I’m a big fan of The Secret, the film about the Principles of Attraction.   It had it’s limitations and I don’t feel it went far enough on the practicalities of “how to” but I did get the one tip on the second or third watching, about feeling grateful when you are feeling down, which certainly works although it usually breaks our shower when I use it (don’t ask!)

Joe Vitale, while featured heavily in The Secret, obviously feels the same, because since The Secret was filmed, he has written not one but three books elaborating on the “how to” of The Secret’s Secret.

I have read and enjoyed “The Attractor Factor”, haven’t yet read “Zero Limits” but am totally immersed in “The Key (The Missing Secret For Attracting Anything You Want)” which I got for Christmas.  I was reading it last night as I was unable to sleep for various reasons.

I’ve got a lot of time for Joe Vitale (left) – not only because he is a great and prolific writer, but because he has been there, totally on his uppers, but also perhaps because he looks a lot like one of my favourite DJ’s in the world, Danny Tenaglia (right). 

They both have this tough but cuddly Italian American look about them which I find very appealing – lucky I didn’t live in New York or Las Vegas in the Thirties eh?

Before I tell you about this amazing practical tool I have discovered in “The Key” let me tell you that I am the least woo-woo person you are ever likely to meet, beaten only in the down to earth stakes by Steve Watson and Greg Ballard. 

However, I had a very interesting conversation with Greg last week on the early morning train from Worthing to Victoria last week about the developments in the Money Gym and all the events Greg has mentored us through, since the sale of The Acacia (my ex-hotel in Worthing).

I can’t remember even what I said but it must have been vaguely limiting or even negative (quelle horror!) because Greg picked me up on it and said 

“All the while you say or think things like that you will only be attracting more of it” to which I replied “I don’t REALLY think it but perhaps sub-consciously I feel it still – I’ll work on that”.

Because there is another level to this attraction stuff and unfortunately it’s sub-conscious, which makes it a bit of a bugger to fix.  Because if it’s sub-conscious, how do you even know it’s there, let alone do anything about it?

I think the clue lies in looking for recurring stuff.  If something keeps happening that you would rather not be attracting, but on the surface of it you think that you are thinking only positive thoughts around that thing, then the very fact of it keeping on, keeping on, shows you that you have some more work to do.

Joe calls this work “clearing” and while I’d heard of it before, a lot of the techniques I had heard about for achieving this clearing sounded way too woo-woo for me.

Joe Vitale is reassuringly nice and down to earth though and in this book “The Key” he suggests several different methods that have worked for him, and better than that he tells stories that illustrate how he used them, and how they worked.

Now, like most of us, I’m not great at actually doing exercises suggested by books – it’s one of the biggest stumbling blocks to a book actually really making a difference in my opinion, that we don’t do the exercises.  When I do them I get great results mostly.

However, one of Joe’s suggested exercises is (apparently also covered in depth in his book “Zero Limits”) and it’s called “I Love You” and was taught to him by Dr Ihaleakala Hew Len.

It’s a well known clearing / healing method from Hawaii called ho’oponopono and it initially got my attention as I tried to get my head around that name.  I get more enjoyment out of reading if I can say the words out loud in my head as I read them, don’t you?

The basic assumption is that every action you take is coming from inspiration or memory.  Inspiration is a signal from the Universal Energy (or Tao, God, Buddha, whatever you like) and as someone who regularly experiences “great ideas” or inspiration, I can go along with it so far.

Memory is apparently a programme in our subconscious and everyone is “coming from” memory most of the time.  It colours our actions on a day to day basis.

So the task in hand is to clean those memories so that you can act from inspiration instead.  And he points out that even the way you react to this idea is coming from memory or “old baggage” as he goes on to call it. 

In other words, you aren’t able to respond to things with objectivity and clarity because there is baggage in the way.  Now he’s really talking my language.

That baggage is memory and to clear it you may need to say “I love you”.  He suggests saying it to The Universe (or whatever you prefer) and this is why it’s likened to a prayer sometime (but that’s not great for me as I have an antipathy to organised religion so I preferred to use the word healing while continuing to read about something that is beginning to intrigue me).

I particularly liked this bit:

“It appears that there is nothing “out there”.  The entire world is a projection of what you feel inside.  So if you feel love, you will attract love.  Because love contains gratitude, you attract more things to be grateful for.  You get what you feel.”

Cowabunga.  This is a practical tool that also contains the only other practical tool that I have found to help enormously, when I’m feeling down.  Two for the price of one.  Dynamite stuff, you may agree.

Saying the words “I love you” inside your head stir the feeling inside you and Joe says this begins the healing process.  Moreover, apparently, saying the words sends a signal “upstairs” to whatever, and you get a signal back which helps to clear the memories that are getting in the way of being here “in the moment” with clarity and awareness.

And we all know what that means, don’t we?

You can’t be happy unless you can be in the moment, because living in the future does not make you happy.

I suddenly realised that IF you can be in the moment, with clarity and awareness and that EVEN IF you are feeling bad in that moment, you now have a practical simple tool (that contains another amazingly powerful tool) to make you feel better in that moment THEN you will, quite literally, be laughing.

What this is doing is creating change in yourself and Dr Hew Len says that even if it seems bizarre, but when you take care of your own issues, they disappear in other people.  The whole idea is to “love your problems away” and you do that by saying “I Love You” non-stop when thinking about an issue.

It’s simple, and whacky enough for me to give it a try, and then I realised that you don’t have to do it out loud or even to the person concerned (if the issue is with a particular person).

So I lay in bed and thought about something that I’m unhappy about at the moment – the fact that I’ve lost touch with two people that I care about leaving a feeling of incompleteness and also a family matter that I can’t see how to resolve. 

I just thought “I love you” over and over directed towards particularly towards two of the people concerned and then to my surprise I burst into tears (but good tears, not the hot painful kind) and then I fell fast asleep.

Hmmm, there might be something in this.

Joe uses it when he writes something or creates a new product – he not only thinks “I love you” about the thing he’s creating, but he thinks “I love you” about the people that will be reading it or using it.

He says “Even if this whole method seems totally crazy to you, what harm can come from you saying “I love you” in your mind as you make calls, write emails and go about your day?  If nothing else, you will have better feeling days!”

And in conclusion, I would like to share with you one of my favourite quotes from TUT “Messages From The Universe” where he says “No great love is ever wasted”.

Try it and see!