I felt compelled to write this. I’m not sure why, but perhaps you know. That is not a question, and I am not looking for you to answer it in this forum. It’s just a statement. I am writing this for you, whoever YOU are.

First I should probably tell you a bit about myself. I am not a “new age” groupie, although I have always been curious about a great many things. I spent my life searching for answers. My searches led me in a great many directions throughout my 42 trips around the Sun.

The first time I came upon “The Secret” it was quite by accident. I found the site while surfing the web one night several years ago. I found the information interesting. There was something about the idea that was so simple yet so profound. It seemed to tie everything together I had ever learned from religion, philosophy, science, and art. This first pass at The Secret didn’t stick. Oh, I brought it up in conversation, but never really put it into practice.

Some time later my wife read the book and bought the DVD. She really started to get into the ideas contained within The Secret. As a result I was reintroduced to it. About this time a funny thing happened – all of the sudden it seemed that everyone was talking about it… even Oprah Winfrey. I got the book on tape and listened to it while in the car, over and over again. I watched the DVD. I started to try to put the ideas contained within The Secret into practice. I took small steps.

My life and career weren’t going the way I wanted. I wasn’t happy. My finances were a disaster. My outlook was profoundly negative. But slowly The Secret started to infect my negativity… it made me feel better. I became more positive. Oh sure, initially it felt more like a lie, but it was there. A small spark of positive thought had begun to grow into a flame. The stories in the book made me feel good. I started to look for other things that made me feel good.

Because of our financial situation my wife and I would play the lottery… we played it every week. And every week we made a game of thinking about what it was going to be like to wake-up the morning after we won the lottery multi-millionaires. We would talk about trips we would take, things we would buy. It was fun. We got into the details of our fantasy. When we didn’t win we told ourselves that we were that much closer to winning. We did this for months and months. We never won the lottery.

However, what we did WIN was the ability to imagine WINNING. We had imagined LOSING for so long, to be able to imagine WINNING was in and of itself a triumph. I can tell you it was well worth the money we spent on lottery tickets.

Today I still think that something completely awesome is going to happen in our life because of this simple exercise. We were both so deeply negative it helped us shake the gloom and see the light. What happened in our life was amazing, and these fantasies where the first intangible steps.

The first concrete evidence for me that it worked happened because of an iPod. I bought an iPod on E-Bay. It was an extravagance that Suzie Orman, because of our finances, would have advised against. But it led to the first concrete step turning positive thought into positive reality. I was spending so much time worrying about paying off debt from my wife’s failed business and trying to keep my head above water in my career, that up to that purchase I had bought NOTHING for me. It had been such a long time that I had bought anything impractical just to make me happy. So I just did it.

I got a great buy, and then the doubt started to creep into my head. I felt guilty spending the money. I told myself there are no “great” deals, that there must be something wrong with the iPod. So when it stopped working I wasn’t surprised. The little emoticon with the frown on the screen of the iPod was quite expected. The iPod was out of warranty. So I left it on my desk and there it sat reminding me that things go bad.

Playing the lottery may not have dispelled all my negativity, but it had cracked it. I scanned the web determined to find a solution to make my iPod work. One night I came across a fix which required me to take the thing apart. I am no techie, but I told myself that it would work – I convinced myself that it would work. I took it for granted. I knew it… AND IT DID. The iPod has worked perfectly ever since. I still have it.

IT was my first REAL victory using the power of positive thought. I can’t tell you what that event meant to me. That’s when everything started to change… all because of this insignificant little, broken iPod. I built on that success. I started to imagine other things working… and they did. One small step after another, I started to have more victories then losses. After that my successes became bigger and bigger.

Today, my career and finances are great. When I first found The Secret, my income was less then $50k per year and I wanted to desperately quit my career. This year my income will be over $500k. Not a multimillion dollar lottery win, but something that I could imagine. That’s just it. It clicked – I can have anything I can imagine. I am so thankful for everything. My outlook changed, and my life is so wonderful. The further I get away from those times of negativity the harder it is for me to “feel” what I felt then. Believe me I don’t try. In fact anytime my mind starts to try I turn it away from those thoughts, and over time this has become easier and easier.

Why have I written this…? I don’t know. Maybe, I wrote this because it hasn’t clicked for YOU yet. I hope this has helped you in some small way… whoever you are. I know things are about to turn for YOU. Maybe all this is just some small evidence that the Universe is pulling for you, and loves you. I wish you the best.