This article by Mathes Jones, which appears in the July 2013 issue of Austin All Natural magazine, is just too good not to share here with you. May it inspire you to follow your own dreams. Enjoy. – joe
The Secret of a Secret Movie Star
From Homeless to Bestselling Author to Movie Star to Healing Musician
by Mathes Jones
There’s a natural order and sequence to life that, as humans, we all understand: Night follows day. Crawl before walking. Grapes into wine. Rags to riches. Author turns movie star turns #1 rated singer/songwriter. You know, that kind of thing.
Wait – “What’chu talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?”
Actually, it’s who, not what, and the answer is Dr. Joe Vitale, the world’s first self-help singer-songwriter.
It’s hard to know what Vitale is best known for – his 50+ books, his role in the hit movie, “The Secret,” or the three Grammy winners he attracted for one of the six albums (The Healing Song) he’s produced in only two years.
Oh, did I mention that a mere three years ago he could only strum a few chords on the guitar and had never written a song – much like Paul McCartney and John Lennon who were just learning songwriting after they became the Beatles?
That’s definitely not the nice, neat, orderly progression we expect of typical humans. But Vitale is hardly typical. He lives in a world that looks much different than most of ours. Essentially, he lives – and sings – what he teaches.
Most (but not all) of his books and writings are in the self-help field, and he’s landed a mass of bestsellers, including The Attractor Factor and Zero Limits. His forthcoming book, The Remembering Process, is currently being published by the world’s leading self-help publisher, Hay House, and is due out in April 2014. His co-author is his music producer, Daniel Barrett.
Vitale sounds like a man on fire with a mission, and it’s undoubtedly where his moniker, Mr. Fire, comes from (www.mrfire.com). The truth is he is on a mission, showing the world how to use music to tap into our mind and body’s natural ability to heal.
He calls it Healing Music.
While Vitale has a fascinating backstory of homeless to multi-millionaire (he’s no one-hit wonder), it’s his rise to stardom as a singer-songwriter that’s so compelling today.
Just how does a person succeed wildly in all these different genres?
Perhaps it’s because he’s a gifted communicator, a necessary and common denominator in books, film, and songwriting. Having spent a lifetime learning, applying, and sharing ancient wisdom and current technologies for self-improvement, he’s an expert in teaching people how to clear limiting beliefs that keep them from pursuing the things they really want.
But if you ask me, it’s something else that’s behind his success – something Vitale refers to as divine inspiration.
“The whole point of personal growth is to clear any negative, limiting beliefs and gain access to your Divine self,” explains Vitale. “The great goal is to be so clear that when Divinity speaks through you, you don’t think, hesitate, or second guess about a call to take action. You just do it because there’s no interference from the conscious mind thinking, ‘Oh, should I do it? Am I the one? Do I have the money? Do I have the experience? Do I have the time? What do my neighbors think? What do my parents think?'”
Vitale is an example of everything he teaches and sings in his songs. He takes his inspirations seriously. A believer in fast, immediate action, he’s famous for the saying, “Money likes speed.” And this attitude has clearly worked for him – taking him from zero to voted as #1 singer-songwriter by Reverbnation (in March 2013) in two years.
“When I decided to be a songwriter three years ago, I had thoughts like, ‘I’m not a songwriter or singer. I can’t do that.’ One of my teachers, famed singer-songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard, asked me, ‘Where’s the proof? Where’s the proof you can’t do that?’ When he said that, I thought, ‘My God, he’s right. I have no evidence whatsoever that I can’t sing, play the guitar, record music, or write my own song. There’s no evidence!’”
“And I did, in fact, prove myself wrong. Little did I know in the beginning that inspiration would move through me so fast I’d not only complete my very first CD (Blue Healer) in just two months, but play as many as seven instruments for it – including a very rare 1915 Gibson Harp Guitar.”
Given Vitale’s success as a self-help and spiritual teacher, both in his own life and in his work with others, it’s natural that this rock-blues loving guy would take the music world by storm – bringing his thousands of fans into a new awareness of music’s healing power.
Music’s ability to heal is not a new concept. Its power has been storied in ancient text for thousands of years of recorded history, and today is well documented in medical research, which Vitale describes in his new ebook, Healing Music: The Miraculous Power of Positive Music to Uplift, Relax, Transform, Awaken, and Rejuvenate.
Vitale brings music to a new level, one accessible to everyone, whether at home, working out, or traveling. Each album he writes, sings, and records has a certain emphasis and intention, a particular therapeutic use and result – because, as he says, “Intention is a key driver in healing of any kind, and it matters in music, too, from the person who created it to the person listening.”
Using certain types of beats and tempos known to affect the mind and body positively, along with positive messages to uplift a sagging spirit, his eclectic music style is as wide and varied as his range of success. We’re talking sheer passion, not elevator music – everything from soothing to down home stomping fun, like his standout song, “You Gotta” (on his recent singer-songwriter album, Sun will Rise).
Whoever said a little fun can’t hurt you was only partially right – it can heal you. And Vitale’s music is proof of it. “The idea behind healing music like mine is to allow the high vibration of inspired music to work on you. That’s the basis for the healing.”
Being the world’s first self-help, singer-songwriter has its privileges. He’s attracted some of the music industry’s finest, including Glenn Fukunaga (Robert Plant), Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer Joe Vitale (Yes, of the same name) and Grammy award winner David Darling to perform and record with him. He’s also recorded two instrumental albums with accomplished Guitar Monk Mathew Dixon. It’s no longer a secret that like attracts like.
According to Vitale, becoming a self-help musician was simply the next step. He got the call, so to speak, and, true to form, acted quickly on that divine inspiration. And it’s this instinct that’s so inspiring to the rest of us.
When asked about his meteoric path, he says, “In a world of all possibilities, there’s only one thing that can stop you…your own mind. Fortunately, you can change that. You can expand your own capacity to receive all the good things in life.”
From the outside looking in, Vitale does make quantum leaps look like natural evolution, gliding seamlessly from one successful reality to another.
Hmm, maybe there is something to that healing music.
“Blue Healer” www.HealingMojoMusic.com
“Strut!” www.GetUpandStrut.com
“The Healing Song” www.TheHealingSong.com
“Aligning to Zero” (with Mathew Dixon) www.AligningtoZero.info
“AT Zero” (with Mathew Dixon) www.AtZeroMusic.com
“Sun Will Rise” www.HealingRockMusic.com
“I want to attend your event but I’m broke”
Some people say they can’t afford the Attract Money Now Live event I’m hosting in November in Austin, Texas because they don’t have the money.
http://www.AttractMoneyNowLive.com
If you feel that way, please continue reading.
I’ll be blunt –
The truth is, everybody has money. You have money, too. You may not have as much as you would like right now, but you have *some* money.
The thing is, you’re choosing to spend your money in ways that may or may not be helping you attract more money.
You know what I’m talking about.
I’m asking you to take a cold, hard look at your relationship with money.
Are you leveraging it to attract more money?
Probably not.
Most people spend their money to survive, not to grow and prosper.
And that’s why they struggle.
I learned a long time ago that one of the best ways to attract more money is to invest your existing funds in ways to bring in even more funds.
This isn’t as hard as it may sound.
I’m talking about changing your mindset.
I’m talking about investing in you.
For example, if you could invest $595 and instantly get $12,000 in value, wouldn’t it be smart to do so?
Of course it would.
When you register for the Attract Money Now Live event, you are instantly given access to online videos worth $12,000 that will begin to transform your consciousness around money.
The videos are called Awakened Millionaire Secrets, and they will stir your mind into expanded thinking that you probably can’t even imagine right now.
http://www.AttractMoneyNowLive.com
I know you may feel broke right now, but I also know if you make a daring decision, you could change your life — and your bank account — forever.
Plus the speakers at my event are off-the-charts incredible.
I’m talking about a fitness legend, a famous movie star, and others — including me — who will be there to transform you at the core so you can have, do, or be whatever you can imagine.
Get full details about the event and the speakers and the “$12,000 for $595” offer at http://www.AttractMoneyNowLive.com
Go for it.
Ao Akua,
Joe
PS – Remember, it’s not about the money. I’m doing my best to help you with free gifts like my ebook Attract Money Now at http://www.attractmoneynow.com and the free ebook The Miracles Manual at http://www.miraclesmanual.com Have you read them? Have you acted on the ideas in them? It’s ultimately up to you to take action and free yourself to express the Divinity within. With more money, you can do a lot of good in the world. Are you ready? Go here now http://www.AttractMoneyNowLive.com
“Couldn’t you just buy it off the shelf?”
I was trying to tell a friend about a cholesterol lowering natural health product I had invested in, called Ideal Cardio Formula. I explained that I spent $12,000 on it so I could personally have it to use myself.
He didn’t understand.
“Couldn’t you just buy the key ingredients of the formula in separate bottles and then take that?” he asked. “It would have cost you far less.”
He was thinking like most people think. He was trying to save a buck and take care of himself. In his mind, the “buy the basic ingredients” approach was smart thinking. It was efficient and frugal. From that limited perspective, he was right.
But he was missing a secret few people know.
I figured he could make $100,000 or more if he knew this secret, so I proceeded to explain it to him.
“Look, when my doctor said I had high cholesterol,” I began, “I wanted a solution without taking his prescribed drug, which I knew had potential dangerous side effects. So I went to a friend of mine who is also a medical doctor, but with an interest in handling health problems with herbs first.”
“I understand that,” my friend said.
“Let me continue,” I said. “My herb-loving doctor told me he had a formula that he developed himself that was a blend of twelve ingredients that he guaranteed would lower cholesterol in thirty days. I naturally wanted it.”
“I would, too,” he said.
“But he said he didn’t have any of the product, and added it would take twelve thousand dollars to make a batch of about two thousand bottles of it as a minimum run from a manufacturer.”
“Two thousand bottles!” my friend exclaimed. “Again, couldn’t you just go to a health store and buy the ingredients and take those?” he asked. “You wouldn’t have to spend twelve grand!”
He was making the mistake most people do. He was thinking of only himself. As long as he did, he wouldn’t have the secret for success.
I saw this moment as a prime chance to transform his life forever – if he’d just listen to me.
“If you don’t mind, let me give you a lesson in prosperity,” I continued. “You’re right. I could buy the ingredients in separate bottles, spend a hundred bucks, and lower my cholesterol. I’d be doing a smart thing. I’d be taking care of myself. But the smarter approach would be to take care of others and myself.”
He still didn’t get it.
So I made another attempt to explain my thinking.
“By investing twelve grand in 2,000 bottles of the cholesterol lowering material, I’d become an entrepreneur who changes lives. How many people need to lower their cholesterol? Millions? I could sell those extra bottles to those other people. I just went from taking care of just me to taking care of others – and being rewarded with money!”
This is the secret few know.
Most people don’t think beyond themselves. That’s fine for survival. You do need to take care of yourself. But the real secret to success is when you take care of others and yourself.
I’m talking about a shift in perception. You might think that this is a mental operation that you’ll never be able to do. It might seem like a foreign way of perceiving the world around you.
I used to believe I couldn’t think like this, too. I remember thirty years ago listening to marketing genius Jay Abraham say he‘d walk into a gym and see a hundred ways they could make more money. He’d then rattle them off. I’d listen to him and say to myself, “How do you think like that?”
But there have been clues along the way.
When I was conducting research for my book on P.T. Barnum, the great circus promoter who I later wrote about in There’s A Customer Born Every Minute, I was baffled to learn that he could see what others could not.
For example, when he heard of a little boy who would never grow over three feet tall, people told Barnum it was sad. But when Barnum met the little boy, his eyes saw “Super Star!”
Barnum transformed that little boy into the man the entire world loved and paid to see: General Tom Thumb.
Both Barnum and Thumb became multimillionaires.
I marveled that Barnum had the ability to see gold in what others saw as nothing special.
But today I do think like that.
How did I go from poverty thinker to million dollar thinker?
By reading books, listening to audios, going to events, getting coaching, and retraining my brain.
Now I can’t turn it off.
Now my brain looks around and sees opportunities everywhere.
I talk to people and can hear their “hidden wealth” within minutes.
In my book, Attract Money Now, I say one of the seven steps to financial freedom is to think like an entrepreneur.
How do you think like an entrepreneur?
By hearing your doctor say you need to lower your cholesterol, and then realizing others might need to do so, too. As you discover your own solution, you turn that solution into a product others will buy.
Win- win.
Here’s another example to help you integrate this new way of thinking:
A decade or so ago, a young woman wrote to me, asking questions about making money online. I met with her and listened to her story.
She talked about her life, her interests, her hobbies and so forth. She actually didn’t believe people could really make money online, and certainly doubted her own ability to do so.
But as I listened, I heard an opportunity.
She mentioned she had taught herself how to play the guitar in a weekend.
“A weekend?” I asked, a little in disbelief myself. At the time, I was an aspiring musician. (Today I have six albums out.) I wanted to know more.
“I created a basic method that let me play popular songs without much effort,” she said, completely clueless to the goldmine she was sitting on.
“Can you teach others to play guitar in a weekend?” I asked.
She said she could.
I then encouraged her to write an eBook on her method. That came as a surprise to her. She never thought of it before. She didn’t know how to write an eBook, but I told her lots of how-to manuals are available, including the one I coauthored with Jim Edwards, How to Write and Publish Your Own EBook – in only 7 days!
She went on to write her eBook, put up a site, and start selling it. To her amazement – as she didn’t think the idea would actually work – she started making sales.
But the story gets even better.
She was a struggling college student. She was borrowing money from her parents. With the eBook selling, she had cash coming in. A little at first. But then more. One of the people who bought her product, and loved it, offered to buy the rights to her eBook – for ten thousand dollars!
For this broke college student, it was like winning the lottery.
But it wasn’t from the lotto.
It was from thinking beyond herself.
It was from thinking about all the other people who want to play the guitar, too.
In short, money isn’t really hiding from you. It’s simply waiting for you to serve people other then yourself.
Said another way, money likes it when you serve yourself and other people.
Think about it.
Ao Akua,
joe
PS – Have you ever wondered why I always end my blog posts (and emails) with a PS?
My new e-book, Healing Music, is available at no charge. It reveals how special music can soothe, heal, transform and awaken, and more. Just click the image below to access your free copy:
PS — Just have to share the good news: Last week I landed a publishing deal for the sequel to the bestselling book on ho’oponopono, Zero Limits. The engaging, amazing, mind stretching entirely new book — continuing with surprises, insights, healing methods, and more — will be out later this year (probably November). Stay tuned!
The book I regard as the greatest self-help book ever — and the most hypnotically written one — is now available as an e-book for only $7.99 — but only for the next few days. Go here to get it: http://www.thebookofest.com
Here’s why you need to go get it right now–
There are only a handful of books that have dramatically influenced my life.
There’s The Magic of Believing and The Robert Collier Letter Book.
But number one on the list is one you may never have heard of before: The Book of est.
Here are two reasons why I love the book:
First —
The book is the famous “est” experience in written form. est, or Erhard Seminar Training, was the controversial self-help movement of the 1970s.
It was intense.
Anyone who withstood the heat of the weekends was never the same again. Lives were transformed forever. You faced yourself and your story in a way that was confrontational and oh so real.
I never got to do est. I was a skeptic and a hold out. I made fun of it when I saw all the articles about it.
Truth is, I was afraid of it.
I was young and in college and unsure of everything, including myself. By the time I got around to wanting to experience est, it was gone and reincarnated into something called The Forum. I did the Forum and endorse it today. But it’s no est.
The Book of est puts you into the seminar room and gets you to feel the intensity.
You experience est.
And it’s hot.
When my late wife began to type up the book in 2004 to be republished by me and a friend, she had to keep stopping.
She said it was intense and dramatic. She died during the transcription process. But that had nothing to do with the book. It had more to do with her choices and what the book urged her to face.
Obviously, a book isn’t a drill sergeant self-help instructor yelling in your face about what isn’t working in your life.
But The Book of est comes close.
It’s safe.
It’s easy reading.
But it’s still real.
Oh so very real.
Just reading it can cause you to awaken to your own patterns. And once you see them, you can let them go.
Or not.
After all, what you get from the book is what you get.
But that’s only the first reason I love The Book of est.
Second —
The other reason I love this book is because the writing is, well, hypnotic.
It’s riveting.
Luke Rhinehart has the gift of writing dialogue and description that puts you in the seminar room with the characters experiencing est.
You FEEL it.
You are THERE.
In many ways, this was one of the first examples I ever found of what I eventually labeled as Hypnotic Writing.
While I later wrote a book called Hypnotic Writing, it was Luke Rhinehart who paved the way for me to know what it was when a true master was at work.
For me, this is one of the best written books of all time.
The author wrote some other cult classics, too. The Dice Man is a masterpiece. It’s well written, engaging, humorous, and in some ways dangerous. Just like The Book of est. But where The Dice Man is alive and well in print, The Book of est has been gone for decades.
Search on eBay or Amazon and you might find original hardcover copies going for one hundred dollars on up to a thousand dollars. I’ve paid that much for first editions, too. I collect them.
The Book of est is one of the rare life changing gems that I can’t get enough of or read enough times.
Sometimes I give the book away. Usually I don’t. I just keep it for myself, as one of the most powerful books of all time kept hidden in my own secret vault of wisdom.
The good news for you is this: Luke is now a friend of mine. We’ve corresponded, shared books, and decided to join a partnership. With the help of a mutual friend, the most powerful self-help book of all time — and the most hypnotically written one — is now available to you.
And right now, the investment to get the e-book version has been cut to only $7.99 — but only for the next few days.
All you have to do is go here right now to grab it as an instant downloadable e-book — http://www.thebookofest.com
Go get it.
I dare you.
Ao Akua,
Joe
PS – est was all about being real. The Book of est will challenge you as never before. How? And why is it the greatest self-help book of all time? How is it hypnotically written? Go see for yourself at — http://www.thebookofest.com
Note: If you prefer a printed copy of the book, we also made it available in paperback. Just go to Amazon to order it.