Secret

“I beat you again, Google!”

It’s my favorite thing to say.

I’ve been beating Google virtually every day for well over a year now.

I beat Google!

I shared my secret with a friend and he thought I should share it with the world.

Well, here goes:

Every day I go into my Google calendar and set my appointments and to-do lists for the next day.

Working out, calls, interviews, errands, etc., are all put into my Google calendar.

I also set timers to go off ten minutes before each task, sending me a text message to remind me of the activity.

Here’s what I do that I doubt few others do:

I intentionally try to get my task done before the Google text reminder alert goes off.

For example, in the morning, I get up, have my coffee, check my email, and head to the gym.

I give my all in an intense workout and then return inside to drink my protein shake and relax.

Right about then, the Google text alarm sounds off to remind me to go workout.

Since I already worked out, I feel I beat Google.

I look at my phone and exclaim, “I beat you, Google!”

It feels great!

I love this game!

Why is this so cool?

Every day I glance at my to-do list and do my best to complete each task before Google has a chance to remind me of each one.

In a way, I’m getting my brain to fire off chemicals of satisfaction.

Or, as Dr. Loretta Breuning might put it, I have controlled my brain rush.

Since my brain (and yours) wants to feel those happy chemicals spurt, I have created a little game to make it happen.

There’s a new book by Caroline Arnold called Small Move, Big Change, about microresoluting your life.

In a way, you set a small, doable goal to give yourself that feel good experience of accomplishment.

Do it in baby steps

Rather than resolving to do something big — like lose 10 pounds this month — you micro-resolve to do something today — like go workout — that is in the direction of the bigger goal.

The little wins give you the brain rush you need to feel good and realize you are moving in the right direction.

Bill Phillips taught me about the value of “a win” every day.

I’ve heard Bill say there are days where he “needs a win.”

Those are the days where you might be tempted to think life is stacked in everyone else’s favor.

Instead of feeling like a victim, and spinning off the ledge into some sort of self hatred or disappointment, you can set a micro-goal or micro-resolution, do it, and feel great again.

When I say I am going to do something, and I do it, I experience a “win” – and the chemical feel good brain rush that goes along with it.

It’s the same with my game to beat my own calendar in Google.

It’s simply a way to make getting stuff done fun, exciting and even addictive (in a positive sense).

I love hearing my phone alarm go off and I get to say, “I beat you again, Google!”

Ao Akua,

Joe

PS — My new album Reflection is an official bestseller in my self-help Healing Music singer-songwriter catalog. Hear samples and grab a copy of the CD (with a collectible booklet and free surprise gift) by clicking right here.

Click image to read book

Look closely at this photo…

Bill Phillips presenting medal to me

I am smiling as bright as sunshine itself.

You can’t imagine how joyful I felt when Body-for-Life fitness legend Bill Phillips presented me with a medal and a certificate for completing his 12-week transformation challenge.

It was my third time to complete his challenge in the last twelve months, and my third medal, but the first one presented to me in public by Bill himself.

I was as giddy as a star struck teenager meeting a super hero.

And I have met super heroes, like the Hulk Lou Ferrigno…

Meeting Lou Ferrigno in my gym one year ago (and me 50 pounds heavier)

And Superman Dean Cain…

Meeting Dean Cain (and I was 50 pounds heavier)

But look at me now…

I'm a champion!

If you’ve been following this blog, you know I have been on a physical transformation journey for one year now. It started when I attended Bill’s Transformation Camp in February 2013.

I have stayed true to Bill’s teachings. I eat right, workout intensely five days a week, follow his principles for self awareness, spirituality, generosity, forgiveness, supporting others in their quest, and more.

The results speak for themselves. I’ve released at least 50 pounds of extra weight, added at least 15 pounds of muscle, and feel like a young Hercules.

A lot of people are supporting me, too, as you can see from this art that was given to me:

Hercules Joe

Bill’s latest weekend camp is called LIFE. It stands for Learning + Inspiration + Fitness + Energy. I just returned from the very first one at his center in Denver.

I loved it.

It’s a refined and more on target version of his Transformation Camp. The eating advice is the same, the workouts are changed a little, the new stories are moving and inspiring, and the daily worksheets (now in full color) are more specific; more like a game you can play to win every day.

I'm very proud of this accomplishment

One big change is Bill wants us to begin with a life vision.

From there, create a year goal, a six month goal, and then a 12 week goal.

That assignment alone helped me feel inspired and fired up to keep moving forward.

It’s no longer about twelve weeks; it’s about life.

I strongly recommend Bill’s work. It isn’t about weight loss per se as it is about living with integrity and wellness.

I regard Bill as a hero in my life; a source of transformation and inspiration from way back in 2004 when I entered and completed five back-to-back Body-For-Life challenges (and received an honorable mention for one of them).

Bill is a genius at sorting through all the conflicting data about health and fitness, and boiling it down to what actually works across the board for all of us.

He’s not a jock so much as a spiritual teacher in the gym.

He’s the Socrates of fitness.

The Buddha of health.

The Aurelius of spiritual-physical balance.

I love the man and his work.

His latest book, Transformation, should be read by all of us. (He’s working on a new book, which I am excited to read.)

Comparing biceps with the legend (Bill, not me)

The people who attend his weekend events are from all ages and all walks of life. Each has a story and a struggle, and each is ready to transform under Bill’s guidance.

Every time I attend one of his events — and I’ve been to four now — I am always moved by the people, their life paths, and their commitment to positive change.

Previous posts about Bill Philips and my Transformation progress:

March 1 2013 http://blog.mrfire.com/transformation-on-demand/

May 16 2013 http://blog.mrfire.com/transformation-update/

October 22, 2013 http://blog.mrfire.com/transformation-part-three/

I fully endorse Bill Phillips. I am not an affiliate for anything he offers (he doesn’t know I’m writing this) but I fully recommend all of it.

I’m told his May event is sold out. He just announced a June camp for June 6, 7, 8. If I were you, I’d go. For more details, see  http://www.transformation.com/ or send an email to [email protected]

Meanwhile, follow your dreams with passion, commitment, and the fire of inspiration.

This post isn’t about me (okay, yes it is) so much as it is a reminder that you can achieve your dreams, too.

Anything is possible.

Expect Miracles.

Ao Akua,

Joe

PS – Lucky you. You can watch me workout with Bill Phillips in this quick video filmed by his wife Maria. I’m on my last set of reps, lifting 100 pounds (two 50 pound dumbbells) like a gorilla ready for his feeding. Enjoy!

PPS –  I wrote the song “Believe” on my latest album in part due to Bill and his beautiful wife Maria (who released 60 pounds) believing in me. Hear a sample by clicking right here.

My new album is everywhere!

Recently I posted this on my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/drjoevitale :

“Inspiration gives you a desire. Decision makes it an intention. Action makes it real.”

That statement helps clarify what it takes to attract what you want. But let’s explore it deeper than a Facebook text-bite so you understand the power of it.

First, an idea is what you get a feeling to do.

An idea is an internal nudge to create something.

It’s different for each person as each of us has a different life mission. My inspiration might be to write another book, or compose a new song. Yours might be to run for political office, open a bakery, or raise happy kids.

An inspiration is either from what I call the Divine, or it’s from your ego.

Nobody outside of you knows for sure what is right for you. It’s your life and up to you to discern the difference. With a little reflection, though, you can tell where the idea is coming from. Nothing wrong with an ego desire, but it’s nobler to come from a higher purpose.

Your Questions Answered

Recently a listener of my latest audio program, The Zero Point, contacted me and told me about the word “Afflatus.” He thought it might be a better word for the kind of inspiration I refer to these days. He was right.

According to Wikipedia, “afflatus” is a Latin term used by Cicero. It means more than “inspiration,” and in fact translates as —

“…the staggering and stunning blow of a new idea, an idea that the recipient may be unable to explain.”

I love the word afflatus so much that I dedicated my latest album, Reflection, to it.

Again, you can receive an idea based on Memory (previous data in your mind), an Inspiration (combining previous ideas into something new), or from afflatus (a completely new idea that stuns you).

The idea should move you to want to take action.

As I also wrote on my Facebook page –

“If you don’t have some self doubts and fears when you pursue a dream, then you haven’t dreamed big enough.”

And that leads to…

Available for Pre-Order

Next, your decision is what gives the idea power to become a reality.

You have free will, so you can ignore the idea, or you can decide to bring it into reality.

I learned decades ago that if I ignore my inspired calling, my life is bumpy. When I decide to follow my inspiration, life is smooth. I prefer the latter.

Again, it’s your choice. When you decide to follow your inspiration, it now becomes an intention. Intentions rule the earth. It’s just wiser to pursue a higher intention than a lower one.

What’s the difference?

• An ego based intention is only about you.
• A Divine based intention is about you and others.

Decades ago I spoke on the same stage as Jose Silva, the founder of Silva Mind Control. Jose said a goal should influence you and at least three other people.

I love that guideline. It gets you out of your own individual experience of life and moves you into a deeper awareness of others.

It also makes taking action easier.

When you know that your actions are going to touch at least three other people, then you are more motivated to decide to do something.

So step two is to decide.

And that leads to…

Finally, action brings the idea, now an intention, onto the earth plane.

Nothing happens until something moves.

You are a co-creator with life. Life itself wants you to do something. When you do it, you trigger it becoming real.

If I want to write a book, I have to sit down and write.

If I want to play the saxophone, I have to sit down and practice.

If you are going to open a bakery, you need to fill out the forms and do the work.

Meet Saxman Joe

This is where a lot of Law of Attraction students fall short. They think if they just affirm it, it will appear.

Well, it might.

But more often than not, you have to do something to work with reality. It’s no accident that the word ‘action’ is in the word ‘attraction.’

Let me give you one final example of how this process works:

Guitar Monk Mathew Dixon and myself are in the studio recording the third album in our trilogy of “zero” music, following the success of At Zero and Aligning to Zero, this one to be called 432 to Zero.

As is our custom, we don’t plan or strategy. We “make space” for inspiration to guide us, and we are ready to take action on a moment’s notice. We are in the studio, prepared and ready.

What do you hear?

One day neither of us felt compelled or inspired.

We sat in the studio and looked at each other. We’ve done this enough to know that sometimes you have to wait, and sometimes nothing will come. We’ve learned to trust the process and be patient.

Suddenly I felt afflatus strike.

I looked at Mathew and shared my idea.

“What if I played two harmonicas?” I asked.

“But we don’t have a bass line or a foundation track for you to play against. You’d be playing to yourself.”

“I know,” I said. “But I feel like trying it. If it doesn’t work, we can just delete the audio file.”

“Why two harmonicas?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I somehow feel if I just improvised harmonica in what’s called the second position, and then improvised playing in the first position, I’d be in the same key but the two harmonicas would sound different.”

I have no idea where that idea came from.

But since it arrived as a gift, the next step was to decide to act on it, and the third was to take action.

Mathew agreed to try it.

I pulled out two harps, and started to play.

I simply allowed myself to be guided by whatever feeling was welling up and directing me.

I didn’t think about it. I trusted that the process would be whatever it was, and that was good enough.

When I was done playing, Mathew was beaming.

“That was incredible!” he said. “We may have just created a whole new genre of music!”

To hear how it came out go here:

http://youtu.be/uGKQpa48z_o

That’s how this process works.

The formula is simple.

Inspiration gives you a desire. Decision makes it an intention. Action makes it real.

That said, what are you going to do next?

Ao Akua,

joe

PS – My Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/drjoevitale

Member BBB 2003 - 2015

I’ve been reading the book, The Einstein of Money, about the legendary investor — the inspiration for Warren Buffett and countless others — Benjamin Graham.

While I’m not personally an active investor in anything but guitars, a couple of cars, and rare books on marketing and metaphysics, I wanted to learn what this icon had to say about money.

Money Wisdom Revealed

As I was reading it, I was reminded of my own formula for attracting more money.

It goes like this:

Profit = P + P.

I failed algebra in the ninth grade (retook it with a different instructor the next year and got straight A’s, thank you for asking), so my formulas are simple.

They need to be, so I can understand them.

Mine goes like this –

Profit equals your Passion plus the Public’s Interest.

Here’s an example:

Waaaaay back in the early 1990s, I was inspired to learn all I could about Bruce Barton, the now forgotten ad man of the Roaring Twenties, cofounder of BBDO (the giant ad agency), a bestselling author of many books, including The Man Nobody Knows (still in print today), and so much more.

I was fascinated and mystified by the man, his enormous successes, and the strange reality of his being virtually forgotten by the 1960s.

All my research led to my writing a book that became (and still is) one of my most popular ones.

Early Famous Bestseller

So let’s see how the formula worked in this case:

My Passion urged me to investigate Bruce Barton.

There was no rhyme or reason to it.

No contract from a publisher.

No one paying me. (I was in fact broke at the time and struggling.)

From outer reality, there was no evidence at all that a book on Barton would go anywhere.

But I followed my passion anyway.

When it came time for me to title the book, I knew the Public didn’t care about Barton.

After all, he was already forgotten by the 1930s and dead by the 1960s and a footnote in advertising today.

The Public would not buy a biography of Barton.

What would the public buy?

What was their interest?

I knew from my own interest in self-help, self-development and success literature, that the Public has a solid, always hungry interest in success.

So I titled the book The Seven Lost Secrets of Success.

I used the formula of Passion (my interest in Barton) and added Public (their interest in Success) and created a new product (a retitled book).

But did it lead to Profit?

The book was first published in 1992. It quickly went through numerous editions, being sold to my mailing list at the time (this was before the Internet, so it was all snail mail).

One mutilevel marketing company loved it and bought 19,500 copies of it for everyone in their business. (!)

Later, a big publisher bought it from me and published it.

It’s still in print today.

So, yes, it led to Profit.

The formula works

The problem with most people is that they never focus on passion to begin with.

They just chase money.

Wrong.

Money is a lousy motivator.

Passion, on the other hand, is real fire.

But when people follow their passion, they often forget to think of what the public wants.

The public pays for it, so you need to tie your interests to their interests.

You have to find the intersection of your passion and their desires.

While someone later came out with a biography of Bruce Barton, it did not sell well. I’m glad Barton got the attention and respect a biography gives, but from a Profit standpoint, thinking of what the Public wants is wiser. (Actually, if you look at the subtitle of the biography on Barton, you’ll see that the author tried to widen his reach to appeal to the public by not just writing a biography of Barton, but by making it about America itself.)

Bio of Barton

Here’s my formula again —

Profit equals your Passion plus the Public’s Interest.

A lot of my thinking about this developed decades ago, when I read a little book from 1928 called, How to Profit from that Impulse.  While that 68 page book, which was about poetry, didn’t reveal any formula that I remember, it got me thinking about how to profit from your passion. That led, in time, to the formula I just revealed to you.

I’ve applied this same formula to my music.

When I decided to become a musician, I did enough research to shockingly discover that there are 3,000 new albums released weekly. (!)

That’s overwhelming competition.

How would I ever stand out in the crowd?

I looked at my Passion (making original music), thought about what the Public wants (to be healthy and happy), and opted to become the world’s first self-help singer-songwriter.

My Product/Profit became a new category of music that I call Healing Music.

This has paid off with seven albums so far, all doing well enough for me to be encouraged to make more. (And I will, including me playing the saxophone on a future album.)

Click image to pre-order new album

As you can see, the formula works.

You just need to apply it.

Here it is one more time for you to ponder —

Profit equals your Passion plus the Public’s interest.

I’m still reading The Einstein of Money, but doubt Benjamin Graham had much to say about my formula for success. And remember that even high rollers and big time investors are often motivated by something other than money.

As Donald Trump once said –

“Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.”

Play the game of attracting money, try out my P=P+P formula, and see what you think.

Expect Miracles.

Ao Akua,

joe

PS – Want more? The definitive audio course on attracting money is still The Secret to Attracting Money.

Member BBB 2003 - 2015

“It’s easier to remember than it is to create.”

Daniel Barrett told me that when I was struggling with writing my first songs.

I didn’t get it.

“Your future already contains the songs,” he explained. “All you need to do is remember them.”

Really?

It took me a while to grasp the fact that Daniel was on to something colossal.

As a result of working with his “Remembering Process,” I recorded my first album in record time, and six more albums after that.

Today I have seven albums for sale (seven!), and they all were more or less “remembered” into being.

I remember you love this book...

Daniel and I also wrote a book to explain his process, which Hay House just published and is for sale today as a printed hardcover, Kindle ebook, or audio book.

It’s called, of course, The Remembering Process.

This elegant, mind stretching tool can help you leave boundaries and assumptions and tap into a greater source of creativity.

When I spoke about the process a few years ago, Jack Canfield, Gay Hendricks and other thought leaders and self-help authors stood and applauded.

It doesn’t matter what you need to solve, resolve, create or produce.

You can make life easier by remembering rather than creating.

I even used the method itself to write a song about the method.

It’s called “Remember” and it’s on my most recent album, Reflection.

It features a hypnotic poem, my voice, and a kundalini moving baritone saxophone.

Again, Daniel’s process is about letting go to something that already exists.

When I was in one of the many Bill Phillips fitness camps I attended, Bill asked me to describe the process to the group.

He knew that contemplating your “future self” as a person who has already accomplished what you presently struggle with, would be an easy way to tap into that future self’s answers.

You can use the future to solve the present.

Think about it.

That future you already knows the answers, because he/she already resolved the issues.

After all, he/she’s in your future, where your current issue has been resolved and is now your past.

You can do this for anything.

When Daniel and I sat in the studio and wondered what a CD cover would look like, we didn’t try to create one, we just played and wondered what it looked like from the future’s perspective.

We did our best to “remember” the cover.

I know this is a lot to grasp, and an entirely new concept to enjoy, but for more details, go get the book.

I remember you bought copies for friends, and shared it with many.

Ao Akua,

joe

PS – Here is my presentation on The Remembering Process from 2012:

Click image above for free gifts