How the Secret Changed My Life

by Rhonda Byrne

  We toured our prospective neighborhood daily. Desperate for the location, we ended up putting in offers on two different houses and lost to higher bids on both.

  Then one night during our usual rounds of the area, we found it. The location was perfect. The style was exactly what we’d visualized. But the price was too much. We knew this would be our house, so we put in an offer anyway. The offer was so low, it was almost insulting.

  We got a phone call from our Realtor the very next day. The seller had accepted our offer! This news totally blew us away, considering I also had a positive pregnancy test that same morning!

  The baby registry I made prior to becoming pregnant was for a boy. I even slept with a piece of paper under my pillow on which I had written his name, gender, and eye color. And what do you know? I gave birth to a green-eyed baby boy, just as I knew I would.

  It’s amazing how powerful thoughts can be.

  – Heather M., Buffalo, New York, USA

  Have you ever started to think about something you were not happy about, and the more you thought about it, the worse it seemed? That’s because as you think one sustained thought, the law of attraction immediately brings more like thoughts to you. But the good news is that the opposite is also true.

  If you give your attention to thoughts that make you feel happy, you will attract happier thoughts. In fact, happiness is the shortcut to anything you want in your life. Just feel and be happy now! Focus on radiating out into the Universe those feelings of joy and happiness. When you do that, you will attract back to you all things that bring you joy and happiness, which will include everything you want. When you radiate those feelings of happiness, they are sent back to you as the happy circumstances of your life.

  Diana, in the following story, visualized having something she really wanted, and in the end, she got even more happiness than she’d imagined.

  INSTANT KARMA

  When I first watched The Secret, it rang so true that it felt like I already knew it, but I hadn’t put it all together. I have continuously experienced great things just by being grateful for everything, by envisioning what I want, and by being a careful observer.

  Most recently, while taking a night flight from Boston to Phoenix, I was one of the first to board because I had paid extra for a better seat up front. On the same flight a year ago, I had been lucky enough to be the only one in my row, so I was able to stretch out and sleep during the trip. All day long I visualized the seats next to me being empty so I could enjoy the same luxury. While placing my luggage overhead, I heard an older woman behind me asking the flight attendant if she could sit in one of the front rows. It was explained to her that those seats cost more, and she quickly snapped back that she was a little claustrophobic and needed to be up front. I continued getting settled as they kindly explained that they could move her but she’d have to pay more, to which she replied harshly that she couldn’t afford it.

  As the rest of the passengers boarded, my delight grew as people passed but no one sat in my row. I repeated to myself how amazing visualizations can be. Finally, the attendant announced that they were ready for takeoff and requested that we all finish using our electronics before they shut the cabin door. I was happy knowing that my wish had been granted, but my mind kept flashing back to the older woman. I thought of how uncomfortable it must be for her to sit in the back feeling trapped. I couldn’t possibly enjoy all this extra room knowing that she was suffering. I got up and approached the attendant who had spoken to her. I explained that I wanted to pay for the lady who was claustrophobic to be moved to a seat in my row, but that they would have to promise not to tell her I had paid for it. The attendant smiled at me and said she’d take care of it.

  After several minutes, the older woman was ushered to my row and seated. We spoke only briefly, but she seemed very happy, and that filled my heart with more joy than sleep ever could. The evening seemed to fly by.

  Toward the end of the flight, the attendants were going around charging each person’s credit card for their food and drink. I waited for someone to stop at my row, but they seemed to have missed me. At last the attendant I had spoken to stopped at my aisle seat and leaned down near me as I held out my credit card to her. She didn’t take the card. Speaking in a very soft tone, she said that she wanted to thank me on behalf of the entire crew. What I had done was the nicest thing any of them had ever experienced while flying, and they were all inspired by it. She ended by saying that not only were they not going to charge me for her seat, but they wanted to pay for my food and drink themselves.

  I felt so honored and so filled with love that I could barely speak. I whispered back, “Thank you!”

  It was such a wonderful and loving experience, and I’m amazed that so much joy rippled out just because I OFFERED to do something kind.

  – Diana R., Phoenix, Arizona, USA

  Think Happy Thoughts and Be Happy Now!

  Most of us have the wrong idea about happiness. We believe that if we get everything we want, and if life continually goes our way, we will be happy. And from that belief, we create all the excuses in the world for why we can’t be happy right now. “I’ll be happy when I get the job, the promotion, leave this job, pass the exam, get into college, leave college, lose weight, put on weight, buy my own home, sell my home, when I’m free of debt, free of stress, free of this relationship, in a new relationship, have a family, when my health improves.”

  But the great revelation about happiness is that it’s those very excuses that are masking your inherent happiness, which is available to you every single day, no matter what is happening in your life. It’s those very excuses that are preventing you from being happy now. It’s not the circumstances of life that are preventing you from being happy; it’s the excuses you’re making not to be happy! Like attracts like, happiness attracts happiness, so just drop the excuses – drop every one of them – and be happy now!

  HAPPY POWER

  I was one of the most miserable people I had ever known. Misery was a lifestyle for me, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. Then, after more than forty years of living in utter misery, it all suddenly changed. The best part was, it was so simple. By changing just one thing in my life, I went from a severely depressed, jobless single mom who continued to turn to drinking, to operating my own independent publishing company!

  I remember the first time I tried to take my life. I ran to the bathroom crying, filled with hurt. I opened the medicine cabinet and took all the prescription pills I could find and swallowed them. I just wanted to die. I don’t even think I knew what the word suicide meant, because I was only nine years old. But I knew those pills could kill me, and I just wanted to die.

  It was the first of many suicide attempts through the years. Pills, wrist-cutting, self-suffocation. Once, as a teenager, I even put a gun to my head, but my parents came home early and I threw the gun back into their nightstand and ran to my room. Starting in my twenties, I turned to alcohol. I went in and out of jobs and relationships while constantly moving. I had gone from being financially well off to being jobless, even to losing my home to foreclosure. I went from severe back pain to constantly calling in sick to breast cancer. And those were just the good times.

  Then, two years ago, I finally decided to pursue my dream and become an author of psychological fiction, and I did. I poured myself into my books, which did pretty well in sales. Then one day I sat at my computer, ready to knock out my sixth book, and I didn’t want to.

  I was tired, exhausted, miserable. I had worked so hard at fulfilling my dream of becoming an author, and now I was right back to my emotional bottom. I couldn’t believe it. I thought, This is it, and fell into one of my deepest depressions. I slept a lot, drank, and just felt numb. I interacted with the world as best I could but felt so removed from it at the same time. I was a single mom of two girls, and taking my life wasn’t an option. So I just struggled through life as best as I could, telling loved ones what they wanted to hear because I
didn’t even understand the truth of the situation.

  I had been studying and learning about the law of attraction for years, but something was missing and I couldn’t figure it out. After a few weeks, I began to give some thought to the idea that maybe being an author wasn’t what I’m supposed to do in life to make me happy. Then I said it again and again, until it narrowed down to “Make me happy, make me happy.” I thought back to the dozens of times I had watched, read, and listened to The Secret and Rhonda Byrne saying, “You have to feel good.”

  Then it dawned on me. What if all I ever wanted out of everything I have been chasing was not to get the thing itself but to be happy, to feel good? What does that even mean?

  I realized that I had never learned how to be happy. Sure, I had had happy moments, but happiness, no. I had been chasing it and didn’t even realize it. So it was in that moment I decided I needed to learn how to be happy, and the only one who could teach me was me.

  I made a list of 10 things that really made me happy and decided to start incorporating these things in my life every day. Then life got in the way and I didn’t do them, but I still looked at my list every morning and gave thought to doing these things even if it was just in my mind.

  And guess what happened? I began to feel happy. It was embracing every morning and proactively giving thought to things that personally made me happy that finally taught me my own happiness. Once I taught my mind and body how to be happy, I began to manifest more happy things, and because I felt happy, I naturally manifested more happy things into my life.

  I wish I could go back and tell my nine-year-old self, “You don’t need to take those pills to make the pain go away. You can make those awful feelings go away. You just have to make a happy list and it will be okay. It will be more than okay, it will be great.” But I can’t go back. All I can do now is share my story with others and tell them that after more than forty years of misery, it all changed once I became proactive in creating my own happiness, and the law of attraction did the rest. If everything I went through was to share this message with the world, it was all worth it.

  – Heidi T., Chico, California, USA

  Be happy now. Feel good now. That’s the only thing you have to do. And if that’s the only thing you get from reading this book, then you have received the greatest truth of The Secret.

  We are all entirely free to choose whatever we want. The power is in your hands now, and you are the one who chooses how to use that power in your own life. You can choose:

  To have a happier life today, or put it off until tomorrow.

  What feels better? You choose.

  – The Secret Daily Teachings

  Keys to Happiness

  You change your life with one happy thought at a time.

  Give your full attention to thoughts that make you feel happy, and ignore thoughts that don’t make you feel happy.

  The more positive thoughts you entertain, the happier you will become.

  When you’re happy, you attract happy people and happy circumstances and events into your life.

  It’s not the circumstances of life that are preventing you from being happy; it’s the excuses you’re making not to be happy.

  Stop entertaining thoughts of misery about anything in the past. If you focus on past difficulties, you are bringing more difficult circumstances now.

  Believing negative thoughts is the biggest contributor to humanity’s unhappiness.

  Fill yourself with positive thoughts and feelings, because where positivity exists, negativity cannot exist at the same time.

  Use Secret Shifters to change negative thoughts.

  To be happy, look for things to appreciate, no matter what is happening around you.

  There is no such thing as a hopeless situation.

  Practice being happy today. Your future life depends on it.

  The shortcut to a great life is to FEEL and BE HAPPY now!

  Money doesn’t bring happiness – but happiness brings money.

  – The Secret Daily Teachings

  How I Used The Secret to Receive Wealth

  To Attract More Money, Focus on Abundance

  Needing money is a powerful feeling, and so of course, through the law of attraction, you will continue to attract needing money. To change what you’re attracting, you must tip the balance of your thoughts from lack-of-money to more-than-enough-money. Think more thoughts of abundance than of lack, and you have tipped the balance.

  MONEY COMES EASILY AND FREQUENTLY!

  I go to a very expensive private university where the tuition is about $40,000, not including food or living expenses. However, I come from a lower-middle-class family and receive no help from my parents, so I pay for everything myself. On the day when the school posted the financial aid packages for the following year, I got up in the morning saying, “Today will be amazing, and money comes frequently and easily.” But when the awards were posted, mine was only about $5,000. I work part-time at minimum wage, and there is no way I could make up the additional $35,000 I would need for school.

  Because I’d read The Secret, I started feeling gratitude and thanking God and the Universe for paying my school tuition. When I checked my Facebook page, I saw that a bunch of people were making negative comments about their award packages, saying things like “Bye, school,” “My education is over,” and “This is ridiculous and upsetting!” I just smiled and thought, At least I’m being fully paid for!

  That afternoon I went to the financial aid office and was told that I could send them an email asking for my package to be reviewed, but it would take at least a week for them to get back to me.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon asking people about scholarships and grants relating to art (which I study and create) but didn’t say anything negative about my school or the amount of my scholarship. I just sought financial advice and felt gratitude and love and prayed and thanked God for helping me pay for school, saying over and over, “Money comes easily and frequently,” with a smile on my face.

  When I got home, I started to write my email to the financial aid office, but I wanted to double-check that my award was exactly $5,000, because I thought it might have been slightly more – maybe $5,150 or $5,200. Well, you will NEVER guess what happened when I pulled up my award on the computer. Somehow it had changed despite having been designated the “final award” earlier that day. In fact, I was being fully covered for the following year! I didn’t have to pay anything at all for school and would even have some extra money to go toward paying for my apartment.

  I’ve used The Secret before, but in the past I’ve also had thoughts about how I work so hard and get such good grades but am still always so broke. Now I think I can do anything and I’m a good, deserving person who can have whatever I want. This should make a believer out of anyone!

  – Chelsea, San Francisco, California, USA

  Use Props to Help You Believe in Abundance

  Using props helps you to believe that you are receiving what you asked for. You may remember that Enny talked about using a check from the Bank of the Universe in her story in the first chapter. This is one of the props The Secret Team has created to help you believe. You can download a blank check from the Bank of the Universe free of charge from www.thesecret.tv/check. The Bank of the Universe has unlimited funds for you to draw from, so you can fill out the check with your own name and whatever amount you want. Put it in a prominent place and look at it every day so you actually believe you have that money right now. Imagine spending the money on whatever you want. Feel how wonderful that is! Know it is yours, because when you ask and believe, it is.

  Remember that the law of attraction doesn’t know if you are playing make-believe or if something is real, so when you are pretending you already have what you want, you have to feel as though it is real. When your make-believing begins to feel real, you will know that you are succeeding in bringing what you want into your reality.

  – The Secret Daily Teachings
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br />   WRITE YOUR OWN CHECK

  I have been a believer in The Secret from the first moment I watched the movie and have been sharing it with as many people as possible. It literally changed my life. After breaking up with my fiancé, coming close to declaring bankruptcy, and having to move back in with my parents, I figured that my life as I knew it was over. The Secret changed all that – in particular, the blank check available for download and printing on the website.

  I have been writing “New Moon” abundance checks for years, and have seen the benefits off and on, depending on how much I believed in them. So, after watching The Secret and finding the blank check from the Universal Bank, I decided to print a copy and make use of it. I put in an amount that was almost impossible for me to imagine receiving: $55,000. I don’t know why I chose that number, but I did. And I placed it on the corkboard that hung on the wall in my childhood bedroom, right where I could see it every night before sleep and every morning when I woke up.

  Some days I’d actively work on feeling that money coming into my life, and other days I’d laugh disapprovingly at myself (which, I believe, is why it took so long).

  Just when I didn’t think my life could get any worse (I lost my job, my mother became dangerously ill, and the relationship with my former fiancé seemed stalled and truly doomed), I received a letter from a family member informing me that I was about to receive $50,000 in inheritance.

  I honestly could not have made this up if I’d tried. I thought my entire heart was going to swell up and burst when I got that news. It allowed me to get out of debt, invest, and go back to school. Next on the list is buying an income property upon which to build my business.