"I'm the kind that follows the directions and I figured it made sense, and if I'd just follow the directions of this Law of Attraction deal, well, I figured it would probably work out."  - Ellen Degeneres

Ask Ellen Degenereswhat's the secret to her success and she'll quickly answer "The Secret" every time.  She recalls the time she sat at her kitchen table and wrote down every good and positive thing that ever happened to her; whether it was career, relationship, or family.  She says she was convinced about the merits of the Law of Attraction when she discovered that everything good had one particular constant attached:  "They were the things I had consciously used the Law of Attraction to get, and my other list ― the one with all the bad stuff on it, or at least the stuff that wasn't good for me… Well, I bet you can guess that one.  Or those ones!" she chuckles.   

Later, as she walks along a garden path that winds serpentine behind and around her California home, she alternates between waxing poetic about the many ups and downs she has experienced, then quickly switches to her signature, self-effacing humor as she recounts some of the more "ridiculous episodes aboard the S.S. Ellen!"  Her laugh, and the humor behind it, is contagious.

"Yeah," she embarks on another tangent, another part to one begun two hours before, "this Law of Attraction Secret thing is, I'm convinced, the answer to the world's ills."  Is she serious, or is she serious?  "I mean, look at me?  Seriously!  I'm a kid from what I wouldn't even call a town down in Louisiana and I can't say I had the greatest childhood, unless you compare me to one of those workhouse kids in Charles Dickens; well, not that I worked, really, but my stepfather wasn't the best and, well, you can see how in later days when I caught onto this Attraction law, well, it was pretty darn attractive."

She says all this in less time than it takes most people to dial a phone number.  And without missing a beat, adds…"See, I'm one of those kinds of people that actually reads and follows the directions.  Drives Portia crazy, but, well, if that's the worst ― anyway, I figured it made sense and if I'd just follow the directions of this Law of Attraction deal, well, I figured it would probably work out."

She adds: "Are you getting all this?  Good.  Probably couldn't say it

the same way again.  But, hey, who knows?"

She steers the conversation back to her belief in the Law of Attraction, and begins to describe her pivotal moment when she knew "beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was real."

"I'd have to go back to the mid-eighties when I was doing stand-up on The Tonight Show," she recalls.  "I had been envisioning all the time this one thing. Probably the most important thing when you're an up and coming comic:  that Johnny Carson would call me over to the couch."

It's no secret that in stand-up comedy circles, an invitation by 

Mr. Carson for a short couch interview following the act, is a career maker.  Just ask some other folks named Seinfeld, Barr, and Leno what an invite to the couch meant to their respective entertainment career paths.  Ellen recalls her anointing-by-Carson…

"They say you just stand over there, he'll say thank you and you walk back off and that's what I was told was gonna happen, but in my head, I had for five or six years known that he was gonna call me over."  And he did.

"Law of Attraction?" she kids in a faux announcer voice, "You be the judge!"

Okay.  It works.

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