I never saw myself leaving. I never saw myself doing anything desirable with my life, which always made me sad. All of that changed at 23, when my twin brother and I first saw The Secret on DVD. It was the only thing that felt like hope for our future that we had felt, maybe ever. We lived together in a quaint apartment in the so-called “ghetto” of a town near where we grew up. We worked jobs that made us miserable and paid us very little and we consistently had trouble keeping up with the bills. We really did focus on all of those miserable things in our lives with such constant passion. The Secret was the first thing that ever really made us think, “maybe.” That quickly changed and we were then thinking, “definitely.” This is definitely legitimate, it works, it’s working all the time and we can make it work for us, too.

Our change started out very small; little hints and signs that we started to pick up on that our energies were shifting. Within a few months, his girlfriend moved in. She was miserable but we showed her The Secret and she latched on, too. For months we meditated together, supported and encouraged each other and helped to shift each other’s energies if negativity came up in our space. Our dull and dumpy apartment became our space; our place of healing. Art went up on the walls, deco that inspired us to look at it. For the first time our shoddy shack became a warm and vibrant home and we were happy, healthy and on a new path.

I dreamed of travel and photography, and a job asking just that of me came out of nowhere. I traveled across the eastern half of the country almost constantly, taking pictures of martial artists, gymnasts, and dancers. It broke me out of so many comfort zones I wanted to expand from. It taught me a lot about myself and the beautiful diversity of everything.

Fast forward to now. The things we were focusing on then, are all around us now and it keeps getting better. All three of us were focused on California. We are all here now. We all moved at different times and to different places in the state, but we actually all live here! I don’t even know how and I suppose that is because I was doing my part and letting the Universe focus on that part. Ever since I was a little kid I’ve dreamed of surfing. Like, obsessively dreamed of it. Not a logical thing for a backwoods country kid to be dreaming about, or so I thought. Some of my friends here are surfers and we do it quite often. I just watched the sun come up through the neighboring palms from the roof of my house, where I live 15 minutes from the ocean. I had been dreaming of this life for forever and The Secret taught me to allow myself to have it. That I can have it and I will have it, I just had to use The Secret. My dreams just keep growing and I keep growing into them.

I will write you again in a year when I’m sitting somewhere beautiful, watching something beautiful, and I am reminded that my life is alive and all around me, and that I have grown. I feel even more love and joy than I ever have before and you are somebody I would like to thank. Thank you Ronda. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you to everybody who helped in drawing such a wonderful map for us to follow and live the lives we’ve always felt we were here for.