ZZ Ward is one of my favorite singers. I met her last year and gave her a copy of my book, Life’s Missing Instruction Manual. She read it and sent this to me (used with her permission):
“Hello Joe! I just wanted to let you know that I love “Life’s Missing Instruction Manual” the book you gave me at my concert! I read it every day, and I’m buying copies for all of those close to me!! It’s an amazing book and probably beats out the art of happiness for me which is also a very inspiring book. Any ways I just wanted to let you know!! Thanks again. – ZZ”
Thank YOU, ZZ!
I met a man on a plane once who told me he buys copies of Life’s Missing Instruction Manual, hides a one hundred dollar bill inside each, and gives them out to people who graduate or have some other milestone.
As the author, you know I like hearing this. 🙂
You can get the book (printed, Kindle, or audio version) at Amazon or wherever books are sold.
http://www.amazon.com/Lifes-Missing-Instruction-Manual-Guidebook/dp/111865966X/
Just sharing. 🙂
Ao Akua,
Joe
PS – Be sure to check out ZZ Ward’s music at – http://www.zzward.com
Back in the early 1980s, my wife and I got up at 4 am every Sunday, loaded our car with our dirty clothes, and drove to the laundry mat.
We lived in too small a room to have a washer or dryer.
We went to the mat early to avoid the crowds.
We went there every weekend for 12 years.
We became best friends with the elderly couple who owned the mat.
They were fun to be with; always joking about how I looked like the walking dead at 4 am.
When my wife and I finally could afford a house of our own, the couple who owned the laundry mat bought us a new washer and dryer as a gift.
I never forgot it.
I never shared this story before in public.
But as I relayed it to a friend, she urged me to share it with you.
I’m guessing you still struggle in some area, too.
My advice is to hang in there.
It took me a long time to achieve success, but persistence and optimism paid off.
If I can do it, you can do it.
If you want help, consider — http://www.MiraclesCoaching.com
Ao Akua,
joe
PS — Miracles are possible for you, too. Believe in yourself, believe in the future, and invest in your dreams. You can do it. http://www.MiraclesCoaching.com
“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 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.
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.
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.
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…
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.)
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.)
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,
PS – Want more? The definitive audio course on attracting money is still The Secret to Attracting Money.