Wealth

Wealth is one of the central states described in The Secret, where prosperity is treated not merely as money possessed but as an organizing mindset. The book argues that people who live in wealth think predominantly about abundance, prevent contradictory thoughts from taking root, and thereby use the law of attraction consciously or unconsciously. Its decisive claim is that visible financial circumstances are residual results of earlier thought and action, while a deliberate change in mental focus can begin a different material future.

Wealth as a Mental State

The book places wealth within a larger explanation of attraction that presents the law as impartial, impersonal, precise, and exact, comparable to the law of gravity. Within that framework, Bob Proctor asks why roughly 1 percent of the population earns around 96 percent of all money and answers that the disparity is designed by an understanding of The Secret. Those who have drawn wealth into their lives, he says, hold predominant thoughts of wealth and abundance rather than scarcity. Their mental world is described as so consistently oriented toward prosperity that contradictory ideas are not allowed to become dominant.

This account makes wealth a matter of inner relationship before it becomes an external possession. David Schirmer calls wealth a mindset and says that creating it is fundamentally about how a person thinks. Loral Langemeier adds that approximately 80 percent of her coaching concerns clients' psychology and their way of thinking, because people can change their inner relationship and conversation with money. The emphasis is therefore not only on income or assets but on the mental language through which money is interpreted.

Scarcity, Debt, and Expectation

The book repeatedly defines lack as an active obstruction rather than a neutral description. It states that the only reason a person does not have enough money is that negative thoughts, feelings, and emotions block money from arriving. The invisible is said to contain all the money required, while the individual must tip the balance from lack-of-money thoughts toward more-than-enough-money thoughts. In this model, repeatedly feeling the need for money attracts the condition of needing money, because the emotional state itself becomes the dominant signal.

Debt receives the same treatment. Bob Proctor argues that making the goal getting out of debt can keep a person in debt because continued attention to debt attracts more debt. His practical instruction is to establish an automatic debt-repayment program and then focus on prosperity. The book also addresses the immediate pressure of unpaid bills: when a pile of bills seems impossible to pay, it says that concentrating on the bills will attract more bills, so a person must find a way to focus on prosperity and recover a constructive emotional state despite the evidence surrounding them.

Expectation is presented as a particularly strong attractive force. The book contrasts a person who opens the mail expecting a bill with one who expects a check: repeated anticipation of debt appears to confirm itself, whereas expectation should be directed toward desired outcomes. Bob Proctor's formulation is that desire connects a person with the thing desired while expectation draws it into life. This turns financial attention into a recurring cycle: what is anticipated is noticed, emotionally reinforced, and interpreted as proof of the governing thought.

Practices for Attracting Prosperity

The prescribed shift begins with imagination. The book says that a person seeking money should focus on already having more than enough and pretend to possess the desired wealth. Such make-believe is meant to change the emotional experience of money immediately, with improved feelings then allowing money to begin flowing into life. The instruction is not to work out how the money will arrive but to ask, believe in receiving, and feel happy now, leaving the details to the Universe.

David Schirmer describes changing a bank statement by whiting out its total and writing in the amount he wanted to see. He then visualized checks arriving in the mail. According to his account, circumstances began changing within a month, and he later received more checks than bills. The Secret presents hundreds of similar letters received after the film's release as further testimony from viewers who attributed unexpected checks to their focused attention on Schirmer's story.

Another exercise transforms the threatening physical form of a bill. The practitioner waits until reaching the feeling that the bills are checks, opens them with imagined joy, and treats each amount as though it were money received. In the described game, each bill's amount is increased by a zero in imagination, recorded under the heading “I have received,” and followed by “Thank you.” The bill is then paid with gratitude. The practice is specifically designed to replace the stomach-churning emotion associated with opening bills with joyful feelings; the book presents that emotional replacement as the reason results can come quickly.

The recommended verbal signals reinforce the same state: “There is an abundance of money and it’s on its way to me,” “I am a money magnet,” “I love money and money loves me,” and “I am receiving money every day.” The book also recommends the affirmation “Money comes easily and frequently.” These statements are intended to make prosperity the predominant mental position rather than a distant condition dependent on current evidence.

Wealth, Action, and Giving

Although the book gives thought a primary role, it also exposes a tension between desire and conduct. James Ray observes that people may say they want to double their income within a year while acting in ways that cannot produce that result. The contradiction appears when such a person immediately says, “I can’t afford that,” to which the book's attraction logic responds, “Your wish is my command.” The implication is that an expressed financial goal is undermined when habitual action and language continue to announce limitation.

Giving is offered as another way to enact abundance. The book calls giving a powerful action because it communicates, “I have plenty,” and links the generosity of wealthy philanthropists to the return of money through the law of attraction. A person who believes there is not enough to give is told that this belief helps explain the felt lack; beginning to give is framed as an act of faith that should generate more to give. At the same time, the text distinguishes giving from sacrifice: giving from an overflowing heart is supposed to feel good, whereas sacrifice carries a different emotional meaning.

Wider Consequences and Critical Tensions

The wealth doctrine extends the same logic beyond finances. Joe Vitale states that everything surrounding a person, including complained-about circumstances, has been attracted. The book applies this claim to such examples as a car accident, a difficult client, and debt, insisting that acceptance of the idea can transform life. It further argues that persistent thoughts of fear, separation, and powerlessness can place people on the same frequency as disastrous events, even when they did not imagine the exact event itself.

This reasoning produces a strong promise of control, but it also creates a moral and explanatory burden. The book treats financial hardship, debt, accidents, historical mass death, and even illness through an internal attribution system centered on thought and frequency. Its account of health invokes the placebo effect, saying that patients who truly believe a tablet is a cure may receive what they believe, while John Demartini cautions that medicine should not be rejected, especially in acute situations that could cause death. The resulting tension is between mental agency and the danger of making individuals responsible for conditions that may also involve bodily, social, historical, or accidental forces.

The same tension appears in the book's treatment of public suffering. Jack Canfield says that noticing what is unwanted can provide contrast, but repeatedly discussing, reading about, and condemning it may create more of it. He argues that focusing on negative events does not help the world and instead adds to negativity, while attention directed toward joy, abundant food, love, and well-being is presented as a way of contributing to change. Wealth thus becomes part of a broader ethical vocabulary in which attention is treated as a form of power: prosperity is not only something to acquire, but an imagined condition whose emotional signal is supposed to reshape personal and collective experience.