Tag: optimism

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.

Your Questions Answered

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…

Available for Pre-Order

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?

• An ego based intention is only about you.
• A Divine based intention is about you and others.

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.

Meet Saxman Joe

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.

What do you hear?

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

Member BBB 2003 - 2015

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.

Money Wisdom Revealed

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.

Early Famous Bestseller

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.)

Bio of Barton

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.)

Click image to pre-order new 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,

joe

PS – Want more? The definitive audio course on attracting money is still The Secret to Attracting Money.

Member BBB 2003 - 2015

“It’s easier to remember than it is to create.”

Daniel Barrett told me that when I was struggling with writing my first songs.

I didn’t get it.

“Your future already contains the songs,” he explained. “All you need to do is remember them.”

Really?

It took me a while to grasp the fact that Daniel was on to something colossal.

As a result of working with his “Remembering Process,” I recorded my first album in record time, and six more albums after that.

Today I have seven albums for sale (seven!), and they all were more or less “remembered” into being.

I remember you love this book...

Daniel and I also wrote a book to explain his process, which Hay House just published and is for sale today as a printed hardcover, Kindle ebook, or audio book.

It’s called, of course, The Remembering Process.

This elegant, mind stretching tool can help you leave boundaries and assumptions and tap into a greater source of creativity.

When I spoke about the process a few years ago, Jack Canfield, Gay Hendricks and other thought leaders and self-help authors stood and applauded.

It doesn’t matter what you need to solve, resolve, create or produce.

You can make life easier by remembering rather than creating.

I even used the method itself to write a song about the method.

It’s called “Remember” and it’s on my most recent album, Reflection.

It features a hypnotic poem, my voice, and a kundalini moving baritone saxophone.

Again, Daniel’s process is about letting go to something that already exists.

When I was in one of the many Bill Phillips fitness camps I attended, Bill asked me to describe the process to the group.

He knew that contemplating your “future self” as a person who has already accomplished what you presently struggle with, would be an easy way to tap into that future self’s answers.

You can use the future to solve the present.

Think about it.

That future you already knows the answers, because he/she already resolved the issues.

After all, he/she’s in your future, where your current issue has been resolved and is now your past.

You can do this for anything.

When Daniel and I sat in the studio and wondered what a CD cover would look like, we didn’t try to create one, we just played and wondered what it looked like from the future’s perspective.

We did our best to “remember” the cover.

I know this is a lot to grasp, and an entirely new concept to enjoy, but for more details, go get the book.

I remember you bought copies for friends, and shared it with many.

Ao Akua,

joe

PS – Here is my presentation on The Remembering Process from 2012:

Click image above for free gifts

Ever since my book, Attract Money Now, came out a few years ago, people sometimes write and ask if I am a member of the Illuminati.

The first time it happened confused me.

“Why do you think I am a member of the Illuminati?” I asked.

“Because of your belt buckle,” was the reply.

My belt buckle? Seriously?

I’m flattered that people were looking at my waistline but it also confused me.

I looked at the cover of my book and sure enough, I’m wearing a belt buckle with a symbol of a pyramid and eye.

Note the belt buckle

The thing is, the cool looking buckle was given to me about ten years ago by a fan who wanted to congratulate me on my weight loss.

There was and is no more meaning to it.

It’s a belt buckle.

I let it go and didn’t think much more about it until…

The other day I was checking email and watching reruns of Modern Family on television when I noticed yet another person asking — this time on this blog — if I was a member of the Illuminati.

That’s when I decided to tell the truth.

“I don’t even know what the Illuminati is,” I confessed.

Since I didn’t want to look completely uninformed, and since it appears that people were talking about me being a member on some discussion forums, I asked one of my assistants to explain the Illuminati to me.

Here’s what she said:

Illuminati is about mind control and aiming towards
the New World Order in order to achieve world domination.
The Illuminati wishes to enslave the whole world in a satanic
plot for a one world government.

Illuminati feels that it is their karmic duty to "Reveal and
Conceal" -- meaning they use overt symbols in your face
without revealing what the symbols are in order to hide
their agendas while subliminally programming people's minds.

The "all seeing eye" you have on cover of The Secret to Attracting
Money audio course and the pyramid on your Attract Money Now belt
buckle are part of the symbols they commonly use.

Here's example:

Katy Perry's music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KSOMA3QBU0
and then here's the conspiracy theory behind the video's meaning:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/katy-perrys-dark-horse-one-big-children-friendly-tribute-to-the-illuminati.html

According to this type of paranoid thinking, virtually every celebrity or politician you name could be a member of the Illuminati.

One list includes —

• Jay Z
• Cypress Hill
• Chris Brown
• Celine Dion
• Halley Berry
• Eminem
• Rick Ross
• TB Joshua
• Charlie Boy
• Tonto Dikeh
• Davido
• Wizkid
• P-Square Twins
• Britney Spears
• Aaliyah
• Nicki Minaj
• Beyonce Knowles
• Alicia Keys
• David Bowie
• Madonna
• Paris Hilton
• Barack Obama
• Aretha Franklin
• Bob Marley
• Angelina Jolie
• Jim Carey
• Bob Dylan
• David Bowie
• Justin Bieber
• Kanye west
• Marilyn Manson
• Lady gaga
• Lil Wayne
• Rihanna
• P-Diddy
• Wiz Khalifa
• T-pain
• Rihanna
• Kim Kardashian

Jim Carey?

Really?

Bob Dylan?

Seriously?

And me? Joe Vitale?

Really?

I have no interest in government (just ask my wife) and certainly not in world domination.

I can barely handle a house of cats.

Have any of these speculators actually read my books?

Rather than just looking at my belt buckle, they might actually open the book and discover what I really think.

People who believe in conspiracy theories and world domination scenarios are coming from victimhood.

They feel powerless in their life.

They want an explanation for their struggle.

Rather than take full responsibility, and move into the Empowerment stage of awakening (which is what I write about in such books as The Awakening Course and At Zero) they want to blame others.

Super stars are easy targets.

The wealthy are easy, too.

After all, they must have “something” that you and I don’t have in order to be so mega-successful.

They must all belong to some secret organization which helps all members succeed and leaves the rest of us to struggle.

Right?

Wrong.

If such an organization exists, I’ve certainly never been invited to join it.

Sometimes I think people who complain and conspire have too much time on their hands.

“People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rather than spending time expressing their life mission and following their passion, they use their hours to create conspiracy theories and projected scenarios that have nothing to do with reality.

Like me and my belt buckle.

But let’s see if we can learn something here.

I did a little research of my own about the pyramid and eye on my belt buckle — the same symbol, by the way, that is on the US dollar bill.

Here’s what I learned:

That famous symbol on the US dollar bill is called The Eye of Providence. It’s sometimes interpreted as the eye of God watching over all of us.

God watching over us?

That doesn’t sound bad at all.

According to the most relied on unreliable source, Wikepedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_of_Providence, the symbol is…

“The Eye of Providence is mistaken for the Illuminati symbol. The original Illuminati symbol is actually the Owl of Minerva”

Owl of Minerva?

No, I don’t know what that is, either.

And I’m not a member of some Owl of Minerva club.

But isn’t it curious that people looking at my belt buckle and assuming it’s a clue to me being in the Illuminati, don’t even know what the actual symbol of the Illuminati is?

I’m flattered that some people think I’m so rich and powerful that I might one day help run a world domineering government.

But when I look over the above list of alleged Illuminati members, I have to confess that I’ve never even met one of them, let alone worked in secret (or even in public) with any of them.

The truth is, I’m a regular guy who has worked hard and done well writing books for a living, was lucky enough to be invited to be in the hit movie “The Secret,” watches reruns of Modern Family on TV with his spouse, writes and records self-help healing music, smokes cigars to commune with the Divine, and is learning to play the saxophone.

Of course, some people think the saxophone is The Devil’s Horn.

They probably think the sax is a clue to something.

Well, I can’t please everyone.

And neither can you.

Please focus on expressing your life mission, no matter if people condemn, understand, complain or applaud.

It’s what you’re here to do.

Ao Akua,

joe

PS — I wrote a song on my new album explaining how life is a reflection of what is in you. The song is called “Reflection.” The album is called Reflection. (Seemed like a no brainer.) It’s relevant to this blog post, as what people project about others is usually what they actually feel about themselves. Think about it…

What do you hear?

In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, which you might say caused a stir.

But that same year saw another book published that triggered an even greater surge of interest, discussion, and awakening: Samuel Smiles’ Self-Help.

The public devoured Smiles’ book. It sold more than 200,000 copies the first year. It out sold Darwin’s book — even Darwin bought it – – and was instantly translated into other languages. It made the author a celebrity. From that point on, he was considered a type of coach to the dreamers of the world.

But Smiles was no dreamer. He was a hard working Scottish author and government reformer who believed struggle was necessary to develop character. He didn’t believe in positive thinking but in positive doing.

In his 1905 autobiography, he wrote –

“My object in writing out Self-Help, and delivering it at first in the form of lectures, and afterwards rewriting and publishing it in the form of a book, was principally to illustrate and enforce the power of George Stephenson’s great word – PERSEVERANCE.”

George Stephenson was a focused dreamer who created the world’s first public inter-city railway line to use steam locomotives. What carried Stephenson on to greatness was the word Smiles admired the most: perseverance.

According to Smiles, hard work, discipline, and focus were tickets to success. It was how you “self helped” yourself in the world.

Too many people today are afraid of work and too easily willing to quit.

I’ve learned that struggle can be not only good, but even great.

When I’m in the gym, struggling to lift heavy iron weights, it’s the struggle that builds my muscles. If I lift donuts, my muscles aren’t challenged and don’t grow.

What do you hear in your mirror?

When I was first learning how to write songs and perform my own tunes, I told my coaches not to take away my struggle. I knew that wrestling with the new skills was how my body and mind were going to create new neural pathways and lead me to my own discoveries.

But not all struggle is necessary, and may in fact be a clue to alter your course.

When I was driving across the city to run an errand, I got a flat tire. That was struggle I didn’t see in any way was helping me. So I looked at the deeper significance and decided it meant I was to skip the errand for that day.

In other words, you get signals through life to proceed, pause, or even stop.

I’ve often called it The Red Flags Theory.

When you go in the right direction, you get green lights to proceed. Things go smoothly. There’s a flow.

But when you are about to do something that is off path, you get a yellow flag. Maybe the engine light on your car comes on. It’s a signal to pause and reflect.

And when a red flag appears — like a flat tire on the way out — you have to literally stop and assess your direction.

But none of this says struggle is bad.

“Struggle” is a path to manifesting what you want.

It just depends on your mental attitude to the work at hand.

When I write blog posts like this one, I “struggle” to articulate and communicate my message. It doesn’t mean I hate the process or want to quit. It means I care and want to get this right.

It’s an acceptable struggle.

It’s simply part of my process.

In creating my seventh music album, I went through lots of struggle.

Writing, rewriting, rehearsing, tweaking, performing, takes, retakes, dubbing, over dubbing, editing, mixing, mastering and more – all could be considered “struggle.”

My 7th album

But it’s simply “the work” that attracted the result I intended: my seventh album, titled Reflection.

Why struggle?

It’s only struggle if you are resisting the work; if you are OK with what needs done, it’s simply process.

As I wrote on my Facebook page recently at https://www.facebook.com/drjoevitale —

“When you resist doing what you know needs done, it is difficult. Find a mental way to enjoy it, and just do it, and it is easy.”

Samuel Smiles worked hard and gave us a book that is still relevant today. I imagine he “struggled” some in writing it. He certainly struggled in getting it published, as his first books were considered failures and his most famous book, Self-Help, was rejected by the first publishers to see it — one of whom regretted it a decade later and told the author so over dinner.

Birth of all kind involves struggle.

Welcome it.

Once you accept struggle, it is no longer struggle.

As Smiles wrote in Self-Help, “Nothing that is of real worth can be achieved without courageous working.”

Now get to work.

Ao Akua,

Joe

PS – My new album on CD – complete with a beautiful printed book revealing all of the lyrics and including photos of me and the band – is at the printer right now.  It will be a limited edition collectible, because I am only printing a small quantity of 1,000 to offer to my friends (like you).  It will sell to others for $21.95 but if you go and pre-order it right now, you can have it for only $9.95 (plus shipping, of course). That’s well over half off. That’s only a dollar a song. For less than ten bucks, you can change your life through sound *and* get a collectible new album and booklet, too. Plus I will include a surprise gift when we ship the new album to you later this month. (You will love it.) May I send it to you? Just go see http://www.reflectioncd.com (There’s no struggle involved in ordering it.) 🙂

PPS – Check out Miracles Coaching to better understand and implement the ideas I express here.

Sequel to "Zero Limits" Available Now at Amazon