The Secret by Rhonda Byrne says that the universe operates on a "law of attraction": think positive thoughts, and positive things will happen. Think about money, and money will come. Think about health, and health will follow. I tried this. I thought about money very hard. Then I thought about pizza, because thinking is hard and pizza is easy. The pizza did not arrive either, but at least I wasn't disappointed because I hadn't expected metaphysics from a cheese-based food product.
The Secret's central thesis is that your thoughts emit a frequency that the universe matches. Think rich thoughts: get rich. Think healthy thoughts: get healthy. Think about pizza: get pizza. The book presents this not as metaphor but as literal physics, despite the fact that actual physicists would like a word. The "quantum" in quantum physics does not mean "magic," no matter how many times wellness influencers say it does.
The Secret helps Rhonda Byrne, who has made a fortune selling the idea that thinking about fortune makes you fortunate. It also helps people who were already going to succeed and who retroactively attribute their success to positive thinking rather than to the combination of talent, effort, privilege, and luck that actually caused it. For everyone else, it provides a brief dopamine hit of hope followed by a longer period of confusion about why the universe hasn't responded to their vision board.
The flip side of "positive thoughts attract positive outcomes" is "negative outcomes mean you were thinking negative thoughts." Got sick? Your thoughts did it. Lost your job? Should have visualized harder. This isn't just wrong. It's cruel. Bad things happen to people who think positive thoughts all the time, because the universe is not a vending machine and your thoughts are not coins.