Author Mike Dooley of ‘The Secret’: “The secret of happiness is giving yourself permission to feel it even when all your dreams have not yet come true”

Published in

Authority Magazine

6 min readSep 18, 2019

The secret of happiness is giving yourself permission to feel it even when all your dreams have not yet come true. Because, truly, just being alive is the greatest gift of all and worthy of celebration and joy in every moment of our lives. And this happiness will beget more, will beget more, and upward spirals lift off.

I had the pleasure to interview Mike Dooley. 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 Life on Earth: Understanding Who We Are, How We Got Here, and What May Lie Ahead; Leveraging the Universe: 7 Steps to Engaging Life’s Magic; and Infinite Possibilities: The Art of Living Your Dreams — have been published worldwide in 25 languages. His teachings contain the premise that our “thoughts become things,” an expression he made popular in Rhonda Byrne’s book and video documentary on the Law of Attraction, The Secret. Mike is the founder of a philosophical Adventurers Club that’s now home to over 800,000 online members. Mike lives what he teaches, inspiring audiences the world over, so far in 132 cities, 34 countries, on 6 continents. You can find Mike at: www.tut.com.

Thank you so much for joining us Mike! Can you tell us a bit of your backstory?

In 1989, 2 brothers (Mike and Andy) and their co ol mom (Sheelagh), launched TUT (then it stood for “Totally Unique T-shirts,” now it stands for “The Universe Talks”) and started selling t-shirts and souvenirs to tourists out of a pushcart in Orlando, Florida, with no idea of where it was actually headed. 11 years later, in the year 2000, after selling 1 million “Totally Unique T-shirts” through a small chain of stores and international distributors, we closed operations and launched TUT, a philosophical club for understanding and living the adventure of life. We started sending out “Monday Morning Motivators” (inspirational poems taken from our bestselling t-shirts) to the email addresses we had collected from visitors to the retail stores. These weekly emails soon became daily emails, which finally evolved into Notes from the Universe — short and humorous reminders of life’s magic and our power that are sent out to 800,000 people around the world and are still the mainstay of all we do.

Tell us about your project, The Universe Talks. How did it start? How did you come up with this idea?

It began at a really low time in my life, at age 40, when I wanted to receive that kind of inspiration. My life felt like a train wreck. Every day, it seemed the walls were closing in on me. I’ve always been fascinated by the truth of our supernatural powers and the infinite possibilities at our disposal to live deliberately and create consciously. It was an incredibly ripe time in my life to do some introspection, be grounded in truth, and apply all of the theoretical stuff I had been reading in the prior 20 years.

I read your book, “The Notes from the Universe,” and I receive these notes every day in my mailbox (they never repeat!). How does the Universe talk through you?

I’ve always just hammered them out in the most conventional of ways. But having done it for so long now and having become a more adept student at metaphysics, I realize that I’m a channel, that we are all channels. When we set an intention to do something followed up by action, it implies we expect it to be done… miracles follow.

Is it possible for everyone to get such connection, or must there be some “breakdown” experience, like near death? How can we foster this connection?

Absolutely anybody can have the same exact connection. Everybody already has the same exact connection. But sometimes we refuse to pay attention to all the information at our disposal until something calamitous happens. “Bad things“ are pretty handy in that way, though absolutely not required for us to begin exploring and making use of our connection with the Divine.

When we look at successful people like you, we cannot imagine that you ever have moments of insecurity or self-doubt. Yet you describe your best quality as the “courage to dream big and take action in spite of self-doubt.” Can you share the darker moments that you got through? When they do happen, what are your strategies to keep dreaming big?

Of course, I’ve had the same dark moments as most anybody. I’ve suffered from devastating heartbreak, immense financial worries, and being misunderstood by the people I loved. These things arise when there is confusion on our part. We create everything in our lives. It’s not just important for us to wisely handle setbacks and disappointments, but to align our thinking ahead of time to avoid them completely. When I feel like the wheels are coming off in my life, I immediately ground myself in more truth — whether through introspection or reading some of my favorite metaphysical books.

Your brand is incredible. You inspire passion and adventure. What is your advice regarding living with a ravenous thirst for life?

Thank you! My advice is to act on that thirst to quench it, moving towards your dreams. Truly, all things are possible. Most of us understand this, but too often, I see people slipping lies in, waiting for life’s magic to rescue them. I once wrote in a note from the Universe that the Universe works through us, not for us. We must take the first step, then the Universe takes 10,000 on our behalf. We must take another step, freeing up the Universe to take 10,000 more. If ever we stop, the entire Universe stops. We must stay in action, no matter how seemingly feeble our baby steps sometimes feel.

In your work you talk about metaphysical things like magic and angels. What do you mean by magic and why is it so important in your life?

I’m simply referring to energies that lie outside of the detection of our physical senses. More happens on our behalf in life than meets the eye. Just as we forge and create (without knowing how) the circumstances and stages of our nighttime dreams, we do exactly the same in the dream of life. Nothing is as it seems. The secret to living deliberately and the life of your dreams lies in first, imagining the end result you’re after. Not in logistically figuring out how to get there. With the picture clearly in your mind, then it is beholden upon all of us to act as if we had already arrived; to act as if we know of the inevitable arrival of our dream; to demonstrate our confidence even when we self-doubt; and to prepare the way for circumstances to change. Then they change.

The United States is currently rated #18 in the World Happiness Report. Can you share a few reasons why you think the ranking is so low?

We are probably one of the most materially obsessed nations on Earth. Plus, we have a terrible habit of putting off our happiness until certain conditions are met.