I first heard of The Secret in 2006 when I was 15 from the Oprah show. After seeing the show I told everyone I could about The Secret and I really wanted to see the movie. My cousin had gotten a hold of The Secret audio Cd’s and I listened to them over and over again.

When I was around 13 or 14 I was invited to a country club and got to get in a Jacuzzi for the first time. I had never been so relaxed in water, and I wanted a Jacuzzi for my house and talked about it all the time. Without knowing it, I set my attention and focus on a lot of things such as living in a house with stairs, a new acoustic guitar, and a house with a Jacuzzi. My family wasn’t rich, but we weren’t poor either, we were more like the lower end of upper middle class. My mom was raising my sister and I alone and she never needed the help from our father; any money she did get from him was used for shopping adventures. After being out of the picture from the time I was 2 to about 11, my father lived with us for four years, he had a terrible temper and would terrorize my sister and I whenever he could, usually when our mother wasn’t home. When I was 15, my sister and I finally got him to leave and then my mom decided that we needed a place to live where he couldn’t follow.

At the turn of the year, we started to look at houses and put ours up for sale. We found the perfect house with a beautiful view of a golf course and wasn’t too far from the city. This house had stairs! Something I had been wanting for a long time. It didn’t have a Jacuzzi, but believe me, I was looking for a spot to put one. After living in the house for 3 or 4 years we fell on hard times like the rest of the country and had to move, but instead of moving to a lower neighborhood, we actually moved to a more prestigious neighborhood. I was not with my mom or sister when they found the house we would be living in and without me even being there, the law of attraction had delivered a house with a Jacuzzi big enough to fit six people! The house was only one story, but I never said I wanted a TWO story house with a Jacuzzi, I said I wanted A house with a Jacuzzi and that’s exactly what I got. For my senior year of high school I lived in a big one story house with a Jacuzzi and an office, which is something I had always wanted too. That same year before we moved, or knew we were moving, my mom and sister got me a new acoustic guitar for my birthday because I had been playing my mom’s and it was literally forty years older than me and on its last legs.

After living in the house for a year we moved to another two story house. I loved the house with the Jacuzzi, but upon getting what I wanted, I realized that Jacuzzi’s were a lot of work, and I wanted a house with stairs more. Right after graduation we moved to the two story house, it was in a gated community on the other side of town. What makes this story, amazing is that my mom had not worked in a year, we had been living off our savings and a severance package she got when her job got outsourced. The view from the new house was beautiful, majestic even, but I knew my mom needed a job because we were running out of savings and the severance package was just about finished. I set my attention on my mom finding a job, she had been on several interviews, but still no solid job offers. I was around 18 or 19 at this time. We probably weren’t in the house for three months before my mom found a job and we were able to continue living a comfortable life. We even managed to get a new (used but new to us) car seeing as our old 93 blazer had given out.

You can call it God or you can call it the law of attraction, but looking back at those past few years, I didn’t know how I was going to get everything I wanted, but I did get everything I wanted and I still continue to get everything I want despite the odds and everything that was stacked against us, and believe me, I told you all of the good stuff, I neglected to tell you the bad because it would have been too much. All of that Drama would require a novel’s worth of reading. Needless to say our faith was tested numerous times and things seemed dark, but light always came.

Today I am 21 years old and more experienced at getting exactly what I want so I can avoid all (or most) of the drama it takes to get what I want. There is nothing in this world that I want so bad that I would give anything for, because I have everything I ever asked for. I have amazing friends, am going to school, and my relationship with my family is better than it has been my entire life. As a kid my family used to pick on me and really demean me, I used to feel horrible about myself, I couldn’t even look in a mirror. I actually didn’t know what I looked like until I was around 15 or 16 because I avoided mirrors at all times. Sure I had seen pictures of myself, but I hated them. I didn’t know the kid in the picture. After my grandpa died, I had no one left to defend me and was truly alone. I went through a lot while we moved from house to house. After hearing The Secret, and finding the things I loved about life and myself, I was able to look in a mirror and realized that I was a really pretty kid. I was actually amazed at how I looked, not in a conceded way but more of a, “that’s what I look like?!” way. Everything made sense as to why I was always being hit on and flirted with. I never understood what all of these guys were seeing, but thankfully my self-esteem was never low enough to speak to them. My grandpa had always validated me.

I say all of this to prove that The Secret is not all about material things, but dealings with the soul and inner-self as well. After I began caring about myself and realizing that I wasn’t crazy or a fool like my family often called me, things began to change. I stopped responding to their jabs and they began to change their behavior around me. Today they think I’m great, they call on me whenever they need something, whether that be my opinion on something or help with something in their house. They treat me better and I learned to get along without the help of my grandpa running to my defense. The last thing my grandpa told me before he died was that I needed to become more independent. When I heard that, I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but six years later I am more independent, happy, beautiful, and have everything I have ever needed or wanted. I can only go on to dream bigger dreams and be happier than I am now.