Tag: New York Times

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