By Dinna Chan Vasquez
When everything seems to go wrong in your life and you seem to hit bad luck at every turn, it is your fault. You are the only one who can create the life you deserve.

When Oprah Winfrey devotes an episode of her highly rated talk show to present the “secret” to making more money, losing weight, finding the love of your life and achieving job success, you can be sure the world will sit up and listen.

Oprah’s voiceover on her show says, “It’s the show everyone’s talking about.” And she was right.

The show was so talked about that the producers decided to devote a second episode to it—which doesn’t happen often, even on Oprah.

So what’s the secret to a successful and prosperous life? It’s called The Secret.

The Secret is the creation of Rhonda Byrne, an Australian television writer and producer, who conceived the book at one of the lowest points in her life.

“My life had collapsed around me. I’ve worked myself into exhaustion. My father died suddenly. And my relationships were in turmoil. Little did I know at the time, out of my greatest despair, was to come the greatest gift,” she says in the film’s intro.

After doing a lot of research and talking to several motivational speakers and resource persons, she decided to compile what she had learned into a film documentary. The film caught on among the American public, eventually gaining the attention of such celebrities as Ellen DeGeneres, Larry King, Conan O’Brien, and Oprah.

The film became so popular, it spawned a book, a DVD and several online sites.

The law of attraction

What is The Secret? It is, by simple definition, a self-help film about the law of attraction. Byrne interviewed personal transformation specialists, spiritual messengers, feng shui masters, and money-making experts to reinforce her premise that people’s feelings and thoughts attract real events in the world into their lives.

But to those who have read the book and say it changed their lives, it is so much more than that.

There is really nothing new about the principles presented in The Secret. It is all about positive thinking and attracting energy so that the universe will give us everything we want.

The book has 29 contributors that Byrne quotes extensively. These include Bob Proctor, philosopher, author and personal coach; Dr. Joe Vitale, metaphysician, marketing specialist and author; John Assaraf, entrepreneur and money-making expert; Dr. John Dimartini, philosopher, chiropractor and personal transformation specialist; Dr. Deni Waitley, psychologist and trainer in the field of mind potential; Michael Bernard Beckwith, visionary and founder of Agape International Spiritual Center; and Jack Canfield, teacher, life coach, motivational speaker, and author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

The Secret is saying that every one of us gets what we want. So if your mind is full of negative thoughts, bad things will happen but if you are full of positive energy, you could be rich and successful and thin and well loved.

“Everything that’s coming into your life, you are attracting into your life. And it’s attracted to you by virtue of the images you hold in your mind. It’s what you’re thinking. Whatever is going on in your mind you are attracting to you,” says philosopher Bob Proctor, one of the resource persons interviewed.

The Secret espouses the belief that everything is energy and that every person is an energy magnet. This means that you “electrically energize” yourself to everything you want.

“Thoughts become things,” writer Bob Dooley summarizes the basic principle behind the law of attraction, one of the greatest laws of the universe.

“Our job as humans is to hold on to the thought of what we want. Make it absolutely clear in our minds what we want, and from that we start to invoke one of the greatest laws of the universe, the law of attraction,” says Assaraf, a money-making expert. “What most people don’t understand is that thought has a frequency. Every thought has a frequency. We can measure a thought. So if you’re thinking that thought over and over again, or if you’re imagining in your mind having that brand-new car, having the money that you need, building that company and finding your soulmate… if you imagine what that looks like, you’re admitting that frequency on a consistent basis.”

It works!

Cecile Zamora van Straten, a designer and newspaper columnist, first heard about The Secret from a friend who told her that it can get you whatever you want, “even if you’re wishing for something as shallow as a Louis Vuitton handbag.”

And Van Straten did want a Louis Vuitton handbag. She wished for it and she got it even when there was a very long wait list for it (an accident put her name at the top of the list) and didn’t have the funds for it (the money came up all of a sudden).

“I learned that you attract things to yourself, whether positive or negative,” says Van Straten.

Byrne restates the law of attraction in various ways:

You get to fill the blackboard of your life with whatever you want.

Your current reality or your current life is the result of thoughts you have been thinking.

Nothing can come into your experience unless you summon it through persistent thoughts.

Like Aladdin’s Genie, the law of attraction grants our every command.

The Secret gives an iron-clad promise that the law of attraction will give you “unlimited joy, health, money, relationships, love, youth: everything you have ever wanted.”

Van Straten admits that the principles offered by The Secret could be in conflict with people’s religious beliefs.

“It promotes materialism and says that the power is within you to get whatever you want. I still believe in combining both positive thinking and praying for the will of God so that you will get only what is OK with God. Remember, more tears were shed with answered prayers than unanswered. God’s will is still number one,” she says. To get the Extended Version of “The Secret DVD Go to v-i-d-e-o-s.info