Mike Dooley
Co-Founder & Author

Mike Dooley is a New York Times best-selling author, metaphysical teacher, and creator of the wildly popular “Notes from the Universe” whose acclaimed books—including The Top Ten Things Dead People Want to Tell YOU, A Beginner’s Guide to the Universe, and Infinite Possibilities: The Art of Living Your Dreams—have been published worldwide in 27 languages.

He was one of the featured teachers in the international phenomenon The Secret and is the founder of TUT’s philosophical Adventurers Club that’s now home to over 1,200,000 online members. Mike lives what he teaches, inspiring audiences the world over, so far in 156 cities, 34 countries, on 6 continents.

You can find Mike at: www.tut.com

Q & A

Zodiac Sign:

Aquarius

Favorite reads:

Atlas Shrugged, Illusions, The Prophet, Siddhartha, The Nature of Personal Reality.

Who are your favorite authors?

Ayn Rand, Jane Roberts (The "Seth" Books), Richard Bach.

Favorite music:

Jay-Z, Springsteen, Elton John, Eurythmics, Pop.

Favorite food:

Spicy hummus, fruit & veggies

Favorite movies:

Casablanca, Lawrence of Arabia, Les Miserables, Romancing the Stone, The Sixth Sense, anything with Ingrid Bergman.

How would you describe your life in only 8 words?

An adventure into creativity and fun.

What is your motto or maxim?

Thoughts become things... choose the good ones!

How would you describe perfect happiness?

The feeling I have after having spoken to an appreciative audience.

If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you choose to be?

Here, but you expected me to say that. My second favorite place might be London.

If you could acquire any talent, what would it be?

To speak other languages, but I'm working on them!

What's your best quality?

Courage to dream big and take action in spite of self-doubt.

What 3 personal qualities are most important to you?

Integrity, honesty, and the ability to dream of what has not yet been.

 

 

I Grew Up
Questioning What Life Is
About

I used to think everyone knew something that I didn’t. They, like I, weren’t aware of what it was, and they didn’t seem to notice that I was without it, but to me the difference was painful.

Life’s “little things” seemed second nature to others, whereas I felt I had to fake that I knew what was going on. I felt awkwardly different, which led to an overwhelming desire to question the things that most people seem to take for granted.

A burning desire to know what this life is about, which I have now largely satisfied, making the price of my sensed alienation very small in comparison.

I didn’t realize it at the time but my desire to “know” had put me on an inner path of understanding, or better my thinking was beginning to attract like thinking.

As if my questions were slowly answering themselves, opening my eyes to the insights that are latent in us all. As I walked this path the questions I dwelled upon were somehow answered.

I didn’t realize it at the time but my desire to “know” had put me on an inner path of understanding, or better my thinking was beginning to attract like thinking.

As if my questions were slowly answering themselves, opening my eyes to the insights that are latent in us all. As I walked this path the questions I dwelled upon were somehow answered.

I was never sure just when the answers had arrived. I only sensed, sometime after “illumination”, that an intuitive knowing had been imparted when I wasn’t paying close attention.

 

 

My favorite tricks like having their fingers go numb so that their big brothers could prick them with pins, telling them that they could no longer open their eyes, or having them blurt out nonsense when given post-hypnotic triggers, lost their appeal. No one had bad habits to break, and I had no success with anyone my age or older.

Exploring hypnosis I gleaned several breakthroughs. First that the process worked, I saw the mind’s influence over the body and its thoughts, and second, while rummaging in the school library I discovered The Search for Bridey Murphy, by Morey Bernstein.

It blew my 9th grade mind. I couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t have a copy, or why the teachers and adults I knew hadn’t heard of it. Surely, I thought, this was revolutionary material that should be studied and queried by the greatest minds of the world. But as far as I knew that hadn’t happened since Bridey’s publication in 1956.

Nevertheless, the paranormal events and conditions described in Bridey made perfect sense to me, paralleling many of my own inner suspicions, and opening doors in my thinking that enabled me to ponder even greater questions.

Although raised a church-going Catholic I found many of their teachings, rules and rituals contradictory, and more importantly, inconsistent with the answers I had intuitively arrived at.

Even human parents are far more understanding of their own flesh and blood than the “Father” as portrayed in most religions. Sin, and its past and present connotations, must have been a term derived by man I concluded, not an understanding, all-knowing God.

 

 

I’ve Always Needed
Explanations That Make Sense,

And I Believed They Were Attainable

I came to deduce, and still believe, that Jesus was here to tell us, as others have, that we are all “children of God”, that the things he did, we all can do, and that there are no sins, no evil, no hell, other than what exists in our own minds. He came to Earth to be a living example of these teachings, to show a better way to his fellow travelers at a dark time in history when limiting beliefs were so ingrained into the population they no longer sought, nor could they conceive of, greater thinking.

Despite my early quest for hypnosis books, I’ve never been a “reader”. Since attending college I’ve probably averaged only 1-2 new books a year. So it’s ironic that over my life, several books, or authors, have helped define my own thoughts, and therefore my life, in the most profound ways.

With few exceptions, these books were introduced to me by my mother, who has always been an avid “reader” and who I’ve always been very close to. I was 15 when, as a budding tennis hopeful on the state juniors’ circuit, she gave me The Inner Game of Tennis, W. Timothy Gallwey and Psycho-Cybernetics, Maxwell Maltz. Both of which improved my game immeasurably, and further piqued my interest in the powers of the mind over our lives. I haven’t read either since the year I carried them everywhere, but I recall that their gist was to unleash the power of imagination so as to influence the course you’d like your game, or life, to take.

During my freshman year at the University of Florida the pitch in my desire for “understanding” was its greatest, overshadowing everything else I did or thought. For the entire year I dwelled daily on the meaning of life, and the mystery of death, but to no visible avail.

Then, out of nowhere, Mom sent another book, The Silva Mind-Control Method, by Jose Silva. Once again I was pondering the untapped abilities of my mind, and felt a renewed excitement for the mysteries it contained. But before I had time to finish it another book arrived, the first in a series, that illuminated the darkest corners of my mind.

Written with a clarity and depth unlike anything I’d ever read, it confirmed, without exception, my deepest feelings and intuitions about life. It put my abstract thoughts into words and filled the gaps inbetween. As I finished each I felt that my almost desperate searching was coming to an end.

My questions were either answered, or by then seemed at least, very answerable. These books contained the “Seth Material” as dictated by the late Jane Roberts, 1929-1984, in Elmira, New York.

 

 

 

Together With My
Artistic Brother And Managerial Mother
We Launched TUT

Within a few months I joined talents with my artistic brother and managerial mother, and we launched from scratch, TUT, Totally Unique Thoughts. One million T-shirts and 10 years later we decided it was time to reach in new directions.

At that point, I recorded my first audio program, Infinite Possibilities: The Art of Living Your Dreams, which has been a perennial best-seller since its release in 2001. To date, a quarter million CD sets have been sold and in 2009 Atria/Beyond Words teamed up to release the book edition, which debuted at #7 on the NY Times bestseller list.

The upward spiral has taken my breath away: I’m now published by Hay House; I’ve spoken in 156 cities, 42 countries, on 6 continents, before hundreds of thousands of people; emailed over 1 billion “Notes from the Universe,” sent out 5 days a week to over 1,100,000 people; appeared in the bestselling book and film, The Secret; authored 18 other books (2 NY Times bestsellers); and I’ve been published in 27 languages. And perhaps, most incredibly, in my 50’s I finally got married and became a first time dad.

My understandings have helped in every area of my life, and they continue to grow with their own momentum. I’m still a student, but also my own teacher, and in this journey I’ve begun to realize that as much as I enjoy thinking and living my thoughts, I enjoy sharing and learning from others, which I expect is at least part of the reason our paths have crossed here and now, you and I.

Thanks for coming by and tallyho…