Tag: paradigm

Recently I got to spend an hour and half talking to actor Lou Ferrigno, best known for his bodybuilding career and playing the comic book hero in the classic TV show, The Incredible Hulk.

Lou is 60 years old and looking as fit as ever, if not better than ever. He’s focused, hard working, intense, smart, driven, and dedicated.

We met because of our mutual admiration for actor/body builder Steve Reeves. I have a large collection of Reeves items, from his car to his gym to his trophies to his clothes. I also coauthored The Steve Reeves Cookbook.

Lou idolized Reeves, met him twice, and modeled the famous Reeves classic physique to sculpt his own impressive body.

Lou Ferrigno and Yours Truly

I wish I could share all of the 90 minutes we spent together. He was very open with me, and I want to honor his sharing. We talked about everything from mindset to motivation, from fitness to aging, from our fathers to our careers. Lou was just as interested in me as I was in him. Lou’s life has not been a piece of cake. He’s had many challenges, and he has triumphed over all of them.

“If I hadn’t lost my hearing, I wouldn’t be where I am now. It forced me to maximize my potential. I had to be better than the average person to succeed. That`s why I chose bodybuilding. If I became a world champion, if I could win admiration from my peers, I could do anything.” – Lou Ferrigno

Lou works out five times a week, even while traveling, for an hour. He does twenty minutes of cardio and the rest of the time is spent lifting iron. He eats the same thing every day, which is egg whites for breakfast and salads at night. He tops off his carb intake at 150 grams a day and none after 7 pm. He has a glass of red wine at night. He doesn’t smoke cigars. He’s a family man with a big career. Despite all his successes, he has big dreams and is driven for more.

I gave him my audio set, The Secret to Attracting Money. He pointed at the word “attracting” in the title, smiled, and said, “I’m very interested in this.”

We were talking about thinking positive when Lou stopped me and said, “I’ve never heard it put that way before.”

I was so caught up in the exciting moment of hanging out with a legendary action figure and super star that I had to ask him to clarify.

“What’d I say?” I asked.

Lou answered, “You said when people start thinking negative, they lose all their power.”

Turns out power is a core theme with Lou. He admitted he was the most competitive person on the planet. He also said he went into bodybuilding as a form of self-protection. He built a physical wall, literally, to protect himself.

Cookbook by George Helmer and me

Lou surprised me by asking what books influenced me the most. I didn’t realize just how much he still wanted to learn and grow and expand his success.

I told him about The Book of est and The Magic of Believing. He didn’t know of either but seemed fascinated.

Again, our ninety minutes together covered a lot of ground. I encouraged him to host his own event, turn his books into e-books, record audio versions of his books, and more. He was very open to my ideas, and answered all of my questions as well.

If I had to give you one take away point from Lou, it’d be this: Do something.

Do something.

He is a massive take-action guy. We agreed that ideas are a dime a dozen and talk is cheap. It’s action that separates the men from the boys, and women from the girls, the wannabees from the successes.

Action.

I’m impressed and inspired by Lou.

When we were to part, he hugged me. I was surprised, as I didn’t read him as a hugger, but I sure welcomed the embrace by the incredible Lou Ferrigno.

His site is at www.louferrigno.com

Ao Akua,

joe

PS – I’ll be in LA appearing on CBS television news this Saturday morning, talking about my book, Attract Money Now. Tune in if you’re in the LA area.

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How do you really attract success in life?

What’s the formula for having, doing, or being what you truly want?

Long term friends who’ve watched me achieve success in several areas — writing, speaking, movies, music, fitness, and more — say my formula for attracting and achieving goals is easy to spot. Basically, it looks like this:

1. Set Intention

2. Hire Coaches

3. Clear Fears

4. Take Action

5. Persist

That’s it. And that formula will work for virtually any goal you want to achieve.

Let me explain.

Currently I’m deeply involved in the production of my fourth music album. This is fairly startling news, because less than two years ago I had never written a song, or sung a tune, or played more than a few chords on the guitar, or recorded with a band, and so on. Yet today I am recording my fourth album.

Recording fourth album

In the studio with some legends of music — music producer Daniel Barrett, famous drummer Joe Vitale, bass player Glenn Fukunaga — everyone was commenting on how much my singing, guitar playing, and songwriting had improved. It wasn’t an incremental improvement. It was a leap ahead.

It was, in their words, dramatic.

And a few days later, when “Guitar Monk” Mathew Dixon came into the studio to play guitar on one of my new songs, he stopped everything to say the words you long to hear.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you something for a while now,” he began. “I was going to put it in an email. Then I was going to tell you at a dinner. But it feels like now is the time to tell you.”

He then paused and said, “I’m proud of you.”

Tears welled up in my eyes.

I wasn’t thinking about those words, but when I heard them, I knew they were the words I longed to hear.

Mathew went on to explain that he teaches lots of people, but not all do the work. He added, “You demonstrate what you teach. When you decided to become a musician, you gathered your support, you took action, and you stayed at it. Your life reveals the formula for success.”

Mathew Dixon and yours truly

I was pretty choked up to hear all of this. But I thought I would share it with you as the lesson is relevant. It reveals how YOU can achieve your goals.

So don’t think this formula is just for me.

For example, legendary drummer Joe Vitale told us he practices playing the drums two hours a day. Two hours! Talk about taking massive action.

Two hours every day!!!

Think about that.

Here’s a man who has been playing for over four decades. He’s a master at it. He’s the drummer rock and roll legends call — from Neil Young to Joe Walsh to Sammy Hagar to you name it.

Yet he continues to work on himself, stretch himself, stay sharp with constant action, and more.

Drummer Joe Vitale's Autobiography

Joe’s an inspiration to me. He knows the formula for success.

Again, the formula looks like this:

1. Set Intention

2. Hire Coaches

3. Clear Fears

4. Take Action

5. Persist

What do you want to achieve or attract?

Take each one of those steps and do them.

Here’s how it looked when I used the steps for my music:

1.  Set Intention.  I decided to become a musician. It all begins when you declare what you want.

2. Hire coaches. I put together a team of mentors and coaches. To excel in any area, you virtually always need a guide.

3. Clear Fears. I had fears bubble up. Self-doubt, lack of faith, negativity. I relied on my coaches and my background in self-help to erase all the fears as they arose. The more you get clear, the faster you attract.

4. Take action. I took guitar and voice lessons, I attended a songwriting seminar (with Ray Wylie Hubbard and Kevin Welch), I hired a famous singer-songwriter (Lee Coulter), I bought books, I wrote songs, I practiced every day.

5. Persist. I continued to take action, rely on my coaches, clear fears, etc.

As a direct result of using those five steps, I’m officially a musician with four  — count ’em, four — albums to my credit.

What do you want to achieve?

The path is clear.

Start doing the above steps today and tomorrow you may hear the words you long to hear.

Ao Akua,

joe

PS – You can listen and even download the title track to my new album, titled “The Healing Song,” at http://www.TheHealingSong.com Grammy winner David Darling composed and played the beautiful cello music on that track. Give it a listen.

PPS – Here’s a short video of famed drummer Joe Vitale talking about my improvement (on the new album, The Healing Song) since the recording of my first singer-songwriter album (Strut!) just eight months ago:

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The hit AMC television show, Mad Men, has been riveting and repulsing me since I first started watching it years ago. You’d think I’d turn it off. But there are moments in the show when brilliance comes through and I sit in awe. Then again, there are way too many moments where I’m just disgusted.

In case you didn’t know, Mad Men is a soap opera-ish adult drama about an up-start advertising agency in New York City in the 1960s. The characters are alive and easy to love or hate; the sets are so real it feels like you time traveled right to the sixties; the conflicts, personal and public, are engaging; the dialogue is human, real, and sometimes profound. All in all, it’s no wonder the show is a hit. It’s prime time drama with unique elements. And it’s won 15 Golden Globe awards and 4 Emmys — so far.

So why does it repulse me?

Virtually everyone on Mad Men has at least one psychological problem. The leader of the pack is of course Don Draper, brilliantly played by actor Jon Hamm. Draper has so many demons inside his skull, he’s a walking version of an internal hell. He’s self-destructive with women and booze, but he’s also often a genius at ad campaigns. He’s got so many secrets he might as well call himself Freud’s best candidate for therapy. In fact, he’s not even Don Draper. That’s the identity the character stole long before he became an ad man. Ah, the twists into mental hell.

Of course, I didn’t like it at all when Lane Pryce, a charming character in the show (played by Jared Harris), embezzled money from the company, was caught by Don Draper, and committed suicide. That episode is still stuck in my craw. I wasn’t even going to write a blog post about the show until after that unforgettably sad airing. I liked Lane. But he, too, was deeply flawed. More than that, people unconsciously model what they see. Seeing a strong character choose suicide is not showing wisdom. Again, we unconsciously attract what we believe and expect.

But the psychological issues don’t bother me so much as the business practices the agency demonstrates.

Lying, betrayal, manipulation, head games — it’s the way of life on the TV show. The series reveals the struggling agency is a prostitute that will sell anything for money. Their chief secretary, Joan Holloway (played by Christina Hendricks), even sells her body for a one night (actually, it was a one evening) stand to get a partnership in the agency and sway a voting client to give the agency a new account. And the agency itself takes on a car company they openly believe manufactures unreliable cars. Anything for a buck.

I know something about ad agencies. I’ve studied and written about some of the real life “Mad Men” in history. Most of the names are legends in the business (and sometimes dropped on the TV show for authenticity), but many you may never have heard of unless you go Google them: John Caples, Bruce Barton, David Ogilvy, Helen Woodward, Claude Hopkins, Rosser Reeves, and more.

These people were geniuses at writing copy and creating ads that pulled in sales. Some, like Maxwell Sackheim, created ads that were so powerful in making sales, they ran unchanged for forty years.

What I admire about the real Mad Men (and Mad Women) I studied were their creativity and sincerity. Bruce Barton, the cofounder of BBDO, and the subject of my book, The Seven Lost Secrets of Success, believed sincerity was the key to success. He turned down clients he didn’t believe in, walking away from thousands to millions of dollars.

John Caples, one of the most famous copywriters in history (he wrote the legendary 1926 ad, “They Laughed When I Sat Down At The Piano, But When I Started to Play…!”), said Barton’s secret was one word: sincerity.

I don’t see that secret practiced in the TV show.

Obviously, there is much truth to the stories and characters in the AMC series. You can read plenty of books about that era and discover many businesses practiced that sort of insincere, manipulative advertising, marketing, and selling. Some still do today. I’m not overlooking that reality. I’ve seen it first hand.

Decades ago in Houston I was in the offices of a corporation, there to write a sales letter for the company, when the president took a call and started yelling, “If you want a $#!&**!!! war, then you got it!” He then slammed down the phone. He turned to me, smiled, and continued our conversation as if nothing had happened. It was unnerving. I was seeing “Mad Men” the TV show in action.

I didn’t like it.

That’s the dark side of business; the side that repulses me.

But there’s also the bright side.

What I am pointing out is the fact that many people and businesses practice compassionate capitalism. They practice sincerity. They did then. They do now. They work hard to offer a product or service they believe in, and they market it in ethical ways. I think they should get equal time on the air.

The Internet helped me discover a more loving way of doing business decades ago. That’s when people who should be competitors of mine became affiliates, coauthors, and supporters of mine. It was refreshing to see online businesses openly share in the income, openly share credit, and openly work on deals together. I saw love in online marketing. I practice it, and teach it. I’ve written about it, too, numerous times, and in numerous books. This love based approach to business is alive and well. Not just online, of course, but everywhere — if you look.

But I rarely see that portrayed in the Mad Men series. Sometimes Don Draper will do a noble thing. Often he exhibits genius in creating or analyzing ads and concepts. Sometimes a young executive will reveal strong ethics (usually the character named Ken Cosgrove, played by Aaron Staton) in the show.

Unfortunately, more often than not, the show reveals the shadow side of business and life. If you don’t educate and enlighten yourself, the negative elements broadcast in the show may distort your view of reality; you’ll see the negative even in the positive.

That’s where I want to see a remedy.

Here’s what I suggest:

Quit watching the show. Yea, I know, I’m not going to stop either. Not with one episode left in the current season. So at least give your brain some balance and read some of the more loving business books and read about the more wholesome business characters.

Here are a few suggestions (in no particular order):

Start Something That Matters by Blake Mycoskie

The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century by Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz

The Seven Lost Secrets of Success by Joe Vitale

The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising by Kenneth Roman

My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins

Faith and Fortune: How Compassionate Capitalism Is Transforming American Business by Marc Gunther

Philanthrocapitalism: How Giving Can Save the World by M. Bishop

Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter Diamandis

Screw Business As Usual by Richard Branson

Anything You Want by Derek Sivers

The Real Mad Men: The Renegades of Madison Avenue and the Golden Age of Advertising by Andrew Cracknell

Mad Women: The Other Side of Life on Madison Avenue in the 60’s and Beyond by Jane Maas

And remember: You can be the positive example you long to see.

You may not see it on Mad Men, but you can live it.

Rather than look for inspiration, be the inspiration.

Be the hero.

Sincerely.

Ao Akua,

Joe

PS – What books have you read showing a more positive side of doing business? I’d love to know and I’m sure others would, too. Please post a comment and tell us. Thank you.

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I love the cover design on Leonard Mlodinow’s new book, Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior. Depending on when the light hits the cover, you can’t see the “hidden” words, which is so, well, subliminal. I moved the book to and fro to catch some of the white words in this picture:

Not all words are seen, but you see them

Of course, the cover design is a playful take on what your conscious mind can and can’t see. The book itself is far more in-depth, serious, scientific, and revealing. I started reading it on my iPad and loved it so much I bought the printed hardcover version, too. Why? I don’t know. Ask my unconscious.

According to Mlodinow, my unconscious is pulling my behavioral strings in ways my conscious can only rationalize.

No news to me. This is the whole reason “getting clear” is the cornerstone of my work these days. What you are “getting clear” of are the unconscious beliefs causing you to get the results in your life.

In other words, the results you get (or don’t get) are tied directly to your unconscious programming. You didn’t know it, though, because it was un-conscious.

Subliminal is a brilliant, up-t0-date look at your unconscious and how it plays you. Oh, it wants to protect you and help you survive, which is good, but it may be doing so in ways you wish it wouldn’t.

People who wash their hands non-stop are driven by unconscious programming. The unconscious wants them safe and clean. But consciously those people would love to not have to wash so much.

People who struggle with money may have an unconscious keeping it away from them, believing that money is evil or bad. Again, that’s the unconscious “protecting” the person. The person, however, would probably consciously really love to have more money about now.

I addressed this issue of money and beliefs in the first step in my book, Attract Money Now. Until you clear up the beliefs in your unconscious about “money evil,” or any variation of that erroneous statement, most likely nothing you do will work. You’ll never admit the problem is in your unconscious database, either. You’ll blame everyone and anything and never look in the mirror.

Yet the mirror holds the key.

If you’ve read my coauthored book, Zero Limits, then you know about programming. According to Dr. Hew Len and ho’oponopono tradition, we have programming/beliefs/data stuffed in our unconscious, and probably wired deep in there over generations.

More than once Dr. Hew Len told me we can never stop cleaning. We simply have too much in the unconscious to expect it to disappear with a click of a cosmic delete button.

He also said that if you knew how much clearing was being done when you practiced the healing phrases (“I love you, I’m sorry, Please forgive me, Thank you”), you would never stop.

Back to Mlodinow’s book.

It’s excellent. It explains some shocking facts, such as the ease in which “false memories” — events that never happened — can be implanted in you. (Remember the money you owe me?)  The sad thing is, you may read this fascinating book and think “People are strange,” without ever realizing that everything the author explains applies to you.

Any book that helps illuminate how our mind works  — especially our unconscious operating center — is going to take us a step closer to awakening. I don’t personally know Mlodinow and I’m not an affiliate for his book, so when I tell you I believe his book is a masterpiece and you need to go read it right now, it’s because I consciously feel it will help you.

Unconsciously, who knows?

Ao Akua,

joe

PS — Having a miracles coach is still the best way I know to get clear of hidden limiting beliefs operating in your unconscious mind so you are free to attract what you consciously long for. Check it out by clicking right here.

PPS — And for funsies, here’s a video of a talk I gave a few years ago to a local group in my area. I’m not sure if you will enjoy this consciously or unconsciously, but I believe you will enjoy it. Here it is…

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“The Healing Song” is an original hypnotic sonnet written and performed by me, with original music composed and performed by Grammy winner David Darling. You can listen to it — and download it for FREE — right here: Click here to get “The Healing Song” for free. Enjoy!