Rhonda Byrne discusses her new book, The Greatest Secret, with her dear friend, the eminent trial lawyer, Brad Brian, along with the wonderful team from Chevalier’s Bookstore in Los Angeles. Click below to watch the video or scroll down for a full transcript of the conversation.

Bert Dexter – It is such an honor for me to have these two particular guests this evening at Chevalier’s Bookstore, the oldest independent bookstore in Los Angeles. One that has suffered the loss of one of our beloved employees in the last week or so and we’ve had the community rally to our support, and when I heard that Rhonda Byrne had a new book out The Greatest Secret I thought boy, what could be a better moment in time to have this wonderful and important, and incredibly bestselling author to discuss her new book? When I thought who would be a great interlocutor with a book that is really about the material world transforming into a spiritual world where all possibilities exist, fears dissolve, uncertainty, anxiety and pain go away, who better than one of the most famous best known trial lawyers in the United States, my friend Brad Brian. And people would wonder gee what is the connection other than of course, Brad’s being so famous for being so spiritual and it is that Brad in his real life would not be spiritual to serve as a trial lawyer for Rhonda and one for her very, very important case. And for me, it’s really a thrill to have my dear friend Brad and this person Rhonda Byrne who I have admired for so long together at Chevalier’s even if remotely. So, thank you both for being here and old turn it over to Brad for his cross examination.

 

Brad Brian – I doubt it would be a cross-examination, but I’m thrilled to be here tonight at Chevalier’s Bookstore talking to my dear friend Rhonda Byrne. Before I ask her about her latest book, I just want to say a few facts about her because not only are her books extraordinary, but her personal story is truly extraordinary. She was born in Melbourne Australia, she was a very successful radio and TV producer, she had some difficult emotional experiences in the 2000’s and she began studying the law of attraction that led her to write The Secret. Well first to make the DVD which is sold 6 million copies, but she turned that into the bestselling book The Secret which is sold 30 million copies, has been translated into 50 languages. She appeared on Time Magazine list of 100 most influential people in the world, and following The Secret of course she came out with The Power, The Magic, Hero and How The Secret Changed My Life. She has now come out with what I think may be her most thrilling book The Greatest Secret which I had the pleasure of finishing last Friday night. I literally couldn’t put it down and Rhonda knows this because I sent her some notes, I must have taken 30 pages of notes and excerpts from the book that I want to go through with here. Rhonda first of all thank you for doing this.

 

Rhonda Byrne – thank you so much it’s a pleasure to be here Brad and it is so lovely to see you and Bert and to everybody at Chevalier’s Books, it’s a real honor to be here so thank you for inviting me.

 

Brad – it’s an honor to have you but before we get into this book tell me a little bit about your personal journey. Twenty years ago you were a happy, successful, maybe not so happy successful radio and TV producer and now you’re a world famous bestselling author. How did that happen?

 

Rhonda – well it all kind of happened in 2004 and when I look back you know even in the few years leading up to it I mean I was leading a life I think that many people lead, you know I had lots of stress and lots of difficulty juggling money coming in and money going out and various health things and relationship things so just kind of like most people you know going sort of from one sort of problem to another and moments of happiness and so on. And then in 2004 my father died really suddenly and he was young, and my parents fell in love with each other at first sight and so it was really, really, tough for my mother and she was grief stricken and that year I was making six movies for television about murder. Can you imagine? Unsolved murders and so that was really really, tough subject so that year everything that could go wrong, went wrong after my father died and obviously, I was grief stricken and I was concerned about my mother. And so everything went wrong the films that I was making, I was sleeping on edit suite floors, and I reached 9th September and I was actually exhausted and the phone rang and it was my accountant who said, “ you have gone over $2 million over budget and you are going to be totally wiped out in 30 days. And you are going to lose everything. That was just like wow! I hung up the phone and it was the most extraordinary thing, I hung up the phone and it rang immediately, it was my mother saying she couldn’t go on any more without my father. And so, I had been somebody who just fixed things all of her life if there’s a problem I can fix it, I can solve it but these things I could not fix these things. These things were huge and so I talk to my mother for a while until I knew that she was fine and she lived quite a long way away from me and I said to her I’ll be going to see you in the morning. So, after I hung up from her, I absolutely collapsed to despair. I was exhausted I didn’t know where to turn and I was just sobbing really and one of my daughters saw me and asked what was wrong and I just said, oh I just brushed it aside and said a few things. And she disappeared and she came back and handed me this crumpled up photocopied paper with a bulldog clip and she just said to me so nonchalantly here read this it will help. And the extraordinary thing is I read it. I mean I had the whole world was collapsing but I read it. I can remember my tears hitting the paper and the ink running as I was reading it. But 90 minutes later the small book, 90 minutes later my whole life are changed and that book is called, it was a book written in 1910, it was called The Science of Getting Rich and it was written by Wallace Wattles. Now it was The Science of Getting Rich in life, in every aspect of life, but when I read that book I just seem to, it’s like there was this massive download because I just seem to know things that I never knew before and I felt they were in the book but then they weren’t all really in the book. But that was the book that was the spark and from that book I went, then I just traced this knowledge back through history. I sort of went from one book to another to another and so I spent the next three months researching. I called my accountant and I said I have discovered something incredible and all I need you to do is just keep my company alive because I’m going to make something that will change the world. And you know what he totally believed me, and he did exactly what I needed him to do. And so, I did research for three months and then I went into my team and said we are going to make something incredible, and so that was that. And then it kind of just started from there and so really when we were making the documentary I was leaving the principles that I had learned. I lived it in so many ways, in every possible way. My life was unrecognisable. My whole life turned around so fast. I immediately, I started gratitude massively because that was one of the things in The Science of Getting Rich and I just think gratitude if you want your life to change, your life will change and 24 hours, your life will change in just 48 hours if you just start being grateful. So then all the other principles, visualisation which you and I have talked about and that became a really big part of my life and so that was my journey to The Secret so I was really somebody just like everybody else you know. Getting caught up in negativity, talking about things I didn’t want, not anymore. Not anymore. I talk about what I want.

 

 

Brad – Rhonda I once met a man in his mid-50s and I asked him if he’d read your book and he said he had read your book and I said to him how recently? And he said this morning in fact I have a download of the book in my pocket and I read a chapter of the book every day. Not always the same chapter. And I gathered that he’s not the only one. Why do you think your books have resonated with so many people around the world in that way?

 

Rhonda – well the first response I would say to that is because it’s the truth. It is the way the world works it is the way everything works and all of those people who have use the principles they know it for themselves so all I can do is share and then say to everybody you have to know through your own experience. Not in believing me but through your own experience because your own experience is all that matters. And so people followed it they’ve done everything you could ever imagine with the principles, really incredible things, miracles. Miracles. We’ve got something like 25 to 35,000 stories on our website that are absolutely breathtaking so it, it doesn’t fail. It doesn’t fail we are the only ones that fail the principles, but it will never fail us it will never let us down and it just, the freedom from this, the freedom to know what to do in a difficult situation. To know how to handle it, to know how to go after your dreams instead of saying things like, I would love to be this, I would love to do this but, but I’d love to be a lawyer for examples but nobody in our family ever achieved anything, I’ve got no hope. I was, I don’t have the money I don’t have this, I don’t have that, and then the person does have no hope but they can do exactly what they want to do, you just have to think about what you want instead of what you don’t want, and I think in The Greatest Secret, Lester Levenson says, ‘if you were just think about what you want and not what you don’t want but just what you want that’s all you would ever get in your life’. And so, it’s quite simple that, you know, quite simple.

 

Brad – You know as you know I went through and wrote down a number of excerpts and that comment, I’m going to jump ahead a little bit.

 

Rhonda – okay jump ahead.

 

Brad – in your book in Chapter 10 is called Everlasting Happiness, I loved the titles. The titles themselves are inspiring. But you say and this is a quote, that many of us resist being happy because of suppressed beliefs and you use examples of phrases that people say like act your age, or grow up, or stop showing off, or calm down and be quiet. And you use that as a way of explaining how some people cause others to restrain their happiness, could you just explain that a little bit? Because I found that fascinating.

 

Rhonda – yes because it might be hard for people to believe this, but happiness is our true nature, that’s our true nature and so if it’s our true nature why aren’t we happy all of the time. We aren’t happy all of the time because we are covering up our happiness with beliefs, feelings and thoughts. They are covering up our natural happiness and so when we are children, you know when we are children, children are so happy, they might fall over and have tears but the tears are gone in a flash and then they are happy again and they just wake up happy. And that’s really our true nature. If you are believing negative thoughts and negative feelings then your happiness is going to be blanketed over. Most of the time when we are children that is when we take on most of our beliefs into our subconscious mind and we are very open as children and so parents or other people say things to us, and we just take those things on. What we have done as children is taken, we’ve heard don’t be so noisy and calm down and behave yourself, and be like this, and be like that, and so what we’ve done then is we have suppressed our natural joyful exuberant happiness.

And we’ve kept doing that in our life, we’ve kept doing it. I mean it could even happen, I think I mention in the book, it could even happen that you’re really joyful person, you go to college and the in group, and the cool group, they all behave in a particular way a bit rebellious and so then you kind of squash your natural happiness again. And these days you know if you really super happy people are like why are you so happy? You know. So we’ve sort of suppressed our natural happiness and the book helps you see that and helps you restore that happiness because the happiness is not anything we have to go and look for and achieve we already have it. We have a wealth spring of happiness and never-ending wealth spring that is ready to explode and the kind of happiness I’m talking about our natural happiness that many people have not even felt. Like it is a bliss, like it’s a happiness of absolute bliss.

 

Brad – one of the things you say, Well we live in a society that often measures success by the house you live in, the car you drive, what kind of job you have and one of the said in your book that instead of looking outwards to the world for happiness you need to turn and look inward and it’s only in that direction you will find everything you’ve been looking for. Can you elaborate on that a bit for us?

 

Rhonda – yes especially because, well as I said happiness is our true nature and so it is within us and all of the material things in the world are absolutely wonderful and everybody deserves to have whatever they want but we will never ever, ever find lasting have the happiness in those things and we know that because we can get a new this or a new that, that we were really wanting, a new car, or a new house or, a new refrigerator, or whatever it might be, the new shoes that we really wanted or a new handbag that we really wanted and the happiness is so fleeting. Like it comes and it’s just gone in a flash and then we’re looking for the next thing that we think will bring us happiness so lasting happiness we will never ever, ever, ever achieve that way. All of the happiness is within us. All of it just bursting inside of us. And so we need to look within for our happiness. Just stop believing negative thoughts. Because the moment we stop believing negative thoughts, we allow all the happiness to begin to rise-up within us.

 

Brad-does that mean it’s wrong to drive a nice car?

 

Rhonda – NO! No! No because everybody deserves whatever they want you know. Where in the material world and we are here to enjoy the material world. And the material world is full of material objects and so they’re here for the fun and for the joy of it, they just won’t give us lasting happiness.

 

Brad – One of the quotes from Anthony de Mello and you say, ’Most people even though they don’t know it are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, and they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They live mechanical lives with mechanical thoughts, generally somebody else’s, mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions, they never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing we call human existence’. First of all, who is Mr de Mello? And tell me why you use that quote?

 

Rhonda – Anthony de Mello was a Jesuit priest, absolutely wonderful, wonderful teacher. I followed his work for a good couple of years absolutely love his things, love his work. He was very confronting like that quote you had there and the thing about him was though, whenever he spoke he always had this smile in his voice. So he had this kind of cheekiness about him and he could say and get away with anything. That probably sounds severe but through Anthony de Mello’s mouth not at all. But what he is saying is that people are listening to the thoughts in their head constantly all of the time and so rather than being completely present, for example with the person walking down the street I’m sure everybody could relate to this is, next time you walk down the street just see if you were listening to the thoughts in your head if this conversation is going on in your hand, or are you totally present on the street. So that’s what Anthony is talking about because what happens is, those thoughts are coming from suppressed feelings, all of those thoughts and so it’s very mechanical those thoughts will keep coming up, and keep coming up and if we are listening to those thoughts all of the time we are actually not living our life. Our whole life will just pass us by without us having really experienced it. That’s what he means by that and I understand perfectly because I can tell you I was asleep for decades. I woke up from The Secret that was the very first awakening that I had. It was, ‘you wake up’ and it really feels like that and all the great philosophers and sages all throughout history spoke all about waking up and when you do wake up you know without a doubt that I was in a dream I was in my head before. I was lost in my head. Hypnotised by the thoughts going around and round in my head and I wasn’t really living my life to the fullest. It’s important to live our life in the present, in the present now and I mean I don’t expect people to just like that and the book absolutely takes you through that and helps you do that and helps you understand the structure. Because as you let go of negative thoughts and negative feelings you will just not believe, people will not believe what will happen to their life, it is incredible. Absolutely incredible.

 

Brad – you say in the book that it’s your thoughts about a person, circumstance or event that is the source of negative situations in your life, not the actual person or circumstance of the event. What do you mean by that?

 

Rhonda – well we always feel that when we get upset somebody makes us angry and we are convinced that it was that person who made us angry. Absolutely convinced. Or if there’s a circumstance in the world that’s made us fearful than where convinced it’s the circumstance in the world that’s made us fearful but in truth all that, what we have manage to do in our lives is suppress our feelings. And so, what happens is they are all suppressed, and we are kind of like these little pressure cookers and we need something in the world to release some of the steam from the pressure cooker because it’s too much on the body. There will be a circumstance that will happen that will make us angry and that allows some of the anger to dissipate and helps ease the body and release some of the tension. And we are convinced that it was that situation that caused us to be angry, but actually what caused us to be angry was the suppressed anger that we pushed down inside of us.

 

Brad – You actually talk about rather than suppressing negative thoughts, talk about welcoming. What do you mean by that?

 

Rhonda – yes. So one of the things is negative feelings don’t feel very nice right? So feel doesn’t feel nice, disappointment doesn’t feel nice, no negative feelings feel nice or feel very good and so what we tend to do is we tend to push them away because we don’t want to feel them, they don’t feel nice and so we push them away but when we are pushing them away we are suppressing those feelings and so instead of doing that this is, this feels so counterintuitive but this is extraordinary. In fact, I would say that in the book it is equally one of the most powerful incredible practices in the book. Because this will eradicate negative feelings for ever. And I know because I’m talking from experience because it is what I have done and so instead of pushing away and negative feeling, allow the feeling to be there. So, if you feel anger arising just watch the anger. Just be the witness and watch it. And allow the anger to be there without trying to fix, it change, it make it go away suppress it, repress without trying to do anything to it. One of the things that I do is I welcome the feeling so as it arises, I just welcoming the feeling, basically I’m saying to the feeling you can stay here it’s okay I understand you can stay. And what happens is when you welcome the feeling, so instead of resisting the feeling, you welcome the feeling, it just evaporates just like that, it’s so incredible. It’s the best feeling in the entire world when you have like disappointment or impatience and impatience is a big one, right? Most people will feel impatient at some point in their day and just impatience arises and you just like allow it. And we say in the book just kind of open your arms out a bit so you so your kind of welcoming the feeling and then you just watch what happens, it just absolutely dissipates, so that is how you release all of the suppressed negative feelings in our body.

 

Brad – one of the things you say in your book is before you were on your own personal journey you used to try to overcome negative thoughts by thinking about positive things which I know I do and I suspect a lot people on this call do, and that didn’t work. Tell us why that doesn’t work?

 

Rhonda – it didn’t work when I was suffering from depression and it worked for me all the rest of the time but when I was down really low in depression and depression is one of the lowest, like grief and depression are one of the lowest and I had a family situation and someone was in grave health risk, one of my children and so I just had one terrifying thought after the other and I listened to them and I believe them and before I knew it was of kind of in depression so I tried really hard to think positive thoughts to kind of turn it around. I knew negative thoughts had got me there and so now I think positive to get out but what I found is if you are down really low, your thoughts don’t have much power and that’s for a reason. Because if you’re down in depression you 27:34 really don’t want your thoughts to have so much power. If you’re really joyful your thoughts have massive power. So, I just found they didn’t have much power and I thought this is going to take ages for me to feel better so what I did was, I just intuitively remembering from The Secret what Carl Jung had said ‘what you resist persists’. So, I thought I’ve got to stop resisting this feeling and so basically what I did was I imagined putting my arms around the depression and pulling it into me and it just evaporated. And the relief was incredible, absolutely incredible. And then a few hours later it came back but not nearly as strong and so I did the same thing again and I did it every time it came back and in a couple of days it was totally gone. And I know without a doubt I will never suffer from depression again because there is no depression left in this body, none.

 

Brad – another really really insightful thing you say in your book is, you talk about taking responsibility for everything in your life and not blaming anyone or anything else for something that’s happened. Tell us about the importance of taking responsibility?

 

Rhonda – It’s so important because unless you can accept responsibility for your life, you’re not going to have any power to create the life you want. We really, really need to be responsible for our own lives and blaming and criticising is just a real trap. It brings us asunder, it really damages us, it robs us of our happiness and it robs us of everything we want in our life, all of the things that we want, great relationships and health and whatever material things that we want and so it’s just the number one thing, is take responsibility for our own life. And that doesn’t mean blaming ourselves or anything, that just like oh well it happened that way so I’m just going to write some things that I’m grateful for, you know, it’s not blaming us either but it’s not blaming anybody else, it’s just because don’t blame or criticize, don’t judge other people, don’t. Those things will harm your life they are not going to harm the other person they are going to hurt you, you know, they are going to hurt your life, don’t do it. Don’t sacrifice your happiness and the fantastic life you can have just for the sake of blaming somebody else.

 

Brad – in Chapter 6 of your book which is called under the Power of Feelings you talk a lot about suppressing bad feelings which you’ve talked about now. You even go so far as to say letting off steam is not the answer. Why not?

 

Rhonda – no because we kind of think I’ll well if I get really angry and if I throw a few things around and everything that’s going to solve things and that’s going to be better for my body. But it isn’t because when we are letting off steam we are still suppressing. We are still suppressing and repressing and so the only way to be free of negative feelings is through the process of welcoming those feelings. To do anything else we are just piling up more anger and more frustration or more in patience inside of us. And those negative feelings you know they play havoc on our health. They really do their energy and they’re trapped in the body and they play havoc. That’s why when you release a feeling you just feel really light and you instantly feel happy and you feel happy for no reason, I just feel happy. Yeah.

 

Brad – you say in the book, ‘don’t except people circumstances and events to change for you to feel better because none of them ever will. You’ll never be happy if you wait for the world to change according to your desires or your expectations. Change how you feel in any given moment is always an inside job.’ I thought that was and then a wonderful insightful thing to say can you just elaborate a bit?

 

Rhonda – Yes. Well if you just think about it I mean even if you just think about their partner and what things their partner has a different perspective on completely from themselves. And so that’s just your partner so even your partner doesn’t see the world the way you see it. If you need your partner to agree with you on absolutely everything for you to be happy you would never be happy and yet we still persist on wanting the world to be the way we think it should be and we want the almost 8 billion people to agree with us to not have a different opinion from us. So all of you 8B 8 billion people need to agree with what I think so that I can feel happy, all of you get into line now, think the way that I think and then I’ll be happy. So you can see it’s a lost cause and yet still we have a tendency to do it you know. Still expect everything else out there to change. No. Happiness is inside of us that’s where we’re going to find it.

 

Brad – And to pursue that you advise people to question everything. You say that through questioning we can discover limiting beliefs that we are holding onto that our obscuring the truth. What do you mean by that?

 

Rhonda – yes. Well we’ve all have beliefs and they’ve been gifted to us by our parents, by teachers, by society and most of our beliefs we talk on really when we were children and we just believed you know what our parents have told us and so to be free of those beliefs we just need to watch ourselves and listen to ourselves. So when we are in a conversation with somebody and will say you know, ‘well I believe that they should’, ‘I just believe they should have done that’, or ‘I believe this’ or ‘I think this’ and if you can hear yourself saying those things underneath that I believe, or I think is a belief. Is a limiting belief. And so just watch yourself. It’s so fantastic to catch these things because beliefs are really tricky because we don’t notice them because we think they’re the truth instead of a belief. You know we think they’re the truth. So it is really great to catch them and then when you see a belief you are like, oh my gosh. Like an example will I give you an example of a belief? Okay that I had, so just after I discovered The Secret and I was researching, I put on some reading glasses and when I put the reading glasses on I suddenly stopped and I was like, ‘oh my gosh’. I’ve got these reading glasses because I believed what people have told me. Oh your eyesight as age your eyesight get less and people had said all these things and I had believed that to be true. And so, I just immediately started visualising that I could see clearly and in two days I didn’t need my glasses and I could see clearly but you see that was a belief. I believe that did not serve me and it’s limiting because I would’ve had to of kept upgrading the glasses and I don’t wear glasses. Beliefs like that they limit our life you know they limit our life. We just need to be mindful and watch out for them.

 

Brad – I have I think two more questions and then it’s probably time for some questions from the audience. One of the things you talk about in the book toward the end is the difficulty That can come from attachments particularly relationships. Explain a little bit about that?

 

Rhonda – okay so attachment is not love. Attachment has a whole lot of fear in it. Attachment is I don’t want to lose this I’m going to hold onto it with a tight grip. This is something that I will not be happy without this, and so what happens is we find ourselves really into attachments of things and then we are terrified of losing them and so but attachment is not love. Love is completely free. Love doesn’t have any negativity in it at all. Love actually allows everything to be the way that it is. Love doesn’t object to anything, it accepts everything, it except every person just as they are without wanting to change them without wanting to do anything to them just excepting them so fully as they are. So attachment is the opposite of that really and so attachments can make us suffer, you know because they are full of fear so we can spend our life being very afraid. I remember with my mother, my mother was like my best friend earlier on in my life and I used to be terrified of my mother dying because I couldn’t imagine how I could live on earth without my mother. And so that was attachment. You know masking itself as love but that was attachment and so fortunately with my journey through The Secret and the journey since then that attachment fell away and just turned to pure love. And so when my mother did pass I, it didn’t affect me the way that it would’ve earlier. We had such an incredible relationship, and I was so grateful for everything she helped me with in my life and so I was able to absolutely love her but allow her to leave as well. And you know something else that I would just like to say about that is that one of the things I think when we lose a loved one people feel an incredible separation from that person, that’s the part that really hurts the most but when my mother passed I felt no separation. She is here present all of the time. I feel no gap whatsoever to her, none at all.

 

 

Brad – one of the things you do so well in your book is to acknowledge the people that have influenced you in your thinking. You’re really quite generous about that. And without going through all of them maybe you could say to the extent you’ve been influenced by them or how much you’ve been influenced by religion and religious thinking??

 

Rhonda – The teachers featured in the book all of the teachers that have changed my life from The Secret to The Greatest Secret and so every single one of them has played such a huge part in my life. Some of them I followed their teachings for a couple of years and others for a few months but every single one of them affected me deeply. They are the most incredible, incredible beings. Really, really incredible and all agreed so graciously without any hesitation to be a part of this book and in fact if I talk about them too much I get very teary because they all means so much to me and I wouldn’t be here at all without them. They’re just incredible. But religions definitely in my journey I have studied Buddhism and Sufism and Hinduism also a big part of that esoteric even, even esoteric, Christianity. I was brought up Christian as a child and so I sort of have that teaching to see the parallels in my work in my spiritual work and I can see all of them teachings that I’ve written about in The Secret and in The Greatest Secret and in all of my books in all of the religions. They all speak about the same thing it’s just they use very different words that were appropriate for their time and it can be hard for us to understand those words in 2020. But all of them are really pointing to the same truth and the truth is magnificent. It is magnificent. The truth really, really, really does set you free. It sets you free from fear from anxiety from uncertainty from absolutely everything.

 

Brad – before I start questions I just want to take and say one thing as the interviewer. You and I share and experience some time ago where I can honestly say that most people would have exhibited just a glass full of negative thoughts criticism and depression. You were the most positive person I’ve ever experienced. Honestly the most positive person I’d ever, ever, experienced. And your gratitude to the people around you was inspiring. It really was and you had a major impact and I thank you for it.

 

Rhonda – thank you so much Brad, thank you so much it’s very beautiful.

 

Brad – why don’t we open it up for some questions.

 

Theresa – So let’s get into the Q&A a portion of the evening and it does look like we have quite the collection of questions so will see what we can get to tonight. The first one Rhonda is, can you talk about the difference in delivering your message via film versus book what are the major changes in each approach and what are the pros and cons?

 

Rhonda – well the film is very immediate and what is also wonderful about the film is that we were also able to use the power of music to help people really feel and understand the teachings in the documentary and also to use all of the vision, so we were able to capture all of a person’s senses and really have them captivated. And that is important, so the mind isn’t going, going, going so that they become fully absorbed and I think music plays a really, really, big part in that. It’s certainly does for us and I worked very hard on the music for The Secret documentary and also worked very hard for that on the music for The Greatest Secret Audiobook as well which is an incredible audiobook. Then with the book what I was able to do was to include all of the things that I had learned from The Secret and so it became even more practical. I was able to share all of the things every single thing that I have learned on my journey and so that made the book really, really, powerful. And also, I think with the book is that you have a chance to just stop you know if you’re reading a paragraph you can just stop and pause and think about that and be like, or you might be reading something and you’re like wow, you know wow, that is incredible, and you can just go back and read it again and just sit with that. So that’s the amazing thing about a book. You can have it by your bedside table and you can open it up and honestly you open up a book and where ever you open it to and where your eyes land is where you need to hear in that very moment. So, they are both absolutely wonderful, I love both mediums. They have just different strengths.

 

Theresa – absolutely the idea of Brad story earlier in the evening about the man the gentleman who would read the same chapter every single day. So, let’s move onto our next question this person in particular, their brother they’re having some trouble convincing their brother about The Secret. Their brother believes negativity actually works for him, he thinks it’s a good thing and that when he thinks positively things go haywire. So most of the time he chooses negativity and do you have any suggestions for them to perhaps help their brother find happiness in his life?

 

Rhonda – well you know it’s, something like that is very challenging. I would tend to say just work on you. Just do everything for your happiness, do your gratitude, do your appreciation and let your life take off. And you visualise, and you do affirmations, and you do all of those things and have your life absolutely take off, and then your brother is going to want to know what exactly are you doing. By your example. And if he would still choose to be negative then I would be blessing him. And you know allowing him to be the way he wants to be and love him exactly just the way that he is. Because you know a lot of people would ask me questions like what do say to naysayers of The Secret. I never came across many naysayers I don’t think I was on the same frequency as the naysayers, but what I have to say to them is absolutely good for you. Because everybody has the right to do whatever they want and I write books to share the things that I’ve discovered that have absolutely changed my life and they are there for whoever wants them. If somebody doesn’t that is absolutely fine.

 

Theresa – wow that was the perfect answer to that question. So, here’s another one. I’ve tried to practice test your lessons often, but I always found myself failing halfway through and getting distracted by negativity and getting consumed by sadness again and feel like I’m back at square one, any advice on someone who is habitual, unhibitual?

 

Rhonda- well I mean gratitude is always a really, really, amazing practice to just quickly turn you around but your question whoever asked that question and thank you so much for it. Your question is the reason why I wrote this book The Greatest Secret because you will come to understand the negative side of your mind. Our mind is the most incredible creator. It’s incredible, it really is, it will create anything and if you follow exactly we what we should do is ask and then you should believe you will most definitely receive. So, it’s a fantastic, incredible glorious creator but it is also can be our greatest torturer. It is our greatest torturer when it is dishing up a whole lot of thoughts that really send us into despair, or make us feel impatient, or all of those kind of things so exactly what this person is talking about. So in The Greatest Secret I show you how to be free of that. To be absolutely free of negativity. That is the whole purpose of the book. For you to be free, completely free of being influenced and affected by negative thoughts and feelings. Can you even just imagine having one day when not one negative feeling can come anywhere near you have one day where your mind is not jumping onto something and complaining about this and that and all that shouldn’t have happened all of those kinds of things? I think The Greatest Secret will just help enormously, completely. So, I would really recommend that you read that other than that gratitude, appreciation and once you start because that’s what I did. I mean with The Secret up until The Greatest Secret I basically trained my mind to think positively. Because your mind is just a computer program. That’s all it is it’s mechanical, it’s just around and around so if you can gather some momentum with positive thoughts, gratitude, appreciation and really get the momentum going those positive thoughts will stamp out the negative thoughts. A drama might happen and then you might get some negative thoughts and then you just go back to your positive thoughts but honestly that is what I did from The Secret I just got my mind to be really, really, positive and I would notice if there was a negative thought and I would just say cancel, cancel. And then I would think the opposite, the exact opposite. Like oh there are no, there are no carparks today, oh no, there are never any carparks around here, and then I’d be like cancel, cancel. There are always carparks for me where ever I go I always get carparks, everything works out for me perfectly every single day. Hope that helps.

 

Theresa – absolutely. So short answer is buy the book and buy the book from Chevalier’s Books.

 

Rhonda – Yes, yes, exactly.

 

Theresa – So here’s another one and I’m interested in this one as well. So this person is asking I’m sure you have a tonne of stories but can you share one or two of your favorite stories of people whose lives have changed because of your work?

 

Rhonda – well I know of quite a lot of people who started their businesses using The Secret principles, they have written into me. Companies that are really well known today, and they started their whole company using The Secret principles so that is amazing. People I’ve had direct contact with, I’ve had women who have not been able to get pregnant and have been trying for years and years and really kind of desperate and told really that they wouldn’t be able to conceive and then have. I’ve just kind of helped them a little bit with that and every single one of them got pregnant and I get emails from them when the baby has a birthday, now five years old, and now six years old. They’re kind of pretty amazing to but there’s one and I was just talking about it and I hope I remember it exactly because it’s an incredible story. Is a woman who really wanted to find her perfect partner and she was going to, I think a business district in her city and she passed a shop with wedding dresses in it. She was having trouble finding the dress she was going to so she just thought I should go into the shop and look at wedding dresses. So she started trying on all these wedding dresses and she bought one and she didn’t have anybody in her life, no partner, no nothing but she bought the wedding dress and she walked out and literally ran into this man. Like basic nearly fell over him, tripped over him. She discovered she said can you help me actually, I’m looking for such and such a dress and he said so am I. So they went there together and that man is the man she married.

 

Theresa – Oh my goodness, I would watch that movie.

 

Rhonda – that story is just like so, so thrilling, really really thrilling. On thesecret.tv website there are something like 25 to 30 thousand stories and they are all categorised in all of the subject, relationships, health, you name it. Passing exams, you know everything. You know people have used The Secret principles for everything, buy a house, travelling around the world for free, getting a free car, all kinds of things so very inspiring. We have 10’s of thousands of people visit our website every day reading the stories because they are so uplifting.

 

Theresa – that’s fantastic. So we are actually almost at the end of our hour so want to get a couple of questions in before we say goodbye. One of them is from Leslie, and she is asking you say to focus only on what you want and not what you don’t want what would you say to someone who doesn’t exactly know what they want other than it’s not the life they have now?

 

Rhonda – okay. That’s a good question. So that person then kind of needs to get clear about what they want and that can be, that can be interesting, and very often we don’t know what we want so the very first thing to do is to ask. And so ask, make it very clear to me what I want, make it very clear to me what is the perfect life for me ahead? And just say those kinds of things so basically you’re saying to the universe told me what it is I really want to know. I really want to know what I want. I really want to know the best life I can really have, and show me that now, and tell me that now, and inspire me with that now. And they will be.

 

Theresa – wow. This is the last question, I am using my privilege as a host to make it my question. So even right now I saw someone in the chat room say that they were tuning in India and people are also talking in the comments here about how it changed their life. Lisa who was afraid to fly and is now a flight attendant seeing the world.

 

Rhonda – oh my gosh, so beautiful.

 

Theresa – so my question is about that you talk so much this evening about focusing on ones self and self visualising can you also talk about the power of community that The Secret has brought together even on your website people sharing the stories about the power of people seeing other people succeed and finding solace in others who are on that same journey And how your work has maybe helped bring that about?

 

Rhonda – well I mean it’s just so fantastic that all of these incredible stories, oh I love that story of the person who was afraid of flying, oh my gosh. There is on all of our social media and the community is just amazing, on all of the different platforms and everything I mean it’s just so fantastic. how can we reach out to Rhonda I love seeing messages like this oh hello to everybody. Thank you for everybody for tuning in. So, on our social media it’s so wonderful the community and it’s very inspiring for people and people will post a problem and it’s fantastic to see all of the people that follow The Secret and they all just jump in and help the person and tell them what they should be focusing on or off giving them suggestions and so it’s just absolutely fantastic. Social media and the community is really amazing, so join.

 

Theresa – and I want to pass the mic over to maybe Bert or Brad if anyone wants to.

 

Rhonda – hi Canada! Hi Canada. I’m just seeing all these people. Oh my, so lovely.

 

Bert – let me express my gratitude to Rhonda and Brad. This evening has made me very happy and the dozens and dozens of people I know have participated which leads me to what I’ve been visualising which is leading me that each of the people who have observed this will be going to Chevalier’s link to buy an autograph copy of your book. I can only hope that everybody’s life has been made a little bit better just by this hour to have spent with you so thank you, thank you, thank you. Really, really moving and important evening for us, thank you so much.

 

Rhonda – oh thank you Bert, thank you Theresa. Brad, thank you so much Brad, so amazing to see you. Thank you.

 

Brad – I loved it. I loved it.

 

Rhonda – I loved it too.

 

Theresa – Thank you everyone, have a great night, thank you!

 

Bert – Good night everyone.

 

Rhonda – Bye.