368. Zero Limits Living with Dr. Joe Vitale

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Joe Vitale: 

You are loved by this invisible spiritual force, this cosmic consciousness, this infinite intelligence. The more you can feel that and sense that, the happier you'll be, the more relaxed you'll be, the more in the flow you will be, the more life will work out in a co-created, moment by moment sense of the miraculous.

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Hello and welcome to The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster, food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. 

Each episode, you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented, and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strived to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your Daily Helping.

Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Daily Helping Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. And I am so excited about today's guest. He is fantastic. Dr. Joe Vitale is a globally famous author, marketing guru, movie, TV, and radio personality, a musician, and one of the Top 50 inspirational speakers in the world. His many books include The Attractor Factor, Attract Money Now, Zero Limits and so many others. He’s a popular leading expert on the law of attraction and in many movies including The Secret. 

Dr. Vitale discovered the missing secret not revealed in the movie. He's been on Larry King. He's been on CNN, CNBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, Fox and Friends Extra. He's been everywhere. There is so much more that we can talk about, but I don't want to rob any of us of the time of hearing Dr. Joe's brilliant insight. Welcome to The Daily Helping. We're going to have a lot of fun today, Dr. Joe. 

Joe Vitale: 

I'm already having fun. I've been looking forward to this. I'm like a little kid. I've been rubbing my hands together going, I can't wait to talk to Dr. Richard. Let's do this. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Let's do this. So what I love to do is I like to hop in the time machine.

I like to go back in time. Dr. Joe, tell us what puts you on the path that you're on today. 

Joe Vitale: 

Well, first of all, I love time machines. And in fact, behind me, for those who can see the visual, there is a time machine replica from the 1960 movie. This is how much time machines have influenced me. But if I go back in a time machine and decide or want to try to figure out how I got into self-help, the easy answer is, I needed help. I was looking for help. So I immediately went to the self-help section of the public library. I didn't have money for books back then and growing up. 

But I went to the self-improvement section, the self-help section. And the reason why? I was unhappy. I was unhappy and I knew there's got to be a way out. There's got to be a way to have a different kind of life. There's got to be some secrets that somebody knows that they can share with me, so that I could, in my young mind, have, do, and be more. And of course, I'm a kid. I was reading these metaphysical, psychology, philosophy books when I was a probably 16 years old, if not a little bit earlier than that in my public library in Niles, Ohio, the Niles McKinley Public Library. What a great gift that was to me. And I pretty much lived there. That's pretty much where it started. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

And so I love it when people are kind of know where I think they get this spark when they're a kid and it carries through. As you started getting into personal development, which really hadn't exploded as an industry like it is today, at what point did you realize you were going to be influencing and helping the number of people that you do today all over the world? 

Joe Vitale: 

Oh, that didn't happen till last week. I certainly didn't know it growing up. My goodness. That was nowhere in my mind. I was too focused on how do I find happiness? How do I survive? How do I break free from this childhood that I viewed as misery and abuse back then. I was not thinking at all about influence. That was never -- there was nowhere near it. I don't even think I could have comprehended the question at that point. 

Now, as I grew up and as I kept befriending books, I did decide at some point I wanted to be an author. And I do remember telling my father, I wanted to write things that made people happy. I said, when I look out into the world, I didn't see happy people. And so I wanted to write what I thought at the time might be humor, might be comedy plays, theater kind of experiences. So I do remember having an inkling that I wanted to kind of influence people. 

And what I didn't understand is the person that was unhappy was me. And what I wanted to do by writing comedy was to make myself happy, make myself lighter, and more humorous, and maybe by extension I can do that for others. And that's, I think the best way I can answer your question because I don't think for decades I ever had a clue that I'd be what would be called an influential until some of my books became bestsellers. Some of the things like being in the movie, The Secret, hit the world and I got carried along with all that. But in the beginning, no, I wasn't thinking of influence. I was thinking survival. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

You mentioned The Secret, and I just want to spend a moment here. We've had a fair number of people in that movie on my show, but you, in your bio, I read that you discovered the missing secret, not in the movie. Let's talk about that a little bit briefly. 

Joe Vitale: 

Well, thank you for that question, because this is probably the most important message I have. This is, if there's any contribution I've made to the self-improvement industry, it's probably this concept of the missing secret and I had to find it myself. I mean, I was homeless for a long time. I was in poverty for 10 years. And during that time, as I mentioned, I'm at the library. I'm reading all the right books. I'm reading Think and Grow Rich and The Magic of Believing and Dale Carnegie and all the names that you would list from the success literature of the world and yet I'm not rich, I'm not happy, I'm not successful, so I keep thinking what's missing. And as most people do you also start thinking what's wrong with me? Why does this work for everybody else, it doesn't work for me?

So I discovered the missing secret through the road of hard knocks and that missing secret is that consciously, you can decide all day long that you're going to be wealthy, you're going to be happy, you're going to be in a relationship, you're going to heal yourself, you're going to do all these wonderful things, all well and good. 

But subconsciously/unconsciously, if you have what I ended up calling counter intentions, you will not achieve your intentions. If you sit there and say, consciously, I intend to have more money. Good. Money is a good thing to use and you need it to pay your bills. But if subconsciously you think money's bad, money corrupts, money's evil, money is going to taint me, money's going to ruin me, what do people think if I have more money? You're not going to allow money in your life. You're going to block it. 

And the missing secret is you have to take care of those counter intentions in the subconscious/unconscious before you can state an intention and actually attract it, achieve it in your life. So this is the missing secret. It wasn't brought up in the movie, The Secret. And I still love the movie The Secret, and I would tell people to watch it whether I was in it or not, because the movie introduced an idea. 

And I also defend the movie because it was a movie for God's sake, it wasn't a graduate course in how to manifest a reality, it was an introduction to an idea. So I talked about the power of the mind, the law of attraction was the main concept, but to go deeper and to talk about counter intentions and inspired action and some of the things I write about today and talk about and get on soapboxes about, that was nowhere near the movie. So I brought out the missing secret afterwards. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

So let's dig into counter intention. So number one, they're unconscious or subconscious as you stated. So we might not even be fully aware we're having. So what's, I guess the first question I have, Dr. Joe, is what's your strategy for discovering if they're there? And then if they're there, what do we do about it?

Joe Vitale: 

These are great questions. And you know what you're doing here, Dr. Richard, because this is the kind of thing that uncovers the truth. And so what do we do? There's two or three things. I mean, I have an old, an audio program I did almost 20 years ago called The Missing Secret. It's full of different ways to find out what those beliefs are. 

But let me help your audience right now. All you have to do to bring up some of the limiting beliefs, some of the counter intentions I'm referring to, all you have to do is state an intention. You state an intention. Right now, it can be anything. Everybody listening, everybody watching, they can pick one. I intend to attract more money is a popular one. And as soon as you say that, what shows up in your brain? What starts showing up in your mind? It's all of the doubt. It's all of the skepticism. I intend to attract more money. Well, that's a great thing to say, but it's not going to work for me. Right there is a limiting belief. 

Or, if they go a little deeper and say to themselves, well, if I have a whole lot of money, I'll have to pay a whole lot of taxes, so I don't really want a whole lot of money. That's another limiting belief. If they say, I intend to attract more money, but then they start to remember, oh, I heard money is the root of all evil. 

What I'm pointing out is that by stating the intention, you engage the mind, and that mind is now going to bring up the objections. Those objections are the counter intentions. All of those objections need to be looked at and questioned. And there's different techniques on questioning them and erasing them and removing them and replacing them. And you and I both know this. 

But to answer your question, all you really have to do is state, here's what I'd like to have, do, or be. And then listen to your own mind. Because your mind is going to start drudging it up. And if it doesn't happen instantly, it's going to happen later in the day. Or it's going to happen the next day. And that's when you've got to peter out a little bit because all of your enthusiasm for the intention is going to get watered down by your mind questioning, doubting, being skeptical. 

And what you have to do is being separate from your own mind is listen and question because more often than not, all those objections, all those excuses, all of those beliefs are just wispy thoughts that you bought into.

And as soon as you shine the light of awareness on them, they disappear, and you're free. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

In the clinical world, we refer to those as cognitive distortions, right? It's the same thing. It's a perception of reality that isn't necessarily grounded in truth, but it may be something, a pattern and echo that we had picked up previously. So I didn't want to spend a ton of time there, but I appreciate you sharing that wisdom. What I do want to talk about, your newest book, Zero Limits Living, which is out now, you're a prolific writer. You've published a ton. What was your impetus for writing this book? 

Joe Vitale: 

This is the most important book of my career so far. And most people don't know, I've written 90 books. So here's a guy who has been very prolific and I've written books like The Attractor Factor which talked about the law of attraction. That was the book that got me into the movie The Secret. I've written books like Zero Limits, which was the book that brought the concept of a Hawaiian healing technique called Ho'oponopono to the planet. 

So I've had some milestones in my career. But I also have looked back and thought a lot of these different books are fragments of a greater truth. And as I have grown, because I'm still reading, I'm still working on myself, I'm still meditating, I'm still doing the self-awareness, self-improvement, self-help, and I'm in my seventies now. 

I've had my own awakening where there's a synthesis of all of these different concepts and all of these different books that goes into a system that actually works. And because I said earlier, I was spending a lot of time with things that didn't work. I was homeless. Nothing seemed to work. Then I was in poverty. Nothing seemed to work then. And there were reasons for all that, besides just the missing secret. I was also just learning pieces of the puzzle. 

Well, the latest book is based on my latest Satori experience, if you will, is that you have to put it all together. The new book is called Zero Limits Living. And it describes what I'm calling the three pillars of success. And previously, any of my books might have focused on one of those pillars, but even I didn't know at the time that there were three and that I could join all three. So Zero Limits Living reveals what the three pillars are in a way that we can finally achieve and attract the dreams that we've been wanting and deserving and scrambling to manifest. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

So let's go through those pillars at kind of at a high level. So are these pillars that are sequential steps we have to go through, or are they just kind of standalone and we can hit them when we're ready to hit them, so to speak?

Joe Vitale: 

Dr. Richard, that's a great question. First of all, I want to answer very spontaneously and honestly that you need all three pillars. In what order? I don't, as I sit here, know that I could answer that clearly. I'll sit with it and I'll call you back later. We'll do a follow up show and I'll go, hey, I got an answer to that other question. 

But there are three pillars and I think you need to do all three pillars. So as you point out, let's do it from the top down. The very first pillar is mindset. Everybody just went, I know about mindset, I've heard about mindset. Not in the way that I'm describing. This goes back to that whole concept like there's a missing secret. You've heard about positive thinking. You've heard about affirmations and having a vision board and this that and the other. 

Those are things that can work if you are in alignment and congruent consciously and subconsciously. If you're not, they're not going to work and you'll sludge your way with great disappointment and shame and embarrassment and disgust and desperation, all because you're not in alignment. So mindset is a far more deeper concept than just thinking in one direction. You've got to have your mind totally cleaned up and integrated. That's the very first thing. 

The very second thing, this is the thing that people criticize the movie The Secret about, is that a lot of people don't take any action. The second pillar is what I call inspired action. It's not any old action. Anybody can just fumble their way through the day, but not actually get anything done. You need the mindset all aligned first, but then you need to take inspired action in the direction of whatever your vision/intention happens to be. 

And there's depth to that to that, and there's all kind of tips and hacks and everything to make that easier that the reason I have 90 some books is that I'm a very inspired action-oriented guy. But if I just thought about the books and just stayed with the mindset pillar, you would not know me as an author. I wouldn't have written anything. So the second is inspired action. 

The third is one that I think in many ways is the most powerful of all, the least understood of all and the least that gets integrated into an action oriented positive thinking spirit. And the third aspect is mysticism, mysticism. Mysticism as a pillar goes by a lot of different names. Spirituality might be the one most people would resonate with, but I mean it a little deeper and a little bit more esoteric than just spirituality. I'm certainly not talking about religion, though I'm not dismissing it. I'm talking about a life force that is animating all of us and is available to all of us that can help guide us through the inspired action and through the iron mindset part of this. 

So you end up with these three pillars that come together in an integrated way that I explained in the new book. And when you get there, you can have a zero limits life. That's what Zero Limits Living is all about. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

I want to circle back to mysticism because the scientist in me is fascinated here. So what you describe sounds a lot like what Dr. Carl Jung talked about with respect to cosmic consciousness. And so, is that what we're referring to here when you're talking about mysticism? 

Joe Vitale: 

I am. And in fact, I like that phrase, cosmic consciousness. And I like the one Napoleon Hill used, which was infinite intelligence. Because in both cases, we're referring to something that other people might call God. Other people might call The Divine. But Carl Jung and Napoleon Hill, they came up with this kind of neutral but yet expansive ways of describing what I think we're all agreeing is this energy vortex that is alive and intelligent. That's what we're referring to. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Even in the movie, The Secret, and I can't remember who it was that referred to this. It might've been Michael Beckwith talking about that there is this kind of intelligent design to the universe and whatever label that we ascribe to it. We have learned through quantum physics and being able to study people's brains, like we understand now that science tells us that there was parts of our brains that light up when somebody -- you look at a monk who can get into this amazingly deep meditative state and somebody who is a devout, whatever their religion is, and they get into prayer, the same parts of the brains are lighting up. So we're seeing with science that there is some connectivity here. 

Joe Vitale: 

Yeah. There's a lot of science that is proving there is a God part of the brain. There's a book called, I think it's called The Awakened Brain. And that scientist specifically had found that there is a part of your brain that actually seems to be the God home. It's the part that lights up when we are connected to this universal intelligence, cosmic consciousness, infinite intelligence, whatever you end up wanting to call it. I end up calling it the great something. Joseph Campbell called it the great mystery. I call it the great something because we all seem to know that there is something there. 

I would even argue that the atheists of the world might call it nature, but this nature is something we are from, we are part of, and yet it's bigger than all of us. So I think that we can all agree that there is something there. But in terms of my new book, Zero Limits Living, you have to use all three in order to have a happy, healthy, prosperous, well adjusted, meaningful life. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

To me, in a roundabout way, this is kind of like the it ego and the super ego. You've got to have this, this, underbelly of this mindset that's intact here. Your consciousness is taking this inspired action. And we didn't really revisit that, but I like that statement because I think you're right. One of the people, or one of the reasons rather that The Secret was criticized is that people would put up these vision boards of these mansions and they're married to models and all these things and they didn't get it because you -- but you can't just expect things just to happen. You have to take action. 

I heard Hal Elrod once refer to this. He called it not the law of attraction but law of action and attraction if I'm getting his quote correctly. But it almost sounds like these three things are really a system. To me, this feels like a system.

Joe Vitale: 

Exactly. And that's how I refer to it, and that's what I call it, and that's what it has been for me. So I do think of it as a system, and I think it's a system that works. I think this system, this process if you will, this strategy if you will, is what fills in the gaps that were missing and all the pieces that I wrote about previously and all the books that I had read previously. It explains why I would read Think and Grow Rich in 1972 and then throw the book against the wall because I immediately went into homelessness. 

I did not get all of the pieces and I can't blame Napoleon Hill because he spent his entire life and left the legacy with as many pieces as he could find. But I do believe that there have been some missing pieces and, of course, the missing secret, which explains why so many people are good naturedly and hopefully getting into self-help and then being disappointed. They didn't have the whole system. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

So I want to take it back to mysticism just for another moment. You had a great example of asking yourself, what do you want and being able to sense what are these thoughts I'm having in my head to see where these limiting beliefs come from, these counter intentions. 

For somebody who is watching us or listening to us -- and you phrased mysticism in a way to where it is more neutral, it could connect with somebody who is straight out of scripture reading your Bible, and it could connect with somebody who's a bit more on the kind of agnostic side of the spectrum. For somebody who isn't overly religious or doesn't really have a religious or a spiritual practice, what are some techniques or strategies that a person might use how to connect with that part of themselves that they are not really accustomed to connecting with?

Joe Vitale: 

Dr. Richard, that might be one of the best questions I've heard all day, if not all week. That is really juicy. And I want to help as many people as I can, so I'm looking in my own brain to say, what is the best answer to this? 

What comes to mind is, the closer we get to the understanding of how we're taken care of in life, the closer we get to understanding there is a benevolent intelligence in the cosmos that is orchestrating that. I'm pausing for that to sink in, and now I want to narrate a way to discover this. The way that you can begin discovering this is through gratitude. 

You and I both know the power of gratitude. It's transformative. It's free. Anybody can do it any time anywhere right now. And when most people do gratitude, they look around and go okay, I'm grateful for, and I got a car, or I got my microphone, I got a camera here, and I got some water and I've got a lamp, and I got a guitar. And they look around at the stuff that's around them and maybe they get to, I got a relationship. I got a puppy and they're grateful for that. 

I want to go deeper because there are unseen, unrecognized gifts that we almost never acknowledge. For example, I'm breathing right now, in part because of the gift of air. I'm not paying for it. I'm not asking for it. And my body is doing it without me sitting here going, oh, remember to breathe Joe. My body's doing this very naturally, very organically. And the combination, that dance between the universe supplying me with the air and my physical body taking it in, that is a miracle. 

And we start to look at the little miracles, like we can look at gravity. I'd be floating right out of your camera range and away from the mic if we didn't have gravity holding me and my chair right now. So thank goodness for gravity. Thank goodness for the oxygen, the air, the planet that's balancing itself enough that I can walk around here where I can't do it on the moon or I can't do it on Jupiter, but I can do it on earth. And then you look at how your body is actually regulating itself. My heart's beating. Thank goodness, it's beating, but I'm not making it beat. My eyes are looking at you. My mouth is moving, and words are coming out and brain is operating and virtually everything I'm saying, I'm not reading a script. I have no notes here. So somehow, I'm trusting all of life and all of the biomechanical part of what you call Dr. Joe, all of this comes together. 

And then when you look at it's a gift. It's a gift. You start to move into what could be called a divine gratitude. It's a lot more than the things in your office or in your home or in your relationships, though you want to be grateful for all of those. This is for something that you didn't do too much to make happen and maybe nothing to make happen. When we go in that direction, we start to make contact with something that I think most of us would agree is bigger than our ego. And that something is closer to what I call spirituality, or infinite intelligence, or cosmic consciousness, or even God. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Beautifully said. Beautifully said. Zero Limits Living available everywhere. I cannot wait to read it myself. Joe, our time together has flown by. 

Joe Vitale:

No. It isn't so.

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

I know. But we're going to do it again someday. I promise that. As you know, I like to wrap up every episode of my show by asking the guest a single question, and that is, what is your biggest hope and that one most important piece of information you'd like somebody to walk away with after hearing our conversation today?

Joe Vitale: 

Well, Dr. Richard, first of all, I'm grateful. Thank you for having me here. I'm flattered and honored, and your questions are priceless. So you're doing a great service to everybody. 

To take a deep breath and look at what is the message I really want people to get is that you are loved by this invisible spiritual force. You are loved by this invisible spiritual force, this cosmic consciousness, this infinite intelligence. The more you can feel that and sense that, the happier you'll be, the more relaxed you'll be, the more in the flow you will be, the more life will work out in a co-created moment by moment sense of the miraculous. You are loved.

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Mic drop. Perfectly said. Dr. Joe, tell us where people can learn more about you online and get their hands on your latest book.

Joe Vitale: 

Oh, well, I'm not hiding. So I'm all over the online world. I have been since 1992. And my books are on Amazon. You can find Zero Limits Living there and 89 other books. I'm on most social media as Dr. Joe Vitale, D-R-J-O-E-V-I-T-A-L-E. I have lots of websites, but I'd say just go to Mr. Fire, which is my nickname. M-R-F-I-R-E.com, mrfire.com. And of course, my new book is that Amazon and wherever books are sold and there you go. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Perfect. And for those of you in the gym or in the car we’ll get you covered everything Dr. Joe, will be featured in the show notes for this episode at drrichardshuster.com. Well, Joe, thank you so much for coming on. I loved our time together. It was awesome. 

Joe Vitale: 

Me too. Thank you. What a great relationship. What a great thing that you're doing. I'm very grateful.

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

I appreciate that. And I also appreciate each and every one of you who took time out of your day to listen to this. If you're inspired, if you're excited, if you're going to go run and get this book, go drop us a follow and a five star review on your podcast app of choice, because this is what helps other people find the show. 

But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else. Even if you don't know who they are and post in your social media feeds using the hashtag #MyDailyHelping, because the happiest people are those that help others.