Tag: bob bly

Bob Bly inspired me to become a copywriter back in the late 1980s.

His books, such as The Copywriter’s Handbook, always informed me in a practical way. I began my business career as a copywriter in Houston because of him. He occasionally wrote me snail mail letters of encouragement. I stay in touch with him, too.

Today he is the author of 85 books.

Eight-five!

I remember he once said he felt like he hadn’t produced much – that was back when he had “only” written fifty books – because he knew Isaac Asimov had written or edited more than five hundred books.

Five hundred!

Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?

I’m running as fast as I can to catch up with Bly and Isimov.

Right now I have about fifty books out, am working on two books, editing an autobiography from my father, completing three music albums, working on new presentations for mega-talks I am giving this year around the world, developing a new process for faster attracting, practicing my saxophone, the guitar, and the synthophone, reading more books a week than most people do in a lifetime, and of course still maintaining my fitness program, writing these blog posts, handling social media, promoting my past projects (which is a giant catalog), helping my Miracles Coaches, and more. (And, of course, keeping my relationships alive and well.)

Some say I’m a “force of nature.”

Others say I should switch to decaf. 🙂

Why so much productivity?

What drives a man like Bob Bly or me? What drove Asimov?

An answer is in the new book, Create or Die: A Manifesto for Fearless Creators Everywhere, by Morgan Giddings, PhD.

"Create or Die"

Her basic premise is that unless you keep creating, you begin to die.

Literally.

Die.

Life is designed to urge you to create, to move forward, to constantly expand, grow, develop, change and challenge.

In fact, challenging yourself is one of the best ways to maintain the exuberance of life.

According to Dr. Giddings, you don’t have a real choice.

Yes, you can decide to “do nothing” but life itself, being the great creative force it is, will move you off your bed if it has to get others to move you and it out the door.

And yes, as Asimov proves, you can create and still die.

But real living comes from persistent creating.

It’s not about the end result – as that will change again in time – but about creating.

There isn’t a “finish line” or even a “perfect” solution.

There will always be something else to create. Another problem to solve.

Life is about creativity. Period.

All of the problems in your personal life – and on the planet – can be resolved with creativity.

Whether oil shortage or climate change or anything else you are worried about, there is an answer, and that answer will come from creativity.

New problems will occur, but that’s just the nature of life’s ever expansion.

And that’s an opportunity for more creativity.

The wise approach is to challenge yourself by choosing your creative projects.

Let your passion lead the way.

Let your enthusiasm for an idea burn bright in your life.

Bob Dylan is still creating, too. About 1,000 songs in this gigantic hefty book.

One of my favorite sections in Dr. Giddings’ book is where she reveals the formula for attracting money.

It goes like this:

1. Use your creativity to create something of great value.

2. Use your creativity to effectively communicate the value of your invention, product, or service to others (market it).

That’s it.

She says everything else is just “playing the lottery.”

She also points out that you need a clear idea of what you want money for, and you need to be clear of any limiting beliefs about money, in order to actually have her formula work.

I'm still creating music, too. This is album eleven.

She writes, “Though a surface-level desire for money exists, it gets distorted and watered down by all these other beliefs that are floating around contradicting it. The contradictory beliefs dilute the singular focus that’s necessary for the kind of creative action that leads to results.”

I’m not sure what Bob Bly would say, and the late Asimov is no longer talking or writing, but in my own case, I am driven by the need to communicate what I am excited about.

It’s not about money – it’s about passion.

Money becomes the pleasant side effect of creating value and sharing it with the world in creative ways.

I am driven to create by the impulse of creativity itself.

My hunch is that everyone has this impulse — yes, even you — but most people are pros at rationalizing why they shouldn’t create.

Excuses are easy.

Wimping out is easy.

Just coasting is easy.

The challenge – and the voltage of life itself – comes from creating.

Ray Bradbury, the legendary sci-fi writer who wrote classic books and unforgettable stories – who wrote every day of his life – once  said in an interview:

“There’s an Egyptian myth I heard about years ago that when you die as an Egyptian and you go off to visit the gods the first question asked of you at the gates of heaven is ‘Did you have enthusiasm?’ And if you answer negatively you don’t get in. My response to everything in life that I really loved has been enthusiasm.”

You most likely have a desire to create something.

A book, song, movie, business, product.

I have no idea what your secret creative urge might be.

But you do.

Dr. Giddings is giving you a wake up call.

Either create – or die.

And ignore the skeptics, critics, and cynics.

Dr. Giddings writes, “Cynicism is rooted in fear…Worse, it’s toxic to creativity. To be creative, it’s essential to express yourself fully, from your own unique vantage point.”

Critics and the like are living in fear and building themselves up by tearing others down.

Ignore them and pursue your dream.

“Creativity is an inside game,” Dr. Giddings writes. “It’s never about pleasing external critics. It’s about producing something that you feel is great, and then connecting with the right audience who will like whatever it is that you produced.”

I’m sure Bly and Isimov would nod in agreement.

Before I dismiss class today, here’s a final thought to consider:

One of my favorite authors during my development as a writer was Jack London, who once wrote –

“I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out
in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom
of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.”

I agree.

Now, don’t you have something to create today?

Ao Akua,

Joe

PS – I didn’t want to write this post. I was tired, my eyes were blurry, I had other things to do. But the creative urge in me pushed from inside and said “Write this.” I obeyed. And guess what? I am not tired, my eyes are not blurry, and the other things I have to do are next. Follow your creativity. Live your dreams. Expect Miracles.

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A friend about to turn 40 years old sent me this question –

“What is the main/biggest thing you wish you knew about money before you were 40?”

I thought about it and came up with the following answer:

Stop worrying; it all works out.

Since I’m now in my sixties and have gone from homeless to poverty to filing bankruptcy to sleepless nights and more, only to end up living the life of one of the rich and famous, I’d say that all my worrying didn’t help at all.

Worry is a belief. It’s trained behavior. Most of us think if we worry, we will whip ourselves into doing something. But worry doesn’t stimulate right action. It stimulates more worry. And from a Law of Attraction view, worry begets worry.

Think about it: Under the feeling of worry are fear based thoughts, such as “What if this doesn’t work out?”, “What if my car is repossessed?”, “What if I lose my job and then…and then…and…!?!”

Those thoughts will create a reality that matches them.

Those thoughts will lead to desperate behaviors, and cause you to ignore more prosperous opportunities.

Those thoughts will create the same old scenario.

As I’ve said many times, you will easily attract what you fear or what you love, because both are strong emotions packed with high voltage energy.

It’s wiser to focus on what you love rather than on what you loathe.

Come from faith rather than fear.

Come from prosperity rather than panic.

Said another way –

Watch which thoughts you feed. If you think lack and limitation but pray for peace and prosperity, you are like a farmer who plants strawberries but prays for tomatoes.

I’ve learned that I need to work but not worry.

Trusting work, faithful work, passionate work.

But no worry work.

Using worry and fear to motivate yourself is a fool’s game. It doesn’t help.

Had I known this fact of life before the age of 40, I would have been happier and slept better, and probably reached success sooner.

In short, keep working, stop worrying.

My friend also asked —

“What single factor/knowledge/idea would you say was the most influential in being financially free and successful?”

Again, I meditated on the question and came up with this answer —

Definitive course on attracting money

Realize money can come from multiple avenues.

For decades I thought money would only come to me from my writing. I couldn’t see any other way. While I continued to labor at day jobs I hated, just to survive, I also continued to write and submit my work to publishers. My entire focus was on money coming from writing.

I couldn’t see the bigger pie.

I couldn’t see the world of infinite possibilities.

I couldn’t even imagine it.

When I began to expand my mind, through books and audios I borrowed from the library, and allowed money to come to me in new and even surprising ways, my income increased.

For example, I began to speak in public.

That was a huge undertaking for me because my natural inclination at the time was to be a book nerd and live in the library. Public speaking was terrifying. Even traumatizing.

But I did it as it introduced a new way to receive money. Either I would get paid to speak or I spoke for free but sold my books in the back of the room. It worked.

I did more than speak, too.

I also tried publishing my first book as a correspondence course. This got my mind to relax the restraint that published writing meant having a publisher. It didn’t. I could take a book, break it into lessons, and sell it as a course.

I tried it once with a classified ad. (This was long before the Internet.)

It failed.

But a decade later, when I tried the same thing online, it became a major income stream for me. It led to my creating e-classes, and attracting tens of thousands of dollars (and a BMW Z3, which was a big deal for me at the time) as a result.

Learning to expand my mind about how money could come to me also led to recording audios.

The legendary publicist and dog lover, Paul Hartunian, told me how easy it was to make audio programs in my home. I listened to this wonderful mentor and acted.

I bought a cheap cassette player, put pillows under the window and door cracks, and recorded a marketing program in my bedroom. Most of it was based on what I learned from researching P.T. Barnum, and writing a book about his business secrets, titled There’s A Customer Born Every Minute.

I sold that home made program for $500 a copy. It later became my first Nightingale-Conant program, called The Power of Outrageous Marketing.

And that, of course, led to me creating numerous audio programs for Nightingale, and becoming one of their best selling authors ever.

My mind expanding didn’t stop there.

All the self-study I had put into becoming a writer meant I had skills most others didn’t have.

Bob Bly taught me (through his books and later with snail mail letters he was kind enough to write to me) to be a copywriter. That lead to a nice income writing sales letters, ads, and more (eventually even writing sales copy for Jerry and Esther Hicks, of Abraham fame).

As I continued to expand my mind, I learned about direct mail marketing.

I borrowed a little money from my parents, rented a mailing list, and sent out a sales letter I had hypnotically written about a new software program. (To show you how long ago this was, the program was DOS based and came on a floppy disk).

It worked.

I still remember opening my post office box and seeing an order for the software. I felt like I had won the lottery.

I also wrote a book about my own invented form of copywriting, had it bound at Kinkos, and sold it at my talks. That self-published manual later became my first e-book, thanks to Mark Joyner, which led to a long series of profit attracting digital products.

It changed my life forever.

It’s still famous today, in print and as an e-book, titled Hypnotic Writing.

And all of this was long before I was ever invited to be in the hit movie The Secret, which of course also changed my life forever, as it shot me into global notoriety and led to numerous unexpected opportunities.

I could go on, but you get the point.

My income increased when I didn’t insist that it come to me in a particular way.

Expand your mind to allow money to arrive in other ways.

Money doesn’t have any beliefs about you; you have beliefs about money. It will come to you if you don’t block it or wear blinders when it drives by your home.

To help you stop worrying and expand your mind —

Read books by Catherine Ponder, Arnold Patent, Napoleon Hill, and me.

Read The Power of Impossible Thinking by Yoram Wind and Colin Cook.

Read Create or Die: A Manifesto for Fearless Creators Everywhere by Dr. Morgan Giddings.

Listen to audio programs from Nightingale-Conant, from Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Mark Victor Hanson, and me.

Listen to The Secret to Attracting Money by Joe Vitale.

Of course, you still have to follow your passion, take inspired action, maintain your character and your health, but the above will get you going in the right direction to attract more money.

Happy New Year!

Expect Miracles!

Ao Akua,

Joe

NOTE:  If you are truly panicking because the bills have piled up, you’re out of work, and you see no end in sight, remember that there are numerous resources available to help you. Yes, take care of your mindset, but also call for help when you need it. The back of my book, Attract Money Now, has a resource section. It’s free right here.

PS – The fastest way to expand your mind is with the help of your own Miracles Coach. Check out Miracles Coaching.

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