Let me preface this story by saying that I have always thought myself a very positive person. I chose show business because I felt as if I had the ability to be anyone I wanted to be. I was like that kid in a room full of pony poop and a shovel-I just knew there was a pony in there SOMEWHERE! This is what I thought-it apparently was not what I was FEELING subconsciously. Because I grew up in a very negative, dysfunctional environment – I suppose my coping skills contradicted what I yearned for – happiness. I then married a very negative man and for the next seventeen years struggled with him in every sense of the word.

Six months ago-I’d had enough – I was ready to let go and move on, but I was terrified! I have always been a spiritual person and what I fondly refer to as a “truth seeker.” I wanted to find joy. I wanted to find some way to sooth this painful, restless nature I had constantly storming within me. I just didn’t understand how. I read just about every self-help book out there. I went to spiritual counselors, churches, ashrams – you name it. It never worked. I would go back to all the negative voices that reminded me that stuff was for other people – not me. I felt like God had abandoned me and I couldn’t understand why nothing good ever happened for me.

When the Secret had first come out – I had seen the tail-end of the Oprah show, but I never followed through with it. I went on with my painful search for truth and inner peace-in vain. I started praying like crazy for help and guidance within the past couple of months, then a month ago, while at the library I saw an article in Oprah magazine and I recognized the name Lisa Nichols (don’t ask me how or why.) Something told me to look her up. I did, and did not find anything.

The following day or so, I went with my eleven year old daughter to a local bookstore and while sitting there in tears – so distraught and fed up with my life -I looked up and there was the book “the Secret”. I picked it up and it was as if someone had literally reached out to pull me from harms way. I sat there and started sobbing. My daughter came over and I told her that this book was going to change my life forever. The problem – I did not even have gas money! She grabbed it and spent her birthday money on it. She wrote in it, “Happy birthday mom, hopefully this will change your life! I love you very much and I hope this proves it!” I cried more, then I went home and I read it, and I read it and I read it some more. I suppose you could say that I infused my life with the Secret. I rented the movie from the library and I watched it and studied it as if I was taking a college course.

I finally understand after all these years why I never got anywhere in my quest for inner happiness. All the negative conditioning undermined all my efforts. I WANTED happiness in my mind, but my heart was so full of doubt and pain. I mistook all my unhappiness for a lack of love on God’s part. It wasn’t that the universe did not love me – it was that I did not love me, so that is what I sent out and guess what? “Your wish is my command”. The universe did not grant me bad things because I was “bad”- it just gave me what I was thinking about! So basic -so simple – I just NEVER got it.

When the student is ready, the teacher will come. It sounds so cliché, this whole ‘See it and you can obtain it,’ but it isn’t. It really does work. The law of attraction really is powerful. For myself, changing my negative thinking has been very exhausting. For the first few days – I was exhausted! I have to work hard to keep on track, but even within weeks, it has been life transforming. Like any habit, it will take diligent work to really instill it within the very fibers of my being, but it is so worth it. To really KNOW you can be everything you want to be and HAVE everything you want and deserve. It truly does show us that this is and can be “heaven on earth.”

Thank you to all those who forged ahead and have been teachers. Now we must in turn teach others and our children. We owe it to all that come after us…