Interview with Joe Vitale

1 THE MASTERS OF THE SECRET JOE VITALE
BILL HARRIS: Hello. This is Bill Harris, and I want to
welcome you to the Masters of the Secret Series. Tonight’s
guest is my good friend Dr. Joe Vitale. In addition to being
one of the stars of the hit DVD movie, The Secret, Joe is an
author, marketer, seminar leader, and overall renaissance
man. Dr. Vitale, Joe, is the author of far too many books
to mention here. Here are just a few of them: he wrote the
recent number one best-seller The Attractor Factor: Five
Easy Steps For Creating Wealth Or Anything Else From The
Inside Out. This became a number one best seller twice and
even beat the latest Harry Potter book. His latest book which
came out this week is The E-Code: 33 Internet Superstars
Reveal 43 Ways To Make Money Online Almost Instantly
With Only Email and it too is a best seller. Joe also wrote
a fantastic book, the only book on P.T. Barnum’s business
secrets called There Is A Customer Born Every Minute.
Besides all these books, Joe also recorded the number one
best selling Nightingale Conant audio program The Power
Of Outrageous Marketing. Joe is also considered to be
an internet pioneer. His marketing methods have made
people millionaires. He has been involved in every aspect
of marketing from traditional direct mail to publicity to
infomercials. He is the president of Hypnotic Marketing
Inc. and the world’s first hypnotic writer. He recently
created a home study course called Hypnotic Selling
Secrets and made $450,000 in three days selling it online.
Joe knows how to use words. He can say three words to
you and get you to give him all of your money. I hope you
won’t do that because some of you might want to keep your
money. He says he can say eight words and get you to never
have money worries and, he said them to me and I’ve never
had any money worries since. And I don’t know about you
but I am ready to hear this guy, so please welcome Joe “Mr.
Fire” Vitale. Hi Joe, how are you doing?
JOE VITALE: I’m doing fine. We’ve got a rainy day in
Texas here and actually it’s good because we’ve been
through a drought. So I’m doin’ fine. I’m looking out the
window. I’m safe, I’m sound, I’m dry, and I’m watching
the ground get wet so all is well in the world.
BILL HARRIS: Well, that’s good. A lot of people know you
because you really are a master marketer and, we can
maybe touch on some of that but what I really wanted
to talk to you about today was more the spiritual side of
things, the meaning of life, your take on life and success.
I think, if I was to make a general statement about the
people listening to this, I would say in fact, you could say
this I suppose about any people, but people want to be
happy, they want to be peaceful inside and they want to
be successful in the world in some way. And, knowing
you as I do I know that you have some thoughts about
this and I know that like me, you have been searching
in your own life for how to create these things and as
I happen to know that you have done a very good job
of doing this. You know, the $450,000 in three days
and those kinds of things are all great but if you’re not
happy and peaceful and fulfilled in what you are doing,
you know, what does it, what does it mean? So, can
you start off and just sort of talk to me a little bit about
your philosophy of life and anything that comes to mind
about those three things that I mentioned?
JOE VITALE: Wow, I didn’t know that we would go
right into the deep end here and go with these giant
philosophical life-changing, life-quest type questions.
BILL HARRIS: Well we can be practical too.
JOE VITALE: (Laughter). I’ll tell ya, I love what you just
painted here about how everybody wants to be happy and
we want to be successful and we want to be at peace. I
A CONVERSATION WITH JOE VITALE
2 THE MASTERS OF THE SECRET JOE VITALE
think that is ultimately what we are all after, whatever it is
we say we want, whether it’s the new house, the new car,
better health, more wealth, I mean, another relationship,
whatever it happens to be, we want it because we believe
it will help us to be at peace. It will help us to be happy
or happier and what I have discovered for myself and
you know, a lot of other people have discovered it but
discovering it for yourself is always the life-turning
event. What I learned from myself is that you don’t need
any of it to be happy right now and that is probably the
million dollar insight of the day if not of a lifetime, to
realize that right now in this very moment as we live and
breath, as this conversation is taking place, as you are
sitting up in Oregon I believe and I am here in Texas,
we are totally fine. We don’t need anything else to take
place for us to be happy. Happiness, at peace, and so
forth is fundamentally a choice.
BILL HARRIS: Well I totally agree with you and this is
exactly what I have been teaching for years, but you
know, people whose happiness and inner peace are
dependent on what goes on around them have to wait
for perfect circumstances in order to feel good and good
grief, how often does that happen? You know, not very
darned often. And so, I agree with you. It comes from
inside and so the question people often have is, well, so
how do I do that then?
JOE VITALE: Well, you brought up a couple of things
here. First of all I want to agree that most of us, myself
included... I don’t want to act like I am enlightened or
anything here, I have my moments where I recognize
that all is well but I often lose it because I’ll start looking
to outside reality and I will want to change things on
the outside so I feel better on the inside. And I have to
continuously remind myself that no, this is the moment.
It is this moment, the point of power is right now. That
doesn’t mean that I’m not going to go for things on the
outside, it doesn’t mean I’m not going to write another
book or do another promotion or try to make a book a
best-seller, or try to lose more weight, or try to this or
try to do that. I will do all of that but I will do it from
a place of peace and safety and security, and I think
this is the real lesson when you asked, “how do we go
about this?” It’s a matter of realizing you’re totally fine
right now where you are at but you are probably living
like a king or a queen compared to people in 3rd world
countries or people in our past history. You are probably
living this lifestyle that other people if they saw would
be totally envious of, and we don’t pause and appreciate
it because we want more, more, more, and more. So I
think the first step is to realize you’re totally fine where
you’re at. If peace is there available to you, happiness is
in this moment, you can choose to see it, choose to accept
it. And then the second step is to choose what you would
like to have to experience next, and this just sounds like
I’m making it a kindergarten level type of process and in
many ways it is. Be happy now, choose what you’d like to
experience next, start working towards it. There you go.
Three steps, we’re done.
BILL HARRIS: Now just to play devil’s advocate, what do
you say to someone who says, “well, that sounds great
in theory but I just had to declare bankruptcy and my
spouse left me and my dog was killed and everything isn’t
all right, it doesn’t seem like everything is all right for
me now?”
JOE VITALE: I love that you brought that up Bill, I
mean you’re really going for the throat here with these
questions, but they’re the important questions. In my
book, one of the most recent ones, The Attractor Factor,
in the back I have this quote that reminds people to put
things into perspective and I’m not going to be able to give
you the exact quote but the idea behind it is whatever is
going on right now, if it looks absolutely horrible in your
life, one year from now or certainly five years from now,
or certainly 10 years from now, you will look back at this
moment in time and you will find a good way of looking
at it. You will often say—there’s so many cancer victims
for example who will say “cancer was the best thing that
ever happened to me,” but when they were diagnosed
with it, that was a very bad day. I mean a very bad day.
But a year later, five years later, whatever it happened to
be, they will look back and say it was the most beautiful
thing that ever happened and for a variety of reasons.
3 THE MASTERS OF THE SECRET JOE VITALE
It may have helped them build strength, it may have
helped them learn discipline, it may have helped them
believe in magic and miracles, it may have helped them
believe in realizing the beauty of each moment. I don’t
know what that is but what I am suggesting here is that
this moment, if the wife did leave or the husband and the
dog died and whatever else happens to have been there,
five years perspective will give you a different view of
this moment in reality. So if that five year’s perspective
is available to you five years from now, it’s available to
you right now.
BILL HARRIS: Well you know, one of the things that I
teach is that the entire key to life is what you focus on.
JOE VITALE: Yes, yes.
BILL HARRIS: And, so if something that you would prefer
not to happen happens and good lord, that happens to
everyone. If you go a week where something happens or
even a whole day that something that you didn’t want to
happen to you happens, then I think that would be pretty
extraordinary. You know Napoleon Hill always said,
“Every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent
or greater benefit.”
JOE VITALE: Yes, absolutely.
BILL HARRIS: And that you have to look for that benefit.
So when something happens, if you focus on, “what could
the potential benefits of this be?” it takes your mind in a
whole new direction that creates a completely different
reality for you, than if you start instead focusing on what
you don’t like about what has happened.
JOE VITALE: Absolutely. It’s a fundamental law in
psychology that you get more of whatever you focus on,
and again, in The Attractor Factor, I say that’s what you
end up attracting into your life. So, if you end up focusing
on whatever it is that you are perceiving to be bad, then
you will get more of those kinds of feelings because
you are in that energy place which you are acting like a
magnet for it, you’ve got to pull more of it to you, you’re
gonna see it because you have the eyes of misery and you
will look for more misery. However, if you look at this
moment and say, “well, that’s an enforcement that took
place, I wonder what the good is in it,” or even better, “I
wonder how I can turn it into something good.” From
a marketing standpoint, I’m always telling people I see
opportunities everywhere because whenever somebody
states a complaint, I hear it as an opportunity. If
somebody complains that a product doesn’t work or
something in their life isn’t going the way they want, I
am thinking in the back of my mind, “I wonder how I
can create a product that will give them what they want,
I wonder how I can create an ebook or an audio or some
sort of product that will help them achieve what they
want.” I hear the complaints as opportunities. That
causes my perception to be completely different. I don’t
get stuck in the mind set of, “I don’t want this,” I get
into the mind set of “how can I turn this into something
positive and of course in my case I want to profit from it
while helping others.” So it is a whole perceptual thing
and it is in our control. The vast majority of people out
there, not the people listening to this call because I’m
sure they’re more elevated in their awareness and their
consciousness, but the vast majority of the people out
there are stuck on that plane of being a victim and as
they look at themselves in their lives as being a victim,
they get more of that kind of stuff. They’ve got to pull in
everything that’s gonna enable them to be a victim. The
ironic thing about all of this is that they are creating it.
They don’t know that they’re creating it because they are
totally unconscious of the process. I tell people including
myself when I look in the mirror that everything that’s
happening in my life is a creation, and I was the guy
creating it.
BILL HARRIS: Absolutely, absolutely. You know, this
whole series that I’m doing, this World’s Greatest
Teachers Series, came about because of this Oracle
database debacle we had that effected tons and tons of
people and I said the very thing we’ve been talking about.
I said, “How can I turn this disaster into something
positive?” and because of that, this series I know is
going to help a lot of people. So if this hadn’t happened
4 THE MASTERS OF THE SECRET JOE VITALE
I probably, you know, I might have
gotten the idea for this series anyway
but it certainly did stimulate me to get
this idea. You know a lot of people
had already heard this story of when
Centerpointe was a year old, we had
a whopping $12,000 in sales the first
year, someone sued me for a million
dollars claiming that I had stolen their
technology and stolen this and stolen
that and it was a frivolous lawsuit but
I was, you know, I was making $3,000
a month at the time and was pretty
green, had no idea how to deal with
this, I was waking up in the middle
of the night in a cold sweat because I
thought I was going to lose my house
and the few things that I did have. And
I asked my attorney, “How much is this
gonna cost?” and he said “Well, it could
ultimately cost about $150,000 in legal
fees if it goes all the way. You’ll find
out why they say ‘Don’t make a federal
lawsuit out of it.’” And my business
partner said, “Well, Centerpointe isn’t
worth anywhere near spending that
kind of money defending.” So I said to
myself, “Well what would it look like
if it was worth spending $150,000 to
defend?” And I started mapping out in
my head, what it would look like, and
today it looks like that.
JOE VITALE: Oh, fascinating.
BILL HARRIS: And if I had never been
sued, which just like the person being
told they have cancer when it happened,
it was a huge disaster to me but when I
looked back on it, it was the best thing
that ever happened to me because I
would not have Centerpointe, I would
not be a personal growth teacher, I
wouldn’t be doing all of the things I’m
doing, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking
to you. So, you know, like you say, if
you’re going to look back on something
at some point and think, “you know, in
a strange sort of way that was a good
thing that that happened.” Why not
start thinking that way immediately and
skip all the part where you feel bad?
JOE VITALE: (Laughter) I’m laughing
because it’s such a refreshing concept.
I’m sure for a lot of people it’s a headblowing
concept, you know. We’ve never
considered it before, but this is available
to all of us, to you, to me, to everybody
listening and I guess I’m gonna go here
and give another example. It was about
a year and a half, two years ago when
I was on a flight from Denver to Las
Vegas I had an asthma attack which is
not pleasant to have anywhere because
you are basically drowning while you’re
still in the environment.
BILL HARRIS: I remember that.
JOE VITALE: And I was on a plane, you
can’t ask them to pull over, roll down
a window, there’s none of that kind of
stuff available. Well, even though that
was terrifying and I ended up going to
the emergency room which I had never
gone to before, always been healthy,
always been solid, stable, bullish, you
know, never any kind of problems,
never been to the hospital. Ended up
doing all of that and all of that looked
pretty horrible, in fact we were going
to Vegas for a week-long vacation and
it began with this experience. So that
week-long vacation was mostly one of
worry and concern and fretting about
Your brain can be directed and
you can direct it by the questions
you ask. Most people ask these
negative questions that send
them down the sewer.
“
”
5 THE MASTERS OF THE SECRET JOE VITALE
my future and my health and all of that. Well, at the
same time it was that very event that was the turning
point in causing me to look at losing weight and getting
fit ultimately for the first time in my life. I am now 51
years old, I have lost over 70 pounds, I have been in
three fitness contests, I am in my 4th one right now, I
have built my own gym that has more in it than a lot of
health clubs here, I have hired a personal trainer, I have
gone out and worked out with Frank Zane, Mr. Olympia,
he’s won it something like three times, a famous legend
in the bodybuilding business and two years before all
of this, if you had said, “Joe, you gotta build your own
gym, you’re gonna become a body builder, you gotta
lose some weight, you gotta go work out with Frank
Zane,” I would have said, “What? What planet are you
from? That’s not JOE VITALE, he doesn’t do stuff like
that.” Well it’s Joe Vitale now and Joe does do stuff like
that and it’s always triggered by something that stops
other people. It was triggered by something that in the
moment looked like a horrifying, hellish experience
and in some ways it was but I was able to turn it into
something good and I can of course look back on it and
say “yeah, I can see how that was useful.” So what I’m
saying and you’re reiterating here is that we can look
at these possibly negative momentary experiences and
say, “okay, we don’t like this experience. How can it be
turned into something good? What’s the lesson in it?
What can evolve from it?” All of it is useful.
BILL HARRIS: We’ve never talked about this before
and, it’s interesting that you’re reiterating pretty
much exactly what I have found to be true about this
and now that I think about it, when I think of other
very successful people I know like Jack Canfield for
instance, everyone I know that is successful in the way
that you are and I am and Jack is, thinks this way and
that should be a big clue to people who are struggling.
But you know, in fact one of the things that I often say
is, “for any outcome you want there is a certain way
of thinking and acting that will get it for you.” Your
job is to find out what it is and we’re telling what it is
right now, so that part is handled, and then be flexible
enough to adopt it, and I find that the flexibility
part is where most people have trouble. Most all of
the “secrets of life” are not secrets anymore. There
is very little that is esoteric anymore in this age, but
where people get in trouble is that they are not flexible
enough to change the way they think and act in order
to align it with what really, what really works.
JOE VITALE: Yeah.
BILL HARRIS: Another thing that you had mentioned
in passing, I just want to reiterate and maybe get your
thoughts on is this idea of, I’m gonna put it kind of in
my own words, people think that they are not good
at manifesting things. I hear this all the time from
the students that I have. “Well I’m just no good at
manifesting things.” And I tell them, “You’re actually
an expert at manifesting things. You’re magically good
at manifesting things because whatever you focus on
manifests. Your problem isn’t that you can’t manifest
things, it’s that you don’t, you aren’t conscious about
what you focus on. Your focuser is running on auto pilot
and it’s focusing on a lot of things that you don’t want
without you intending that, necessarily, and because of
that it’s creating a lot of what you don’t want in your life.
So if you want something in life, you’ve got to consciously
and intentionally get control of your focusing and focus
on it.“
JOE VITALE: Absolutely and well said. In fact that’s
what’s been the turning point for me to lose weight
is I could unconsciously go through life and put on
weight and look out into the world and say that it’s
because of my genes, it’s because of how I brought
was up, it’s because of DNA, a habit, psychological
upbringing, I kept pointing the finger elsewhere. It
wasn’t until I really took control of the unconscious
process that was going on, made it conscious and then
took new steps to make a new habit out of this and to
take on the mind set if you will or the beliefs or the
programming of somebody who is fit and trim and
slim that I began to make those changes and I want
people to realize that, when they listen to somebody
like you or they listen to somebody like me they might
6 THE MASTERS OF THE SECRET JOE VITALE
say to themselves “yeah, it’s working for you guys, you
guys mastered the process.” The first thing I want to
say is I have not mastered the process, I feel like I have
woken up in first grade and I’m just learning how to
use this process and the second thing I want to say is
I was homeless at one point thirty some years ago in
Dallas. I slept on the steps of the post office waiting
for checks that I hoped would arrive so I can eat. Then
when I moved to, migrated to Houston when it was a
boom town back in the late 70’s I took all kind of jobs
and lived in poverty. I was a reporter, a truck driver,
a taxi cab driver, a laborer. I was in this poverty mind
set, this low self esteem. I was really, in my opinion,
working at making a difference in my life. I did want to
be an author. I did want to pursue writing. I did have
that as a calling that was coming from my heart but I
was bouncing against this unconscious belief system
that was not allowing me to get the results I wanted.
So I had to get into reading all of the books, you know,
Think and Grow Rich and The Magic of Believing by
Claude Bristol and doing a lot of seminars and working
with a coach and slowly making all of that that was
unconscious conscious so I could make new decisions.
I had to let go of all the programming and I’m trying to
say this in a way so that people who are listening who
may be struggling, not that anybody may be homeless
though somebody listening might be, and I want them
to realize that wow, Joe came from there. Joe came
from the streets and now I live a luxurious lifestyle,
I mean I just sold my second house, I have a country
estate out here which you’ve flown down to and stayed
at, I just bought another car which was a luxury item, I
just bought a luxury sports car, a BMW 645 CI that was
made for me in Germany. And when I stop and realize,
“Joe, you were the guy who was sleeping on the steps
of Dallas starving, hoping to get some work, hoping to
get some money, hoping to make a difference and now
today 30 some years later, BMW, one of the finest car
artists in the world just made a car for you in Germany
that was shipped to you,” it fries my brain because
I am so different. How did I become different? It’s
changing from the inside out. It’s all the stuff you’ve
been talking about.
BILL HARRIS: I think you’re making the same point that
I often make which is that literally anyone can do this.
Very often I know people look at me and they think,
“well yeah, it’s okay for you Bill. I mean you’ve got a
lot of money and you’ve got a big company,” and so on
and so forth. I’ve never been homeless but I could tell
a pretty grim story of being in my early 30’s, my wife
left me, she took my last $3,000 when she left, I had
no job, no job prospects. I was the golden boy when I
was in high school. Everybody thought I was going to
grow up and be a heart surgeon or something like that
or a big lawyer or whatever, and I got into drugs when
I was in my 20’s and just sort of had this tail spin and
I was approaching 40 and I had no money, no career,
no relationships, was depressed, was angry and all of
that, and it was really finding this same idea of focusing
your mind on what you want, taking action, looking at
other people who were creating whatever it was that I
wanted to create and, modeling what they were doing,
modeling their way of thinking and acting. And boy, I
stumbled many times, many times where I made a little
progress and then I stumbled and then thought oh, this
is a pipe dream, I can’t do this, but I guess I was just at
the point where I thought well, there is nothing else to
do but keep going. I don’t know, it’s either keep going or
kill myself and I really didn’t feel like killing myself so I
kept going and eventually through a lot of wrong turns
and stumbles I figured out how to do this and like you, I
don’t feel like I’ve mastered this completely. I don’t feel
like in every moment I’m totally in control of my mind
but I certainly notice the times when I’m not in control
of it and sometimes I sit there and wallow in feeling
lousy for a little while before I say, “Okay, okay, enough
of this,” but as soon as I decide that I’m gonna change
it, I know how to change it and I do change it and when
I change it, it works.
JOE VITALE: Beautiful, beautiful. I didn’t even know all
about your background there so thanks for sharing that
personal story and I’m glad you did because it’s again a
reminder that all of this is available to everybody. We’re
not born knowing all of this material, we learn it and for
the first part of our lives for the vast majority of people
7 THE MASTERS OF THE SECRET JOE VITALE
that go through their entire lives totally unconscious, live
to the age of 90 and die totally unconscious, just living
out whatever their programming was in the beginning.
And those of us who are on the call, just listening to this
right now, my best bet is that they are far more alert and
far more conscious and we’re just kind of raising the bar
here and as I listen to you Bill, you are even raising it for
me and helping me realize yes, I want to be more aware in
each moment, I am not quite there yet, but I am going in
that direction and I feel good about that kind of process.
BILL HARRIS: You know, thinking about the people
that have trouble adopting this, there’s a question I’ve
thought about a lot over the years because I deal with so
many people and some of them just take this information
and just run with it and within a very short time their
life really is substantially different and then there are
other people that just have the hardest time and I kept
thinking, “what is it about these people that have such a
hard time and how can I help them?” and finally what I
concluded was that the people that have a really hard time
with this are unwilling to adopt one particular principle
that I think is probably the core principle behind all of
this stuff and we’ve sort of touched on it already, and
that is the idea that no matter how it looks, in some way
or other you’re creating how you feel in every moment
and you’re creating all the situations and people that
you attract or are attracted to and because a lot of people
cannot see how they are doing that because that process
to them so far is unconscious, out of their awareness,
they conclude that the triggers outside of them, that the
stuff they’re taking into their senses is the cause of how
they feel, whereas it’s really what they’re doing with it.
So anyway, I just found that the people that just will not
buy into this idea that somehow even if they can’t figure
it out, they’re creating all this stuff, those people really
stay stuck. Once somebody adopts that point of view
then they can start figuring out the “how-to” part of it.
JOE VITALE: Beautiful, beautiful. Well I think what you’re
saying is the statement that I make in The Attractor Factor
where I say that you have to take 100% responsibility
for everything that occurs in your life in order for you
to change these things and that is the hardest thing for
everybody to accept. And I have to admit, to myself too.
I’ll give you a story that I’ve never told anybody, it just
happened within the past few weeks. Of course my exwife
who I was married to for twenty-some years, best
friend and everything died last year and it was a major
event for me because it was my best friend and we were
married for twenty-some years and even though when
we were separated we were still best friends and we still
stayed in contact and you know, every day talked or
emailed or saw each other. She died last October. So
I would put her house on the market to sell and it took
forever to sell and I was wondering why isn’t this selling,
what is going on? Of course I never looked within myself,
I always looked at the outside circumstances and I would
find people to validate. Oh, the markets a little bit tough
right now, they are building new homes in the area so
the older homes don’t sell as well, all of that kind of stuff
was there. When I finally found a buyer it took forever
for this house to close partly because the original owner
of the house, this is fairly complicated, but when I first
bought the house it was owner financed. The original
owner of the house did not want to sign any papers to
release the house even though he was going to get paid
off if he signed. And I would look at that and go now,
why is he being a stubborn you know what? Why is he
being this guy? Always again, looking outside, looking
outside. And I had to stop and ask myself, Joe, you’re the
guy who says everything in your life is being attracted to
you because of you. You have to take 100% responsibility
for everything that is happening instead of looking out
there and blaming the previous owner, blaming the
realtor, blaming the economy, blaming the housing
market. Look at yourself, take responsibility and say,
“Okay, why don’t you want to sell the house?” I paused,
looked within myself and it’s like, this is the last concrete
reminder of my wife and I didn’t want to let it go. When I
finally came to grips with that and said, “Okay, I’m never
going to forget her, you know, that’s still gonna be in my
heart, it’s gonna be okay.” I was able to sell the house 24
hours later.
BILL HARRIS: Wow, that’s a great story.
8 THE MASTERS OF THE SECRET JOE VITALE
JOE VITALE: But taking responsibility even for myself,
and I’m the guy standing up there as this you know, this
evangelist for the whole idea of The Attractor Factor and
taking responsibility for your life and creating your own
reality and I’m admitting that it is incredibly difficult for
us to take 100% responsibility for our lives because it
is so incredibly easy to point outside and say, “No, it’s
the president’s fault, it’s the economy’s fault, it’s the
terrorists’ fault, it’s my spouse’s fault, it’s my dog’s fault.
It’s you know, whoever’s fault.” That’s easy to do and
that’s not reality. That’s the illusion.
BILL HARRIS: Right, exactly. It’s what you do with all of
that stuff inside that really makes the difference. Well I
noticed when you were telling that story at a certain point
you asked yourself a question and I sort of generalized this
question that you asked and call it the magic question, and
it starts with, “how can I...?” And you started to add, and I
don’t remember exactly what you said but something about
how can I figure out how, you know, why this house, why
I’m not able to sell this house or something? And when
you said that it just reminded me of the fact that a lot of
people get stumped when they’re trying to do this. They’re
trying to figure out how did I create this mess and they
don’t start asking themselves those kinds of questions, and
because people don’t realize that when you ask yourself
those kinds of questions, whether it’s how can I figure this
out, or how can I make 20 sales before next Friday or how
can I write a book, or how can I...whatever it is, when you
ask yourself those questions and really get curious about
the answers, I mean really ask them. This is not just like
parroting the words, it’s really thinking, “Okay, how can I
do this? There is a way to do this, I haven’t figured it out
yet. How can this, how can I do this?” When you ask that,
it does something inside your head that generates all kinds
of ideas coming from inside of you. It may be attracting
things psychically to you for all I know, it certainly causes
you to notice things that you overhear or you walk to
a bookstore and the book jumps off the shelf into your
hands, or you know, something. So I know that you think
this way too, so give me your views on this idea.
JOE VITALE: I’m glad you brought that up because this is
another fundamentally, well it’s a phenomenal technique
and it’s the idea that your brain can be directed and you
can direct it by the questions you ask. Now most people
ask these negative questions that send them down the
sewer.
BILL HARRIS: Right, “What’s wrong with me”?
JOE VITALE: You know, the favorite question of the mind
is something like, “What if? What if things go bad? What
if I can’t pay my bills? What if I don’t lose weight? What
if I have a health problem? What if she leaves me?” You
know, they ask the negative questions. But, that causes
your brain, and the brain is neutral, the brain’s just gonna
go after the solution that you gave the question there for.
So if you ask something that is negatively leading it’s just
gonna go and obey you. So if you say “What if I don’t get
better by next week?” Or, “What if I don’t raise the money
by Friday?” the brain is gonna say, “Okay, let’s come up
with all the ways that you can’t raise it by Friday.”
BILL HARRIS: Right, and my favorite is the question,
“what’s wrong with me?” If you ask yourself, “what’s
wrong with me?” your brain will always come up with
a list of plausible things that are wrong with you even if
objectively there isn’t anything wrong with you.
JOE VITALE: Exactly. Well the beauty of this is that
you can take control of your brain if you ask different
questions, so they can be the questions like, “What are
some ways to raise the money by Friday to pay the bills
that I need to pay?” And it could be a better constructed
question, you know, “What is an easy, effortless, and
healthful way to lose the unnecessary pounds I’m
carrying by August 22nd?” I mean, you can ask these
well constructed questions that’ll cause your brain just
to be an obedient researcher. It’ll go within you first of
all looking for any answers but then it also kind of alerts
your mental radar so that when you are browsing online
or you’re getting some snail mail, or as you pointed out,
you’re walking through the bookstore, suddenly these
thousands of books are blurred but one book seems
to almost leap off the page or off the shelf and it’s the
9 THE MASTERS OF THE SECRET JOE VITALE
book that’s geared toward the answer to the question
that you have given to your brain. So I treat the brain
like this, I don’t know, missile operating pad and you
tell it what you’re looking for in terms of an answer and
it will go and find it, so you want to be more positively
directed than negatively directed to give the example
that you gave earlier rather than asking, “what’s wrong
with me, what’s right with me?” List all of my positive
qualities and let it go to work for you there. It will just as
beautifully come up with answers for that question as it
will for the other question.
BILL HARRIS: Sure, another kind of pair of polar
opposites of questions is “why can’t I?” And then you fill
in the blank as opposed to “how can I?” and my whole life
changed when I stopped saying, “why can’t I?” whatever
it was and starting saying “how can I?” And at first
when I started using questions in this way sometimes
some questions it would be a month or so of me asking it
before the answer would appear but as you get better at
this and have more practice, I find that most of the time
the answer comes to me within a second or two.
JOE VITALE: Wow.
BILL HARRIS: Occasionally that’s not the case but almost
always it comes to me within a second or two and I, you
know, you’re saying wow but I bet that you do the same
thing.
JOE VITALE: Well, I’m reflecting on my wow there and
I am impressed that it comes within a second or two
but I also think it depends on the question and what
you’re looking for and as I reflect on it fairly quickly
here, spontaneously, yes, the answers do tend to come
very quickly whether they come in a second or two
would depend on the subject of what I am trying to get
an answer to, but I have found...well, let me give you an
example. When I went through that whole asthma event
and you know, came back to Texas and went through this
semi-depressed period for a week or so thinking, “okay,
I gotta do something about my health, but what?” And
then of course the emergency room bill arrives which
buckles my knees and I’m thinkin’ “okay, I don’t want to
see any more of this,” and the question becomes, “how
can I quickly, easily, safely lose weight, achieve my ideal
body, do it as quickly and as safely as possible in a way
that is going to be permanent?” And I don’t know if
that’s the exact question that I asked but you get the idea
that I was asking a positively directed question. That
very week and it might have been the next day, certainly
within three days I get an e-mail from a company I had
never heard of before. It was the Mental Toughness
Institute For Weight Control and it comes in and I’m
going what in the world is this? And you know, it’s one
of those things that you feel in your gut that this is your
answer. It’s one of those things where you put out the
question, here comes the answer and it’s resonating so
you know that unless you deny this consciously and just
dismiss it you know it’s the right thing. I explored it and
I said, “You know, this is coming at the right time. I am
the right guy, I had asked the question, this looks like
the answer,” I signed up and I swear to god Bill that was
a transformative experience. I still love those people. I
am still in contact with them and that was the awakening
process for me and their whole system is all about what
we’ve been talking about here, making what’s previously
been unconscious, all the creation that’s going on in your
life has been unconscious previously, in my case it was
unconscious to make me overweight, it was very easy to
do it because I was just operating unconsciously, had to
take all of that, make that process conscious and then go
with a new direction which has made a whole new me.
There’s how this works, right there.
BILL HARRIS: In a way this is why Holosync® works
because I can describe the benefits of it in a million
ways but really what it does is it makes you more aware
and as Ken Wilber says, “Awareness in and of itself is
transformative”. It’s really the key to all the rest of the
stuff. You know, you mentioned The Attractor Factor,
one of your books a number of times and, I read that
book. It was named, wasn’t that the Spiritual Marketing
Book before...?
JOE VITALE: My other version of it was Spiritual
10 THE MASTERS OF THE SECRET JOE VITALE
Marketing.
BILL HARRIS: Yeah, and I read that. I believe I’ve read
every one of your books unless you haven’t sent them to
me because you sent me a big box of them at one point.
JOE VITALE: That’s right.
BILL HARRIS: And I don’t know if you’re in this situation
but I have people sending me books and other things,
every day I get stuff from people and I just, you know,
I wouldn’t have any other time to do anything else if I
didn’t read them and very often notable people send me
books too, and often I don’t have time to read them. But
I picked up, I think that was the one I picked up really
first was The Attractor Factor. I read a page and a half
and I could not put it down and once I’d read that book
I read every other book you had sent me and every one
was delightful and every one was a little different. You
know, a different perspective on things. I mean you’re a
very multi-faceted renaissance kind of guy is kind of the
way I see you. Anyway, I just...give people a little more
information about that particular book because I think
that that’s an important book and I think it would really
resonate with a lot of people who are listening.
JOE VITALE: Well there is a couple of things I want
people listening to understand about this book because
this is a teaching tale. I did not want to release the book
that was originally called Spiritual Marketing and then
when it was revised and published by a major publisher
it is now called The Attractor Factor. I never wanted
to originally release it because it was a personal book,
it had a lot of my personal struggle stories in it from
homeless to you know, whatever I am today, and I only
wrote it as a little booklet for my sister because she was
struggling, she had been on welfare, she had been in
poverty, she was trying to raise three kids, and by then I
knew these secrets to prosperity, I knew these secrets to
creating your own reality, the art of manifestation if you
will and I wrote the little booklet for her, but I didn’t
want to release it to the world because I thought I’ve
been published by the American Marketing Association,
The American Management Association, I’ve got an
audio series with Nightingale Conant. These are all very
conservative large companies, what will they think of
me? What will the world think of me if I stand up and
say, “uh, folks, one of the things that I do in my life to
achieve these results is that I work from the inside out,”
and I thought oh, they’re gonna think I’m flaky. So I
didn’t release the book for the longest time and then as I
slowly did and I would give it to my sister, I would give it
to a few friends, and I would see them get these results.
My sister got off welfare, she got a job, she bought a car.
She still struggles some with money but she is not fully
practicing the processes either. So anyway, a long story
short, I found that very often the gold in a person’s life
is in that area where they are afraid. I was afraid to
release The Attractor Factor because I thought “What
would people think of me?”, yet when I did release it, it
has become a best-seller three times, it has gone through
four printings, even Spiritual Marketing has been a bestseller
and gone through several printings, it’s published
by a major publisher who has now signed I think three
other book deals with me because they are so delighted
with the success of The Attractor Factor. The Attractor
Factor is my most beloved book. I have I don’t know,
thirty-some books between e-books and published
books and I’ve been published in any way, shape or form
you can think of, from self-published, print on demand,
traditional publishing, the whole route. The Attractor
Factor is still the one that shines the brightest yet it was
the one I was most reluctant to share. So I am trying
to express to people that if you are looking to bring in
riches in your life besides doing all of the things we’ve
been talking about on this call, also look in that area of
your life where you really have a thrill, you really have a
passion, you really have a love, but you have not shared
it with the rest of the world, not in a public way. It could
be a sign of the gold that’s waiting for you. And then the
other part of this is, well, The Attractor Factor revealed
a five-step formula for creating wealth or anything
else from the inside out. And again, it’s all about the
stuff that we’ve been touching on throughout this call,
about taking complete responsibility, about directing
our mind to go in the right direction or directing our
11 THE MASTERS OF THE SECRET JOE VITALE
brain to bring us the answers we want about realizing
that we’re already master creators, we’ve just been
doing it unconsciously so we’re getting things that we
consciously say we don’t quite prefer and we want to
become aware of that process and take control of it. So
I love The Attractor Factor. I’m very proud of it. In
fact I’ll tell listeners that if they want to get a special
deal, the deal that was going on when I first promoted
the book where you can get thousands of dollars worth
of bonuses if you just went and bought a copy of the
book is still active at this secret site; it’s www.mrfire.
com/factor.
BILL HARRIS: And I’ll also say that I love your website.
Believe it or not Joe, on wet afternoons sometimes I go
to your site just to poke around and look at all of the cool
stuff you have there...
JOE VITALE: Well that’s nice to hear, thank you.
BILL HARRIS: And you’re into so many different
things that there’s just all kinds of different stuff
on your site, and so I encourage anyone listening to
this to go to www.mrfire.com and just look around
because there’s all kinds of other tools and resources
and information there that are along the same lines
of some of the things that we’ve been talking about.
Now one of the things we haven’t talked about is
marketing and I bring this up actually because a lot of
the people that are Centerpointe participants I know
have a problem with marketing. They often think that
marketing is manipulative or that somebody is trying
to get somebody to do something they don’t want to
do or buy something they don’t want to buy and so
on, and you bill yourself as a hypnotic marketer and
that sounds like “Well, you’re gonna hypnotize me and
take my money,” and all of this so I thought maybe we
could talk a little bit about this because I know your
philosophy about this is similar to mine, which is that I
think marketing is explaining to people certain benefits
that they can get if they are willing to trade their money
or whatever other payment it might be for whatever
the item is. And the whole idea is that at the end of
the transaction they have something they wanted more
than the money and you have the money since that’s
what you wanted because you’re in business in order to
sell products and everybody ends up happier and this,
the hypnosis if you want to use that word isn’t to try
to get anybody to do something they don’t want to do,
it’s really to help people overcome their own ways of
sabotaging themselves from going ahead and getting
what they want.
JOE VITALE: Yeah, I’m glad you asked the question
because this is not about manipulation or persuasion
or brow beating people or the old used car salesmen
mentality or way of being. This is all about finding the
target audience who most wants your product or service.
That’s really what marketing is. It’s finding that target
audience, that’s already got a mind set looking for your
product or service, it’s just that match is where the sale
takes place and marketing is just telling them both about
it. But I want to go ahead and say something that I found
explains marketing in a way that seems to make a lot of
sense to people that have been listening to me talk before
because I’ve heard these objections before, and I say “You
know, I don’t really care for marketing myself and I don’t
look at what I do as marketing.” I’ll give you a quick story
here. A year or so ago I’m laying on the massage table
getting a massage from my massage therapist and this is
one of those unusual times when she would not shut up.
She was just talking a mile a minute and it was all about a
movie she had seen the night before and she saw a movie
that I am sure you’re aware of your listeners should see it
if they haven’t seen it yet, and it’s What The Bleep Do We
Know? So she had seen What The Bleep Do We Know
the night before and she was just raving about this movie,
she would not be quiet. She just went on and on and on.
Now of course, I got interested, I ended going to see the
movie. I of course told her later that I saw the movie
and my question that I ask people when I tell the story is,
“was she doing marketing?” You know, everybody says
no but she was. She was marketing that movie. She was
not getting paid to do it but she was certainly marketing
that movie. It was a form of marketing. I say that
when you look at this real closely, all she was doing was
12 THE MASTERS OF THE SECRET JOE VITALE
sharing her love to somebody who she felt would be very
interested in the product or service she was describing.
Well by God, that’s a great definition of marketing.
That’s kind of an elevated, noble, higher consciousness
way of looking at the word marketing. If people look at
marketing and think “Oh, that’s just you know, it’s evil,
it’s mind manipulation, it’s money grubbing.” Well,
forget marketing all together then. Just go with sharing.
If you have a product or a service that you believe in and
by god, you should believe in it if you are offering it to
the world, otherwise why are you promoting this product
or service? Get out of it and get into something that
you do believe in. So if you’ve got a product or service
you believe in, you want to share your belief in it with
the people that are most likely to want to hear about it.
That’s marketing. So I’ve just transformed this whole
conversation by saying “It’s not about the marketing,
it’s about the sharing.” You don’t walk around and just
share whatever it is at the restaurant you just ate with
everybody in the world. You share it with the people
who are your family, or your friends, maybe your clients,
because you think, “you know what? They would be
interested in this.” That’s marketing. Sharing what you
love in a passionate, enthusiastic, sincere way with the
people who would be most interested in hearing about
it.
BILL HARRIS: Well I just assume that people would want
to know about something that I know about that would
solve a problem they have or would give them a benefit
they want, and in fact, what would they think of me if I
knew about something that would solve a problem they
have and I didn’t tell them? And then the second part of
it is, then I try to make them an offer that they can’t refuse
to quote The Godfather. I try to make the description of
what I am telling them about enthusiastic and engaging
so that they stick with it and get to the end where I make
them the offer, and then I try to make them the best
possible offer that I can so that they really say, “wow, this
is really worth it, this is what I want, and it’s really worth
it.” And what I have found is that the people who have
trouble with this are almost always, if not always, people
who have problems maintaining good boundaries. For
instance, if I tell someone about something and it costs
$249, let’s say, and they’re having trouble paying their
bills and they don’t have an extra $249, they get into this
state where they really want the benefits I’ve described
but then they feel all of this anxiety about their finances
and the fact that they really can’t afford it, and instead of
saying, and this goes back to something we were talking
about earlier. Instead of saying, “Wow, I’m creating this
feeling of anxiety in myself because of my finances,” they
blame me for creating that anxiety in them or it could
be that they really want the benefits but they don’t know
me yet, and so they are not sure if they can believe me.
And so they feel anxiety about, “I want this but maybe
it’s some sort of a scam,” and they feel anxiety instead
of saying, “Wow, I am creating anxiety in myself by
what I am doing inside,” they blame me for creating the
anxiety in them and then they write me a three-page
letter complaining about the marketing which I use as a
teaching opportunity. I’ll usually spend the time to write
them a letter back and I’ll try to explain to them what I
think is going on, but...
JOE VITALE: That’s beautiful. I’m glad you said that. Well
you know what, I put up one of many websites recently.
This one is at www.attractanewcar.com and I’m saying
that for a couple of reasons. One is, I’m marketing right
now because I am very excited about this and I think the
people listening to this on this call would want to hear
about it. But the second reason here is there is a case
history going on. If you read the sales letter at www.
attractanewcar.com, towards the bottom of it where I’m
starting to get to the kill here, what I mean by that is that
I’m starting to go for the close and I am asking you to
buy, I also get to the point where I say, “I know that you
are probably wondering if you should believe me or not,”
and I list a couple of things that are obviously on people’s
minds like, “is this process really gonna work and really
attract a new car using Joe’s system?” And second of all
I say something like, “And you’re probably wondering
if you can trust me or not.” So this is where hypnosis
comes in where I’m starting to create rapport by paying
attention to what I believe what people’s mind set is
but I am also doing this process of highlighting the very
13 THE MASTERS OF THE SECRET JOE VITALE
beliefs on their brain, and then going to the next step to
say, “Look, it’s this very quality of doubt that is keeping
you from attracting a new car and getting a lot of the
results in your life.” What I am saying here Bill is that
I’ve used the very thing people have ended up writing to
you and me with complaints about. I have woven it into
the sales letter and said, “Look, if you’re gonna let doubt
stop you from buying this, you’re probably letting doubt
stop you from doing the very things you want to achieve
in your life. Are you going to stop it or are you going to
go forward?” So I am using it within the sales letter to
increase sales.
BILL HARRIS: I just went to the site and it’s as all of
your... I love reading your sales letters anyway because
you’re such a great writer and I’d love to steal your ideas
because you’re a great copywriter and people can see you
kissing your lovely wife in front of your custom made
car.
JOE VITALE: Brand new car, right.
BILL HARRIS: Yes, and what is this other car below it?
Batman’s golf cart?
JOE VITALE: Yeah, one of the guys...This is a great story.
Pat O’Bryan of www.instantchange.com who is one of my
partners on some products, this is a guy who’s driving
a beat-up pick-up truck who had 250,000 miles on it.
He was a struggling musician really wrestling with self
esteem, with poverty, with accepting money into his life.
He had to really come to grips with the idea that he could
have a new car. Now, for him to allow a new car into his
life he chose a Scion, which is what there is the picture
of there, and of course when he got it, he absolutely
loved it and he called it Batman’s Golf Cart, a cute way of
describing the darn thing. But you’ve got to realize for
him to allow that car into his life was like somebody else
allowing a jet into their lives, to own a jet for example. I
mean this was huge. It caused a deep transformation and
he had to change a lot of beliefs to allow it. So that’s just
one example. Somebody else wanted a sail boat. There
was somebody else who wanted $50,000 in cash and got
it, and you know, the list goes on and on. I’m not trying
to sell something, and people go to www.attractanewcar.
com and buy it, that’s wonderful of course. I’m trying
to use this to illustrate the process of marketing. I love
everything that I am selling on that website, I believe
that people who end up going there are a match for it so
of course, this is my sharing again. I believe they should
buy it because it’s gonna make a difference in their lives
and all the principles in the web site and in that course
are the very things you and I have been touching on
throughout this hour or so conversation.
BILL HARRIS: So www.attractanewcar.com is really a
practical demonstration of how people can direct their
mind in a way that attracts whatever they want.
JOE VITALE: That’s the point because a lot of people will
say, “Yeah, I’m learning the process of manifestation
or I’ve done a few books or whatever,” but they are
still broke and so I am saying, “Okay, lets’s do this
on something really concrete. If you can look in your
driveway and see a brand new car there next week or in
30 days, then you can nod and say, “Yeah, I manifested
that. I used the www.attractanewcar.com.” And if you
can’t do it then you haven’t mastered the system. So I’m
just using manifesting a new car or attracting a new car
as a personal development exercise. It’s not about the
car. It’s not about the car. It’s about you and becoming
conscious of your own inner power.
BILL HARRIS: Well it’s interesting that you are doing
this Joe because the very first thing that I consciously
decided to attract was a new car. I was 27 years old.
I was selling real estate. I had been selling real estate
for maybe a year and my real estate broker gave me the
book Think and Grow Rich to read and after I read it, I
got very excited about it because in that book Napoleon
Hill gives a pretty easy to follow step by step way of
creating whatever you want, and so I went to my real
estate broker and said, “Well, what kind of a goal do
you think I should set?” And I thought he was gonna
say, “Sell x houses in x time or something like that or
a certain amount of money,” but he was smarter than I
14 THE MASTERS OF THE SECRET JOE VITALE
thought he was because he did the same thing that you’re
doing which is very smart. He made it very tangible. He
said, “Why don’t you get a nice car?” And at the time I
thought, “Well that sounds very materialistic. It sounds
like I should get some two tone shoes and plaid pants
to go with the rest of my real estate salesman outfit or
something.” I mean that’s what I thought of real estate
salesmen at the time and I suppose that there are some
that way, but at any rate, that was the year 1977 that the
Cadillac Seville first came out which was a smaller, more
compact, sportier Cadillac, and so I decided I would get
one of those in 6 months. And then I thought, “Okay,
now what do I do?” after I wrote down this goal. Because
I had no idea how to go about doing it. So the only thing
I could think of doing was to go to the dealership and
look at them. And I thought what a lame first step but it
was the only thing that I could think of. So I went to the
dealership and I started looking at them and to make a
long story short, I had the car not in 6 months but in 6
days.
JOE VITALE: Oh wow.
BILL HARRIS: And I found out that when I got there that
I could lease the car and that the payment wasn’t very
high at all and that I was making plenty of money already,
and it caused me to feel so much different about myself
at the time that my income really went up quite a lot then
after that, and it made a pittance to afford it and so then I
said, “Gosh, this is amazing, this really works,” which is of
course what you want people to say when they go to www.
attractanewcar.com and do what you say. So then I set
another goal that I would make, I don’t even remember
what it was. I think it was $7,500 in 30 days which was
a lot of money at the time. This was 1977 when, that was
probably $20,000 or so in today’s money, maybe even a
little more. But at any rate, I made exactly $20,000 in
exactly the next 30 days to the penny which of course
caused me to say, “What’s wrong with you, why did you
only say $7,500?” You can tell me if this ever happened
to you Joe. At a certain point this was working so well
that I began to think “I don’t need to do anything to
make this work. It just seems so effortless that all this
stuff was coming to me,” so I stopped all the stuff I was
doing every day, writing down goals, thinking about
them, asking myself how am I going to do this, and so
on and then stuff stopped happening. And then I had to
say, okay, this really reinforced me that there really was
a strong connection between what I was doing inside my
head and what was happening. And I would sometimes
be thinking of things in my head, you know, visualizing
things and setting goals and focusing on them and so on,
and what I wanted would not come from the area where
I was doing the acting. It would come from somewhere
else. I was going out like I was going out knocking on
doors or something to try to get real estate listings and
I was getting lots of listings but not from the knocking
on doors. So I stopped knocking on doors and stopped
thinking about it and I stopped getting listings from
other places. So I also realized that it may not happen
in the way you think it will happen. And to be open to it
happening in whatever way it happened. So...
JOE VITALE: That was one of the big learning experiences
for me is to be open to be surprised. For the longest time,
because initially when I was working back in Houston
and I had a job and so forth, I would expect the extra
income I wanted to come because somebody was gonna
give me overtime. And I had to learn to let go of my
expectations because that was coming from my ego. My
ego knew what my past was, it knew what my perceived
capabilities were. It knew what the avenues of income
based on the past were supposed to be and I had to let
go of my ego and allow the universe which of course has
the global perspective to say, “You know what, we can
surprise you and bring money to you in any number of
ways that you’ve never even imagined before, you just
have to let go of being concerned about it.” And that
was a tough one because I had to trust which is another
big issue for most people. It’s like the step five in The
Attractor Factor is about trusting, is about letting go, it’s
about going with this whole process. And what I have
found is that this stage of my life I am amazed at where
the money comes from, how much comes in and the level
of wealth that is there. There does not seem to be a sky
is the limit type of thing because even the sky is a limit.
15 THE MASTERS OF THE SECRET JOE VITALE
We have seen people go far beyond it and I have no idea
what the limits are, as long as we take the limits off of our
own brain, our own belief system, it could come to us in
any number of ways that we’ve never imagined before.
Certainly it could come from the old routes that they
came into our lives before but as long as we’re open it
could come in surprising ways, and that was one that
I had to wrestle with and then the other part that you
had mentioned a little bit earlier was about when you
stopped that a lot of this stopped. And I have found
that yes, when I stopped focusing on what I wanted
and stopped declaring goals and stopped spending
time visualizing or nebulizing, or thinking I would have
liked to have the things I wanted, it seemed to slow
down to a kind of automatic pilot level. So in other
words, if I’ve already raised my prosperity IQ, if you will,
then I will continue to bring in that amount of money for
that level. But if I wanted to raise the level, then I had to
consciously do something and that’s when I wrote down
a vision or I had to write my goal or I had to do some of
the things you were talking about. So I found that I have
to keep doing it and it’s not a “have to” in a negative way,
it’s a “have to” in a fun way. It’s almost like writing out
a Christmas list, you know, saying, “Wow, universe, I’d
really like to have this and this and this. I’d really like to
experience this and this and this, and it would be really
cool if you could bring it by this and this and this.” Then
it’s just fun, it’s placing my order with the universe, kind
of depositing it in through the mental bank so to speak
and then acting on my hunches and paying attention to
the opportunity and then acting on them when they show
up and being dazzled and surprised as it all unfolds. It’s
a wonderful process.
BILL HARRIS: You know, and I want to insert something
here that we sort of talked about right at the very
beginning and I find that this is, at least appears to be
ironic. I don’t think it really is ironic but it appears to
be ironic especially to someone who isn’t really creating
much success in their life and that is that the more
successful you get, the more you are able to manifest
whatever you want, the more money you can make
and all that sort of a thing. The more you realize that
it doesn’t matter whether you have money or whether
you have things or whether you have stuff, and it kind
of becomes, it’s sort of a game and it’s fun to play the
game of “let’s manifest some stuff.” But the more that
I have the less I realize or the less I need it, the more I
realize that my happiness and my inner peace and my
fulfillment in life is not tied to this stuff. A lot of people
that don’t have this stuff, they really think that, “if only I
had this stuff,” you know, “if only I could pay my bills, if
only I had a partner, if only something.” And it’s great to
have those things. It’s the old, “I’ve been rich, I’ve been
poor and I like rich better.” A lot of people have said
that but really, you almost have to get a lot of stuff before
you realize that getting a lot of stuff does not make you
happy. It’s almost a cliché that people with a lot of stuff,
some of them are miserable still.
JOE VITALE: Yeah, absolutely. I’m glad you brought it
up. It kind of brings us full circled in a lot of ways and
I guess I would like to leave you with a thought here,
leave everybody listening with a thought. One of the
things that I heard decades ago that I did not grasp
right away and it really jammed my brain when I first
heard it and I had to wrestle with it before I began to
understand it. There was this one line that said, “You
can have whatever you want in life as long as you don’t
want it,” and I wrestled with that for the longest time.
It was like how can I want it and not want it? How can
I want money or a car and not want it? I changed the
wording a little bit because I am a word guy so it made a
little bit more sense to me but the concept is still strong
and that is, “You can have whatever you want in life as
long as you don’t need it.”
BILL HARRIS: Well, it’s kind of the difference between
preferring an outcome and being attached to an
outcome.
JOE VITALE: That’s exactly it. Because when you’re
attached, when you’re dependent, when you’re desperate,
that’s the energy that you send out that ends up
attracting more desperation, more neediness. You don’t
get the thing you want, you end up getting this feeling
16 THE MASTERS OF THE SECRET JOE VITALE
of desperation which you think is driving you. It’s the
whole Attractor Factor in a nutshell really, but it’s really a
thought I guess, there’s so many thing’s we’ve covered on
this amazing call, I’m just blown away by this. I am going
to have to listen to it myself to just grasp everything we’ve
touched on. But this idea that you can have whatever you
want as long as you don’t need it, meaning that you can
have it as long as you’re not attached to it. You can have
it as long as you’re not going to live or die if you don’t
get it. You can have it as long as you’re not desperate
for it, you know, needing it, addicted to it. You can have
whatever you want as long as you don’t want it.
BILL HARRIS: Yeah, and I think part of what I was
saying was the more you realize how easy it actually is to
manifest whatever you want, the more secure you’ll feel,
that that can’t be taken away from you and therefore this
clinging and grasping for things kind of goes away and
that’s when it becomes really easy. You know, Napoleon
Hill was very wealthy in 1929 and he lost everything in
the stock market crash and he has a book that he wrote
when he was in his 80’s called Grow Rich With Peace
of Mind which is really different than his other books.
It’s a much more thoughtful book in a way because he
was very old and he knew he wasn’t going to live that
much longer and he, in that book he says that when that
happened he spent a few minutes being miserable and
then he realized that though he had lost all this riches,
the real riches he had were inside his head and all the
principles he knew about how to create things in the
world and of course some other principles too, spiritual
principles, and that no one could take that away from
him. And after that he made way more money than he
had made before except this time he didn’t spend it on
having six Rolls-Royces and a lot of other stuff that he
had spent it on the first time, that he realized that he was
you know, he was just kind of doing for his ego at the
time. So, there’s a couple of other things I jotted down
while we were talking that I’d like to get your thoughts
on before we wrap this up. One of them is, I’d love to
ask you a question that I’m asked a lot. In fact, I wish I
could find an e-mail here but I’d have to scramble around
while we’re talking, because someone asked me this very
recently in one of my online courses. I’m telling people
to do the things that we’ve been talking about on this call
and some people say, “Well you know, I start focusing
on what I want and then I actually feel really good. And
then I come back to reality and I realize that I am poor
and I don’t have this,” and they go back into what they
consider to be their grim reality and then they say, “You
know, this whole idea of doing this just seems phony to
me. I just can’t fake it. The reality is that I am poor and
miserable and I am uneducated and I don’t know what to
do.” So, I know how I answer that question but how do
you answer it?
JOE VITALE: Well, in The Attractor Factor I say there is
a missing step and there is Step 3, I call it the missing
secret and that’s the idea of getting clear. Getting clear
means that you want to get clear of all of the negative
beliefs within you, the programming and so forth, that
are in the way of you achieving whatever it is you happen
to be. When somebody says that they can’t do it because
they feel like a phony, that’s a belief. They are giving it
power when they keep repeating it. “I feel like a phony, I
can’t do this.” Well, repeat it enough, it’s your reality. It
goes back to some of the things we talked about earlier.
And then there’s this whole perception thing that we
talked about earlier too that they may feel poor, and I
don’t know where they’re living, but I imagine if they are
in a one room efficiency and they have a refrigerator and
maybe not even a t.v., they’re living better than people in
true poor countries and third world countries or living
better than people lived in castles in the 1500’s. They are
in the highest level of riches in comparison to somebody
else. So when they say that “I’m really poor” and
whatever, they’ve made a judgement about themselves.
They want to get clear of that. So for me, it’s all going
back to getting clear, they’re accepting their illusion as
their reality and they’re not taking any steps to change
it.
BILL HARRIS: Here, I found one e-mail that’s kind of
like this. It’s very short, I’ll just read it. It says, “I’ve
spent the last several days trying to notice any negative
feelings, what I don’t want, and immediately refocus on
17 THE MASTERS OF THE SECRET JOE VITALE
what I want. However, in most cases I find that after a
few seconds I am back focusing on what I don’t want.
This is very frustrating as I keep noticing what I don’t
want and then fear that I am going to create it. It feels
like a never-ending process. I don’t see how I can keep
this up indefinitely. Any suggestions that would make
this process easier would be appreciated.” And you
know, it is a tedious process at first to keep pulling your
mind back to what you want and I think that I have
uncovered really what’s behind all of this, why there is
this pull to focus on what you do not want even though
it’s very un-resourceful to do so and that is that when
people are growing up, if they are traumatized in some
way they reach a certain conclusion about the world and
life which is that the world is a dangerous place, or it’s
a potentially dangerous place and in order to avoid that
danger they’ve got to watch out for it. Well, to avoid
danger you’ve got to focus on it and then your brain says,
“Oh, he’s focusing on danger, he must want,” you know,
whatever the danger is. The danger could be being poor,
it could be being alone, it could be being abandoned,
it could be, whatever. So, ultimately you can exercise
will power to keep your mind focused on what you want,
despite the fact that the negative emotional charge from
past traumatic events is pulling you toward that. But
eventually you’ve got to get clear as you say. You’ve got
to heal the root cause of that trauma in some way and the
two tools that I use are Holosync which is very powerful
in doing that, and then in my online courses we do a
lot of time line therapy which takes people back to the
root cause event and it’s a very elegant way of people
eliminating the emotional charge on it so that it feels
totally flat emotionally, totally emotionally neutral and
it no longer pulls their attention.
JOE VITALE: Let me offer a third idea here that has
worked for me and I alluded to it when I talked about
going into the Mental Toughness Institute For Weight
Control. That’s the idea of being in a supportive group
and of course Napoleon Hill called it a mastermind
and I have been in, I am currently in two different
masterminds and I have found being in a supportive
group to be an incredibly powerful way to elevate me
from what I used to be tugged back into. Now whether
that meant the old lifestyle of wanting to go back into
a habit of overeating, if he had been doing it for fifty
some years, there’s a very strong tug to go back to
the habit, and making up your mind to change that is
part of it and making that perfect decision and being
diligent about watching it is part of it, but I have found
that if you have support from other people, either going
through the same thing or they’ve already been through
it, who are rooting you on, who are available for a
weekly call or a meeting or an e-mail. That is incredibly
powerful in keeping you above what has pulled you
down before. So I want to offer that as a third tool, not
a replacement for anything but saying that the whole
idea of a mastermind or a support group has been in
my experience, anyway, phenomenal in transforming
the old into where I wanted to be into this new.
BILL HARRIS: Absolutely, I totally agree with you and
this is part of the reason why we offer support coaches in
the Holosync Solution Program and in case somebody is
listening to this and they are saying, “Well I don’t know
anybody I can do that with, all the people I know are all
losers and idiots and they wouldn’t be supportive of me,”
in case somebody is saying something like that, this is
the time to ask that magic question, “how can I find a
group of like-minded people that will help support me?”
And if you really ask that question and really get curious
about it and keep asking it and keep pondering it, you
will magically somehow find a way to create that group
of people.
JOE VITALE: Well, we live in the age of the internet.
The groups are all over the place online and if you can’t
find an existing one you can probably create one either
online virtually or in your own neighborhood. But my
whole point is, yes, I love what you just said. Direct
your brain to find the answer for you but don’t be
afraid to ask for help. That’s one of the success parts
of the AA program, is you know, get support. So, this
does work, all of these things.
BILL HARRIS: Well, Joe, we did not really talk about
18 THE MASTERS OF THE SECRET JOE VITALE
what we were going to talk about before we did this
and I had a few ideas, but 90% of what I brought up I
thought of off the top of my head and sometimes that’s
the best way. I really want to thank you for sharing
your brilliant knowledge and wisdom with everyone
and it’s always a lot of fun to talk to you and to share
ideas with you. So thanks so much. Again, Joe gave
two websites that you might go to again if you want
to find out more about Joe and what he does and I
endorse Joe very highly and what he does is gonna be
very useful to you I am sure, and that would be www.
mrfire.com and then I want to make sure I get the one
about the car right.
JOE VITALE: www.attractanewcar.com
BILL HARRIS: www.attractanewcar.com
JOE VITALE: Yes.
BILL HARRIS: Is that linked to from www.mrfire.com?
JOE VITALE: I don’t believe it is because it is brand new
so it’s not linked just yet.
BILL HARRIS: Okay, so that’s a somewhat secret site that
uh...
JOE VITALE: Yeah, we just made it public right now.
BILL HARRIS: Okay, great.
JOE VITALE: Oh, this has been exhilarating Bill. Thank
you. We’ve worked together to bring up some wonderful
stuff. I feel stimulated and enlightened and I’ve learned
just as well as I hope I’ve taught, so this has been fantastic.
Thank you.
BILL HARRIS: Well, it was a pleasure for me too. So
thanks a lot Joe. I appreciate it.
Thank you so much for listening to this conversation
with another of the Masters of the Secret. I know this
information will help you to master The Secret yourself—
the fact that what you focus on is created in reality. To
thank you for listening, I have a very special free gift for
you. As I’ve worked to master The Secret and implement
it in my life, one of the most powerful tools I’ve used
is Holosync audio technology, which, when listened
to using stereo headphones places the listener in deep
states of meditation, literally at the touch of a button.
In addition to many mental, emotional, and spiritual
benefits, Holosync creates an ability to focus your mind
so powerfully that manifesting what you want becomes
easy. I’d like to send you a free Holosync CD so you can
try it yourself, along with a free Special Report explaining
how it works and all the amazing benefits it has created
for the nearly 300,000 people who have used it in 173
countries. To get your free Holosync CD, just go to:
http://www.centerpointe.com/freecd
Thanks again for listening, and I look forward to being
with you again next time.