I remember walking into the office that day—It was 2008 and I had been living and working in Shanghai for over 3 years. I was in a bad way again, bemoaning and crying over yet another failed relationship.

One of the colleagues I worked with back then, I’ll call her Grace for the purpose of this article, opened up something in me that struck a chord. A chord, which profoundly embedded itself in my mind ever since.

Eyeing me sympathetically, she casually said

“But Jacqueline, you know your outer world is a reflection of your inner world don’t you?”

No! I didn’t know—I knew nothing of the sort.

 “What? What was that you said”? I asked

“Well, everything that’s happening to you, is because of something inside of you” She said gesturing to and feeling around her heart…

I stared at her blankly—what in the world was she talking about? I really had no idea. Her words had completely gone over my head making as much sense to me as pigs flying.

Until that point, it had never crossed my mind that there was such a concept as “an inner world”, let alone one, which could be mine and I had certainly never considered the possibility that I might have an outer world.

For me there was only one world and in that world—my world, life was hard and involved struggle.

A struggle to understand myself, my life and to make sense of where I was going. To fathom why I wasn’t where I wanted to be and why life just kept slapping me in the face.

It was in my relationships that I struggled most. I felt like a fisherman without a hook…no matter how far I threw my line, it always came back empty. Try as I might, I could not hold down a solid relationship.

Well… several weeks later, during a fabric show in Paris, Grace came running to me in a storm of excitement, her eyes blazing with intensity. She proceeded to pour out to me, how in the weeks following our last conversation, her life had completely changed.

She’d said “Jacqueline I’ve met the man of my dreams, we’re engaged and we’re going to get married in 6 weeks”

I was dumbstruck!

“It know it sounds incredible” she said “but it’s really true”

At the end of her unbelievable story she asked, “Have you heard of the book The Secret?” “No” I said. Then she said “Jacqueline go and buy it as soon as possible, it could really help you—what have you got to loose?”

What did I have to loose? Absolutely nothing!

I was both excited and hopeful; if this book could change Grace’s life so overwhelmingly, maybe it could also change mine.

Before returning to Shanghai, I spent a few days in London, giving me ample opportunity to buy The Secret.

This little book began to unlock an entirely new world to me, introducing concepts that were beyond my comprehension back then. It started the process of uncovering, then slowly lifting the veils of my inner world, taking away some of the focus from my material outer world.

The secret showed me very clearly that I definitely had an inner world—a world that had remained a mystery to me my whole life.

I devoured its pages with eagerness and fascination, drinking in every word. It completely captivated my attention.

It spoke about “The Law of Attraction” a universal law that could give me anything I wanted, if I only knew how to use it. It sounded so fantastical and yet so easy! Why hadn’t I heard about this law before?

According to the law of attraction, we are attracting situations, which we may class as good or bad to us all the time, and what we are attracting depends on the energy we are sending out into the world.

In simple terms, sending out positivity will attract positivity back to us and conversely sending out negativity will bring negativity back to us too.

So whether we are positive or negative in our energy field, depends on the quality of the thoughts we are consistently having, whether they are positive or negative.

It’s also dependent on the inner workings of our minds, which concerns how we feel about ourselves, how we perceive our lives, our families, childhoods, our wealth, relationships our health etc.…

So in short, we are like beacons of energy, transmitting negative or positive thoughts concerning the different areas of our lives, into the ether. These thoughts come back to us in the form of good or bad situations in our lives.

Therefore if we have areas in our lives that are not to our liking, we must look to our thoughts, as life only sends back to us what we ourselves are transmitting.

The problem most of us have however is we are so much better at focusing on and thinking about the things we don’t want, rather than on the things we do want. If we could somehow change this around we could all achieve much more than we are currently doing.

Does this make sense?

At first the notion of a law of attraction was a difficult concept for me to accept. It seemed so ridiculous to me that I had attracted all this “stuff” into my life. Stuff I neither liked nor wanted. I mean how could that be, why would I, or anyone else want to attract negativity into their lives?

Can you guess why it was so hard for me to accept this notion? Well the truth is; if I accepted it, it would mean I was responsible for all the things in my life I didn’t like, and that was something I really couldn’t take!

But you know what—it didn’t take so long for me to see the law of attraction in action. After a few weeks of reading the secret day and night, I went on the Internet and found their website. The website talked about a video of the book and I found myself wishing I could get a copy of the video as soon as possible.

About a week later, while visiting a supplier with a colleague, we started talking about the secret. When I told her how much I really wanted to get a copy of the video, she told me she had the video at home and would make a copy for me.

I was shocked but also very pleased at the same time….it was amazing wasn’t it?

The secret video became my best friend and companion for the next year. I watched it repeatedly, especially when I felt down or needed inspiration. I watched it until I started believing that I could change my own circumstances.

I began to understand that we really are responsible for creating or destroying of our lives. Whether we create the lives we want or drift along in life is up to us.

I started to realise that success or failure solely depends on each individual and that each of us has the key to our own success inside us.

It’s been almost 10 years since that first introduction.

By using the theories I learned all those years ago, I can see just how much I’ve moved forward with my life. My understanding of the law of attraction has also developed and moved on. It’s no longer just a concept but has become my living reality.

it’s now obvious to me just how much my inner world shaped the circumstances in my outer reality and daily life. This inner world that I was clueless to, played such an instrumental role in creating the many challenging, unpleasant situations I’ve had to face during different phases of my life.

It’s taken a long time and many years of working on myself, but I think I can finally say my outer world is really reflecting my inner world.

I feel it right to say thank you to Rhonda Byrne and all the inspirational speakers who created The Secret.  And to Grace (You know who you are) the woman I feel a great debt to for introducing me to this amazing book, all those years ago…

I say a heart felt Thank You.