When The Secret author Rhonda Byrne found out the business she built over ten years was going under, she feared what would become of her life. She had no prospects for income to save it. Then, she remembered a book her daughter had given her, a book that contained the elements of what would become The Secret. After using these principles to draw abundance to her life and save her business, she decided to bring this process to the world.
The basis of The Secret is the Law of Attraction—use your thoughts to attract the things you want. Everyone is a creator. The power of your mind is akin to the power of a magnet. When you look at your current life, you can trace everything back to one thought or a series of thoughts. Your life is a reflection of your thoughts, and you can use them to create your future self.
What’s Your Frequency?
Think of yourself as a transmission tower, like the ones used to broadcast signals to your television. Those signals become pictures on the screen. If you don’t like the show you’re watching, you change the channel to a new frequency. A new picture is broadcast. Through a similar process, your thoughts create a frequency that signals the universe, and the Law of Attraction broadcasts that signal back to you as the pictures of your life.
The Law of Attraction is infallible. Like the law of gravity, it is always at play, whether you believe it or not. Your thoughts are always creating frequency signals, and the universe is always conspiring to return that frequency to your life. Being intentional about what you’re thinking and focusing on positive thoughts will put you on the right frequency to create the right changes.
Harnessing the power of the Law of Attraction involves three steps, known as the Creative Process. You can use this process to bring about a change to any aspect of your life. You can improve relationships, find the perfect partner, get a great body, improve your health, age gracefully, and help inspire goodness in the world.
Step 1: Ask — The Law of Attraction is similar to your very own genie in a bottle. Each time you rub the bottle, the genie pops out and says, “Your wish is my command.”
The same is true for the Law of Attraction. Like the genie, the Law of Attraction never questions your thoughts. If you think it, no matter how big or small, the Law of Attraction will begin the process of making your wish come true.
When you ask for something, you must be clear in your mind about what you are asking for. If you aren’t clear, the Universe will receive mixed frequencies. It won’t know what to attract back. Getting clear is the same as deciding, and deciding is the same as asking.
Step 2: Believe — To trigger the Law of Attraction to begin conspiring on your behalf, you have to believe you will get what you want.
Maybe you’re a writer. Maybe you want to win an Oscar for a screenplay. You form a clear picture in your mind of winning an Oscar. You’ll be more likely to achieve success as a writer.
Believing is the act of having utter faith that once you’ve asked, you will receive what you have asked for. You must know it is true. You must know it is in your future simply because you sent a clear signal to the universe to make it so. You may not understand the how yet, but that is not your concern. You’ve asked. Now, believe the genie will grant your wish.
But believing works in the other direction too. Say you believe winning an Oscar seems far-fetched and unlikely. Guess what -- if you believe that, the universe will too. The universe is a mirror, reflecting your thoughts back to you. If you believe it is unlikely you will ever win an Oscar, those are the thoughts that will be projected back to you.
Step 3: Receive — After you have asked and believed you will receive, the next step is to feel the joy of receiving. More simply, feel happy about getting what you want.
When you feel the joy of receiving, you have triggered the frequency of receiving—the frequency where all good things will come to you.
What would it feel like to win an Oscar? Sit quietly and focus on that feeling. You’ve just won. Your life is about to change. Find the sensations of that moment, and hold them in your mind. The Law of Attraction has no other choice but to reflect those feelings back to you.
To bolster your power, become hyper-aware of your thoughts. Thoughts have a way of getting away from you, and you can get stuck in a whirlwind of confusing thoughts. Bringing your awareness back to your thoughts helps you get clear on what you’re thinking and feeling.
Show gratitude for your current life and feel happy about what you have. If you only focus on your discontent with the way things are, you will only attract more of the same. The universe will mirror your frustration, and you will block all the good waiting for you to receive. For instance, if you only focus on how much debt you owe, you will attract more debt. If you are grateful about what you do have, the universe will bring you more to be grateful for.
Act as if you already have what you’ve asked for. If you want your partner to move in, make space in your environment for them. Actions are the effect, thoughts are the cause. You can believe and feel the joy of receiving, but if you act as though you do not expect to receive, you will not receive.
You must love yourself before you can bring love to you. When you don’t love yourself, it is impossible to feel good. But negativity cannot exist in a body full of love.
Believe you are worthy of all the good things life has to offer. There is no time or size limit for the Law of Attraction. Anything your heart desires can be yours. A future where you have it already exists. Your future self exists as a possibility in the universe. Use your power of creation to call if forth.
Start small, attracting things you believe are possible. Once you see the Law of Attraction at work, you will have more faith. The stronger your faith, the stronger your ability to attract. You are the master of your own universe. Create the life you want, and be happy because you deserve it.
Throughout this summary, you may come to understand the logic of The Secret as something akin to “Think good thoughts, get good things.” Yet, there is more nuance to the principles and how to approach them.
Critics of The Secret likely see the concept as “wishful thinking.” For example, one might say, “Well, I wished for a Ferrari, but I still drive a Buick” or “I can wish I had a million dollars all day, but it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t.”
One reason for this criticism is that much of The Secret revolves around the idea of faith. The ability to believe in your power to change the universe is a hard concept for some to buy into. Also, the tone Rhonda Byrne uses throughout the text feels more like a pep talk than concrete guidance, and so the principles might feel implausible. For instance, the idea that positive thinking can cure you of disease probably feels unrealistic. (To be faithful to the book, we use a similar level of enthusiasm in our summary, and we retain its core ideas.)
If you’re skeptical, we recommend not dismissing this book as saying that you can literally wish anything into existence. Rather, see this as a basis to change your approach to getting what you want out of life. For example, merely thinking positive thoughts about heart disease will likely not cure you. But focusing on these positive thoughts can uplift your approach to how you live. They can motivate you to take more positive actions surrounding your health, rather than indulging your fears or negative perspectives.
If you’re skeptical of the book, try to approach it pragmatically in a way you can accept. Throughout this summary, we’ve taken the original book, which can be meandering and confusing, and reconstructed it in a way that represents a process. By understanding the steps, tools, and logic of The Secret, you will start to see how you can practically implement them.
You don’t have to believe every word of The Secret to benefit. Creating a more positive life through positive thoughts has little downside. If you can allow the principles to help reduce psychological stress, at the very least, you will have benefitted.
At the heart of The Secret is the concept of the Law of Attraction—use your thoughts to attract the things you want. Every person alive is a creator within the universe. What you create in your life traces back to what you think about. If you focus on thoughts about who you want to be or what you want in life, you will attract those ideas and things back as your life experience.
Understanding this relationship is the key to changing your life, one thought at a time. To see the result of this relationship, trace the current state of your life back to your previous thoughts. Every action, every event started with a thought.
So, why is this the case? You wanted a new job, so why does it matter what you think about the current job? The answer is that thoughts have the power to become reality. What you give your attention to the most is what you will receive.
It’s like planting a seed in a garden. If you plant a seed that represents being stuck in your job, the only thing that can grow is a representation of you being stuck in your job. To change your life, change your thoughts.
Your thoughts have an energetic frequency that beckons other sources with the same energetic frequency. When you focus on a thought, you send a frequency into the universe that attracts that same frequency back. You are a magnet pulling the things you think about to you.
Think of yourself as a human transmission tower. You understand the concept of transmission as signals sent from your television to a satellite. You turn on a station, and an image appears on the screen. This image is delivered through the frequency slated for that particular channel. If you don’t like the program on one channel, you change it. A new frequency is sent for the new channel, and a new picture appears.
You have the power to operate similarly through your thoughts. Your dominant thought sends the frequency signal to the universe, which sends that frequency back as a picture. In this case, the picture is your experience. Because energy returns to the source, the universe must return whatever frequency you send out, no matter how outlandish.
Like television, if you don’t like the picture of your life, change your thoughts like you would change a channel.
If you allow your thoughts to be dominated by negative thinking, you are creating a negative frequency. The Law of Attraction doesn’t distinguish between good thoughts or bad thoughts. The universe can only transmit the pictures you send out with your thoughts. If you focus on what you don’t want, you will attract what you don’t want back to you.
Don’t worry about being perfect with positive thoughts. We all think negative thoughts from time to time. Nothing can come into your existence unless you summon it with persistent thoughts. Therefore, a negative thought once in a while is nothing to worry about. Bad things only come into your life when you think about them persistently.
You may have experienced negative circumstances in your past and felt you were simply unlucky. Those circumstances were likely a result of being unaware of the power of your thoughts. There’s no reason to blame yourself. Now you know to change the frequency of your thoughts to a positive one to create a positive picture of your life.
Your negative thoughts about others create the same outcome. You cannot hurt another with your thoughts, just yourself. If you focus on what you don’t like about someone, you will attract more people with that trait. Likewise, if you focus on wanting something bad to happen to someone, all the universe picks up is the bad thing. Guess who that bad thing gets brought to?
There is no trick to subverting negative thoughts. Set your intention to only think good things. Declare that your negative thoughts have no power. Declare that your positive thoughts are the most powerful. Proclaim and believe the universe is a good place. The Law of Attraction will reflect pictures back that allow you to experience it as such.
Changing your thought frequency may seem like a difficult task. But becoming aware of negative thoughts and their power helps you understand what you can do to change them.
Think of a persistent negative thought you live with. Maybe it’s something you’ve been thinking for years or something that’s come up recently. What is the thought?
When you look at your life, can you find examples of ways in which that thought has manifested? What are they?
How can you restructure that thought to turn the negative into a positive? Like with a television, tune your thinking into the channel that you want to watch. What positive images does it show you?
Just because you may not fully understand or believe in the Law of Attraction doesn’t mean it isn’t working. The Law of Attraction is at play at all times, with or without your consent or knowledge. You are always thinking; therefore, you are always signaling the universe.
Think of the Law of Attraction as a genie in a bottle. You know about genies from childhood stories and Disney cartoons. When you rub the bottle, the genie comes out and announces, “Your wish is my command.”
You don’t have to believe in the Law of Attraction for it to work in your life. Keep your thoughts positive, and it won’t matter. Positive thinking will always lead to a more enjoyable life, whether or not you understand why.
Understanding that your thoughts are powerful is only half the challenge. Knowing how certain thoughts lead to certain outcomes can help you gear them toward what you want.
If you found a bottle with a genie inside, what is one wish you would make?
Now let’s try to convert your wish into positive thoughts. What positive thoughts relate to your wish?
If you think these thoughts, what is a possible experience you might attract back? What opportunity might appear, what positive outcome might happen?
You must love yourself before you can bring good things to your life. If you don’t love yourself or your life, you will be stuck at a negative baseline. Nothing good can come into an unloved life. Once you learn to find self-love, you will be ready to harness the power of the Law of Attraction to its fullest benefit.
Showing love to everyone and everything is essential, but the most important feeling of love you can have is for yourself. You can’t feel good when you don’t love you.
Remember the Golden Rule to treat others the way you want to be treated? Self-love is the reverse of that. When you don’t treat yourself the way you want others to treat you, you are creating a powerful message: “I am not worthy. I am not deserving.”
You will broadcast those messages to the world, and more people, situations, or events will be attracted to emulate those thoughts.
When you feel bad about yourself, you’ve boxed yourself in with negativity. All the good waiting for you in the world is trapped on the outside.
By beginning to treat yourself better and loving who you are, you are shifting to a frequency of feeling worthy of love. The Law of Attraction will move the entire universe to create experiences where you are loved and respected.
To truly love yourself, you must focus on the powerful presence inside you.
People have three common barriers to self-love: their past, self-doubt, and sacrificing for other people.
To be able to find self-love, you must let go of regret, shame, and doubt. Holding those feelings inside taints your thoughts. If you can find a way to move past those feelings, you can find a way to be happy with who you are now.
Everyone has experienced difficult things in their pasts. There is a tendency to ruminate on the hard times in the present, focusing on hurt or disappointments. But when you bring that focus into your thoughts, you are inviting similar difficult circumstances to your life now.
You can change your future and leave the past behind by making the choice to either look at the past with love or not think of it at all.
The blackboard of your life is open to whatever you want to put on it. Remove anything from the past that does not serve you. Show gratitude for the past and the path it provided to get you here now. You can have a new beginning whenever you want. Your slate can always be clean.
Similarly, when you have doubts about who you are or what you’re capable of, the universe’s only option is to agree and comply with your thoughts.
When a thought of doubt comes into your mind, the Law of Attraction will summon one doubtful thought after another.
Emotional sacrifice also hinders your pathway to self-love. Sacrificing your emotional security leaves you vulnerable to negative thoughts.
You have likely been told at one point or another to put others before yourself. The consequence of that action is a signal of being undeserving of what we give to others.
Each of us has a responsibility to summon our own desires from the universe. You must secure love for yourself first. Make yourself whole first, come from a place of plenty, and then help others.
Find and nurture your joy first and act in a way that makes you feel happy. When you do, that joy and happiness will spill out from you and inspire and affect those around you.
The more love you feel inside and send out, the more powerful you become. Harnessing love signals the Law of Attraction to reflect more to love back to you.
There is no greater force in the universe than the power of love. The expression of love is the highest, strongest frequency you can emit. Your joy exists on that love frequency.
Your ability to generate and experience love is limitless. Existing in the state of love puts you in harmony with the universe. Learn to love everything in your life, including you and everyone else. The Law of Attraction has to send you more things to love by its nature.
Whatever negative thoughts you’ve had about yourself in the past, change them now. Maybe you’ve felt that life has been a struggle, and through those thoughts, you had no choice but to continue experiencing life as a struggle.
Your desired version of you already exists in the universe as the frequency “the best me I can be.” You already know the truth deep inside. You just have to let it out and believe it—you deserve all the good things life has to offer.
It’s easy enough to say, “I love myself.” But what does that mean? What does self-love look and feel like? By being intentional about how we think about ourselves, the path to self-love will become more clear.
Do you hold a grudge about something from the past? Do you think about it often? Describe what the resentment is about.
Remember that thinking negative thoughts about the past is only hurting yourself. How can you turn this thought into a positive one or reject the negative thought?
What was something you did recently that made you proud? Why did this thing bring you joy or make you feel good about yourself?
The process of bringing what you want to your life is called the Creative Process. The Creative Process is a three-step guideline for using your thoughts to create the life you want. Think of the Creative Process as super-sizing your ability to harness the Law of Attraction. Although the law is always working, following these steps will make sure it’s working exactly how you want it to.
The act of asking for what you want helps you become clear about what you want. Being clear in your own mind is required for the universe to get a clear signal. If you are not clear, you will send out mixed frequencies. If the universe picks up mixed frequencies, you will attract mixed results. Being specific and clear about your desires sends specific and clear signals into the universe.
When you ask for something, you are making a clear choice. You have placed your order with the universe, and trust that it’s heard you. Think of the act of asking like ordering from a menu or catalog.
Asking isn’t always about wanting something in particular. Sometimes asking is simply the act of seeking an answer. If you have to make a difficult decision and don’t know what to think or what to do, ask.
You must believe that what you’ve asked for will be yours. The moment you have asked, believe and know your answer is coming. What you want already exists in the unseen, and the universe has started to conspire to bring it to the seen. Have complete faith. The universe is a mirror reflecting your dominant thoughts, so believing you already have what you’ve asked for reflects back as you having received it.
The trick is to not focus on not having it yet. If you focus on the fact that you don’t have it, you will attract the experience of not having it. The frequency your thoughts are emitting is not having it. So, the only pictures that frequency can send back are of you without what you want.
If what you’ve asked for doesn’t appear right away, don’t worry that the universe didn’t hear or understand you. Trust that the universe has heard you, and what you want is in your future.
The how is not your concern. How you will receive what you want, meaning what you will need to do and how it will be brought to you, is something the universe will figure out.
If you have trouble having faith that you will receive what you ask for, pretend to believe. When we’re children, we make believe all the time. We imagine we are astronauts or rock stars. We imagine giants who protect us or that our stuffed animals talk to us. We felt free to let our minds go crazy with whatever fantasy we want. As adults, our pragmatism gets in the way. The logistics get in the way.
Make believing as an adult can help you begin believing that what you’ve asked for can really be yours.
Even before you have received, the act of feeling as though you have received communicates powerfully with the universe. Feel all the sensations that come with receiving what you’ve asked for. When you get what you want, you feel happy. Why would you want something that doesn’t make you happy? You wouldn’t. Ask once, believe you have received, and be happy about receiving.
When you are happy about receiving what you want, you are sending out the frequency of receiving. The frequency of receiving is the frequency by which all good things are brought to you. Get on this frequency, and attract back what you’ve asked for.
When you experience the sensation of having received, the universe has no choice but to comply.
Jenny works two jobs to pay her rent. She is often too tired at the end of the day to go out with her friends. She lacks a social life, which makes her feel isolated and depressed. Jenny has thought many times about how good it would feel to have more time in her life. But Jenny has never been able to see a way to make that happen. She’s resigned herself to her lot.
Then, Jenny hears about The Secret and decides to use the Creative Process to change her life. Jenny wishes for more time with her friends. But she realizes this is not clear enough and could create a circumstance where she has time but no jobs. She restates her wish, asking “I would like one job that allows me to support myself and have time with my friends.”
Jenny has a hard time believing her circumstances could change, so she starts to daydream about what that feels like. She imagines getting a promotion with a higher salary at one of her jobs. She imagines shaking her boss’s hand. She imagines getting her first paycheck and knowing it’s enough to cover her rent. She imagines quitting her second job. She imagines coming home when it is still light out. She imagines getting ready for a night out. She imagines meeting her friends at the neighborhood bar.
Next, Jenny goes back over her daydream and feels all the sensations of those events. She feels the joy of receiving the promotion. She feels the firmness of her handshake and the smile on her face. She feels the giddiness of seeing her first paycheck. She feels the excitement of coming home earlier and preparing for a night out. She feels the happiness she experiences with her friends. She feels the overall relief and bliss that comes from her new life.
Jenny no longer feels isolated or depressed because she has felt her new future and knows it’s on its way. When she gets called into her manager’s office a week later, she doesn’t feel fear. She feels confident and ready to accept her promotion.
Now that you can be, have, or do anything you want, without exception, it’s time to get clear on what that is.
What could you ask for that would make your immediate life better? Be specific.
Take a minute to believe that your thoughts have power and that what you’ve asked for will be yours. Don’t worry about the how, just believe. What thoughts come through your head?
Now prepare to receive. What does it feel like when you’ve gotten what you’ve asked for? Describe the sensations vividly.
Feeling good feelings is the fastest way to thinking good thoughts.
You know how feelings play a part in the Creative Process. But your feelings are more than just a tool to express happiness about receiving. Your feelings are a gauge for your thoughts.
Think of the relationship between your thoughts and feelings as a cause and effect. Your thoughts cause the effect of how you feel. Understanding what you’re feeling tells you what you’ve been thinking.
Your thoughts create your signal frequency, and your feelings tell you which frequency you are on. If you feel angry, you know you are thinking negative thoughts. By its nature, the Law of Attraction can only attract back pictures with the same frequency. So, what you are calling back to your life with your thoughts is more anger.
If you don’t know what you’re feeling, ask “How am I feeling?” When you become aware of your feelings, you are aware of your thoughts. And if you become aware of your thoughts, and they are negative, change your thoughts until you feel better. Not changing your thoughts is like saying, “I love being angry. Pile on more anger.” Not changing your thoughts also sets you up for the feelings trap.
Changing your feelings from positive to negative helps stop a negative snowball effect. You know what a bad day feels like. Everything seems to go wrong. You stub your toe, then you’re late for work, then you miss an important phone call, then you get stuck in traffic on your way home. Your thoughts may have been, “Can this day get any worse?” or “With how this day is going, I’m sure I won’t make it home on time.”
When you get stuck on a negative frequency and do nothing to change it, the Law of Attraction dictates that you will continue to stay on that frequency. You will attract more negative situations or events to your life.
When you let something go and move to a better feeling, stay in that moment for as long as you can. As you stay in that positive place, experience how your thoughts continue to be positive. If a negative thought enters your mind, block it out by feeling good about something. Remember the good you were just feeling, or bring up a new thought that makes you happy.
You have the power to create whatever feelings you want to feel because you have the power to choose what to think. If you’re not feeling the way you want to feel, focus on your feelings and try to lift them.
Intentionally adding positive feelings to the thoughts of what you want will strengthen the Creative Process. You can have whatever life you choose, but you must be happy about that life. If you don’t want a horrible life, then feel positive about life. That’s the end game you’re going for anyway, isn’t it?
The universe tells you what frequency you’re on through your feelings. As well as being aware of your feelings, trust that the universe is also aware and is sending you signals to inform you about your thoughts. This is your frequency feedback mechanism.
This feedback serves as a sign of what you need to do. For instance, if you experience a bad feeling, it’s the universe’s way of saying, “Bad frequency alert. Abort. Abort. Fulfillment of negative thoughts will commence in 10, 9, 8….” You get it.
We all have crummy days when something happens that dampens our mood. It can be hard to shake things off when we’re feeling low. Getting in touch with our feelings and intentionally changing them is a good habit to begin.
What’s something that happened in your life recently that caused you to feel bad? What were your thoughts surrounding what happened?
How could you have changed your thoughts about what happened? What would those positive thoughts be?
How do those new thoughts change the way you feel?
Write down three thought lifters that make you happy. You should be able to draw on these when you’re feeling down and feel perked up.
You now know the Creative Process and how it works to harness the power of your thoughts. But your thoughts are likely not always connected to wanting something. In those moments between asking, believing, and receiving, you can still put your thoughts to work to benefit your life. By strengthening the following mindsets, you can make the most of your thoughts to strengthen the Law of Attraction.
If your thoughts are power, then being aware of your thoughts gives you control over your power. When you control of your power, you can wield it to your advantage.
When you are purposefully aware, you are present in your consciousness. From this position, you can choose to think or feel however you want. However, when you’re unaware of your thoughts, you relinquish your power.
Awareness is necessary not just to claim your power, but to see the answers to your questions when they come. Be aware of everything around you, because you are receiving the answers to your questions every moment of the day.
The universe has been answering you all your life, but you may not have received the answers because you were unaware. You weren’t paying attention to your thoughts and questions being asked. Therefore, you couldn’t know what answers to receive.
The channels that answers can come through are unlimited. Answers can come in the form of a song you hear while shopping, something you overhear in line at the movies, or something you see on TV.
(Shortform note: You’ve heard the phrase, “The universe works in mysterious ways.” Being aware of life around you emulates that sentiment. You never know where answers will come from. Even something in this summary can be an answer to a question you’ve been asking. If that’s the case, take a second to feel how amazing it feels to have your questions answered. Also, you’re welcome!)
Expectation is the feeling of believing something is likely to happen. Expectation is a powerful state of mind because of its ability to pull what you’re thinking to you.
As we expect what we’ve asked for to occur, the Law of Attraction sets in motion the necessary components to make it so.
Planning for the day ahead is a good example of setting expectations. If you wake up and expect the day to be brutal, it will be. Your thoughts have sent out signals about how brutal the day will likely be.
A good habit to get into is thinking about the day you had before bed.
The forces of attraction stay with your last thoughts before you fall asleep. Be clear about what you expect when you wake up. Be intentional about what you think before drifting off.
Abundance means believing there is more than enough for everyone. When you have more than you need, you feel joy and fortune. If you focus on radiating that kind of joy and happiness to the universe, you are acknowledging abundance in your life.
Acknowledging abundance may be hard if your surroundings beg to differ. But believing in abundance isn’t about how much you have today. It’s about what you believe you are able to accumulate. Believing in abundance means believing in an unlimited universe.
The opposite of believing in abundance is believing in lack. But believing in lack is self-defeating.
Change in your life doesn’t come from the outside world. With your knowledge of the Law of Attraction, you know that everything first comes from inside. Through your internal thoughts and feelings, you communicate with the universe.
When you open yourself to your creative power and the Creative Process, you will attract abundance and live in a new abundant world.
We are never stuck with the way things are. If we don’t like how something is going, making small adjustments in how we envision the day ahead is a good start to changing it.
Think about your day. Was there an event or situation you wish had gone differently? What was it? What was wrong with it?
If you could reimagine how that experience went, what would it look like?
Think about your day tomorrow. What do you expect to happen? What thoughts will help set the expectation for those things happening the way you want them to?
Now, imagine there are no limitations to what you can do tomorrow. Do your answers change? What else would you add to have the most desirable day?
What you do in life is as important as what you think. Now that your mind is geared toward strengthening the Creative Process in your life, you can add appropriate behaviors to boost your success.
Show gratitude for each day as it begins, as though everything you want to happen already has. Gratitude is the cousin of expectation. Showing gratitude for what is to come is linked to setting your expectations.
Byrne says that by the time she is ready to face the day, she has said “Thank you” hundreds of times. Through this action, she is showing gratitude for the day ahead, powerfully setting her expectations for what her day will look like.
When you give thanks for what is to come, you emit the frequency of knowing what you want is already yours. When you ask, believe, and feel the sensation of receiving, gratitude reinforces those thoughts and feelings. Be grateful for who you are and your power to change your life. Be grateful for the universe and the work it is doing to give you the life you want.
If you are ungrateful for the life you have, you won’t be able to attract a better life.
As you start to focus on all of the things you are grateful for, you’ll begin to notice more things to be grateful for. The more you communicate gratitude with the universe, the more the universe will bring you to be grateful for.
Any action you take is guided by thought. When you take action, you are fulfilling the thought that inspired us to act. When you want to create something in your life, your actions should support what you’re trying to attract.
You’ve heard the phrase “Fake it till you make it.” The principle of acting as if is the same thing. This idea is a physical embodiment of Step 3 in the Creative Process: feeling the joy of receiving what you have asked for. The same is true for actions. You should act exactly as you would if you already had the thing you asked.
Actions, like feelings, are a good way to understand what your thoughts are. You may not even realize what you’ve been thinking. But by looking at how you behave, you can start to understand your underlying thoughts.
Example: Byrne had an artist friend who was attractive and successful but perpetually single, despite his desire to date.
When he painted, he always painted women with their backs to him, at first believing it was a stylistic preference. Later, he realized the pictures represented his subconscious thoughts about how women saw him. Despite his attributes, he thought he was unable to get noticed by women.
After realizing what his thoughts were, he started painting pictures of himself with women. A few months later, he was inundated with dates.
This artist hadn’t realized that his actions were antithetical to his wants. By aligning his actions with his desires, he was able to focus all of his power on the thing he wanted—dates with women. With his newly aligned actions, he signaled the universe to bring that picture to him.
Instincts are the manifestation of inspiration from the universe. The universe is pulling you toward the thing you asked for so you can receive it. Trust your instincts and know they are leading you toward inspired action.
Inspired action differs from forced action. For many people, the term “action” denotes work. But action is often only work when it is forced.
A Vision Board is a physical representation of all the things you want. To create one, get a poster board. Cut out pictures representing what you want in your life - things, people, experiences. Looking at your Vision Board, you should feel it encompasses all the major things you want out of life.
The act of creating a vision board is the act of asking.
As you put each item on the board, make sure you take a moment to feel the experience of already having that item now.
Put your Vision Board in a place where you can see it everyday. Take a moment every day to visualize your ideal life.
Vision Boards are good activities to do with children to help them begin to understand the Law of Attraction. You’re never too young to start creating the life you want.
Visualization is mentally picturing what you want. It’s a way of saying to the Universe, “Look at me with what I want. It’s a pretty picture, no? I’m so happy to have received this gift.” The state of mind—the plane on which we visualize—is as real as the physical world.
When you visualize, you situate yourself on a powerful frequency. The Law of Attraction, by its very nature, will pick up that frequency and follow it until the end. All the pretty pictures you created in your mind will become the pictures of your life.
More than simply holding a picture in your mind, you have to feel the experience, as well. Remember, our feelings take our thoughts to the next level. The feeling is what solidifies the attraction in the universe. The picture is just the thought.
As you see the picture and experience the feelings encompassing it, you are placing yourself within the realm of believing and receiving.
Here’s a trick: think of what you want as a fact of life already. When you believe something as fact, there can be no question that it will come to pass.
Do you believe you can do anything you want? If so, then just believe it’s true, and it will be.
When you praise or bless someone or something, you emit a feeling of love. As you know, love is the most powerful frequency there is. Through that frequency, love will be returned to you time and again. So, praise and bless everything and everyone.
Praising and blessing is the kryptonite to negativity.
Since visualization is more than just a static picture, you can think of the act of visualizing as making a moving picture of your life.
Think of something you want really badly. Create a picture of that thing in your life. What does it look like, in detail?
Go beyond images, and think about the sensations in your visualization. What do you feel, using your five physical senses? How do you feel internally?
Now “act as if” you already have this thing in your life. What can you do today to make room to receive what you want?
You now know what the Law of Attraction is and how to use it to bring about the life you want. You know how to shape your thoughts and behaviors to enhance the Law of Attraction. Now, let’s look at practical applications of the Law of Attraction toward specific ends, such as your body and health.
(Shortform caveat: Diagnoses of health conditions should not be trifled with. Don’t put your health at risk by rejecting treatments and only using positive thinking. We recommend following the recommendations of your medical professional, in addition to gaining positivity about yourself as described below.)
If you want the perfect body, hold thoughts of the perfect body in your mind. If you focus on whatever the perfect body is for you, you will receive that perfection.
Only you can define what your perfect weight is. Whatever that is to you is perfect for you. No one else’s opinion matters.
If your thoughts are of needing to lose weight, the Law of Attraction has no choice but to attract the experience of needing to lose weight.
Instead, if your thoughts are of the positive kind, of having a healthy or attractive body, that is the picture that will manifest into your experience.
Your thoughts are more powerful than food. When you focus on food as the culprit to weight gain, your every thought is based in fear of gaining weight. If you feel guilty about eating a certain food or believe the food will cause you to gain weight, it will.
Some people have been diagnosed with thyroid issues and slow metabolism, or they’ve been told that their body size is hereditary. When they hear these things, they start to believe that being overweight is out of their control. This belief makes it true. But according to the book, this is not the case. These conditions are fat thoughts in disguise.
You can use the Creative Process to attain your perfect weight. Simply ask through your thoughts, see it, believe it, feel it, and receive it.
(Shortform note: In reality, weight loss will require real action on your part. Let your thoughts inform your actions, and be aware of the answers the universe sends to you and be inspired.)
Think your way to perfect health. If you believe your body is a vision of health and focus on that belief, you will signal the universe to make it so. Like everything else, every health condition has a frequency, and to heal, place yourself on a healthy frequency.
Imperfect thoughts are the origin for all of the issues plaguing humanity, including disease and emotional and mental disharmony. If you believe you are sickly, you will be.
Stress is often a culprit in acute and chronic illness. Stress in your life is the result of one thought that slipped under the radar or was given too much focus. That thought manifested into more stressful thoughts, all the way to creating stress in your life. Stress is the outcome, negative thinking the catalyst.
The situation is not hopeless. Just because stress has been manifested in your life doesn’t mean it needs to remain. One positive thought can set you on the right frequency. One good thought leads to another and another.
If you are sick or feeling less than perfect, thinking about it will only make things worse. Instead, try thinking, “I feel amazing. I feel healthy and good.” And really feel it.
Healing using your mental powers can work in accordance with medicine. Medications are often prescribed to manage pain. When you are pain free, your mind is free to focus all your power on health and healing.
Science shows that the body regenerates completely every few years. If this is the case, what is the cause of degenerative disease in the body? The answer is your thoughts. Once a diagnosis or condition is received or noticed, your continued observation and focus on the illness or condition only serves to strengthen it.
If you have pain in your back, and you constantly focus on the pain and start to think of yourself as someone with back pain, what response is the universe meant to have?
When someone around you is afflicted with something contagious, don’t let fear of catching it consume you. You cannot catch anything unless you believe you can. If you think you can, you may as well invite whatever it is you don’t want to enter your body.
Getting sucked into other people’s thoughts and feelings about their illnesses will also harm you.
Regardless of what physical afflictions you have brought on with your thoughts, there is always time to change them. Start thinking positively, and start feeling happy. Releasing negative thoughts will allow your natural state of health to emerge inside. And what follows is your body’s process to heal itself.
There is no limit to what the Law of Attraction can do for your health. Since time and size do not exist in the universe, no affliction is too great for the Law of Attraction.
Example: Morris Goodman was a successful business man who became paralyzed after his personal plane had engine troubles and crashed. He was unable to breathe, talk, or eat. His spine was crushed, as well as his diaphragm, and he lost the ability to swallow. The doctors said he would never recover and declared a perpetual vegetative state.
But Goodman, only able to communicate consciousness through his eyes, didn’t listen to them. He visualized walking out of the hospital one day in normal health. He set a goal to walk out by Christmas. All he had was his mind, but it’s all he needed. He used his thoughts to heal himself, first by breathing on his own, then by learning to speak and walk again. Eight months after his accident, he walked out of the hospital unassisted and became a motivational speaker.
He sums up his experience as a belief that a person can become whatever they think about.
Releasing your physical expectations of age will have an effect on how you age. Believe that your body is only months old, and feel it.
There is a curative nature to laughter. When you are in a state of healing, adding laughter to your life strengthens three important powers: the power of gratitude to heal, the power of faith to receive, and the power of laughter to eliminate disease from our bodies.
Use the power of your mind to create the perfect body, the perfect weight, a perfect state of health, and eternal youth.
By now you understand the power of the Creative Process, and how they apply to your body and health. The same principles apply to money and creating wealth in your life.
To attract money, you must focus on money. To bring money to you, you must create a new thought message of wealth.
When you focus on a lack of money or the consequences of not having enough, you are blocking all the money waiting for you with your thoughts. If your thoughts are on not having enough, you will never have enough.
You can’t attract money if you feel bad about money. It makes sense that when you do not have enough money, money becomes a stressor. Your thoughts around it become negative.
If you can start to feel good about money and showing gratitude for what you have, you can create a new frequency. You must change your thoughts from lack-of-money to more-than-enough-money. Start to say and believe that you have more than enough. Feel it and show gratitude.
Remember the childhood game of make believe? Use your imagination to see and believe that you already have more than enough money. Imagine what you would buy with that money. All the things you will do. Imagine yourself spending, and feel the joy of it.
There is abundance in the world, and your responsibility is not regarding the how of money coming to you. All you have to do is ask, believe you are receiving, and feel joyful about having received.
If you believe the only way money will come to you is by struggling, release that thought immediately.
By merely existing, you are deserving of prosperity. The keys to attaining prosperity are your thoughts and feelings. You’ve had the keys all along, and now you know how to use them.
When you give, you are acknowledging that you have more than enough to share. This powerful action sets you on the frequency of having plenty of money, and you will continue to have plenty.
If you don’t believe you have enough to give, you now know why you don’t have enough to give. When thoughts of not enough enter your mind, start giving. Giving is an act of love and abundance, and love feels good. Giving from a full heart is one of the best feelings in the world. The Law of Attraction will use that signal to send even more to your life.
As you exhibit faith in the ability to give, the Law of Attraction must provide you more to give.
Financial sacrifice is not the same as giving. Sacrificing stems from a thought of giving despite your lack. The underlying thought is one of there not being enough. Your good deed for another creates a bad frequency for you. Sacrifice will lead to resentment. Your thoughts of being without will be compounded as you feel you are losing more.
The actions of giving and sacrificing are the same. The thoughts are different. Turn your thoughts about sacrificing into thoughts of sharing your abundance with another. Those thoughts will signal the Law of Attraction with the right frequency.
You know that acting as if bolsters your thoughts. When money is involved, acting as if can be very powerful. On the website for The Secret, Byrne provides a blank check from the universe. The check is for you to make out to yourself with the amount of money you want to receive.
What amount of money would you fill out to cover everything you needed?
How would that money help you? What would you buy?
Now, what amount would you fill out if you could have any amount you could dream of?
What would you buy with all that money? What sensations do you feel as you see yourself buying these items?
More than health and money, people tend to crave affection and harmonious relationships. The Law of Attraction works for calling forth love and healthy relationships into your life.
You can have whatever relationship you want by calling it forth with your thoughts. Think about the type of partner you want. Visualize what that partner looks like. Think about what qualities that partner has. Feel what life with that partner feels like. Believe this partner exists in the world. Believe you have summoned them to you through your thoughts and feelings.
If your thoughts are about how lonely you feel, the Law of Attraction will mirror that loneliness back. You will block the love you want with your thoughts of not having love.
Make sure your actions match your desire to bring love into your life. Make space to receive what you want through your actions.
If you are married or in a relationship, think about what you are grateful for. Show gratitude for the way your partner uplifts your life. Make a list of all the things you love about your partner, and show gratitude for those things.
When you focus on what you love about your partner, even during times of strife, the universe will give you more to love about them.
When you focus on the negatives about your partner, the universe will conspire to bring you more of the same. Every couple has arguments. Every person has a list of things their partners do that drive them crazy. But if your thoughts are always on those arguments or things, the Law of Attraction has no choice to bring more into your life to make you angry.
There may be good reason to doubt your partner’s actions. But rather than focusing on them and bringing that reality to fruition, change your thoughts. Focus on what you want the future to look like. Focus on what you want your relationship to look like.
Relationships can be hard to maintain. Keeping your thoughts focused on the kind of relationship you want will ensure you receive and are able to maintain that relationship. One relationship might end, but be open to the possibility that the universe heard your positive thoughts and has conspired to make them a reality. There may be answers in places you didn’t expect. Stay positive in your thoughts. And stay open to receiving.
Think about relationships with positivity, and you’ll get positive relationships in return.
What are three things your partner did recently that made you feel happy? If you don’t currently have a partner, what are three things your ideal partner would do to make you happy?
What do those things say about your partner?
Think of a negative thought you have about your partner or your current love life. What is it? Now try to convert that into a positive statement, instead, of something you want. What is it?
You’ve learned how the Law of Attraction can help improve your personal life and well-being. But your personal life takes place in a public sphere. You can use the Law of Attraction to improve the world around you as you have to improve your life.
You may believe you are insignificant and have no power in the world, but that belief is a fallacy. Your thoughts shape the world. Rather than feeling powerless to change the world, use your power of creation to bring about the positive you want to see.
Everything around you was created through a thought. Some things continue to gain power as more and more people see them and turn their thoughts toward them, good or bad.
Focusing on the negative aspects of the world will not help. Not only will your negative thoughts add power to the thing you don’t like, but they also put you on a personal negative frequency, attracting more negativity to your life.
When you focus on and feel joy, you bring joy into your life and into the world.
As you resist the pictures you see on the outside, you are focusing on those pictures. That focus only adds more energy and power to them. If your thoughts are on what you don’t like, you are only serving to call forth more of the same picture.
It may seem like there is always the same terrible story on the news, and why is that? Is it possible that society’s interest in and acceptance of flashy, scintillating headlines is attracting more of the same? Is humanity addicted to the act of resistance and has become obsessed with stories that trigger that feeling?
It is easy to become captivated by the pictures you see around you. But if those pictures are not of what you want, turn your mind to the pictures of what you do. Rather than resisting what we don’t like, focus on the opposite of what you resist. Turn your thoughts to what you want to happen.
Understanding that every person and everything in life is governed by the same Law of Attraction, the One Universal Mind, helps to strengthen community and the world. We are all connected as part of the One Mind. Although we feel separate from each other, the One Mind is the umbrella over all of us.
The One Mind is everywhere, encompassing all knowledge, wisdom, and goodness at the same time. In short, it is perfection. Because of this all-encompassing connection, every possibility capable of existing already does.
Believing that the world is every person for themselves deviates from that One Mind. Conflict, competition, rage, and hate all stem from the belief that you are separate from everyone else. When you believe you are separate, you create negative emotions and a negative environment around you. Fear is the basis of nearly all negative emotions.
There is more than enough for everyone, as the One Mind holds all possibilities for all people. You don’t need to compete. All you have to do is ask, believe, and receive.
Now that you know all things in life are governed by the One Mind, you can use that knowledge to call forth things into the world to improve the world.
All information and understanding, all innovations, and all inventions for the future exist within the One Mind as possibilities. What could be different in the world? If you look around, do you see a need for something? Do you find yourself thinking, “Life would be so much better if we had a [fill in the blank]”?
Let’s say you live in a community where public transportation is not an option. You see your fellow community members struggling because they’re not mobile. You find yourself wishing there was a system to bring the advantages of city life to the outskirts.
(Shortform note: This idea may seem simple and farfetched, but remember your instincts are the universe’s way of inspiring you to receive what you’ve attracted to your life. If you really want to invent or fix something, there will be work to do, but that work will be inspired action if you trust the One Mind.)
There is a never-ending quantity of ideas within the One Mind waiting for you to discover and draw out. If you want to help solve the world’s problems, believe you can, and you will.
The more you practice the Law of Attraction and experience it bringing things to you, the greater your faith will be. The stronger faith you have, the greater the magnet you’ll become. As you start to change your thoughts, you start to change your life.
Using the principles of The Secret is like driving a car at night on a dark highway. The headlights will only show you so much of what is in front of you. But you believe that someone made the road. You trust that you can keep driving and keep finding road to drive on. You trust that you will have enough road to make it to your destination. This is the same trust you need to have with the Law of Attraction.
If you use your thoughts to create but the outcome isn’t what you wanted, you’re not stuck with it. Change the thought to create a new frequency. Get a new result. As long as you exist, you have the ability to think your life into existence.
The Law of Attraction can be considered the law of supply. With this law, there is an infinite supply available for you to attract. Remember, the things that come to you and the things you desire are not due to anything on the outside.
You are the creator of your own life. Anything that comes from the outside originated inside you. If you believe in abundance, you can ask for whatever you want.
Manifesting five dollars is no easier than manifesting five hundred dollars or five thousand dollars. The only difference is your ability to believe. You likely believe that attaining five dollars is not hard because it’s not a lot of money. If you can believe the same thing about five million dollars, you will start to believe it is not hard to attain, as well.
To learn how to harness the Law of Attraction, start small. Do a test run. Ask for something small and simple. Something you have no trouble believing can be yours. When you receive that small thing, move on to something a little bigger. Once you experience receiving something small, you will be able to believe in receiving anything.
As you learn to expect good things and abundance, you will begin to create a life that includes good things and abundance.
You can use the Law of Attraction to create your whole life in advance. Just as you learned to set expectations for your day, set the same expectations for your life.
Time is an illusion. Believing you don’t have enough time, whether in the future or today, creates the consequences of rushing and carelessness.
Rushing stems from fear: fear of being late or disruptive or thought irresponsible. When you rush, you are focused on those fears. The universe will bring more into your life that makes you need to rush. Your thoughts center around fear of the “or else” at stake if you don’t get done what you want. You start to do things quickly, instead of intentionally.
When you are rushing, simply stop and adjust your frequency. If you are chasing time, pull yourself off that frequency by saying, “I have all the time in the world,” because you do.
Make it a habit to create every aspect of your life by intentionally setting your thoughts on what you are able to do. Know that you have plenty of time to accomplish your goals, and you will.
You have the knowledge of The Secret now. Whether you choose to use it is up to you and right for you. Even if you don’t use it, you can’t go wrong changing your thoughts to positive ones. At the very least, a life of positive thoughts is more enjoyable than a life of negativity.
If you choose to use the principles of The Secret, forget who you thought you were. You now know who you really are. You are the master of the universe. The more you believe in your power and use it, the more you will bring into your life.
After a while, you won’t have to think about it. You will just be a powerful magnet full of joy and love. You will just be the perfect version of you because you believe you are the perfection you want to be.
Now that you have the power of The Secret in your mind, consider how you think and feel about what you’ve learned.
What aspect of The Secret most resonated with you? Why do you think this is?
If you had to explain The Secret to a friend, what would your description sound like? Did anything new come up from your own summary?
How can the tools you’ve learned in The Secret help your immediate life? How will you use it to create your future?