Years ago, I got one of the first copies of The Secret the DVD when it was released and after watching “The Secret” about a hundred times, I decided to work with it on a problem that was driving me a little nuts.

The cute little apartment I lived in was in an area that was plagued by bugs. Mosquitoes, flies, spiders, you name it, I had them. I was so tired of waking up each morning with a fresh crop of bites. On top of that, the cabins in the mountains where we took our family vacation in the summer was right beside a large stream and came with mosquitoes and deer flies, which draw blood when they bite. I always came home covered in bites and bathed in calamine lotion.

So I decided that I was going to work with The Secret and stop resisting the bugs. I adopted a live-and-let-live approach with them, assisting them out the door when possible and leaving them to do their thing when it was not. In a matter of days, they had stopped biting me, and by the end of a week, there weren’t any bugs in my apartment. When I went on vacation, I came home bite-free.

That was over a decade ago. I have had my ups and downs since then, but this never fails me. It is a constant source of hope and confidence in the down times. I know that if I can do this, I can do anything.

It is also a source of amusement when I’m vacationing with my family. I have explained to them why I can sit around a campfire without bug repellent and sleep on the porch without getting eaten alive and even though they’ve seen it time and time again, they still don’t believe me. They don’t have another explanation, but they still don’t believe me. One day, perhaps they too will learn The Secret.