Dr. Joe Vitale at Zero

Riveting.

That’s the only word to describe the book I couldn’t stop reading on the flight back from Chicago.

Riveting.

I was tired from spending almost a week recording my new audioprogram for Nightingale-Conant.*

I wanted to sleep.

I needed to sleep.

But I couldn’t put the book down.

All NLP people, hypnotic writing disciples, negotiators and persuasionists, sales people and marketers need to write this title down:

Influencer: The Power to Change Anything.

It’s by the same team who wrote Crucial Conversations (which I haven’t read yet): Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan and Al Switzier.

I’m not sure how five authors write one book, but this one is well-written, packed with stories, case studies, tips and insights that are enriching my understanding of personal change and stretching my mind in entirely new directions.

Logic and verbal persuasion are out, as well as old school intervention tactics and other aggressive approaches to change.

They rarely work, anyway.

And never for the most persistent and overwhelming problems.

The authors make the powerful (and persuasive) case that if you want to change the most troublesome problems in yourself or anyone else, you need to study the change agents who have done the impossible, people like –

* Dr. Mimi Silbert, who created a way to change thieves, prostitutes, murderers and gang members into college educated citizens who work regular, respected jobs — and without therapists, staff, funding, grants, or guards.

* Miguel Sabido, a TV producer in Mexico who creates life changing soap operas that have helped millions — including one show that caused over a quarter million viewers to flood the streets looking for a booklet on how to cure illiteracy.

* Dr. Wiwat, who helped stop the spread of HIV/AIDS in Thailand by getting all the sex workers to practice safe sex.

* Garth Japhet, who helped stop wife beatings and other violence against women in South Africa.

* Muhammad Yumus, Nobel Prize winner, founder of Grameen Bank, who helps women in poverty in India with microcredit loans to put them into business - to date helping over 100 million people, and with a 98 percent success rate.

* And Albert Bandura, the modern psychologist, a genius, who invented self-efficacy (the unbending belief that you can do something), who all modern influence masters and change agents study when they want to know how to change the “impossible.”

I’m reading Influencer to learn new ways to influence myself. (There’s always something to improve.) I’m also reading it to understand how to change others for the highest good of all concerned.

This is a powerful, inspiring, important book. It’s aimed at changing groups or organizations (even countries), but the applications are personal as well as professional.

If you want to change something in yourself or another and have been hitting a wall, Influencer may be the door to freedom.

Their approach involves research, behavior study, and a multiple of methods that are weaved into a strategy where the desired change is virtually inevitable.

Creating a change strategy based on the authors’ methods will take time, but the ending result could be amazing.

See www.vitalsmarts.com for information on it and other books by the authors.

Highly recommended.

Ao Akua,

Joe
www.mrfire.com

PS -  Have I mentioned I think the book is riveting?

* My previous program with Nightingale-Conant is The Power of Outrageous Marketing. My new program is called The Missing Secret and will explain the Law of Attraction in a practical way. It will be released on November 12th. Mark your calendar.

You can see a brief video clip on youtube of me answering questions about marketing and Zero Limits and writing and publicity and a whole lot more from a wired audience at http://youtube.com/watch?v=zaoEhWRM-UE  It’s an excerpt from the DVD explained at www.patobryan.com/revelation.htm Go see.

 One of the guardian angels in my life is Peter Wink.

If you’ve been following my career, you know he is the reason I ended up with my first Nightingale-Conant audioprogram some ten years ago.

Peter believed in me before anyone else, and worked for an entire year to make me a Nightingale-Conant author.

I’ve often told the story of how he put my picture in every office at N-C, including the mens and womens bathrooms, and also on top of the company Christmas tree.

He wanted people to know who I was. He eventually sold me to the company, and my program, The Power of Outrageous Marketing, remains a top bestseller for N-C even today.

Peter and his beautiful wife Stephanie have been entertaining us a lot this week here in Chicago. They are loving, positive, supportive people.

Peter still believes in me and wants to see my career go even higher and reach even more people. I tell you, we all need coaches and supporters like this. It’s a key to success.

Peter’s website is www.peterwink.com He’s got a terrific book on negotiating you should get, too.

Ao Akua,

Joe
www.mrfire.com

PS - I finished recording my new audioprogram for Nightingale-Conant this morning. It will be ready for review on November 12. Stay tuned.

 Dinner tonight was amazing. Hanging with the great Vic Conant of Nightingale-Conant fame was a wonderful moment. The man is humble, wise, and full of stories about the legends of personal development. I urged him to write a book about his life but I doubt he’ll do it. Still, you never know. I need to make this short as I need to get up early and get back into the studio. More soon. Wish me luck.

 I’ve been in Chicago all week recording a new audioprogram for Nightingale-Conant. I was here ten years ago to record The Power of Outrageous Marketing, which has been and still remains a bestseller. This new program will have little to do with marketing but everything to do with the “missing secret” to success. This new program will come out mid-November. You know I’ll tell you when it’s available. If you’ve never browsed the famous Nightingale-Conant catalog, you’re in for a treat. Go see www.nightingale.com Meanwhile, I’m off to have dinner with friends in the beautiful windy city.

  Several weeks ago one of our cats, Tiger, was diagnosed with high blood sugar and diabetes.

The vet advised a second blood test to see if the condition would change.

We did the second test and discovered his condition had actually worsened.

The vet said Tiger would need insulin shots twice a day, else his health would worsen even more.

Shots?

Twice a day?

Tiger is nearly twenty years old. He’s a maine coon. I’ve had him since he was born feral and came knocking at my door when I lived in Houston.

In many ways, he’s my best friend, though he doesn’t say much (a good thing in a cat) and he rarely likes to be held (he’s a loner).

Still, we’re buds.

I didn’t relish the idea of him being sick, let alone us having to give him shots twice a day.

I’m pretty sure Tiger wouldn’t like the shot thing, either.

I asked Nerissa and the vet if they would give me two weeks to try to heal Tiger.

Neither liked the idea but both humored me. 

I then did three things that I hoped would make a difference in Tiger’s health:

 

1. I set an intention.

I stated that I wanted to find a fast way to normalize Tiger’s blood sugar level and heal him of diabetes. Nerissa joined me with this objective. A clear target can be very motivating. Two people focusing on it adds to the power to achieve it.

2. I searched for a remedy online.

I jumped online and searched for “Cure feline diabetes.” To my amazement there was a site dedicated to just that. I instantly ordered the special vitamins and started putting them in Tiger’s food. He never ate all of it as he didn’t like it, but I figured a little is better than none.*

3. I gave Tiger healing treatments.

Every day I would hold him, pet him, and consciously send healing thoughts and chi energy into him. I’m a student of Chi Kung/Qi Gong and know how to direct energy. As a metaphysician, I know about mind power treatments. As a practicioner of self-identity ho’oponopono, as described in my book Zero Limits, I know to keep cleaning on anything I see as a problem, whether in me or “out there.” I did all of this daily. Apparently Tiger liked these healing treatments because he started getting on my lap every day, something he would normally never do.

This two week experiment ended yesterday.

We had to take Tiger back to the vet for his third blood test.

Nerissa drove him over while I stayed home and kept cleaning on his health and my worries.

The vet took one look at Tiger and said, “He’s better.”

She noted he had gained weight and looks healthier.

She added, “Whatever you are doing, keep doing it.”

That was good news, of course, but we still needed to do the blood test to confirm that our intention came to be.

The results came in today.

Tiger is better!

The vet said his blood sugar dropped by half.

He dropped over two hundred points.

He’s still not completely out of danger, but she felt he could go without insulin shots as long as we maintained whatever we are doing and he continued to look healthy. 

Not bad, eh?

Please note how this healing method worked:

1. I declared an intention.

2. I took action.

3. I kept cleaning.

What’s impossible?

Maybe nothing.

Why not go for your wildest dreams?

Why not try the impossible?

Tiger says it’s worth a shot.

And he’s not talking about an insulin shot.

Ao Akua,

Joe
www.mrfire.com

PS — Miracles Coaching might be worth a look, too. You don’t have to heal cats in it and who knows what you might achieve?

* The special vitamins formula I found online and bought for Tiger is described at www.petremedy.com/cat/db/home.htm Since he didn’t eat a whole capsule every day, and did his best to eat around it, I can’t say that it helped normalize his blood sugar level yet. But we’re going to keep giving it to him, just in case it did or does help. The site selling the formula has dozens of powerful testimonials from cat owners who have seen miraculous healings. Tiger wants his picture on their site, too.

 It took me 53 years and nine months, but I finally did it.

On January 1st I wrote about a climbing rope I bought from John Wood and set up on a 15 foot tower outside by my gym. (See http://blog.mrfire.com/uncategorized/on-continuing-a-rocky-story/ for that original post.)

My goal was to climb it, of course.

I couldn’t do it growing up and my gym instructor humiliated me for my failure.

I didn’t try as an adult.

But it was unfinished business in my life. I wanted to succeed at this personal challenge and goal.

So virtually every day I tried to go up that rope.

There were several setbacks along the way, including an emergency appendectomy.

But I kept trying.

My trainer Scott York was patient and encouraging.

He’d climb the rope as if he were a monkey and then do chin-ups on the tower at the top.

I wanted to do that, too.

So I kept trying.

Every day.

And yesterday I climbed the rope!

Fifteen feet straight up.

No one was there to photograph the moment but now that I’ve succeeded, I know I can do it again, and even more easily than the first time.

I’m sharing it here to inspire you to set goals that are meaningful to you and work at them every day.

Persistence is a secret to success.

And it’s something you can practice every day.

If I can climb a 15 foot rope after 53 years and nine months of failing at it, what can you do?

Ao Akua,

Joe
www.mrfire.com

PS –  What’s “the rope” in your own life?

I’m reading yet another book in the growing field of positive psychology. This one is Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier by Robert Emmons.

Dr. Emmons is Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Positive Psychology. He is also author of The Psychology of Ultimate Concerns (Guilford Press) and The Psychology of Gratitude (Oxford University Press). Thanks! is his newest and most accessible book. 

One of the most revealing insights early in this new book is that happy people achieve goals faster than unhappy people.

In other words, most people use un-happiness in any of its forms (anger, frustration, desperation, impatience, dissatisfaction, etc) to motivate themselves to achieve a new result.

But new research, reported by Emmons, proves that happy people — people already grateful for who they are, where they are and what they have — tend to more easily and quickly achieve the goals they say they want.

Emmons writes ”…happiness makes good things happen. It actually promotes positive outcomes.”

This is remarkable news. I’ve been saying it for years, though, and wrote about it in my book The Attractor Factor: happy people tend to attract positive results faster than unhappy people.

And the really great news is that you don’t need anything to be happy.

Happiness is available to you right now.

I write about this in my forthcoming book, The Key. One of the best ways to experience happiness is to find something to be grateful for right now.

As you do, you shift your perception, which shifts your feelings, which causes you to attract and act in new directions.

Most people bicker, complain and blame.

You can imagine what they feel like, or what they accomplish.

But if you stopped and wrote down five things you were grateful for right now, you would transform your perception and begin to act and attract more of what you really want — and even faster.

I’m enjoying reading Thanks!

In fact, I’m very grateful for it.

Ao Akua,

Joe
www.mrfire.com

PS - This month marks the one year anniversary of my Miracles Coaching program. It has been a phenomenal success. The last group of participants are finishing up their program and we have an opening for you. Get all the details at http://miraclescoaching.com I’m very thankful for it, too.

I was tossed every question you could think of — about writing, marketing, blogs, publicity, Amazon gift certificates, bestseller campaigns, Dr. Hew Len, “Digit” and more – at Pat O’Bryan’s last UnSeminar.

The scheduled speaker was late and I jumped (was pushed) on stage to field questions.

The result was one of the most information-packed hours you’ve ever seen or I’ve ever given.

One friend said, “I can’t believe you gave away ALL your secrets!”

I was nearly in tears at the end of the hot seat, mostly because of the last question I was asked.

I also got a standing ovation. 

You can now see the whole thing on DVD.

Get the scoop at www.patobryan.com/revelation.htm 

Go see.

Ao Akua,

Joe
www.mrfire.com

PS - What questions did they ask me at Pat’s event? They’re listed at www.patobryan.com/revelation.htm Go see if one of yours is there.

 A few months ago I wrote about an old world craftsman by the name of Arlin Liss who hand makes unique cigar humidors. I was so taken by his work that I hired him. The above picture is of the cigar humidor he just completed for me. 

I’ve called Arlin Liss the Michelangelo of cigar humidor makers.

I saw Michelangelo’s Pieta’ — considered the greatest sculpture in history — in Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican in Rome, Italy. 

It’s breathtaking.

I’ve also seen Michelangelo’s David in Florence, Italy.

It’s astonishing.

But I think Arlin Liss is just as good.

Okay, maybe I’m waxing poetic here, but you get the idea.

Arlin is a master craftsman, an artist with wood, who loves what he does and infuses his work with that love.

Consider: Are you doing what you love, with passion and skill, so others see an artist at work?

If not, why not?

Ao Akua,

Joe
www.mrfire.com

PS - My original post on Arlin and prosperity thinking is at http://blog.mrfire.com/uncategorized/question-prosperity-or-problem/   

PPS - You can see more pictures of my new humidor at www.arlinliss.com/_Cocobolo/Joe%20Vitale/Humidor_Details.htm (It’s expected to arrive here on Thursday.)