Happiness, Inc: Wayne Dyer Lives His Positive Thinking Philosophy

Nov. 29, 2009 — -- Wayne Dyer, best-selling author and lecturer, is one of the world's preeminent proponents of the power of positive thinking.

Dyer often tells audiences that he is his message.

As a child, he was abandoned by an abusive, alcoholic father, then lived in orphanages. He went on to write 25 books, including the mega best seller, "Your Erroneous Zones," which made him a talk-show regular who now makes millions selling DVDs and giving speeches.

Dyer's central theme is that you can attract whatever you want, be it money, love, even improved health through your thoughts.

"You must assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled," Dyer, 69, tells his followers. "In the process you begin to attract experiences that match up to what your imagination is offering. This is the great secret of those who are able to manifest into their life, almost effortlessly, what they would like to have."

Dyer says he has been doing this his entire life.

Positive thinking, which has become increasingly popular through books like Rhonda Byrne's, "The Secret," which was heavily promoted by Oprah, is often criticized as dangerous psychobabble.

ABC's Dan Harris first sat down in September with the now-single, father of eight, who lives in Maui, Hawaii, to discuss Dyer's philosophy.

Harris: The problem I have with the wish fulfillment stuff that you talk about, and positive thinking generally, is that if you invert the logic, then the bad things that are happening to us, and happen to everybody, must be the result of thinking incorrectly.

Dyer: It's not about correct or incorrect thinking. It's about alignment. When you see a tsunami hit, as one did not too long ago, and you see people just washed out to sea, it's not like, you know, thousands of people were just thinking incorrectly and got washed out to sea. They were aligned with that energy that came in there. This is the way this universe works.

Harris: You argue that we can take affirmative action to get into our lives the things that we want into our lives. So isn't the reverse of that logic that if something bad happens to us, it must in some way be our fault?

Dyer: Well it depends what you mean by fault. If fault means blame, and you know, assuming that I'm being punished, I don't think fault works that way at all. I think that everything that happens to us, everything that comes into our life, it's essential to take responsibility for it if you want to change it.