Tag: Books

I used to hate exercise.

Even though I’ve worked out with legends in fitness, and personally met icons like Frank Zane, Lou Ferrigno, George Foreman, Floyd Patterson and others, I never liked exercise.

I even own one of the largest and most well stocked private gyms you’ve ever seen, which includes famed bodybuilder Steve Reeve’s personal Universal machine.

I used to smoke cigars in it.

If I could pay someone to exercise for me, and still reap the benefits, I’d do so.

Gladly.

But personally training with Body-for-Life fitness legend Bill Phillips has changed all that.

I now look forward to getting my workout done every morning.

These aren’t walks in the park, either.

My 25 minutes of HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) cardio takes all I have.

And the 45 minute weight lifting is something I almost hate to do but love having done it.

I’ve learned that I may resist it or resent it, but I never regret it.

But the best thing of all?

I’ve created something called obstacle immunity.

I learned the phrase from the book, Spartan Up! by Joe De Sena.

Inspiring, challenging book

De Sena created and runs the incredibly intense obstacle courses/endurance runs/insane peak performance events called “Spartan” that about half a million people have voluntarily entered.

Crawling up greased walls, running through mud, sprinting over rugged hills, dodging fires or any number of totally unexpected obstacles is what Spartan is all about. And penalties for not completing an obstacle are fifty burpees (fifty!), the most intense body weight exercise ever.

Spartan is designed to challenge you beyond what you think you can do.

It’s Hunger Games without the politics or the killing.

But it’s still intense.

De Sena says when you achieve athletic success in the unpredictable wild environment that his creative mind conjures up, you develop a resiliency to anything life can throw at you.

Your inner strength becomes almost super human.

I’m not suggesting you enter a Spartan race or Mud Run or CrossFit gig (unless you are inspired to do so), but tackling something as challenging as a burning morning workout sets my mind’s resistance meter to high.

If I can complete such a self-directed rugged workout, then I can do almost anything.

I leave the gym ready to handle life.

And the thing is, life is then much easier.

I don’t know Joe De Sena, or even anyone who entered one of his Spartan events, but his book validates what Bill Phillips and my trainer Scott York have said for years: getting that morning intense workout done gives you “a win” that makes you feel you can handle anything for the rest of the day.

As Bill Phillips, Scott York, Joe De Sena and even my father all say, exercise is medicine.

Too many of us want the easy street.

And we want it now.

I’m all for an easy life, but I’ve discovered life gets easier when you choose tough physical challenges and use them to fortify your mental ability to handle the rest of life.

I know the thrill of completing challenges -- 8 certificates, 3 medals, and 1 honorable mention

When you take on a physical challenge, and you learn to endure struggle by controlling your mind and delay gratification, the result is a type of unshakeable bliss and inner self-confidence you will never forget.

Plus you develop an internal ability to handle adversity.

You create “obstacle immunity.”

You will be almost unaffected by any problem, issue or challenge you may face.

Your ability to handle stress will have increased.

When you set out to attract your goals, you will not be easily disheartened or discouraged when you face any blocks along the way.

This can help make you feel that anything is possible.

Any dream.

Any goal.

Any intention.

And guess what?

Anything really is possible.

Arguing for limitations is just, well, arguing for limitations.

I think Spartan Up! is incredibly wise, inspiring, and challenging.

Read it.

And then go do something big that will build inner strength.

What are you doing to challenge yourself?

What can you do right now?

Well?

Ao Akua,

Hercules Joe

PS — We all need help in going for our dreams. Consider Miracles Coaching.

Member BBB 2003 - 2015

Back in the early 1980s, my wife and I got up at 4 am every Sunday, loaded our car with our dirty clothes, and drove to the laundry mat.

We lived in too small a room to have a washer or dryer.

We went to the mat early to avoid the crowds.

We went there every weekend for 12 years.

We became best friends with the elderly couple who owned the mat.

They were fun to be with; always joking about how I looked like the walking dead at 4 am.

When my wife and I finally could afford a house of our own, the couple who owned the laundry mat bought us a new washer and dryer as a gift.

I never forgot it.

I never shared this story before in public.

But as I relayed it to a friend, she urged me to share it with you.

I’m guessing you still struggle in some area, too.

My advice is to hang in there.

It took me a long time to achieve success, but persistence and optimism paid off.

If I can do it, you can do it.

If you want help, consider — http://www.MiraclesCoaching.com

Ao Akua,

joe

PS — Miracles are possible for you, too. Believe in yourself, believe in the future, and invest in your dreams. You can do it. http://www.MiraclesCoaching.com

Click image to read for free - Volume 1 and Volume 2 now available

Look closely at this photo…

Bill Phillips presenting medal to me

I am smiling as bright as sunshine itself.

You can’t imagine how joyful I felt when Body-for-Life fitness legend Bill Phillips presented me with a medal and a certificate for completing his 12-week transformation challenge.

It was my third time to complete his challenge in the last twelve months, and my third medal, but the first one presented to me in public by Bill himself.

I was as giddy as a star struck teenager meeting a super hero.

And I have met super heroes, like the Hulk Lou Ferrigno…

Meeting Lou Ferrigno in my gym one year ago (and me 50 pounds heavier)

And Superman Dean Cain…

Meeting Dean Cain (and I was 50 pounds heavier)

But look at me now…

I'm a champion!

If you’ve been following this blog, you know I have been on a physical transformation journey for one year now. It started when I attended Bill’s Transformation Camp in February 2013.

I have stayed true to Bill’s teachings. I eat right, workout intensely five days a week, follow his principles for self awareness, spirituality, generosity, forgiveness, supporting others in their quest, and more.

The results speak for themselves. I’ve released at least 50 pounds of extra weight, added at least 15 pounds of muscle, and feel like a young Hercules.

A lot of people are supporting me, too, as you can see from this art that was given to me:

Hercules Joe

Bill’s latest weekend camp is called LIFE. It stands for Learning + Inspiration + Fitness + Energy. I just returned from the very first one at his center in Denver.

I loved it.

It’s a refined and more on target version of his Transformation Camp. The eating advice is the same, the workouts are changed a little, the new stories are moving and inspiring, and the daily worksheets (now in full color) are more specific; more like a game you can play to win every day.

I'm very proud of this accomplishment

One big change is Bill wants us to begin with a life vision.

From there, create a year goal, a six month goal, and then a 12 week goal.

That assignment alone helped me feel inspired and fired up to keep moving forward.

It’s no longer about twelve weeks; it’s about life.

I strongly recommend Bill’s work. It isn’t about weight loss per se as it is about living with integrity and wellness.

I regard Bill as a hero in my life; a source of transformation and inspiration from way back in 2004 when I entered and completed five back-to-back Body-For-Life challenges (and received an honorable mention for one of them).

Bill is a genius at sorting through all the conflicting data about health and fitness, and boiling it down to what actually works across the board for all of us.

He’s not a jock so much as a spiritual teacher in the gym.

He’s the Socrates of fitness.

The Buddha of health.

The Aurelius of spiritual-physical balance.

I love the man and his work.

His latest book, Transformation, should be read by all of us. (He’s working on a new book, which I am excited to read.)

Comparing biceps with the legend (Bill, not me)

The people who attend his weekend events are from all ages and all walks of life. Each has a story and a struggle, and each is ready to transform under Bill’s guidance.

Every time I attend one of his events — and I’ve been to four now — I am always moved by the people, their life paths, and their commitment to positive change.

Previous posts about Bill Philips and my Transformation progress:

March 1 2013 http://blog.mrfire.com/transformation-on-demand/

May 16 2013 http://blog.mrfire.com/transformation-update/

October 22, 2013 http://blog.mrfire.com/transformation-part-three/

I fully endorse Bill Phillips. I am not an affiliate for anything he offers (he doesn’t know I’m writing this) but I fully recommend all of it.

I’m told his May event is sold out. He just announced a June camp for June 6, 7, 8. If I were you, I’d go. For more details, see  http://www.transformation.com/ or send an email to [email protected]

Meanwhile, follow your dreams with passion, commitment, and the fire of inspiration.

This post isn’t about me (okay, yes it is) so much as it is a reminder that you can achieve your dreams, too.

Anything is possible.

Expect Miracles.

Ao Akua,

Joe

PS – Lucky you. You can watch me workout with Bill Phillips in this quick video filmed by his wife Maria. I’m on my last set of reps, lifting 100 pounds (two 50 pound dumbbells) like a gorilla ready for his feeding. Enjoy!

PPS –  I wrote the song “Believe” on my latest album in part due to Bill and his beautiful wife Maria (who released 60 pounds) believing in me. Hear a sample by clicking right here.

My new album is everywhere!

Recently I posted this on my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/drjoevitale :

“Inspiration gives you a desire. Decision makes it an intention. Action makes it real.”

That statement helps clarify what it takes to attract what you want. But let’s explore it deeper than a Facebook text-bite so you understand the power of it.

First, an idea is what you get a feeling to do.

An idea is an internal nudge to create something.

It’s different for each person as each of us has a different life mission. My inspiration might be to write another book, or compose a new song. Yours might be to run for political office, open a bakery, or raise happy kids.

An inspiration is either from what I call the Divine, or it’s from your ego.

Nobody outside of you knows for sure what is right for you. It’s your life and up to you to discern the difference. With a little reflection, though, you can tell where the idea is coming from. Nothing wrong with an ego desire, but it’s nobler to come from a higher purpose.

Your Questions Answered

Recently a listener of my latest audio program, The Zero Point, contacted me and told me about the word “Afflatus.” He thought it might be a better word for the kind of inspiration I refer to these days. He was right.

According to Wikipedia, “afflatus” is a Latin term used by Cicero. It means more than “inspiration,” and in fact translates as —

“…the staggering and stunning blow of a new idea, an idea that the recipient may be unable to explain.”

I love the word afflatus so much that I dedicated my latest album, Reflection, to it.

Again, you can receive an idea based on Memory (previous data in your mind), an Inspiration (combining previous ideas into something new), or from afflatus (a completely new idea that stuns you).

The idea should move you to want to take action.

As I also wrote on my Facebook page –

“If you don’t have some self doubts and fears when you pursue a dream, then you haven’t dreamed big enough.”

And that leads to…

Available for Pre-Order

Next, your decision is what gives the idea power to become a reality.

You have free will, so you can ignore the idea, or you can decide to bring it into reality.

I learned decades ago that if I ignore my inspired calling, my life is bumpy. When I decide to follow my inspiration, life is smooth. I prefer the latter.

Again, it’s your choice. When you decide to follow your inspiration, it now becomes an intention. Intentions rule the earth. It’s just wiser to pursue a higher intention than a lower one.

What’s the difference?

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

Decades ago I spoke on the same stage as Jose Silva, the founder of Silva Mind Control. Jose said a goal should influence you and at least three other people.

I love that guideline. It gets you out of your own individual experience of life and moves you into a deeper awareness of others.

It also makes taking action easier.

When you know that your actions are going to touch at least three other people, then you are more motivated to decide to do something.

So step two is to decide.

And that leads to…

Finally, action brings the idea, now an intention, onto the earth plane.

Nothing happens until something moves.

You are a co-creator with life. Life itself wants you to do something. When you do it, you trigger it becoming real.

If I want to write a book, I have to sit down and write.

If I want to play the saxophone, I have to sit down and practice.

If you are going to open a bakery, you need to fill out the forms and do the work.

Meet Saxman Joe

This is where a lot of Law of Attraction students fall short. They think if they just affirm it, it will appear.

Well, it might.

But more often than not, you have to do something to work with reality. It’s no accident that the word ‘action’ is in the word ‘attraction.’

Let me give you one final example of how this process works:

Guitar Monk Mathew Dixon and myself are in the studio recording the third album in our trilogy of “zero” music, following the success of At Zero and Aligning to Zero, this one to be called 432 to Zero.

As is our custom, we don’t plan or strategy. We “make space” for inspiration to guide us, and we are ready to take action on a moment’s notice. We are in the studio, prepared and ready.

What do you hear?

One day neither of us felt compelled or inspired.

We sat in the studio and looked at each other. We’ve done this enough to know that sometimes you have to wait, and sometimes nothing will come. We’ve learned to trust the process and be patient.

Suddenly I felt afflatus strike.

I looked at Mathew and shared my idea.

“What if I played two harmonicas?” I asked.

“But we don’t have a bass line or a foundation track for you to play against. You’d be playing to yourself.”

“I know,” I said. “But I feel like trying it. If it doesn’t work, we can just delete the audio file.”

“Why two harmonicas?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I somehow feel if I just improvised harmonica in what’s called the second position, and then improvised playing in the first position, I’d be in the same key but the two harmonicas would sound different.”

I have no idea where that idea came from.

But since it arrived as a gift, the next step was to decide to act on it, and the third was to take action.

Mathew agreed to try it.

I pulled out two harps, and started to play.

I simply allowed myself to be guided by whatever feeling was welling up and directing me.

I didn’t think about it. I trusted that the process would be whatever it was, and that was good enough.

When I was done playing, Mathew was beaming.

“That was incredible!” he said. “We may have just created a whole new genre of music!”

To hear how it came out go here:

http://youtu.be/uGKQpa48z_o

That’s how this process works.

The formula is simple.

Inspiration gives you a desire. Decision makes it an intention. Action makes it real.

That said, what are you going to do next?

Ao Akua,

joe

PS – My Facebook page is at https://www.facebook.com/drjoevitale

Member BBB 2003 - 2015

I’ve been reading the book, The Einstein of Money, about the legendary investor — the inspiration for Warren Buffett and countless others — Benjamin Graham.

While I’m not personally an active investor in anything but guitars, a couple of cars, and rare books on marketing and metaphysics, I wanted to learn what this icon had to say about money.

Money Wisdom Revealed

As I was reading it, I was reminded of my own formula for attracting more money.

It goes like this:

Profit = P + P.

I failed algebra in the ninth grade (retook it with a different instructor the next year and got straight A’s, thank you for asking), so my formulas are simple.

They need to be, so I can understand them.

Mine goes like this –

Profit equals your Passion plus the Public’s Interest.

Here’s an example:

Waaaaay back in the early 1990s, I was inspired to learn all I could about Bruce Barton, the now forgotten ad man of the Roaring Twenties, cofounder of BBDO (the giant ad agency), a bestselling author of many books, including The Man Nobody Knows (still in print today), and so much more.

I was fascinated and mystified by the man, his enormous successes, and the strange reality of his being virtually forgotten by the 1960s.

All my research led to my writing a book that became (and still is) one of my most popular ones.

Early Famous Bestseller

So let’s see how the formula worked in this case:

My Passion urged me to investigate Bruce Barton.

There was no rhyme or reason to it.

No contract from a publisher.

No one paying me. (I was in fact broke at the time and struggling.)

From outer reality, there was no evidence at all that a book on Barton would go anywhere.

But I followed my passion anyway.

When it came time for me to title the book, I knew the Public didn’t care about Barton.

After all, he was already forgotten by the 1930s and dead by the 1960s and a footnote in advertising today.

The Public would not buy a biography of Barton.

What would the public buy?

What was their interest?

I knew from my own interest in self-help, self-development and success literature, that the Public has a solid, always hungry interest in success.

So I titled the book The Seven Lost Secrets of Success.

I used the formula of Passion (my interest in Barton) and added Public (their interest in Success) and created a new product (a retitled book).

But did it lead to Profit?

The book was first published in 1992. It quickly went through numerous editions, being sold to my mailing list at the time (this was before the Internet, so it was all snail mail).

One mutilevel marketing company loved it and bought 19,500 copies of it for everyone in their business. (!)

Later, a big publisher bought it from me and published it.

It’s still in print today.

So, yes, it led to Profit.

The formula works

The problem with most people is that they never focus on passion to begin with.

They just chase money.

Wrong.

Money is a lousy motivator.

Passion, on the other hand, is real fire.

But when people follow their passion, they often forget to think of what the public wants.

The public pays for it, so you need to tie your interests to their interests.

You have to find the intersection of your passion and their desires.

While someone later came out with a biography of Bruce Barton, it did not sell well. I’m glad Barton got the attention and respect a biography gives, but from a Profit standpoint, thinking of what the Public wants is wiser. (Actually, if you look at the subtitle of the biography on Barton, you’ll see that the author tried to widen his reach to appeal to the public by not just writing a biography of Barton, but by making it about America itself.)

Bio of Barton

Here’s my formula again —

Profit equals your Passion plus the Public’s Interest.

A lot of my thinking about this developed decades ago, when I read a little book from 1928 called, How to Profit from that Impulse.  While that 68 page book, which was about poetry, didn’t reveal any formula that I remember, it got me thinking about how to profit from your passion. That led, in time, to the formula I just revealed to you.

I’ve applied this same formula to my music.

When I decided to become a musician, I did enough research to shockingly discover that there are 3,000 new albums released weekly. (!)

That’s overwhelming competition.

How would I ever stand out in the crowd?

I looked at my Passion (making original music), thought about what the Public wants (to be healthy and happy), and opted to become the world’s first self-help singer-songwriter.

My Product/Profit became a new category of music that I call Healing Music.

This has paid off with seven albums so far, all doing well enough for me to be encouraged to make more. (And I will, including me playing the saxophone on a future album.)

Click image to pre-order new album

As you can see, the formula works.

You just need to apply it.

Here it is one more time for you to ponder —

Profit equals your Passion plus the Public’s interest.

I’m still reading The Einstein of Money, but doubt Benjamin Graham had much to say about my formula for success. And remember that even high rollers and big time investors are often motivated by something other than money.

As Donald Trump once said –

“Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.”

Play the game of attracting money, try out my P=P+P formula, and see what you think.

Expect Miracles.

Ao Akua,

joe

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

Member BBB 2003 - 2015