Several years ago, the employees at the small chiropractic office where I worked saw that the business numbers were decreasing. No one had received a raise in more than three years. Something had to change. We loved our jobs, but the cost of living was going up, and we were all starting to look for new jobs or second jobs.

The staff met on a day without the doctors being present and talked about wanting a raise. We knew that in order for that to happen, we had to set goals for our office and fill the schedules for all the doctors. We started with weekly and monthly goals. Once these goals were in place, we figured that a 25 percent raise would make up for the lack of raises over the last few years. But most of all, we needed to determine how soon we wanted our raise. We decided on October 15, an unusual time of the year for giving raises.

We set our plan in motion. We created a saying: “Life is good at 25 percent!” and posted it on each of our desks. Every day we would focus on the schedule being full for all the doctors. If it was not full enough, we would say, “We need ten more established patients and two new patients,” and sure enough, the phone would start ringing! Soon the doctors were so busy that they complained about how tired they were at the end of the day.

At the beginning of October, the staff met once more to review our goals and our gratitude lists. We thought that the next office meeting would be a great time to do a presentation of our goals and how they came about. On the day of the meeting, we were ready, but the doctors had a lot on the agenda and we didn’t get to do our presentation. We were disappointed, and October 15 was just two days away, but we kept on focusing and saying, “Life is good at 25 percent!”

Well, the fifteenth came and went. Our next pay period was coming up, and the doctors had met with our accountant. A few days later, our boss asked me to meet with her. I had no idea why, but her opening line was that we had been doing a great job and we were all getting a raise, which would be retroactive to October 15. All but one of us got 25 percent, and she got 20 percent. My eyes filled up with tears as I told the doctor that we had used The Secret to reach the goals we had set for the office and our 25 percent raise.

We saved our jobs, made some money, and boosted the morale in the office. The staff is now meeting and improving our personal lives using The Secret, and we encourage our patients to borrow the DVD from our office anytime they want.