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There’s a great quote from Neville Goddard that says, “Man moves in a world that is nothing more or less than his consciousness objectified.”
What I love about this quote is that it speaks directly to something we talk about a lot on this show: the law of attraction. In today’s episode, I’m speaking to the woman who discovered the law of attraction and shared it with others in her now-famous documentary The Secret.
Rhonda Byrne is here with us today on School of Greatness to discuss what the law of attraction is, how you can use it in your daily life to break out of negative thought loops, and how to find truth by leaving the ego behind. We get deep into Rhonda’s life experiences and discuss some of the biggest lessons she’s learned from discovering the Secret. This is such a powerful episode, and I know you will get a lot out of it!
You may not know the name Rhonda Byrne, but I bet you’re familiar with her work. Rhonda is the creator behind The Secret, a documentary film that swept the world in 2006, changing millions of lives and igniting a global movement. Rhonda followed the film with a book called The Secret, now translated into 50 languages and one of the longest-running bestsellers of this century. She’s also written other bestselling books: The Power in 2009, The Magic in 2010, Hero in 2013, and How The Secret Changed My Life in 2016.
Rhonda also served as a producer on the 2020 movie, The Secret: Dare to Dream, based on her book The Secret. The film stars Katie Holmes, Josh Lucas, and Jerry O’Connell. In November, her newest book The Greatest Secret was released!
I am so excited to have Rhonda on this podcast. She doesn’t really do many interviews — in fact, there’s not much content about her online. It turns out that this is intentional on her part.
It was fascinating to pick Rhonda’s brain about life, the universe, and the power of thought. I think you guys are going to get a lot out of this interview, so let’s begin!
The Secret is one of the most well-known books in the world, but, besides appearing on Oprah, Rhonda has kept a low profile. She said this decision to stay out of the spotlight was to make sure the message stayed front-and-center.
“I really wanted the sacred message to be the hero. We have a tendency to idolize people, and I did not want that to happen. I wanted people to know a little bit about me and how I discovered it and the year that I’d had, but I didn’t want any of that to detract from the message. … I’m not out to convince anybody of anything. I discovered this [Secret,] and my life is unrecognizable. … You can have everything you want; you deserve everything. If there are people [who] don’t want that, that’s totally fine. That’s why I was very selective [about media appearances;] I had worked in media as well, and I knew that sometimes media can really build you up and then take you down.” – Rhonda Byrne
Rhonda wasn’t interested in becoming a so-called “guru” after sharing The Secret. She knew there would be naysayers and detractors, but it wasn’t her goal to argue with people. Rhonda said she’s just like everyone else: a normal person who has simply dedicated her life to sharing as much as she can about the Secret and helping others to make their lives better. So what’s in The Secret that’s so important to share with the world?
The law of attraction and your mindset are subjects we talk about on The School of Greatness a lot. And, if you haven’t already, I strongly recommend you read or watch The Secret. The basic principle is what is known as the law of attraction — “like attracts like.”
“[The Secret] talks about the power of the mind and the power of thought to create a physical world and material world. The Greatest Secret takes that to a whole new level actually. [It helps you realize], ‘Oh my gosh, it’s super easy to create anything I want.’ If we have a belief it’s hard, then it’s going to be hard. It has everything to do with our mind and what we believe.” – Rhonda Byrne
Basically, the law of attraction tells us whatever we will believe, we will manifest. If we believe we are deserving of great love, then we will manifest it. If we believe we are going to be poor, we’re going to stay poor. If we believe we don’t deserve something, it’s not going to come to us. Sounds pretty amazing, right?
Unfortunately, a lot of people think a lot of negative things. Negativity and judgment often play on a loop that can hold us in these negative thought patterns. Luckily, we can start to override those patterns and replace them with new loops.
“The mind is like a computer program. The fact that it’s on a negative loop is because we programmed it on a negative loop. One of the things that the mind loves is repetition. … If you really watch your thoughts, [you can notice] the same old thoughts over and over again. [Your mind] is kind of dishing up the same old thing. … The way you can override a program is to put in the opposite.” – Rhonda Byrne
When you start noticing a damaging pattern, Rhonda said that you can replace it with a new one.
“When you start out, it feels like you’re lying. You might not have any money, and you’re trying to instill wealth and prosperity and riches. Every time you say it, you feel a contraction in your body because you don’t have it. After a while, you change [your thought pattern], and you don’t quite have that contraction anymore. Then you start to see money coming in in different ways. [For example,] you can be given things that you were going to buy, and now you don’t have to buy it.” – Rhonda Byrne
One thing to notice as you start going through this exercise is where those negative beliefs are coming from. Rhonda said they’re often held in our subconscious — stemming from our childhood conditioning. This is something that she tackles in her newest book, The Greatest Secret.
“Start to listen to yourself, and look at the things that you have really strong opinions about — where you have a really strong opinion is a belief that’s underneath that. You can dissolve [those beliefs] and feel free. Every time ‘I believe’ goes out, you feel completely free. It’s amazing to feel light as a feather and actually feel invincible. Doubt and uncertainty play a big part in most people’s lives. And [those two things] can be paralyzing. So just imagine living life with zero uncertainty.” – Rhonda Byrne
Doubt is not who we are, it’s just our ego. The voice of doubt is not you but a program in your head that gets ingrained over time. We all have these limiting beliefs that hold us back, and once we recognize and reprogram them, we can start to manifest the things we want in life.
Rhonda said one of her biggest limiting beliefs was something many of us struggle with. It was around money.
“The biggest thing [I had] to overcome was the belief in lack of money. … I started with $2 million in debt. I remember [when] I discovered the Secret, and I went to my accountant and I said, ‘You have to do whatever it takes to keep my company afloat. I’m going to make something that’s going to change the world. I’m going to make it, you keep my company going.’ … So I maxed every credit card I had to the limit. I mortgaged my home to the absolute limit. I took overdrafts out on my company so I could make the documentary. I had crushing debt coming in on me, and I needed more money to keep making it.”- Rhonda Byrne
If that sounds like a desperate situation, it was — but at the time, Rhonda was working through patterns that her parents handed down to her around manifesting abundance. She grew up hearing all the time, “We can’t afford that.” Instead of letting that script deter her from making The Secret, she adopted a mindset of growth toward debt and spending. She would practice gratitude, put on some cheerful music, and pretend her bills were checks. Rhonda even started giving money away.
“I took out all of these $20 bills, and I thought, ‘I’m going to walk down the street [and ask] the Universe [to] show me who to give it to.’ I would walk down the street, and I [would] look at everybody’s faces. I don’t know if you’ve ever done that in your life — silently walk down a street and look at people’s faces like with a heart wide open. … It was just amazing because the Universe would just show me who to give it to. These kids walked out of a store, and they’re like counting their money. [I heard them say], ‘I don’t have enough to get that’, wanting to get something in the store. I gave him $20. That was on a Friday, and on the Monday I received $25,000 in my account.” – Rhonda Byrne
That story is so incredibly powerful. Rhonda said even after The Secret was released, she didn’t care at all about the money. She just wanted to get The Secret into the hands of as many people as possible to make an impact.
Rhonda put a lot of work into creating The Secret — it didn’t just occur to her to make this documentary. She said everything that took place in her life led her to this amazing work that has impacted the lives of so many.
“I had a couple of really rough years before 2004, and then 2004 was a doozy. That’s why it knocked me to the ground. I’ve looked back on all of those things, and I’m so grateful for every one of them because I needed every one of those things to go wrong to get me to the place that I got to. I’m just so grateful — I could have lived my whole life without finding anything.” – Rhonda Byrne
So many of my guests tell me stories that show how hardship can lead to greatness. I think it’s hard for us to truly grow and find the wisdom we need when things are going well. It’s almost like we need to have some type of breakdown in order for us to wake up and say, “Something’s not working.”
“[The night] when I discovered the Secret — I’ve played [that night] over and over in my mind. There was no ego. … I have always said that night that the despair was so great inside me that my ego jumped on a horse and rode the heck out of there. I think it just collapsed. There was this huge opening, and in that opening came everything.” – Rhonda Byrne
Even after The Secret was released, Rhonda said she has faced challenges where her mindset has been tested. Her daughter was really sick at one point, dealing with a life-threatening illness, and when wildfires threatened her home, Rhonda made the choice to leave everything behind when she was evacuated.
“When the wildfires came, I evacuated, and I had a house full of beautiful things. I didn’t take anything with me, because if I took a whole lot of stuff with me that would be saying to the Universe, ‘I think it’s going to burn down.’ … I was just fine with whatever happened. If it got engulfed, then that meant the Universe needed to move me in a different direction. I was totally fine with that. All the people around me in a panic. … I honestly never felt a shred of fear or anything at all. I was just fine with it.” – Rhonda Byrne
By shifting her mindset, Rhonda learned how to eliminate struggle. Rather than panicking during the wildfires, she was able to be available to others who are struggling. Her path taught her to embrace negative feelings in order to evaporate them.
“I came to understand that if we [resist] negative feelings, then we just push them down inside of us and suppress them. Then they would just be sparking off at every little thing. If you’ve got anger suppressed inside of you, you can bet there’s going to be a whole lot of things in the world that are going to trigger that anger that is pushed down inside of you. I actually intuitively worked out that if I welcomed a negative feeling and imagined putting my arms around it and bringing it in close to me, it would intensify for one second to two seconds, and then it would just evaporate.” – Rhonda Byrne
This practice taught Rhonda to see anger in others differently, too. When she sees someone get angry, she can understand that they’ve suppressed their anger rather than embracing it. This prevents Rhonda from getting triggered and gives her the ability to feel empathy for others.
Throughout my life, I’ve studied a lot of meditation with different teachers in India. One of the things we try to understand is human suffering. Rhonda has a deep compassion for human suffering. I wanted to know why she thought humans suffer so much.
“All suffering comes from the mind. … We suffer more from believing our own thoughts than we do from anything in the world. … The mind loves drama. It will give you so many scary thoughts around a drama and get you so worked up.” – Rhonda Byrne
This goes back to the law of attraction — the mind can create the life you want, but it can also torture you. When you focus intensely on something, you can manifest negativity around that thing. Instead, try to focus on the truth and on being effortless:
“What will bring you everlasting happiness is to know the truth about everything and to know the truth about who you are. That will take away all of the things that everybody is worried about. … Everything falls into place. The world and the manifestation of the world becomes even more incredible than it was. … The more effortless you are, the greater you manifest everything that you ever dreamt of.” – Rhonda Byrne
Rhonda believes that effort comes from the ego and the mind. Being effortless doesn’t mean you do nothing; it means you’re not struggling. It’s about tapping into a state of flow and a greater source than yourself. It’s about going beyond the mind — abandoning limiting beliefs, judgment, and negativity in favor of letting the Universe show you the way. When we can let the Universe lead, we can stop resisting and struggle less.
“We see the world as solid and us as separate, but if we just shift our perspective ever so slightly, we see something entirely different. That is completely freeing.” – Rhonda Byrne
Shifting your mind to become aware of your thoughts, practicing gratitude, and manifesting what you want to achieve is how you will suffer less!
Rhonda’s mission today is to help others achieve consciousness in the simplest way possible. She’s unlocked the three words that will help you find the core of who you are.
“The Greatest Secret is simple. So simple that three words will get you there. Three words will get you to who you are. However, it’s all of the beliefs and the opinions and the fixed ideas we have in our mind that will make something very simple [become] complicated.” – Rhonda Byrne
These three words? “Are you aware?” If you’re not aware, you’re in suffering, in lack, in frustration, anger, resentment, or judgment. Being aware is existing in this present space because the past and future don’t exist. If you can embrace the present moment and be aware of your thoughts, you can start to discover your whole self.
Rhonda Byrne is an incredible gift — I highly recommend you listen to this full episode to take in all of her wisdom and joyful energy. Rhonda’s curiosity and search for life’s answers are a true inspiration. She has a way of explaining these incredibly complex answers in simple ways that are easy to apply to your own life.
Here is Rhonda Byrne’s definition of greatness:
“[Greatness is] who we really are. That’s the only greatness there is. I would say any greatness that we see in the world, the greatness of the infinite being that we are, I would say that absolutely categorically, there can be no other greatness than the greatness of the infinite being manifesting through all people. Everybody is filled with greatness, they just need to realize that.” – Rhonda Byrne
Thank you so much for tuning into this episode! If you enjoyed it, please let me know over on social media, @lewishowes, and let Rhonda Byrne know on Facebook as well. I’d be so grateful if you would share this episode with someone who you think would be inspired by this message. If you haven’t picked up a copy of Rhonda Byrne’s newest book, check it out: it’s called The Greatest Secret and is available here.
Friends, join me on Episode 1,037 to learn about the law of attraction and how to change your mindset to one of abundance with the amazing Rhonda Byrne!
To Greatness,
Music Credit:
Kaibu by Killercats
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