Rhonda Byrne Celebrates 20th Anniversary of ‘The Secret’ Publication with Two New Books and a Special Event

Shhhh! Don’t tell a soul … NOT!

When The Secret was published in 2006, word about the book spread around the world like wildfire. In the early 2000s, Australian Rhonda Byrne was facing challenging times and one night found herself in complete despair.

“I felt like I was at a complete dead end, with no way of making anything better,” she says. “What was the worst night of my life became the greatest moment of my life, when my daughter handed me a 100-year-old book called The Science of Getting Rich (by Wallace C. Wattles, published 1910).”

Byrne sat down and read the entire book, and she “realized that our thoughts are directing exactly what happens in our life. In other words, we create our life with our thoughts. The Secret was born on that very night, because I immediately knew that what I needed to do was share this extraordinary discovery with the world.”

In a nutshell, Byrne says The Secret teaches you how to use the power of your thoughts to make your life what you want it to be, through the three-step process of “Ask, Believe, Receive.”

“When you do this process, you can create or change anything in your life. Step One, Ask, means getting a very clear picture in your mind of what you want. Step Two, Believe, is thinking and feeling that you already have what you want — that sets the frequency that draws what you want to you. And Step Three is Receive. Once you believe that what you’ve asked for is already yours, you feel that joy and gratitude before it even arrives — and you will receive it.”

Byrne first created The Secret as a documentary film in 2006 and wrote the book later that year. The book became quite a phenomenon, selling more than 34 million copies in more than 50 languages, and spending more than 200 weeks at the top of the New York Times best-seller list.

She left Australia before the documentary was released, but moved to America for the launch, and has lived here ever since. 

From the moment she arrived in Santa Barbara to celebrate a birthday weekend soon after her U.S. arrival, “I knew I was going to live there, and it was just a few months later that I moved,” she said. “I lived in Montecito for 15 years and loved every single second of it.”

Byrne moved to Ojai five years ago but still spends a lot of time in Santa Barbara and Montecito, saying, “I am very fortunate to have lived in two gorgeous places.”

The Secret’s 20th anniversary launches a new edition in November, with a fresh afterword from Byrne, along with 20 insights she’s drawn from two decades of living the methods outlined in the book.

Asked to reflect on any scientific advances that may have changed in the two decades since publication, Byrne says the heart of the book hasn’t changed, and defers to the philosophers who inspired her ideas in the first place. “Science continues to reveal fascinating things about the power of our thoughts, particularly through neuroscience and psychology. But my greatest love and passion is for the timeless wisdom that has been handed down over thousands of years through the many spiritual traditions. And perhaps even more than that, it’s from my own experience of using the principles myself for 20 years, along with the amazing experiences shared by millions of people around the world. In the end, I believe our own experience is the best gauge of what is true in our life. And the evidence I’ve seen in my own life has been overwhelming!”

This November, Byrne is also launching a new book, Thought Rules. “My understanding of the principles I shared in The Secret has continued to deepen over the past 20 years, but the fundamental truths haven’t changed. I have spent those years practicing every single day, and I’ve learned so much about how to use the power of our thoughts to create the life we want.” 

The new book distills the 12 essential rules of thought that anyone can begin using in their everyday life. “It’s my clearest and most practical guide yet to understanding your thoughts and using that power deliberately…. Thought Rules is another way for me to share what I’ve learned and help people discover just how incredible their lives can be.” 

See Rhonda Byrne at a special event on November 22 at 6 p.m. at Godmothers (2280 Lillie Ave., Summerland), in conversation with Judith Curr, the publisher who first brought The Secret to readers 20 years ago. See bit.ly/4z7vRmU.