Tag: houston

The big mistake most people make when it comes to using the Law of Attraction – or using anything to achieve their goals and dreams – is wanting to know how.

“How do I make it happen?”

“What are the exact steps I should take?”

“How do I get from here to there?”

The thing is, you rarely if ever know how in advance.

Once you complete a goal and can hold it in your hand, or show it off to friends, you can explain the how of it.

You’ll then have a complete beginning-middle-ending story.

The puzzle will be revealed.

You can then explain the steps you took.

But not before you attract it.

Recently I surveyed my list, asking what book they would like to see me write next. While virtually everybody wanted more books like Zero Limits and AT Zero on ho’oponopono, a few wrote in some suggestions.

Those people were usually wanting to know how to attract something specifically, and how I did it.

They wanted stories of people revealing exactly how they attracted their goals.

They were asking for step-by-step plans.

This is the big mistake.

Let me explain:

When I was making a name for myself as a copywriter and marketer back in the 1990s, a lot of things occurred that I couldn’t predict, let alone know how to make happen.

For example, the Internet came along.

Who saw that coming?

I was one of the first to be online already – on what were called Bulletin Board Systems (a kind of miniature, local only, limited reach Internet) – so when the actual Internet was born, I was already there.

The speaking and writing I was doing in Houston, where I lived at the time, now being posted on CompuServe and AOL, broadcast my name across planet Earth.

It helped make me cyber-famous.

It was certainly an essential step in my career.

But I never saw it coming.

It was never on my to-do list.

How could it be?

Are you starting to see how this works?

During these same early years, I wrote a little book called Spiritual Marketing.

I released it online, free, and it touched millions of lives.

I never knew it would do anything. I released it to the world in the hope that it would help people.

But The New York Times wrote about it.

And Bob Proctor urged me to publish the book.

And it became an early print-on-demand book.

It was also my first Amazon bestseller.

But I wasn’t following a “how to make it happen” plan.

No such plan existed.

These synchronistic events were happening as a side result of my passion and persistence.

They were happening organically.

They were happening on the way to my dream.

I couldn’t predict them because I couldn’t see them.

They were on the unseen road ahead, to be discovered as I kept moving forward.

And along the way in this adventure a publisher contacted me. He later published my book, Spiritual Marketing, but with a new title: The Attractor Factor.

That became the most powerful and popular self-help book I’ve ever written.

And The Attractor Factor was given to a television producer in Australia. She read it and contacted me.

She said she wanted me to be in a movie she was making about the Law of Attraction.

It was to be called The Secret.

That movie changed my life.

It put me on Larry King’s television show, twice, and got me invited to speak in countries I didn’t know existed.

How do you make those things happen?

After all, none of them could have been foreseen.

When people ask for the step-by-step exact plan to make something happen, they are making the mistake of thinking there is such a plan.

There isn’t.

There is a general formula, but not a specific one.

There are formulas for helping you choose your intention, start taking action, and maintain momentum once you get going.

But there isn’t a specific “do this and then do this” plan.

Even Mark Twain knew it.

Twain said, on his 70^th birthday, “You can’t reach old age by another man’s road. My habits protect my life but they would assassinate you.”

Thinking you can copy the specific things I did in my life to attract and achieve specific results in your life is a big mistake.

Thinking there is a “how” to get where you want to go is an error.

You attract the results you want with the formulas I have revealed, in books like The Attractor Factor, Attract Money Now, and most recently in The Miracle.

Other self-help authors have other formulas.

Mine goes something like this:

1. Declare your intention or inspiration.
2. Take the first baby step to begin moving toward your goal.
3. Keep taking action on all next steps and new opportunities.
4. Surround yourself with positive people and messages.
5. Clear any limiting beliefs as you notice them.

You’ll notice there isn’t a specific task that will work for you and everybody else.

There isn’t because there’s no way to know it in advance.

Steve Jobs knew this, too.

Jobs once said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”

Melissa Etheridge told it to me this way –

“You just get on the path, you just do it, and that’s your intention, and then you let The Great Something bring you the stuff.”

Have faith that it’s all working out in your favor.

Have faith that “The Great Something” is – as I sing in my title track song on my new album – your “hidden ally” in life.

Have faith in yourself, the Universe, The Great Something, and your journey.

And then one day, after the dust has cleared, and you realized you attracted your goal, you can look back and tell the how of it all.

You can then connect the dots.

But all you can do today is the next obvious action step.

It’s the next “dot” that will lead to your success.

Dot by dot, by dot, you will get there.

Now go do today’s “dot.”

Expect Miracles.

Ao Akua,

Joe

PS – Check out www.MiraclesCoaching.com

Robert Collier remains one of my all-time favorite authors.

He influenced me when I was a kid in Ohio in the 1960s, with his books, The Secret of the Ages and The Amazing Secrets of the Masters of the Far East.

My cat loves Robert Collier books too

Collier was the first to introduce me to the Law of Attraction, mind power, positive thinking, and more, while I was a teenager searching for truth in books. His writings deeply influenced me.

“Plant the seed of desire in your mind and it forms a nucleus with power to attract to itself everything needed for its fulfillment.” – Robert Collier

I didn’t know Collier was a copywriter and direct response marketer until, as a struggling adult living in Houston, I stumbled across his magnum opus, The Robert Collier Letter Book.

The final masterpiece, edited by Robert Collier right before he died

I still remember seeing the hardback book, with a faded yellow jacket, on the shelf of Colleen’s Books in Houston.

I stared in disbelief.

I carried the hefty book to the front desk and asked Colleen if the author was the same one who wrote all those metaphysical books.

She didn’t know.

But as I scanned the pages, and saw sales letters for those esoteric books I had read decades earlier, I knew Robert Collier was the author of all of it.

It changed my life forever.

I was an OK copywriter before the letter book; I was a hypnotic copywriter after it.

Rare course by Robert Collier circa 1947

And it was a mention in the letter book that sent me on a wild adventure to discover all I could about Bruce Barton, which led to my writing a turning point book in my career, The Seven Lost Secrets of Success.

Rare 1941 paperback of famous Letters book

And knowing that Collier was a marketer as well as a metaphysician paved the way for me becoming the same, and led to my book Spiritual Marketing, which was later retitled The Attractor Factor, which still later got me invited into the hit movie The Secret.

He so influenced me that I dedicated my book, Hypnotic Writing, to him.

Rare signed Letters book circa 1937

I collect everything by and about Collier.

I have a paperback version of the Letter book, published during war years to save money.

I have an autographed copy of the first edition of the Letter book.

I have a little course he wrote on making money by mail.

I have a complete set of his original booklets.

What was Collier’s secret to success?

Catalog of books Collier’s company sold

It wasn’t sales letters, as I would have guessed, it was ideas.

“Visualize this thing that you want, see it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blue print, and begin to build.” – Robert Collier

Robert Collier felt the idea was more important than the sales letter for it, though he obviously made an icon status legend for himself with his letters.

Books Collier’s company sold

Collier knew numerous people of fame during his lifetime, including strongman George Jowett. I thought that was synchronistic as I know many strongmen of today, including Dennis Rogers and Iron Tamer David Whitley.

I was having lunch with Jerry and Esther Hicks, of Abraham fame, a decade or so past, when Esther said that the greats of long ago met and had lunch, just as we were having lunch that day. They, too, had been influenced by Collier.

Collier left us in 1950.

I was born in 1953.

I often wondered if I were the reincarnated version of him.

Of course, I never got to meet him, let alone have lunch with him, but his spirit, ideas, and wisdom live on, in all of his books, but particularly in his magnum opus, The Robert Collier Letter Book.

Ao Akua,

Joe

PS – Learn more about the Law of Attraction with these in-depth audio programs http://www.nightingale.com/authors/joe-vitale.html