Lessons - Homelessness And The Levels Of Human Consciousness | Dr. Joe Vitale, Author & Speaker

Welcome to the lessons episodes of Success Story. These lessons episodes will be shorter clips from past guests, accomplished value community members, and myself. In each short episode we'll feature concise and insightful actionable conversations and tactics providing you with real-world strategies and tips to help you achieve your personal and professional goals. If you're seeking a no-nonsense approach to growth and progress, you've come to the right spot. Settle in, take notes, and enjoy. Yes, I was homeless way back in the 1970s in Dallas, Texas, but I really had a dream, and that's what kept me going. The dream was to be an author. I thought I was going to write novels and plays, and I did write a play that did get produced, it really didn't go anywhere, and I've never had a novel completed or published. But the extension of that was I still followed my dream, I followed my passion, and despite being homeless, despite being in poverty for 10 some years, I somehow maintain the vision and in my own clumsy, persistent, very often suicidal, and depressed, approached the life, I managed to get through it and get out the other side. So in summary, for me, I'm simply a guy who's following his passion, whatever I'm curious about, I pursue it. If it really seems to be something that would resonate with other people, I turn it into a book, or a music album, or I don't know, a digital product, a some sort, an audio program, so I can share it. I think my mission is to inspire people to go for and achieve their dreams, and as long as I'm doing that, I can just keep on going. So how do you, so you went through some tough times? How did you, or let me rather phrase it differently, is the thing that kept you going, the thing that you felt sort of drove you through those tough times, and eventually you became successful, is that something that you basically try and teach over, and what is that thing, what is that driving factor? That's a wonderful question. I would say there's two things that kept me going. One was curiosity, and the curiosity was when's it going to change? Was it going to change tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, meaning when is the door to success going to crack open and let me in? That curiosity kept me going, and it kept me going through some very dark nights. I remember getting a shotgun and taking it out and loading it, and I was going to do myself in. It's true story. I actually fired the gun to make sure it worked, and then I was going to turn it on myself. And I remember thinking, this was in Ohio, it was dark, it was cold, the stars are out, and I remember thinking, what if tomorrow I get an acceptance for something I've written, or what if it's next week or next month? And I pulled the plug now. What if I stopped before the show's over? So curiosity, and curiosity's available to all of us because none of us know what's happening. None of us know what tomorrow brings today brings, let alone tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, the rest of our lives, none of us know. And that curiosity kept me going, and I'm very grateful for it because I ended up living a life that is staggering in terms of unimaginable success on levels that I've never envisioned. I mean, good Lord, I can go through the list, but I don't want to sound like I'm bragging. I want to sound like my curiosity and my persistence kept the momentum going. So the first thing is curiosity, it's available to all of us, just be curious about today and tomorrow. The second thing is the vision, the vision. And the vision for me was to be an author. I didn't know I'd be a musician, I didn't know I would be in movies, all of these are what I call side benefits of following your dream. And I had a dream. And the dream ever since I was a kid was to write stuff that would last, that would make a difference, that would bring joy, happiness, pleasure to people. And I started doing it early on, and I followed that dream then, and I still followed that dream now. You mentioned I have 80 some books out. That's all coming from my passion, that's all coming from me wanting to share, that's all coming from me wanting to make a difference to make people happier. It all comes from my sense of a mission. So I would say the two things that come to mind right now is curiosity and vision. I love that. I think that when you speak to a lot of successful people, I see those themes a lot, right? You see that curiosity, that vision. Now let's speak about, because I know that when somebody, when somebody listens to the intro I just gave, if you're not involved with your work, you hear the secret and you hear about manifesting, you hear about all these types of things. I'm a big fan of abundance mindset. I fully buy into that. I think that if we can all give a little bit more, there's more than enough money to go around. I think that is something that not enough people subscribe to. Now manifesting, I do believe that if you're continuously thinking about the things you're going to achieve, you're going to be taking micro steps in the direction of what you'd like to achieve eventually. I think that a lot of people miss the understanding of all these different themes, like the abundance, mindset, manifesting, loss of attraction, all these things are, is that, I don't want to input words in your mouth. Is that the core of the works that you do because you believe that that is how you achieve success or is that just a very small portion because I do want to touch on that briefly? No, I'm glad that you're bringing these things up there important. Those are stepping stones along the way. That is not the whole picture and that is not where I'm coming from anymore. Where I'm coming from is what I call, and I have a program called The New Awakening and I have a book called The Awakening Course, I'm coming from awakening. And so this is a spiritual insight into the lives we're living. I actually think we have stages of consciousness and most people are born in the victimhood. Most people die in victimhood. They just blame the world, they react and respond to life. But there's other stages of consciousness. The second one is empowerment. An empowerment happens when somebody sees a movie like The Secret or they see a show like this or they read some of my books or some of the success literature out there. And they start to learn about the power of the mind, how they can set goals, take action, use visualization, affirmation, meditation, all kinds of tools. But that's not the end. That's where a lot of people get stuck. And it's kind of a fun place to be stuck because for a while you feel like Superman or Superwoman because you can now feel like I can have you or be anything. I just have to imagine it and go for it and if I'm persistent and so forth, I'll get it. A lot of that is true, but there are other stages of consciousness. The third stage is kind of a divine surrender. And this is where, and believe me, I know this firsthand, you come across something that you can't change with yourself alone. You can't change with empowerment. You have to surrender to something that's bigger than you. And this happens when there's a death. My father died about a year ago this month or there's an illness. My new life partner had got neuro-align disease and was near dead for about a year with me taking care of her. Or you go up against something that you alone can't resolve. I'm in a divorce even right now, which should have been over very easily because I didn't resist or say no to anything. But yet it's going on because of other parties that I don't have any control of. And so you get to this place where you realize you're not God. You don't have control of the world. You have a lot of power. You are very empowered and these are God-given powers. But at some point you realize you're not the one in charge and you have to learn how to co-create reality. And then the fourth stage of awakening is an awakening itself. That's enlightenment. That's when you realize that you are a spiritual being in a material body in the third dimensional world. And you apply a lot of spirituality to your day-to-day existence. So Scott to answer your question, I am in many ways way beyond the secret and the law of attraction. It's a little bit like saying, hey, you went to first grade. Wasn't that cool? Why don't you just stay in first grade? Well, there's second, third, fourth, fifth. There's a graduate school, I mean, there's all kind of levels beyond it. So I want people to have what they want. I want them to be happy and healthy, but I also want them to have an awakening because I think that's my message. That's what we all need to hear. I actually believe we're all here to do one thing, to awaken, to awaken. You hear that spiritual message in a lot of different religions where you're trying to reach that level of consciousness. And I do believe that a lot of people don't take the first step into improving their lives just because there's this abundance of pessimism and negativity that really stop people from understanding what they can do. And I think that what is tough for people to figure out or wrap their mind around is to see the full path. So they don't understand how the micro-action they take is going to eventually lead to the success they want in 10 years. And they just want the immediate, and that's it. And if it's not immediate, it's not real, or if it's not immediate, it's not valid. And that's wrong. Because people that aren't entrepreneurs that don't go through this struggle, entrepreneurs know this better than anything. And I don't mean to speak to entrepreneurs in particular, but you ever ask an entrepreneur or anybody who has success, sports, politics, anybody who has any sort of credibility in their field, it's not overnight. It's, you know, thousands of all these different. So it's like, just take that same mentality, apply it to any person. And if you want to be successful, it's not going to be the one thing. It's going to be the hundreds of thousands of things that you have to do. Anyway, that's that's my, I don't want to take over the session. This is all, you know, just something I feel passionate about. It's very wise and people need reminded of that. That's also true in my case. I've often told people, yeah, I'm an overnight success. If you define overnight as 30 years, it is none of us that I am aware of had an overnight success. Everybody put in their time. They put in their hours, they put in their work and overtime, they had little breadcrumbs of success that kept them going. But the vision is what kept them going and the belief in themselves and the possibility of the vision becoming reality is what kept them going. And then at some point, you break through and you, you reach a level where people notice your success and to them, it seems like it was overnight because you just appeared. It's much like before the movie The Secret in 2006, I was pretty well known as an internet marketer as a copywriter because I was one of the first to go on the internet. I was considered an internet pioneer. And from that level of success, a lot of people took notice of me, a lot of people hired me. And then the movie The Secret comes out and that thing blows across the planet and suddenly everybody sees me and everybody recognizes me and I go on Larry King live twice and Oprah does three specials on the show and Newsweek and New York Times and I'm being invited to speak all over the world. Suddenly overnight, overnight Joe is noticed all the time before. I was doing all the work to be in preparation for a phone call that I didn't even know was coming that would say, Hey, we read one of your books, which I wouldn't have written had I not taken the action to get it done. And we want to put you in this movie, which I didn't know was going to do anything. And then when I'm in the movie, it ends up being this intergalactic historic making film. But all of this was because I was worked in for 30 years to get to that point. So your point is well taken and I think people need reminded of that. If they open their business today, they should not expect the sell out today. If they write a book this week, they should not expect it to be a best seller next week. They should be doing the plugging along, doing the action steps and trusting that planting seeds and a little later you'll get the pluck this fruit.