Recently in The Secret Category

Henry Aaron is a class act.

I don't make that comment because he is one of the most beloved sports figures of all time or because he is a fellow Atlantan. I just saw the news replay of his speech last night as he congratulated Barry Bonds for surpassing him as the all-time baseball homerun champion. I'm reprinting it below in case you haven't seen or heard it.

You might think that Barry Bonds's tremendous accomplishment or Hank Aaron's scoreboard address would have nothing to do with voice-over. However, I see a parallel between these sports heroes and my voice-over career.

When I hear the same thing in quick succession from 2 or more people who aren't related to each other and have no vested interest in the comments, I feel the Universe is giving me a sign to pay attention! 

Such was the case this week with the classic motivational book As A Man Thinketh by James Allen, originally published in 1902. I don't remember, but I think this work was referenced in The Secret. Since I am vitally interested in the power of our thoughts and words to create our reality, I recently downloaded the free audiobook of this work available from LearnOutLoud.com. 

I began listening to it on 13 July. Ten minutes after I started listening, I decided I had heard enough. The audiobook narrator included at least 3 stumbled words, several lipsmacks and an uninteresting method of delivery. With the availability of low-cost and free audio editing software, I am incredulous that someone would choose to leave the stumbles and extraneous noises in an audiobook, even one offered for free. An audiobook is a thing of permanence. I would like to think that people would seek out my audiobooks 100 years from now, just as I was seeking out Allen's book. 

I was showing my new business cards to a friend of mine this afternoon. She said she had a book that she wanted me to see. She and I have had many great discussions about the extreme power of our thoughts, and the book was on that subject. Which book do you think she recommended? Yep, that's right -- As A Man Thinketh by James Allen. Although I had abandoned the free audiobook, the Universe was telling me to give the book another try! I told my friend that I would get the book tonight. 

However, I wasn't the only person who made a special trip to the book store. The store was crowded with people waiting for midnight, when the last Harry Potter book goes on sale. Someone who has been living under a rock or totally new to the country might think that tonight was Halloween, given the number of young people dressed in costume at the mall. Of course, they were flocking to the book store. They were not looking for a title associated with the Law of Attraction to help them live their lives to the best potential. No, all of those young people and their parents were at the book store to buy the final installment about the boy who lived! 

I am not still at the store, waiting to get my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I will, however, buy the audiobook version consisting of 17 CDs sometime over the weekend. (I doubt that I will be wearing a costume when I buy it, though!) I encourage anyone interested in performing audiobooks to listen to Jim Dale's masterful narration of any book in this series. You can download the previous 6 books and thousands of other audiobooks on iTunes. I would imagine that this final book will be loaded on ITunes in the near future. 

Also note the high level of production quality in one of these books. The series is so popular that the audiobook is published simultaneously with the hardback edition. Jim Dale didn't even have the opportunity to read the entire book before entering the recording studio. He read the book in segments of 100 pages. For a fascinating article about Jim Dale and his role as narrator of the Harry Potter series, you will want to read this feature story published 17 July in the New York Times.

Success leaves tracks,

I've been working and traveling so much lately that I have neglected to update my blog. Happy anniversary to me! I've been writing blog entries for a year and hope that you have found some useful tidbits in them to help you live the life of your dreams, especially your dreams of a thriving voice-over career.

I recently bought the DVD and book of the best-selling work The Secret. I do believe in the Law of Attraction and attempt to live my life according to its principles. I have read many books on the topic and find something meaningful in each one. Since some of my writing on this blog relates to ideas and processes described in The Secret, I decided to add a category for The Secret to make those types of posts more readily identifiable.

My knowledge and application of the Law of Attraction are sort of like learning to use your microphone and editing program. At first, you don't know how to do it. Once you get comfortable with the principles, you practice and continue to learn. Even when you're competent or even at authority level, you still want to learn and apply more so that you will always improve.

I was on a cruise recently and had an epiphany. Drew and I were seated around some loud, obnoxious people. We looked at each other and said, as we have said in many similar past circumstances, "We must be magnets for this type of behavior." I realized at that moment that we were indeed MAGNETS! By constantly saying and reinforcing the idea that we would be seated next to rude, noisy people, it's like raising our hands to the Universe and saying "bring 'em on!" I now say that I am a magnet for peace and quiet, with respectful people around me. :)

Hurricane-ravaged Grenada was one of the islands we visited. While the country has rebuilt much destroyed in hurricanes of recent years, nature's damage was still very evident. Roofs were missing from the 3 churches that we saw. Some building still looked ramshackle and uninhabitable. Looking around and seeing the people scrambling for every dollar made me once again feel extreme gratitude for the bountiful blessings in my life.

However, my spriritual side was not the only part of me that had a boost in knowledge during the trip. I also noticed something that could apply to my voice-over career. Drew and I were about to cross a street in a narrow intersection at the top of the steep hill near the old fort. He started to walk, but I stopped him. A car was zooming up the hill, and the driver wasn't going to stop.

I had a doctor's appointment today. I have been taking prescription drugs for several years to prevent migraine headaches, and I have decided that I don't want to take daily medicine for the rest of my life. I want step down the dosage so that I'm off the drugs completely.

While the doctor is willing to accommodate my request, I noticed that she told me more than once that I would probably start noticing an increase in headaches and would need to go back on the medicine. Maybe, but I don't think so.

The mind is an extraordinary thing. In order to make any positive change in your life, you have to change your thoughts.

I reach for the most powerful, positive thought possible, using techniques that I have learned from many people. For instance, I often hear from people who feel they can't follow their dreams of voice-over careers or other things because they have full-time jobs. I use the words of Barbara Sher when I tell them to think of their full-time job as a subsidy to their art. I learned from Dr. Wayne Dyer that you must bless your job with love and realize that it is a stepping stone on your life's pathway.

For the career changers, I learned from Louise Hay that you must start thinking in terms of being ready to release your current position with love to the next person who would be delighted to have it. Train your mind to think of the delicious possibilities that you desire. If you want a voice-over career, visualizing the outcome is the first step you should take on your journey. If you know where you're going, you will be able to figure out the actions you need to take to get there.

Last year at this time, I was preparing to go to Brazil for a class titled The Inner Game of Voice-Over taught by my coach Susan Berkley and her co-instructor Rich Jones. Those two people are as warm and gracious as the Brazilian sun, and I was a like a flower on a spring day when taking direction from them. Our time together did much to help me analyze my thinking on various topics. They taught based on Dr. Norberto Keppe's psychological work

I have talked about Susan previously in my blog, so you probably know that she's the voice of AT&T and other big companies, and she runs a production company. Rich is an award-winning voice talent who now lives in Brazil. Rich has started a podcast titled Thinking With Somebody Else's Head that challenges some of the popular beliefs held in the world. In honor of Valentine's Day, I'd like you to listen to his recent episode titled Some Truth About Love.

Rich reminds me on his podcasts that love and beauty are all around us. When I think of the world that way, I know that I don't need to be so focused and driven on producing results in my voice-over career that I have to take drugs everyday to ward away migraines.

I know I promised another article that was inspired from my recent trip, but I had to pass on something I just read that will help you move forward in your voice-over career. It's a new year, and many people have spent part of the day setting goals and reflecting on events of the past year. Every New Year's Eve, I write in a special journal about my plans and hopes for the coming year. I have goals for all areas of my life, especially in my voice-over profession.

However, I have learned that I don't want to spend too much time looking back over the past year. It's easy to fall in the trap of forgetting my many accomplishments for the year. My mind instead wants to dwell on things that didn't happen the way I envisioned or at all. I want to stay focused on my current plans and keep marching ahead!

I just read Wayne Dyer's new book Being In Balance: 9 Principles for Creating Habits to Match Your Desires. He makes a strong point in chapter six that made me realize yet again the detrimental effect one's thoughts can have on one's voice-over career.

Dyer and others have said You become what you think about all day long. He writes:

Maybe you:

Right. I could continue on with a long list of things that maybe you didn't do, but that would be negative thinking. Why don't you write down a list of everything -- big and small -- that you DID to move forward on your voice-over goals? When I look at my list, I feel fantastic! I see that I took advantage of unexpected opportunities, and I have momentum carrying me into the coming year.

I re-write my goals and plans on an on-going basis. Magical things happen when you write down your goals....but that's another subject for another day.

I wanted to write today to encourage you to start your new year by looking forward in your voice-over career, not back. Looking back tends to crystallize your thinking and can cause you to get stuck. It's a new year, so it's time to move ahead! Decide what you want, and then decide that you have the power to attain it. Once you start thinking those types of thoughts, you will start taking the actions necessary to make your dreams a reality.

Things happen for a reason. Every moment and decision has meaning -- even if you don’t know it at the time.

As I sit in my beautiful soundproof recording studio with its Parisian decorating scheme, I still marvel at the newness of it. A little more than a year ago at this time, my house, my voice-over career and my life were severely disrupted because we were in the midst of building the addition on our house for the studio.

I didn’t even make the decision to build the studio until 6 January 2005. Prior to building the studio, I had been using an unventilated, small walk-in closet as my voice-over recording booth. While I could tolerate the many discomforts of the space, it was the surrounding noise that forced me to go to drastic lengths.

-----Forwarded Message-----
From: The Universe
Sent: Sep 20, 2006 3:21 AM
Subject: TUT... A Note from the Universe

You are just ace -
The Universe

Mike Dooley is the creative genius behind these weekday e-mails signed from The Universe. Many times, I receive a message that is uncannily on target with things that are occurring in my life. I especially wanted to talk about the importance of yesterday’s message because I think many people don’t understand the importance of visualizing their success prior to its appearance.

Athletes who win the big championship game will tell you that they have scored the winning points a thousand times in their minds before ever playing the game. Musicians know that to play beautifully on stage, they must first consistently create strong mental pictures of themselves walking confidently before an adoring crowd. The value of visualization is true for voice-over artists or anything else that you want to achieve in your life.

If you don’t know what you want, how do you expect to attain it?