Author Archive
There is Only Now
I’m on an airplane right now, thinking about a conversation I had after my stress seminar this morning.
A man came up to me and asked all sorts of questions about whether I thought my self-hypnosis CD “Unlimited Confidence” could help him with his own lack of confidence.
It seems that every time he has to give a presentation in front of a group he dreads screwing it up (therefore all but insuring that he will) and then obsesses over it for days afterward, feeling miserable the entire time.
I reassured him that this is exactly the kind of issue that this CD is meant to address, but he still seemed hesitant. “But I’ve had this problem for such a long time.” he moaned, “It’s so entrenched.” My answer to him is what I offer you now…
First of all, there is no such thing as time. Time is a fabrication we construct to make our lives seem more linear and therefore more in control. Dwelling on what we perceive to be past mistakes only exacerbates their hold over us. You can do NOTHING about whatever has happened in the past. It is done. There is only now. There is only to decide and to do in the here and now. There is no “entrenched”. There is no “been going on so long”. There is now and only now. Decision. Action. Or nothing.
When I was a philosophy major at one point in my long and winding college career, we were often asked the big questions in life “Who are we? Where are we going? Why are we here?” There are no right or wrong answers to these things, but it is very easy to get caught in the trap of ruminating about them.
“Are people basically good or evil” is another one of these eternal questions. I thought it was very easy to answer. I just asked myself “What’s in it for me?”If I decide that I think that people are basically evil, then I will naturally begin to withdraw from them, isolating myself from those I think might seek to do me harm, eventually becoming a surly curmudgeon with few friends and limited opportunities.
On the other hand, if I decide that people are basically good then I will seek them out and attract more of them into my life. I will expand my circle of friends and invite limitless opportunities. The worst that could happen would be to be taken advantage of from time to time via my Pollyanna naiveté. But it would be a choice, and a price worth paying when weighed against all of the good that would come from seeing the best in people.
Now as is usually the case, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. But truth is what we decide it to be for ourselves; and for me, my truth, the truth that I live, is that people are basically good and so I chose to see the best in them whenever possible.
We all chose what to believe either by conscious action or by default. Whatever was true for us in the past need not be in the future if we simply decide that another point of view is in our best interest in the here and now.
Perhaps believing in yourself, in your own ability to change and grow and embrace new opportunities for personal fulfillment might serve you better than choosing to believe that you are limited by your past experiences. Just a thought.
He just stood there. Sweating a little.
What will you chose to believe about yourself today? Are you going to allow yourself to be limited by your past, or are you going to believe that you have an unlimited future?
The choice is yours and you can make it right now.
Look into the mirror and confidently, with genuine feeling, tell yourself what you’ve decided that you believe to be true.
Now go out and have an awesome day!
What Holds You Back?
In the past few days since my last Blog posting, I’ve flown to Alaska (and bought a coat!), performed my hypnosis show twice and my stress reduction and weight loss seminars once, and spent the rest of my time doing the following:
• Ziplining in the rainforest canopy
• Photographing bears fishing for salmon in the wild
• Visiting two glaciers and reveling in the serenity and silence of the crisp, clean air
• Pontooning in the midst of dozens of humpback and killer whales
• Hiking up the side of a mountain to the foot of a steep and thundering waterfall
What have you done this week?
I don’t ask this to make you jealous or resentful. Far from it. I ask because I enjoy, no LOVE showing people how to live their dreams, but before I can do that they first have to identify what their dreams are.
I’ve found that most people have buried them under years of unfulfilling work, unsatisfying relationships, and resignation to the daily grind.I’m no different… I just did something about it.
As recently as two years ago I was still living in Los Angeles, holding down two careers (one as a hypnotist and the other as a very successful voice over actor) and working about 14 hours a day. I was successful by most common measurements of the term but I was unhappy.
I decided to “throw it all away” and leave a dead-end relationship, a career that paid well but bored me to tears, sell my house, and travel the world.
Two years later, I’m working far less (about 6 hours a week), making far more, spending my time with happy / enthusiastic people, and traveling to places I hadn’t even known existed!
You can do this too.
I’m not saying you have leave your job or relationships. I’m saying you can live your dreams and have a fulfilling life full of exciting adventures, living each day as though it might be your last. You just have to take that first step of overcoming your fears and deciding to take charge of your life. Your time in which to do this is limited.
We don’t live forever folks. In fact, have you ever thought to count up the number of days you have to enjoy your life? How many do you think it is?
Millions of days? Hundreds of thousands of days?Tens of thousands of days?
Actually, you probably have less than 30,000 days to live (365 days x 80 years = 29,200 days). That’s it. Then it’s over.
How many have you used up already? How many have you squandered on meaningless or unfulfilling pursuits? How many more are you willing to throw away?
When I speak to groups and individuals about improving their lives I find that they usually need to progress through the following steps:
• Before you can live your dreams you need to identify what they are
• Before you can identify your dreams you need to believe that you are a person worth living them
• Before you can improve your self-esteem to the point where you can dream big dreams again, you need to take control of your life and stop allowing it to overwhelm you
• Before you can take control of your life, you need to learn certain skill-sets like stress reduction, time and information management, and simplicity of living.
• Before you can do all that you need to change your mindset from one of reacting to your environment to one of proactively creating your environment.
You need to change the mindset that created all of the unnecessary problems in the first place. You need to SNAP OUT OF IT. Whatever your life is at the moment it is the cumulative result of all of your past thinking; therefore, you can change the course of the remainder of your life by changing your thinking now.
I’d like to help you do that.What would you like me to address IN DEPTH in future Blog postings?
• Mindset: how to be a truly happy person and attract great people and opportunities into your life
• Stress Reduction: how to limit debilitating stress and take advantage of motivating stress
• Time and Information Management: how to decrease the number of things you HAVE to do so you can increase the number of things you WANT to do
• Weight Loss: how to become fit, healthy, and active without diets or “exercise”. After all, you can only live your dreams to the extent that you are healthy
• Fears and Phobias: how to quickly and easily overcome any fear, no matter how long you’ve had it or how debilitating it’s become
• Persuasion and Influence: how to use hypnotic language patterns and rapport building techniques to sell anything to anyone so you can finance living your dreams
• Focus: how to cut out all the distractions and get things done once and for all• Dreaming Big: how to discover what you really want out of life
• Self Esteem and Self Confidence: how to truly believe that you are worth having, being, and doing the best that the world has to offer so you can get far more out of life
Please vote for whatever topic most intrigues you from the list above by clicking on the underlined heading. You may click on as many topics as you like and your vote will be counted each time. I will devote myself to writing a multi-part Blog on whichever topic gets the most votes.
(VOTING IS OVER. LINKS ARE DISABLED.)
So, what do you want to learn?
NOTE: Comments are now closed. Here is what was submitted…
Dwain
Wow, your blogs are great! Normally I skim blogs, literally every single one of the 30 I read, but your blog has this draw to it, that keeps readers going and wondering “What kind of trouble has he gotten himself into?”
How you turned such a horribly negative situation into something so positive and good! That was quite the story! Live life one moment at a time I say, I rarely plan ahead and when I do I tell people don’t expect 100% for me to be there, you just never know what might come your way at the last second!
Your Mind Body Connection
What do these things have in common?
Weight loss, stress reduction, time management, communication skills, self esteem, money flow.
Answer: You.
All these areas of your life are linked together just as your mind and body are linked together within the person that is you. When you make the commitment to improve your life in any one of these areas you inevitably begin to address all the others areas too.
Permanent weight loss is difficult to achieve without implementing stress reduction techniques as well. Permanent stress reduction is a real challenge to maintain without learning the time management skills that will keep you from feeling overwhelmed. I could go on and on, but the point is that to really make meaningful changes in any one area of your life it requires a commitment to improving your whole life.
Your mind and your body are connected after all, so to make physical changes that you desire (less weight, more money, etc.) you must also make mental changes. Everything begins with thought. Your thinking determines your beliefs, your attitudes, your expectations, and ultimately your outcomes.
Your whole life is a reflection of your thinking up until now. So if you want to change and improve your future in anyway all you really need to do is commit to changing the way you think.
This realization is simple but profound. It doesn’t require research and education, merely self refection, personal responsibility, and a commitment to change.
Here’s an exercise to help you incorporate this belief system into your thinking:
Take a nice deep breath and just relax. Notice the quality of your breath and be at peace with yourself and your environment as you turn your focus inward.
Say to yourself: “I am the result of all my past thinking up until now.”
Take another deep breath and accept the truth of that statement.
Now say to yourself: “I take full responsibility for everything in my life.”
And as you release that breath realize how empowering that statement is.
Finally, say to yourself: “Every day in every way I’m becoming better and better”.
And believe it, because it’s true.
NOTE: Comments are now closed. Here is what was posted…
Virginia
Seeing you on the ship and reading your dialogues has truly helped me. I would very much like to see you again in person and have a meeting with you. How can I go about that? Would you please consider this? I feel as though you are one of the few people that can help me. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Magda
Thank you for the exercise it truly helps my thinking.
Avani
I have noticed that my emotions and my body are very deeply connected. If my emotional state breaks, my body too breaks down. And if physically I am unfit, my emotions too aren’t in my control. Was wondering if you know how are these two connected.
Joshua Seth
Hi Virginia,
I’m glad my seminar and articles are helpful to you. In person meetings are really only possible at the seminars themselves because of my touring schedule.
I am planning an online coaching club that will be launching soon. This will be an affordable, regularly accessible way to keep the process going. Watch your emails for details.
Learn How To Speed Read
One of the most useful skills you can aquire for accelerated learning is the ability to speed read. With speed reading you will actually improve your memory and retention of the subject matter, comprehend the information better, and increase the intensity of your focus.
I’ve studied a number of speed reading courses throughout my life and they all boil down to this single concept: there are different kinds of reading and different reasons to read so it follows that you should have different methods of reading as well.
Some things we read for pleasure, some to prepare for an exam, and others for general knowledge of the world around us. Step one in learning to speed read is to recognize the type of material you’ll be reading and determine the purpose for reading it.
Not every book is a novel and not every novel is good, yet people tend to read everything slowly and in depth as through they are reading for pleasure. When you learn to speed read you won’t want to read everything at the highest possible rate of retention, but you will have that option when you need it.
You may want to read the newspaper at a high rate of speed, review study materials at double speed, and read a novel for pleasure as slowly as possible.
How many times have you left a good book unfinished because there was a boring part in the middle that you just couldn’t get past? When you learn how to speed read you will be able to breeze through that boring part without losing track of what’s happening in the book and then slow down again when you get to the satisfying sections!
In future articles I will break down the process of speed reading into various exercises for you. For now though, begin to become aware of the different types of reading material you process throughout the day and ask yourself “why am I reading this?”
If there is no discernible benefit, then stop. Put it down and don’t read it. If there is a reason then define that up front. This will help to focus your attention on what is important and relevant to you as you read the rest of the material.
This is pretty basic, but it’s the foundation of the lessons to come. Define why you’re doing something before you do it and if you can’t, then develop the self discipline to move on to the next purposeful activity.
Be Here Now
Today’s accelerated learning tip is to focus on one thing at a time. If you want to develop your mind to learn more, retain more, and be able to apply what you know in creative and useful ways then you first need to break the habit of mutitasking. You need to train your mind to Be Here Now as Ram Dass famously wrote over 35 years ago. It’s a topic more recently explored by Eckhart Toole in his book The Power of Now.
Everything and everyone is connected but before you can become aware of those connections you first need to become aware. The concepts of past and future only exist in our minds anyway. All that is real is the now.
Part of being human is that we have the ability to spilt our focus to think and do many things at once. The problem is that when you multitask you don’t do any of those activities well.
If you’re sitting in class and thinking about what happened yesterday or what may or may not come to pass tomorrow, then you will not absorb all of the knowledge being imparted to you. Part of this is due to social conditioning. People think it proves they’re smart if they can do many things at once. And part of it is mental laziness. A lack of discipline to focus on the task at hand for a prolonged period of time.
When you focus fully you make excellence possible. You lose track of time and distractions cease to exist. When you focus on one thing at a time you also get more out of life.
Really listen to the person in front of you. It’s the greatest compliment you can pay them. It shows interest and respect. It also allows you to absorb everything that they are communicating to you because only about 7% of communication is verbal. The rest is all body language and inflection and emotion. If you allow yourself to be distracted then you will miss the nuances and connections that impart real meaning.
There is a Zen story where the Buddha looked at a flower and became connected to it in that moment. It was his most famous sermon and was delivered without a single word. All of life is like that. If any one of us could ever be fully present in any one moment then we we would achieve a kind of lucidity that eludes us in the fog of daily living.
Strive to be connected in the present moment to the person who is teaching you and you will get far more out of every interaction. And by the way, every person with whom we come in contact can teach us something. Look for it.
Accelerated Learning
When I was in college I took a course in speed reading. It was one of the best investments I ever made. For a few hundred bucks and a little bit of spare time, I learned how to assimilate A LOT more information and do it a lot faster than most people even realize is possible. Over time I developed techniques that allowed me to also recall that information with a minimum of preparation.
Complete Your Studies In Half The Time
This is one of the reasons I was able to do a four year program at a major university (NYU) and graduate in half the time. Yes, I completed a four year program (with a double major) in just 2 years and graduated with honors. I’ve always maintained that this had very little to do with my intellect. Rather, I spent the time to learn a few interrelated skills that helped me to take twice as many classes as my fellow students and still do fairly well in all of them.
Even if you’re not a student, these skills can help you get more done in less time and with far less effort. And if you’re in business, you’re a student for life, right? If you want to stay at the top of your game you are, that’s for certain.
What Is Accelerated Learning
So what skills do you need to master to learn more quickly and recall more easily?
Here are the primary methods I’ve used throughout my life to get ahead:
• Speed Reading
• Time Management
• Clarity of Focus
• Graduated Goal Setting
• Clever Study Skills
• Awareness of Preferred Learning Styles
• Stress Management Techniques
• Having a Healthy Diet
• A Sense of Purpose
• Self Confidence
These skills are a set that work together to help you succeed in school, work, and life. In future articles I will be expanding on each of these areas.
Innovative learning strategies and highly adaptive thinking skills are invaluable in today’s competitive economy. I’m excited to share them with you as a way to help you reach your goals, transform your life, and live your dreams.
Behind the Scenes With Akira and Digimon Voice Actor Joshua Seth
A few years ago I got the chance to record the American voice over for the starring role of Tetsuo in the animated anime classic Akira (which is now being remade by Leonardo Dicaprio in 2011). This is after I had voiced Tai in Digimon and many other classic anime characters.
In this behind the scenes video, I reveal how I landed roles in many of the most popular anime series and movies of all time and why I retired from voice acting at the peak of my success in Hollywood.
Check back on this page from time to time for more updates.
Comments
3 Responses to “Akira”
- Alexandria and Marissa on March 23rd, 2009 2:42 pm (Edit) Hey there!
It is sad to hear that you have retired from voice acting, but we greatly appreciate the projects you did work on, because they always bring smiles to our faces! =D You really did bring all your characters to life, and it’s great to know your voice acting will be forever memorialized through these characters.
As for your career as a hypnotist, we wish you the best of luck with your tours. We’ve seen some of your videos, and they are just brilliant! If you ever visit New York City or Rhode Island for another tour, Pace University and Rhode Island College would love to have you!
Thank you again!
Best wishes,
Alexandria and Marissa
- Lauren on April 10th, 2009 4:37 am (Edit) I’m also sad to hear that you’ve retired from voice acting. I think that you really outshone JYB [Kaneda's Voice actor] in Akira, and have certainly made me admire you over other VA’s who are still around today. You brought such energy and spirit to your characters, not to mention that you have a great voice for the job.
- Your hypnotizing job seems pretty hardcore. I with the weight-loss thing would work for my mom and myself, but I just can’t see how hypnosis can work. Call me a skeptic, I guess. Regardless, I wish you the best of luck with it. (:
- Pedro on July 11th, 2009 9:14 am (Edit) o i see, thanks for making this interview video, it was really interesting to see how your life of voice acting was and to hear from your experience and the reason why you have retired voice overs. yeah i understand why you retired, you need to live your life the way u want to, not just based on other peoples perspections, not saying that you do not enjoy voice overs anymore, just saying that you decided to try something new, and that u found another hobby that you enjoy. I watched both the 1st 2 season of Digimon again all in like 3 days and i always wondered who played the voice of Tai, because i also heared your voices throughout other anime, expamples: young Knives,Hige and joe shimamura. I enjoyed your voice overs throughtout each of those series. I guess i just wanted to say thanks for being one of those guys to make english anime dubs more enjoyable, your voice overs really make a big impact on anime. Also to just also say to u how skilled you really are. Watching this interview explained a lot, no wonder your so good, your not just talented but u put your heart into it making the voice overs the best they can be, not just rushing through them to get the job done, i respect that. i guess thats y many others and i enjoy your work, its because you sell out each time. when i found out who u were i was wondering y havent you been in any more animes so i looked through the internet and found the interview on youtube. when i saw this video it explained it all.i never heard of the anime akira and seening this interview got me interested in watching it.i am going to start watching it right after i finish rewatching wolfs rain.(which might take awhile). Its been a while since i seen that anime so i figure i just rewatch it just like i did with Digimon and Trigun. Well guess i just wanted to say thanks again for your amazing work. Goodluck with your hypnotist career, i still havent seen it but ill check it out some time. And dont worry about responding, i know that you are busy i just wanted to show u a little bit of fan appreciation and just to let you know how great you were at voice overs.
