‘Whatever you dream of can be yours’
Except I didn’t. Sell the clothes on eBay, that is. Or create a budget. Instead I picked up a book that told me I didn’t need to sell my dresses, I had to buy new ones. A book that suggested only losers cry over bank statements, winners write themselves pretend cheques and imagine money flying through the letter box. A book that told me I could have anything I wanted, and more, without doing anything at all . . .
This book argues that there is a ‘Great Secret’ that has been passed down between the best minds in history – people such as Plato, da Vinci, Einstein . . . and, er, Australian daytime-TV producer, Rhonda Byrne. What is this secret?
You can have anything you want in life if you just believe.
The man of your dreams, the house of your dreams, the job of your dreams, millions of pounds . . . all yours, if you just think positively enough. No need to work, study or do anything, really – just wish for it.
I know, wonderful, isn’t it? What the hell have we been making life so complicated for?
And in case you are sceptical (you cynic!), according to The Secret, it’s all down to something called the ‘law of attraction’, which states that ‘thoughts become things’. So, if you think about money, you’re going to get lots of money. Think about debt and that’s what you’ll get more of.
‘Thoughts are magnetic and thoughts have a frequency,’ says Byrne. ‘As you think thoughts, they are sent out into the Universe, and they magnetically attract all like things that are on the same frequency.’
Hmmmm.
I’d had a flatmate who was obsessed with The Secret. She used to fall asleep watching the DVD (it started life as a film) and gave copies of the book to all her friends, including me. I’d never got past the first few pages; I objected on aesthetic grounds. I hated the stupid brown pages, which looked like they’d had coffee spilt on them and I hated the stupid scrolly font that’s trying to make everything look old and scholarly but actually makes everything look naff and crap.
And, even though I hadn’t bought it, it really bothered me that the price of this small, ugly book was £14.99. Rhonda Byrne had clearly uncovered the secret to getting rich. In fact, her bestselling book is reported to have grossed around $300 million internationally, selling to 19 million people and sprouting a series of sequels called The Power and The Magic. Which begs the question: if The Secret answers the mysteries of our time – why do people need to buy the other books?
And it wasn’t just me who had an allergic reaction. Concerns were raised about the materialistic message in these books – in which happiness always comes in the form of money and cars. Greater criticism was levelled at the idea that, according to the law of attraction, anything bad that happens is your fault.
Then Byrne fell out with two of the main contributors, Esther and Jerry Hicks, and in 2011 one of the so-called experts in the book, James Arthur Ray, was charged with ‘negligent homicide’ after three people died in a sweat lodge at one of his retreats.
It was all deluded and dangerous nonsense – the very worst of self-help.
So why was I doing it?
Because ever since I’d started the project people had one of two reactions: either they looked at me blankly or their eyes got bigger and they asked me if I’d read The Secret, before telling me how their life had changed since reading it.
One friend reckoned The Secret got her pregnant. She’d been trying for five years with no luck. They were just about to go through their third and final round of IVF treatment when her mum gave her the book. She went on to have twins nine months later.
‘Something just clicked,’ she said. ‘I had total faith that it was going to happen – and it did.’
Another swore blind that the flat she was living in was one that she visualized, to the inch, five years earlier. ‘I used to draw out plans for my ideal home – the size I’d like the living room to be, the kind of bedroom I wanted with a window overlooking a garden. It was The Secret – absolutely,’ she said.
A former colleague believed that she got proposed to because of The Secret. She had been single for years when one New Year’s Eve, at home alone, having been given the book for Christmas, she wrote a list of everything she wanted in her life. Top of that list was ‘Be engaged by the end of the year’. It happened sooner than that. She met a guy the weekend after and he proposed within two months. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out. ‘Next time I’m going to specify the kind of guy I want to be engaged to – so not an alcoholic head case,’ she said.
I scoffed when I heard these stories. There was always a more realistic explanation. I think Jo got pregnant because she was more relaxed and therefore everything worked better. Or maybe it was just her time. Lucy got the flat not because of the powers of the Universe but because her grandmother died and she inherited enough for the deposit. As for Sam, she met someone because she was looking.
But, believe it or not, the idea of the law of attraction has been around for more than a century – featuring in The Science of Getting Rich written by Wallace Wattles in 1911 as well as Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking, published in the 1950s.
It’s even backed up by science, according to Byrne, who argues that the law of attraction is ‘a law of nature’ and supported by quantum physics.
‘The discoveries of quantum physics and new science are in total harmony with the teachings of The Secret,’ she explains. ‘I never studied science or physics at school and yet when I read complex books on quantum physics, I understood them perfectly . . .’ I didn’t do physics at school either, Rhonda, so I’ll have to take your word for it.
But as far-fetched as it all sounded, a little tiny part of me couldn’t help but wonder . . . What if we really could have anything we wanted just by changing our thoughts? What if there are forces at work that I don’t understand?
For all my cynicism, deep down I wanted it to be true. I wanted to believe that all my problems could vanish in an instant. That I could get everything I wanted, and more. I wanted to believe in the magic.
I also needed a bit of light relief.
It had been a high-octane start to the year, followed by the tears and shame of money month. That phrase, ‘You can’t handle the truth!’ kept going around in my head. Too bloody right I couldn’t. I didn’t turn to self-help looking for the truth.
So at the start of March, given the choice between continuing to face financial reality or sticking my head back in the sand . . . I chose sand. Lots and lots of sand.
I picked up my old copy of The Secret.
I once read an article that argued that all self-help books promise to tell you one of three things: how to get laid, how to get rich, or how to lose twenty pounds. A book that could combine all of those – well, it was guaranteed to be a bestseller. Cue The Secret.
The book’s basic formula is this: Ask, Believe and Receive.
First you should ‘Ask’ for what you want. Then you must absolutely ‘Believe’ that it is on its way to you. And hey presto! Before long you are ‘Receiving’ untold men, money and a supermodel body.
Having spent the last month in tears over my finances – my ambition for March was simple: it was time to get stinking rich. Apparently this is really very easy.
The book tells the story of a guy who used to get lots of bills in the post until, one day, he decided to imagine cheques coming through the letter box instead. Then, what do you know, within a month the cheques came flying in.
So on Monday 10th March, instead of writing an article I’d been asked to write about the magic power of goji berries, I closed my eyes and tried to imagine cheques flying through my letter box rather than bills and takeaway pizza leaflets. I pictured them shooting onto the doormat, like coins coming out of a slot machine. There were so many of them they formed a little paper mountain.
This felt ridiculous, obviously. But also quite nice. I mean – who doesn’t like a little get-rich daydream?
Next I downloaded a blank cheque from ‘the Universe’ that I found on the Secret website. You just fill out the amount you want and then that amount will magically come to you in real life.
As it chugged out of the printer, I debated how much to ask for. The book says, ‘It is as easy to manifest one dollar as it is to manifest one million dollars,’ but I didn’t want the Universe to think I was greedy. Nor did I want to miss my opportunity. I decided on £100,000. The number scared me. ‘Who do you think you are?’ thoughts came into my head but still I wrote the six figures in the box and filled it out in my name. I looked at it and for a second I felt a flutter of excitement. Imagine if it was true . . .
Rhonda says I needed to believe it was going to happen and to ‘feel the feelings of having that money now’.
She also says that for the next thirty days I should look at everything I wanted to buy and say, ‘I can afford that! I can buy that!’ I went on Net-a-Porter and had a browse. Did you know that jeans could cost £300? Me neither, but they can. And according to The Secret, I could afford them. So I pictured myself in a pair of high-waisted Victoria Beckham jeans and a floral blouse . . . Then just for fun I visualized myself being skinny in these over-priced jeans.
Visualization is important because ‘When you are visualizing, you are emitting a powerful frequency. The law of attraction will take hold of that powerful signal and return those pictures back to you, just as you saw them in your mind.’
And to make sure the Universe gets the message, The Secret suggests I also doctor my bank statements to let them show the amount of money I wanted rather than the reality of what I had. I took out one statement that informed me that my account was minus £1,238.00 and changed it to plus and Tippexed out the point so that it read £12,380.
By the end of the day I still hadn’t finished the piece that could have actually earned me some real money but I had picked out a fantasy wardrobe for my fantasy life. I did not check my real bank balances. I figured it would lower my frequency.
It was just a week after my financial reality check and already I was going back into La-La Land.
As if she could sense the slippery slope I was on, my mum rang.
‘I’ve just written a cheque to myself for £100,000,’ I told her.
‘What?’
‘The book I’m doing this month says you should write yourself a pretend cheque and imagine it coming to you, and that if you believe it will come, the money will appear.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’
‘I know, it’s silly.’
‘We all have a genie in a bottle, do we?’
‘Yes! Actually The Secret says that in the original story Aladdin didn’t get just three wishes, he got unlimited amounts.’
‘Right, so when is this money going to land?’
‘Rhonda says our dreams only come true if we really believe – and if they don’t come true it’s because I don’t believe.’
‘That’s convenient,’ said Mum.
‘And she says that “time is just an illusion”.’
‘I bet she does.’
Silence on the line.
‘You don’t really believe this, do you?’ she asked, after a long pause.
‘No, not really but loads of people swear by it. And maybe it’s good to think positively instead of always imagining the worst. Who knows, maybe I will write a bestselling book, earn millions and move to an LA beach house? Then you’d want to come and visit, wouldn’t you?’
‘Do they have earthquakes in LA?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, at least when you get too big for your boots you’ll be able to afford new ones . . . You could celebrate by getting your roots done. Or get your teeth sorted.’
I didn’t know which was better – Mum’s cynicism or The Secret’s magical thinking. But I knew which one was more fun.
That night I fell asleep watching a YouTube clip of young Jim Carrey being interviewed by Oprah. He was talking about writing himself a cheque for $10 million when he was a broke actor. He put it in his wallet and a few years later he was paid $10 million for the movie Dumb and Dumber . . . And I know it sounds nuts but as I watched it I thought, why not? Why shouldn’t something like that happen to me? To all of us? I mean – what makes people who achieve different to the rest of us except that they believed that they could do more? What’s that Henry Ford quote? Something along the lines of ‘Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re probably right.’
I thought about how nice it would feel to be out of debt, to have £100,000 in the bank, to have my own flat and a sense of security. I could take a plane anywhere, to see my sister in New York, or to see my friend in Spain . . . I’d be a really nice rich person. I’d give to charity and be very down to earth despite my fabulous wealth . . .
When I was at school our gym teacher had an old Mercedes sports car in blue. I loved it and have always wanted one. The Secret says that if you have a dream car you must take it for a test run just to help you believe that it’s yours. After my night listening to Jim Carrey I was willing to believe there might be something in it.
I found a garage in East Finchley that had one for sale and asked Sarah if she wanted to come. We met at the station.
‘It feels like I haven’t seen you for ages,’ she said.
‘I know, I’m sorry, it’s been hectic.’
‘How’s it going? Are you feeling new and improved?’
‘I don’t know. I scared myself witless in January and cried over bank statements in February – but it’s been good. More full-on than I was expecting but definitely not boring.’
‘So what does The Secret say?’
‘It says we can have anything we want in life if we just believe.’
‘I think that’s true.’
‘Do you?’ I was delighted. I was now hungry for proof.
‘Yeah, I think if you set your mind to things, make a plan and work hard – you can do anything.’
‘The book isn’t about working or making a plan, it just says you have to decide what you want, believe it’s going to happen and then the Universe magically delivers it to you.’
‘So you don’t do anything at all?’
‘There is one reference to the fact that you might have to take “inspired action” but they reckon this doesn’t feel like work – it feels “joyous” – so no, the idea is that it just comes to you.’
‘So if I want a big house in Hampstead I just sit there and imagine it?’
‘You don’t just imagine it, you have to believe it’s already yours. If you don’t believe, it’s not going to happen.’
‘How can I believe that a house that’s not mine is mine?’
‘I don’t know, you just do. You have to have faith.’
‘And I can just sit at home waiting to win the lottery, can I?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t even have to buy a ticket.’
‘Well, you might be inspired to joyously buy a ticket . . .’
‘And what happens when I don’t win the lottery?’
‘That’s because you didn’t really believe it was going to happen; therefore it didn’t.’
‘That’s bullshit.’
Even though I knew Sarah was right, I felt defensive.
‘I can just ask for bigger boobs, can I?’ she continued. ‘And what happens when bad things happen? Everyone in Syria asked to be in a war zone, did they? Those people in concentration camps just weren’t thinking positively enough?’
‘That’s kind of what the book implies,’ I admitted. Actually it says: ‘Imperfect thoughts are the cause of all humanity’s ills, including disease, poverty, and unhappiness.’
‘That’s disgusting.’
‘I know.’
We walked in silence until she repeated the question that Mum had asked: ‘You don’t really believe in this stuff, do you?’
‘No.’ And I didn’t. Not really. Just a bit. Maybe. Oh, I don’t know.
We got to the garage, a 1980s temple of chrome, glass and black leather sofas.
Gary, the salesman, walked us to the showroom, where the sky-blue Mercedes was parked. I asked him how many miles were on the clock, just to be convincing. He gave me a number and I had no idea whether it was high or low but he assured me it was ‘Very rare for a car this age.’
I nodded as if I knew what he was talking about. I felt bad. I was wasting Gary’s time. I guessed he was on commission.
‘I’m afraid you can’t take it out today, but would you like to get in and see how it feels?’ he said.
Sarah and I got into the car, while trying to keep a straight face. It felt like being fifteen and getting served in the pub.
The door was reassuringly heavy and the cream leather interior reassuringly soft.
‘Ooh, this is nice,’ said Sarah, stroking the mahogany dashboard.
I put my hands on the steering wheel. It did feel nice. Very nice.
I moved the wheel around like I did when I was a child, then I stopped in case Gary saw me.
‘So do you believe the car is yours?’ asked Sarah.
‘Weirdly, yes. Why not?’ And I did. Sitting in that car, it felt like I was meant to be there, meant to be driving it.
‘Well, tell him you’ll take it, then,’ she said. ‘Write him one of those cheques from the Universe.’
‘Ha, ha,’ I said, sarcastically, as we got out of the car and made our excuses to Gary.
‘I’ll think about it,’ I said. ‘It’s really lovely, but I’m looking at another one next weekend.’
I could feel myself going red.
Sarah and I went for an Italian around the corner. We both ordered the cheapest thing on the menu – spaghetti with tomato sauce.
‘I’m broke,’ she said.
‘Me too, but we’re not allowed to say that. If you say you are broke then you are attracting more broke-ness to you,’ I replied.
She rolled her eyes but I kept going: ‘The more positive you are the more good stuff happens, so we should be repeating affirmations like, “I’m a money magnet.”’
‘I’m a food magnet,’ said Sarah, taking a big bite of garlic bread. ‘I am eating everything in sight. I wish I could be one of those people who stops eating when they get stressed . . .’
She started talking about how crazy work was and how her boss had buggered up her holiday.
‘She said she didn’t get my email asking for dates in June and now she’s booked those off, which means I can’t go.’
‘Maybe she didn’t see the email.’
‘I get a notification when messages have been opened.’
‘Maybe she opened it and then got busy and forgot to put it in the calendar.’
‘No. She does this kind of thing all the time . . .’
The Secret says that you cannot talk negatively about anything. It says that you should not complain because if you are complaining the law of attraction will give you more things to complain about. You must, instead, replace negative thoughts with positive ones. You must think loving thoughts about everyone and be grateful for everything because that creates a vibration that attracts more good things. If you keep moaning about what you have now, you are giving off a signal of not enough and that’s what you’ll keep feeling.
And if your friends start to complain you should change the subject or leave. But this was a problem. For years this is what all my friendships had been based on: moaning and drinking. But I was no longer allowed to moan. And, for once, I didn’t even want to. I thought about how much time I’d wasted complaining about things, getting angry and bitter with people.
‘I’m going to Camden to meet Steve and his friends; do you want to come?’ she asked.
‘No thanks, I think I’ll head back.’
She looked hurt. Usually I’d have gone out and it would have been a four in the morning job.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, fine.’
I got the bus home.
For the next few days I replayed my conversation with Sarah. Of course, she was right. This was all nuts. But then maybe it wasn’t . . . I mean, it was good to be positive, wasn’t it? And miracles happened all the time, didn’t they? And why did so many people love the book if there wasn’t something in it?
I decided to investigate further by trying to get the body of a supermodel while eating carbs. Suckers go to the gym and eat well but people who know The Secret don’t bother with that. According to Rhonda: ‘Food cannot cause you to put on weight, unless you think it can.’ So if you want to lose weight, simple! Eat the Mars bars but think skinny thoughts.
This is Rhonda’s three-step plan for weight loss:
Ask: Visualize yourself at the weight you want to be. If it’s a weight from your past then take out an old picture and keep looking at it, otherwise find a picture of someone who is your perfect weight and look at that.
Believe: Believe that you are that weight already. Write out the weight you want to be and put it on the scales, over the real number.
Receive: Feel good about your weight now. Rhonda says: ‘Think perfect thoughts and the result must be perfect weight.’
I dug out the dusty scales from the cupboard under the bathroom sink. I took off my jeans and shoes (every little helps) and stood on the grey plastic square. The dial hovered then settled on a number. 11 stone 9 pounds – I was more than half a stone heavier than the last time I’d stood on scales. This was why I didn’t weigh myself; it was too depressing. Fat and ugly thoughts started to flood my mind but I stopped myself.
Think of Elle Macpherson’s legs. Imagine you have Kate Moss’s bum. Heidi Klum’s flat stomach . . .
I went to my room and found the sticky white labels I’d used on my financial folders and put one on the plastic window of the scales. So how much did I want to weigh? Maybe lose two stone? I wrote ‘9 stone 9lb’ in blue marker.
I looked at the scribble and felt worried for myself. The front door opened and Rachel shouted hello. I shoved the scales back into the cupboard so she couldn’t see what I’d done.
‘If we eat this and think thin thoughts it won’t make us fat,’ I said that night, eating risotto.
‘How does that work?’ she asked.
‘The Secret says that you only get fat by thinking fat thoughts, it has nothing to do with calories or cream or Parmesan.’
I helped myself to some more cheesy risotto but Rachel said she’d had enough. She had an outdated approach to staying slim – she just didn’t eat too much. You could never sell a book on that.
I looked up at a woman with perfect white teeth and brown hair, hair that was so straight and shiny that I knew that we could never be friends.
‘That book changed my life,’ she said. I was in Bread and Bean, working (looking at Facebook), and the book was out on the table.
‘Last year I broke up with an arsehole and a friend gave me it. I wrote a list of everything I wanted in a man. I forgot about it until I moved house and found it in the drawer. The guy I’m going out with now is everything I listed except one thing – he doesn’t dive! But he can learn.’
Why did everyone have a story like this?
‘Are you single?’ she continued, clearly flouting all English rules about not talking to strangers.
‘Yes.’
‘Have you written down exactly what kind of boyfriend you want?’
‘No, but I’ve spent the last two days clearing space in my wardrobe and making sure I sleep on one side of the bed.’
The Secret quotes a woman who, like me, was always single. This woman had done lots of visualization of what she wanted her ‘perfect partner’ to be like, but he wasn’t turning up. Then one day she came home and realized – duh! – the reason she was single was because her car was parked in the middle of the garage.
‘She realized that her actions were contradicting what she wanted. If her car was in the middle of the garage there was no room for her perfect partner’s car!’ says Rhonda.
So she not only moved her car, she cleared space in her wardrobe for her ‘perfect partner’s’ clothes and stopped sleeping in the middle of the bed, all to leave room for her ‘perfect partner’. Then she met the man of her dreams and lived happily ever after . . .
Shiny-haired woman smiled. ‘Oh, I didn’t do any of that. I just wrote it all down – the man I wanted, the kind of house, the job, the travel . . . Then I did a Vision Board with pictures of things I wanted to attract. Have you done a Vision Board?’
‘No.’
‘You should.’
‘Do you really believe this stuff works?’ I asked.
‘I know it does, but you have to believe,’ she said.
‘But how do you make yourself believe in something you don’t believe in?’
‘Fake it till you make it.’
So that weekend I set about creating a Vision Board, which is basically a big pinboard or piece of card on which you stick pictures or words that depict your dream future. I was determined to take this seriously. I was going to suspend my disbelief and really put my heart into it. No more cynicism – otherwise known as reason.
As I sat down with a pile of magazines and a pair of scissors, the first problem quickly became apparent. I did not know what I wanted from life beyond a vague idea about being skinnier, richer and more successful. I had never thought about what I wanted because: a) how was it going to happen, and b) who do you think you are?
‘Most of us have never allowed ourselves to want what we truly want because we cannot see how it’s going to manifest,’ writes Jack Canfield, author of Chicken Soup for the Soul, who is quoted in The Secret. To which Rhonda answers: ‘How it will happen, how the Universe will bring it to you, is not your concern or job. Allow the Universe to do it for you . . .’
So if there were no obstacles – otherwise known as reality – what did I want?
I decided to start off with a fancy house.
John Assaraf, ‘metaphysician, marketing specialist and author’, says he cut out a picture of a giant mansion from a magazine for his Vision Board and five years later he found himself living in it – the exact house.
Ever since I’d gone to LA to report on a Zumba convention a year before, I’d dreamed of living there. With that in mind, I went online to do some imaginary house shopping. I couldn’t decide between something in the Hollywood Hills or something by the beach. Spanish bungalow or uber modern and glassy?
Then I spent twenty minutes looking at bathroom tiles for a house I didn’t have, in a country I didn’t live in. Aqua or green? Purple or blue? I did the same with cushions for my non-existent beige sofa. I kid you not, this got me stressed. What if I made the wrong choice? How much money was I spending on all this? Was I already bankrupt in my dream life?
As I looked at hundreds of pictures of perfect people in their perfect houses I got that familiar feeling of not being good enough. I wasn’t pretty enough to live in LA! Who would I be friends with? I’d be lonely in a big house on my own.
I found a picture of the old Mercedes I’d sat in but that didn’t inspire me either. A car wasn’t going to change my life.
I made myself some tea and cheese on toast and realized that perfect bendy skinny LA girls don’t eat carbs. I was failing my dream life already! I didn’t want to pick a future that meant cutting out cheese on toast.
By the time Rachel came home she found me half a bottle of red down, surrounded by mountains of paper at the kitchen table.
She sat down and picked up a picture of a house in the Hollywood Hills.
‘What’s this?’
‘My future home.’
‘Really? It doesn’t seem very you.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know, it just doesn’t. Why do you want to live in America? You don’t know anyone over there. Why can’t you be happy here?’
It was a good question. Why did I always think that happiness had to be somewhere else, with me being someone else?
I’d always thought that happiness had to come in the form of stacks of money and nice clothes and a fancy house, but maybe it didn’t. Maybe there were other ways to be happy? I didn’t want my life to be a giant shopping list.
Bloody hell, I really was changing.
I decided to change tack. Time for a new vision! The new me wouldn’t be money-obsessed and skinny – she would be happy and free and fun! I pinned up pictures of Indian temples and Moroccan tiles (not for my designer bathroom, but to symbolize a trip to Morocco). I added a picture of an old desk by a high window where future me would write wonderful, fabulous words. I put on a picture of a woman meditating, another doing yoga, a glass of green juice (the future me drinks green juice) and a courgette salad. There was a woman doing a handstand. I have not done a handstand since I was eight – but I liked her. She looked joyous in her upsidedownness.
Next to me Rachel was pinning pictures of picnics in the sun, country cottages and people around a table laughing. Her Vision Board looked like her life right now, full of simple pleasures, good food and good company. Not a designer handbag in sight.
‘Now we have to find a man,’ she said.
I went through a pile of Sunday supplements to go man shopping. It should have been a fun job but I kept looking at lovely smiley men and imagining them thinking, ‘Dream on, love, as if I’d go out with you.’
I started cutting out a picture of the man who designed the new London bus. There was an interview with him and he seemed clever and modest and funny. And he had nice curly hair. I googled him and learned he had a wife. I can’t have another woman’s husband on my Vision Board.
‘You’re over-thinking this,’ said Rachel.
‘I know, but it doesn’t feel right,’ I said.
‘So what do you want in a man?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. Someone nice.’
‘OK. What else?’
‘Someone kind, clever, funny . . . and twinkly.’
‘What’s twinkly?’
‘You know – just got a twinkle about him. And he has to be down to earth and successful but not too successful. He can’t be a dickhead.’
‘Why do you look so scared?’
And it was ridiculous but I was scared. It felt scary even thinking about what kind of man I would like because he wouldn’t like me back – why would he? He could do better than me and then I’d be rejected and hurt and what was the point in all of that? Better not to want it at all.
I was rejecting myself even in my fantasy life.
But this was exactly the problem – if you don’t think you deserve good things, you will not allow them to happen.
Gemma always talked about the time I got chatted up in a pub. The man probably ticked every box on my dream list – at least in the looks/job department – he was tall, dark hair, blue eyes, smiley and an architect. So what did I do when my future husband started chatting to us and asked me if I’d like a drink? I said, ‘No, thanks.’
I’d just come from a twelve-hour shift at work and looked rubbish – greasy hair, no make-up, dodgy office outfit – and couldn’t believe that a guy like that could seriously be interested in someone like me.
‘He’s drunk and trying it on with everyone,’ I said to Gemma.
‘No he’s not, you’re an idiot,’ she replied. I was. I am.
Rhonda says: ‘When you feel bad about yourself you are blocking all the love and all the good that the Universe has to offer you.’
I had been blocking a lot of things for a long time. It felt safer that way. Better not to dream at all than to dream and be disappointed. I had to get over that.
I started to google ‘Smiley handsome beardy men’ and passed a good twenty minutes looking at generic bearded men online. Then I remembered the email Sarah had sent a few months ago with THIS IS THE MAN YOU ARE GOING TO MARRY in the subject line. It was a link to an interview with the lead singer from a band called Snow Patrol. He was talking about being rubbish with the opposite sex and drinking too much. And he lived in LA. We were pretty much spiritual twins. I printed off a picture of him and stuck him on. And it made no sense but it felt so exposing to do this – to stick up a picture of a man and say that I might like one in my life.
After dinner I propped the Vision Board on the floor by my desk. As I lay in bed I looked at it. My dream life. And it looked nice. And the more I looked at it over the next few days the more I started to believe that these things were possible.
Maybe that’s what this book’s secret really is; it gives us permission to daydream about our futures in a way most of us don’t do after the age of five, when we would announce with no self-consciousness that we wanted to be astronauts or ballerinas or ambulance drivers. It stops us from making excuses and hiding behind so-called ‘reality’, something we start to do as soon as we hit our first teenage disappointments.
It was actually scary to dream big because it meant opening yourself up to disappointment when/if your dreams didn’t become reality. But it felt good to become much clearer on what I really did want. I had thought it was the car and big house stuff, but really what I wanted was peace of mind and friends and travel. Although, let’s be honest, I wanted the pots of cash too. My cheque for £100,000 was also pinned on my board. And the more I looked at it, the less ludicrous this dream life (even the cheque) seemed.
The Secret says that it’s not our job to worry how things are going to happen, but the whole glossing-over of the idea of ‘work’ still made me uncomfortable. I didn’t believe a genie in a bottle was going to work magic; I believed I would, with enough positive thinking and hard work.
Athletes believe in their success and visualize the moment they cross the finish line, but then they train every day to make that vision a reality. I remember watching a documentary about Usain Bolt. He might make his record-breaking sprints look like fun runs but the film showed him training so hard he vomited.
Was that ‘inspired action’ and the law of attraction? Or was it old-fashioned hard work?
Then something strange happened: four days after doing the Vision Board, I got an email from my editor asking me if I’d like to write an article about kale being cool. I had to eat and drink nothing but kale for a week and report back – presumably from the toilet.
Days after putting up a picture of green juice on my Vision Board I was getting paid to drink green juices! I wrote about health stuff all the time, so the kale story wasn’t completely out of the realms of normality . . . but . . . two days after that the same editor asked me to write about a yoga class which involved hanging upside down . . . Universe, is this a sign? Maybe the magic does work. Now, if someone would just send me a cheque for £100,000 . . . then, I’d be convinced.