Thoughts on Joe Vitale’s 3 steps to making something happen

There are many ways to say it: 

Making something happen 


Materialization 


Manifestation 


Achievement


Realizing a dream


Bringing about a desired experience . . . 

Let’s use Joe Vitale’s language:

Joe Vitale’s 3 steps to manifestation

1) State what you want

This is so simple but how few of us really do it? 

Here’s an example from my own life. 

Five years ago in 2009 I was living in some kind of cratered hell. Our business had nearly been wiped from the planet in the aftermath of the crash. Who needs the luxury of art when survival is in balance?

My most urgent dream was to survive. To keep the business afloat. 

We’re going to survive even if we’re hanging on by one torn fingernail, was my mantra. 

I said it often. To myself. To everyone.

Five years on we’ve done that magnificently. All while 80% of our competitors in the area went out of business.

What I would add to Vitale’s dictum is this, State what you really truly want.

Now I think, what if I’d stated this instead? We’re going to come out of this better than before. We’re going to new heights!

That thought would have been the one permeating my brain tissue and my soul tissue. I believe we’d be in far better shape today had I articulated an even more powerful future then.

Believe me, I’m doing that now. Articulating the powerful future I want to participate in.

2) Release any need for it

I love this one. 

Christians might phrase this as Thy Will Be Done. Contemporary spirituality might simply call it surrendering. New Agers might use the term releasing it to the Universe.

It’s the basis of all spirituality. Deep knowing. Coming to understand that in this very moment you are supported, you are provided for. That there is richness in your experience right now and it is your job to relinquish all that prevents you from seeing it.

When you’re able to do this something paradoxical happens. 

You feel the moreness of connection. Limitations drop away. Your experience right now becomes perfect to you. 


Moments before you might have lacked money, a perfect home, the right partner, appreciation, love, health, friendship. 

Now in your moreness all feels strangely ideal. 

All that you are experiencing feels rich. 

You are saturated with the energy of creation.

Those things you want, meh. It would be nice, though no longer important. You’ve released them. 

The paradoxical part happens now. Those things you want come to you sweetly, easily, in time.  

3) Take action on any opportunities you spot

High-energy people already understand this. Go-getters get this too. 

Oddly, people on the spiritual path often think it near profane to get out and take action. 

If you feel your thoughts direct your outcomes then it is helpful to understand that action is your strongest form of thought. 

You only take the actions that you are the most powerfully in sync with mentally. 

It would have been impossible for Gandhi to strike back at another who was beating him — and he was beaten often in his life — because it was inconsistent with his most powerfully held ideals.

There’s also this: Life favors the experimental. It’s as true for the evolution of life forms as it is true for software creators. 

It’s been true for me as well. In the past five years I acted on ideas that presented themselves and bit by bit we made it through. 

Some ideas were difficult emotionally to execute. I hit the road for a year and a half doing art transport to save our business, taking me away from the family I love insanely.

Not every idea worked. 

Some were painful at the time, like having to let go of our staff as we approached bankruptcy. 

To our gallery director at the time it was equally painful, if not more so. 

Yet today she is making far more money per hour and with greater flexibility than had she remained with us. Because she was forced to concentrate on a side business. 

Until that time she hadn’t been able to put a lot of time and energy into her business. Now she’s rocking the cosmic casbah with her appraisal services.

And us? We never went bankrupt. 

Inch by action inch we moved forward. 

Our gallery is entering a Golden Era. We’ve built back. And creatively my wife and I have never been more a-fire. 

All because we made real changes to the way we did things. Sometimes drastic changes. 

We got silent often. We spoke to our needs from both anquished and exalted places. We asked! We affirmed. We did almost everything one can think of doing.

And you know what? Doing everything works.

An interesting side effect to taking action

Over the years, in good times and bad, we’ve noticed this: When we take material action in a direction we seem to always get results.

However, it doesn’t necessarily come from the action we took! Not in any direct way that we can ascertain.

An example: Sales slow down and we jump into action connecting with our top clients. 

Sales come, but from new clients who walk in.

Or sales slow down and we pump funds into advertising in a specific area.

Sales come, but not from there!

We’ve learned that taking action with real intent is the key. So now we focus on what we can do to improve the gallery itself when we feel a slow down in process.

It works. Sometimes what we are doing is invisible to clients — we might be purging a storage area — yet there is always a response. 

There is always a response to earnest intention. There’s always a response to energy expended. The delight is watching where it comes from. That is mindfulness in its best form. Being attentive to the flux around you, happily alert for the response that is coming.

From where though? That’s the beauty and the mystery. You don’t know! 

But it’s coming. 

For you —

Evan Griffith
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