece of the idea.

The central claim is simple. Your thoughts and feelings work like a signal. Whatever you focus on with steady attention and emotion, good or bad, you attract into your life. The book calls this the law of attraction and presents it as a universal law, as fixed as gravity. (For what the law of attraction actually is, and how it differs from manifestation as a practice, see our separate guide.)

From there, it offers a three-part process:

Ask. Get clear on what you want and state it, to yourself or on paper.

Believe. Act and feel as though it is already yours. Doubt, in the book's framing, sends a mixed signal.

Receive. Feel the emotions you would feel once you have it. Good feelings are treated as evidence you are on track.

Around that core, the book adds a few supporting habits. Gratitude is a big one: you are encouraged to give thanks daily, both for what you have and for what you want as if it has already arrived. Visualization is another. You picture the outcome in detail, sometimes with images pinned where you will see them, much like making a vision board.

Later chapters apply the same idea to money, relationships, health and the wider world. The book also claims that great historical figures understood this secret, and it borrows language from quantum physics to suggest the idea has scientific support.

That is the book in a few paragraphs. Notice how little of it is actually new.

Where the ideas came from

The Secret did not invent the law of attraction. It repackaged a body of writing that is well over a century old, most of it from an American movement called New Thought.

The New Thought movement

New Thought grew out of the work of Phineas Quimby, a nineteenth-century mental healer in Maine who believed that the mind played a central role in illness and recovery. His students and their students spread the idea that thought shapes experience. By the late 1800s and early 1900s, New Thought had its own magazines, publishers, churches and a steady stream of books.

Keep that origin in mind. The movement began with claims about the mind and the body. That matters later in this article.

William Walker Atkinson

Atkinson was a lawyer who suffered a breakdown, turned to New Thought, and became one of its most prolific writers. In 1901 he took over as editor of a magazine called New Thought. In 1906 he published Thought Vibration, or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World, one of the earliest book-length treatments of the phrase The Secret would later make famous.

His core picture, thoughts as vibrations that attract matching thoughts and circumstances, is close to what Byrne's teachers describe a century later. It also survives as the law of vibration in the modern list of 12 universal laws.

James Allen

Allen was an English writer whose short book As a Man Thinketh (1903) took its title from a line in the Book of Proverbs. It is less about getting things and more about character. Allen's case is that your habitual thoughts shape who you become, and that your circumstances tend to reflect that over time.

It is the quietest book in this lineage and arguably the best written.

Wallace D. Wattles

Wattles published The Science of Getting Rich in 1910 through the Elizabeth Towne Company, a New Thought publisher in Massachusetts. He died the following year.

The book argues that there is a reliable, almost mechanical way to build wealth: form a clear mental picture of what you want, hold it with faith and gratitude, and then act efficiently every day toward it. Wattles was firm on that last part. He wanted readers creating value, not sitting and waiting.

Charles Haanel

Haanel was a St. Louis businessman who released The Master Key System in 1912 as a 24-part correspondence course, later collected as a book. Each lesson pairs ideas about concentration and attraction with a practical exercise. Napoleon Hill wrote to Haanel in 1919 to thank him for the course.

Byrne's own stated debt

This is not a theory critics invented. Byrne has told the story herself. After her father died in 2004, she was in a dark place, and her daughter Hayley gave her a copy of The Science of Getting Rich. Byrne told Newsweek in 2007 that the book was the spark for the film and everything after it. The Secret also draws extensively on Haanel's Master Key System.

So when you read The Secret, you are reading a modern, film-driven condensation of these older books. That does not make it worthless. It does mean the originals deserve your attention too.

What The Secret got right

It is easy to sneer at this book. Millions of people read it, and many say it changed how they thought about their lives. That deserves a fair hearing.

Clarity about what you want is useful. A lot of people drift for years without naming what they are aiming for. The Secret pushes you to write it down and look at it every day. That alone can change how you spend your time.

Attention shapes what you notice. You have probably had the experience of buying a car and suddenly seeing the same model everywhere. Your brain filters what you notice based on what matters to you. Focusing on a goal makes related opportunities easier to spot.

Gratitude is a decent habit. Taking a few minutes to notice what is going well tends to make people feel better about their day. You do not need a cosmic explanation for that to be worth doing. A manifestation journal is one simple way to build a gratitude practice into your week.

Optimism helps you start. People who expect things can work out are more likely to try, and trying is where most results come from. Hope is a reasonable fuel for effort.

It got people thinking about what they want. For many readers, The Secret was the first book that told them it was fine to want a better life and to plan for it. If it did that for you, that was real.

The problem is not these habits. The problem is the claim wrapped around them.

What The Secret got wrong

The health material

This is the part to take seriously.

The Secret applies the law of attraction to health in the same way it applies it to money. The logic runs like this: if your thoughts attract your circumstances, then illness is something your thoughts attracted, and changing your thoughts can change it. The film includes a woman who describes recovering from breast cancer without radiation or chemotherapy, crediting her mindset and laughter.

That message drew sustained criticism, and for good reason. It can hurt people in two ways.

It invites self-blame. If thoughts cause illness, then a sick person caused their own illness. People with cancer and other serious conditions have described feeling guilty for not being positive enough, on top of being ill. The journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, who wrote about this after her own breast cancer diagnosis, argued that pressure to stay upbeat became one more burden on patients and silenced their fear and anger.

At the far end, it can delay treatment. A reader who believes thought alone can resolve a serious illness may put off seeing a doctor, or skip treatment that works. That is where a self-help idea turns into real harm.

Byrne responded to critics at the time by saying The Secret supports all forms of healing and that she is grateful for what conventional medicine has achieved. That is good to hear. But the book's framing still points the other way, and it is the framing readers remember.

So here is the plain version. Illness is not a judgment on how you think. Being sick is not your fault for having the wrong feelings. A positive outlook is no substitute for medical care, and nothing in this article, or any book listed here, should be treated as one. If you have a health concern, see a doctor.

It is worth knowing that this idea did not start with Byrne. As you saw above, New Thought began with mental healing, and several of the older books on this list make similar claims about health. Read those passages as history, not guidance.

The science claims

The Secret leans on the language of physics, frequencies, vibrations and quantum theory, to suggest the law of attraction is proven. Critics and scientists have rejected those claims. The physics is borrowed for its sound, not its meaning. You can keep the useful habits without believing them to be a law of nature. We walk through the physics in detail in law of attraction physics.

Blame in general

The same logic that blames sick people for illness blames poor people for poverty and victims for what happened to them. Life involves luck, other people, systems and accidents. A worldview that leaves no room for any of that ends up being unkind, including to you on a bad day.

None of this means you were foolish to find the book helpful. It means you can keep what worked and drop what doesn't.

The free reading list: the classics behind The Secret

Every book in this section is in the public domain in the United States, which means you can read it free and legally. Copyright terms differ by country. If you live outside the US, check your local rules, especially in countries with longer terms such as Mexico and Colombia. The links below go to the original text from free libraries, not to modern editions, which may carry their own copyright.

The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles (1910)

Read free: Project Gutenberg, Wikisource, or as a free LibriVox audiobook.

Start here if you have read The Secret, because this is the book Byrne says started it. It is short, a couple of hours of reading, and more practical than its title suggests.

What it offers: a step-by-step argument that a clear picture of what you want, held with gratitude, should be paired with efficient daily action. Wattles also argues for creating value rather than competing for a fixed pie, which is a healthier frame than much of what came later.

What to keep in mind: the confident promises of guaranteed wealth belong to their era. Take the method, not the guarantee.

As a Man Thinketh by James Allen (1903)

Read free: Project Gutenberg.

This is the shortest book on the list and the one most worth rereading. Allen writes in calm, plain prose about how your habitual thoughts shape your character, and how character shapes the life you build.

What it offers: a focus on self-discipline and inner steadiness rather than on acquiring things. If The Secret felt too much like a shopping list, this is the antidote.

What to keep in mind: Allen sometimes implies that people fully create their circumstances. Read that as encouragement to take responsibility for what you can control, not as a judgment on what you can't.

The Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel Shinn (1925)

Read free: Project Gutenberg.

Shinn was a New York illustrator who became a New Thought teacher and self-published this book when she could not find a publisher. It reads like a series of short stories from her counseling work, each built around a principle and a spoken affirmation.

What it offers: warmth, humor and the practice of affirmations, which shows up in almost every modern manifestation book. If you like affirmations, this is where much of the style comes from.

What to keep in mind: Shinn includes healing stories in the same spirit as The Secret. Treat those as part of the book's era.

Thought Vibration by William Walker Atkinson (1906)

Listen free: LibriVox audiobook.

This is one of the earliest book-length treatments of the law of attraction by name. The full title is Thought Vibration, or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World.

What it offers: the clearest early statement of the core idea, plus practical chapters on willpower, desire and dealing with fear and worry. If you want to see the original shape of the concept before Byrne's version, this is it.

What to keep in mind: the "vibration" language is metaphor dressed as science, the same issue critics raise about The Secret.

The Master Key System by Charles F. Haanel (1912)

Read free: sacred-texts.com hosts the 1919 edition in its New Thought section.

This is a 24-lesson course, and it is the most structured book on the list. Each lesson ends with an exercise, many of them focused on concentration and quiet attention.

What it offers: a program rather than a pep talk. If you like working through material week by week, this suits you. It is also the book The Secret draws on most heavily after Wattles.

What to keep in mind: it is long and dense in places, and it makes claims about mind and body that you should read as history.

Modern books worth considering

These are in copyright and cost money, though most are easy to find at a public library or on library apps like Libby.

Ask and It Is Given by Esther and Jerry Hicks. One of the most widely recommended law of attraction books after The Secret. It focuses on emotions as a guide and includes a set of practical exercises. It shares The Secret's strong claims, so read it with the same filter.

Manifest: 7 Steps to Living Your Best Life by Roxie Nafousi. A recent, popular book that ties manifesting to self-worth, mindset and taking action. It is a gentler, more modern entry point than the older classics.

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (1937). The bridge between New Thought and the modern success-book industry. Hill credited Haanel's work as an influence. The original 1937 text is widely considered public domain in the US because its copyright was not renewed, but it remains under copyright in many other countries, so it is listed here rather than in the free section.

Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich (2009; published in the UK as Smile or Die). Not a manifestation book. It is the best-known critique of the positive thinking industry, and its section on The Secret is worth reading. Pairing it with the books above will make you a sharper, safer reader of all of them.

If you'd rather go beyond the law of attraction, Neville Goddard's books are the main source for the law of assumption, a related idea from a different lineage.

The takeaway

The Secret is a condensed, modern retelling of ideas that were already a century old. Its useful parts, clarity, attention, gratitude and hope, hold up. Its claims about health do not, and they can cause real harm if you take them literally.

If the book helped you, you don't need to throw it out. You can go back to the sources it came from, most of them free, and read them with clear eyes.

FAQ

Is The Secret based on another book?

Rhonda Byrne has said her starting point was The Science of Getting Rich, a 1910 book by Wallace D. Wattles that her daughter gave her in 2004. The Secret also draws heavily on Charles Haanel's The Master Key System and the wider New Thought movement.

Which law of attraction books are free?

The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles, As a Man Thinketh by James Allen, and The Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel Shinn are free on Project Gutenberg. Thought Vibration by William Walker Atkinson is free as a LibriVox audiobook, and The Master Key System by Charles Haanel is hosted on sacred-texts.com. All are public domain in the US; check your own country's rules if you live elsewhere.

Is The Secret scientific?

No. Critics and scientists have rejected the book's scientific claims, including its use of quantum physics language. Its practical habits, such as getting clear on what you want and practicing gratitude, can still be useful without the metaphysics.

When was The Secret published?

The Secret came out as a film in March 2006. The book followed in November 2006, published by Atria Books and Beyond Words.