Love Your Life: Creating Clarity, Purpose and Passion with Jack Canfield & Marci Schimoff

this is marci shimoff and welcome to the love your life summit 21 years ago I had an experience that changed my life and it happened to do with Jack Canfield sitting here with me today I would not have imagined 21 years ago that I would get the privilege and honor of not only having Jack as someone that I'd be interviewing today but as a wonderful dear friend and my mentor in this life one of my main mentors so I'm very very excited about today's conversation that we didn't get to have together so let me tell everyone about you jack everyone knows all about you but I'm going to tell him about you evil rumor so you probably know Jack Canfield is the co-creator of the New York Times bestselling series Chicken Soup for the Soul the series currently has 215 titles I was number three or two actually and more than 125 copies in print in 47 finalist quick that's more than 125 copies I think you meant to say on the 25 million copy if you're looking at here's what's really cool let me just I'll be part of my own intervention we just found out I don't even think you know this that last year in China they sold 350 million Chicken Soup for the Soul books so according to the people that keep numbers yeah we're up to 500 million copies that's a half a billion book sold and and I that I don't think the second best-selling book series has got to be maybe less than a hundred million so that the contrast between that yeah it's huge that's amazing jack so jack is also the founder and CEO of the camp field training group which trains entrepreneurs corporate leaders managers and sales professionals and how to accelerate the chief the achievement of their personal professional and financial goals Jack's personally helped hundreds of thousands of people on six different continents become multimillionaires business leaders best-selling authors leading sales for successful entrepreneurs and world-class athletes world-class athletes but at the same time creating balanced fulfilling and healthy lives jack is a dynamic speaker I've heard him speak hundreds of times and every time I'm still completely engaged it was recently inducted in the National Speakers Association speaker's Hall of Fame he's appeared on more than a thousand radio and television shows including Oprah Montel Larry King everything that's on TV he's been in the hit film the secret which I'm happy to be there with you and the Opus which I'm happy to be there with you and beyond belief which I'm happy to be there with you and he's been in a number of others Jack's best-known success resources are his best-selling book the success principles how to get from where you are to where you want to be the power of focus the Aladdin factor maximum confidence self esteem and peak performance and Jack Canfield key to living the law of attraction all of these resources consist of powerful strategies and techniques that are designed to at a minimum double your income and double your time off in less than three years he's been presenting these powerful principles for over 38 years and so for those of you who don't know this one of my favorite things in life is getting to have my name next to Jack Hamm fields on the cover of Chicken Soup for the Soul books Jack you have without a doubt changed my life and I mean there is nobody who on a professional level has been more generous and more someone that I so admire you change mama you have brought me through the ability to do that you can sit for the Soul books in your incredible generosity in inviting me and my partner at the business partners I'm Jennifer Hawthorne in to do those books with you you've taught me so much you are I just I so respect who you are as a person your integrity is complete you have a full heart you're the whole package and you from the bottom of my heart Jack you know you've changed my life and you know how grateful I am but I want to tell everyone this is the man so this is the man thank you thank you would you and thank you for being here with us so measure I think I should join a 12-step program on how to stop writing books yeah this thing though though well actually and we're actually in Jack's beautiful home and Jack you have more books than anybody I've ever met you have what is the latest count 5,000 or more in your libraries about 5,000 years you know what I love is that you are a continuous learner to the nth degree can we give your age yeah be 67 in August of this year and you have not slowed down you just told me your schedule for today it starts you know early in the morning goes till very late at night and you love what you're doing I do and you are when you sit and learn you see in you go to seminars Jack is always in the front row he's writing everything down he's trying it out in his life he's applying it and I think that that you still walk your talk so let's find out from you what have you done what do you feel has been the most important things in your life that have brought you to loving your life the way that you do now well I think I I think there's a lot of things that have created that number one I've always followed my heart I believe that as many teacher you're teaching today that if you follow your joy Joseph Campbell said follow your bliss Abraham says you know do that which brings you joy and if you do that that's your internal guidance system that tells you this is what is for your highest good this is what's take you to the fulfillment of your vision your purpose your intention what you're here for I believe each of us is born with an inborn purpose just like you know tantalum can't be a carnation and a carnation can't be a rose jack canfield shouldn't try to be like you know everything else what don't try to be like anybody else so let's try to think of someone else's name I couldn't think of who also want to be liked but anyway the idea is for me always from the time I was a little kid if I was interesting collecting baseball cards I cooked the baseball cards when I was tired of that I played marbles I became the marble champion of our neighborhood I always just went for that which attracted me you know the law of attraction talks about attracting things to you but I also believe you have to let yourself follow that which you're attracted to and so whether it's a certain study of field of study or whether it's certain kind of music or place you'd like to vacation or whatever the people you're attracted to is - I always allow myself to follow that and never let anything stand in the way you know when I did the first Chicken Soup for the Soul book everyone in our company was saying that's a stupid title we're trying to be in the business world people are going to judge us and be woo woo and weird I was by the way one of those people that thought oh no he's not going to go out with the title Chicken Soup for the Soul all right I'm glad I didn't say that to you though right I'm glad I I have one staff person to my company quit over it and the person that runs my foundation told me he thought it was the worst decision I've ever made profession because at that time we were really targeting our work into the corporate world professional associations but I knew in my heart I had to do this and so I did it and you know now Chicken Soup for the Soul as a brand you know it's worth hundreds of millions of dollars and it's an expression people say what oh that's so Chicken Soup for the Soul yeah well I remember in New York you know when they were we got feedback when we first tried to sell the book you may remember we had 144 rejections of you know people saying it's a stupid title people don't read short stories you know whatever and you know we just stuck with it and now in New York when a book isn't very emotionally moving they say can you make it more chicken soupy you know so it's become a genre of motivational inspirational stories I have a collect probably 300 books that will tell you they owe their existence to the model that we created which you can see and so I think you know whatever you call it inner guidance or following your souls impulse or trusting your gut or your intuition whatever that is if you do that then you're going to have success and you're going to have fulfillment see I think I make a distinction between success and fulfillment success for most people is related to financial success you know having the perfect spouse lots of vacations travel whatever it might be and for years I thought that success was the you know ability to produce a result so if I wanted a great relationship I could do that if I wanted to raise healthy children that to do that if a one to become owner I can do that but in the last few years I've redefined my definition of success as the fulfillment of your life's purpose if you fulfilled your life purpose and you may not have become wealthy you may have been a poet your whole life and lived you know on the edge I have a son who's a hip hop singer lives in San Francisco and he's not rich by any means but he's you know wealthy in terms of money but he's rich in terms of experience self-esteem the joy the connections of relationships and his creative process of unfolding and he's them like self-produced something like 9 or 10 albums he's well known in the Bay Area and he's a happy kid so it's a matter of fulfilling what you came here to do and when you do that you live a happy life I think that's a huge distinction I mean I think that we as a society are so trained to think that success is these exact things like the money and the the right house and all of that so how do people break free from that mindset and that training to really feel the freedom to say okay I know that real success and fulfillment is going to come from living my life's purpose instead I first I'll tell you a story that we published in chicken see when it comes to mind then I'll answer your question more directly but the stories about a fisherman in Mexico who took every Saturday off and he's sitting there on the dock and this American tourist comes ladies a businessman and he says they start talking and he says fisherman suggestions of a wine-shop fishing today so I'm just taking some time off to enjoy the day and I said well you know if you were out fishing you'd make more money if you made more money you could buy more boats and you could have more people fishing for you eventually you could have this big company of fishermen and then the guy said well why would I want to do that he said well then you'd be able to take days off and do whatever you want he says I'm already doing that and so I think we have to give up this conditioning that we all got from our parents and I can see it in my own home I have a 17 year old daughter and you know my I'm a much more less a fair kind of parent and my wife and there's no right or wrong here but she's always pushing her get your homework done get good grades and I know all kinds of people who never graduated high school or college you know I think it's a good thing to do but if it's really not part of your purpose and she's my stepdaughters a singer and artist she writes already at the college level and she's just not all that excited about you know English and biology and so the reality is that I know she'll turn out well and I know she'll turn out fine because she'll follow her heart what she's doing right now and so we have to get past that conditioning that we all got as children that we have to work hard sacrifice now for the future I think working hard is important but I think you have to work on something you're passionate about otherwise hard work just like his misery of suffering it's like you start to learn that I have to suffer to be happy and you can't be suffering and be happy it's just I mean you can be in prison to be happy but it's your attitude but if you're doing something you hate and you don't feel like you have a choice about it and you're striving to get these symbols what I call symbols of success see most people really want the experience of success but they've now attached it to the symbols because they see successful people and they have the Rolls Royce and they have the mansion and they have all this stuff they think well if I have that then I'll be successful the fact is those are just manifestations of someone that's living their dream pursuing their passions etc so I say go directly for the experience well why do all people want to be successful they'll tell you I want to be happy you know I want to be free I want to be able to express myself you can do that now right you know you can do that right now so if you trust the universe and trust the designer that made you when I do then I go back to if it's making you if you feel joy and I make a distinction between joy and you know the idea of like just momentary pleasure so we have a lot of people who are addicted to gambling and sex and drugs and alcohol and those things may feel good for a moment but they're not the things that really sustain us true joy is a different experience than that and it's I don't know how to explain it but when you have it you know it yeah I talked about in happy for no reason I talk about a people because they're unhappy they go for happiness for bad reason which means I'm going to use these addictions so that I can feel a temporary state of happiness but what we really want is causeless joy which is you know happy for no reason we want to have that experience of freedom of deep fulfillment in our heart that isn't dependent on any particular circumstance where you know anywhere you could go you would feel that because it's you carry it with you yeah that's what that's what people really want most deeply well we we live in a world where I can't remember any course in school called joy 101 or how to expand your capacity to love I mean all the things that people feel pain about in their life you know loneliness and in a sense of not connected to their purpose not fulfilled that's not being addressed in the school I always say nobody ever got divorced because he didn't know the seven causes of the Civil War they got divorced because they didn't know who they were they didn't know how to express who they were they didn't know how to defend who they were in a sense of having boundaries and their life and so forth and when you can learn how to produce joy or I thought Eva producing is allowing I think you know ROM das a great spiritual teacher who spoke of my college when I was a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts right he came in and he said I'm going to talk for four hours at some point you're going to hear what you need to hear and you can leave it because it's just a big screen of projection and I have a lot of wisdom and you can't possibly integrate all this but you'll hear one thing that I did will change your life and I think one of the things I have heard several things but one and I did leave before was Homer but I was so full but one of the things he said was the Sun always shines the Sun doesn't look down on new orleans say oh you can bad today you have Gorham was getting drunk in having sex Mel the Sun just shines because that is the nature of the Sun to shine and so it's not about necessarily you know creating something it's about removing the blocks that are allowing that to come out when I've had three children and two stepchildren and when they were little kids they were just always vo they were happy they were transcendent most of the time unless you've got on your way and then they could get a little temper tantrum about being kept from what they wanted yeah but generally they were curious they were happy they could play with the cat's tail for an hour and a half you know just being in that moment of presence and so I think what happens is I use this metaphor that came from a trip I had when I was in Bangkok Thailand we went to see the temple of the golden buddha and this boot is about ten and a half feet tall it's solid gold it weighs several tons of gold is considered one of the largest gold objects in the world and it's worth 196 million dollars if you just melted it down to make your rings out of it you know opposed to the iconic religious value but we're watching it we're in the temple looking at it and I looked off to the right and it was a case a glass case this case was a piece of clay was about that wide about that tall about that thick and it said that a 19 I'm going to make up a number like 57 50 for something like that they did not know they had a Golden Buddha they thought they had this big clay Buddha and they were lifting that to move it from one side of Bangkok for the other because the temple was being relocated and the crane slipped and a big crackling down through and they were freaked out you know like you've broken the David or the Pieta urbanism and so they covered it with a canvas because was starting to rain and that night they shined a flashlight him to see if it was staying dry and he noticed that there was something reflecting back light from inside the craft and said what clay doesn't it look like there must be something else in here you got to remember this thing was about you know 10 inches thick so they chipped the way in the back where it wouldn't be seen if they screwed up and lo and behold they found this Golden Buddha and their best theory was that 300 years earlier the the burmese were attacking thailand and that they knew they were coming and they covered up the buddha and covered it with clay and painted so would look worthless and they think all the monks that knew the secret were massacred by the rumor on armies and so the secret died with them now the word discover means to take the cover off of that which is already there but Columbus didn't discover America America was already here right but he did take the cover off the ignorance that it existed and so I think that each of us is like a weird like a golden buddha of gold in Christ for however whatever metaphor you want to use there is a spiritual essence within us call it your soul call your purpose call it your natural being your mother child you know whatever and that is wanting to radiate out and what happens I think Buckminster Fuller said there's no such thing as a genius he said some people are just damaged less meaning we get D genius by our school by our parents by the bullying that occurs in our in our world the conditioning you know other kinds of things toxins in our body and so forth so I think that happiness joy love exists within us it's simply a matter of removing the obstacles the negative thoughts the limiting believes the emotional wounds whatever you might call it that are stopping us from allowing that you know the fear etc and it's like another metaphor I use in my trainings is it's like we have a diamond in us we cover it with a ball of manure which is all this negative stuff no one wants to go right and say hi I'm a ball of annoying okay so we then put nail polish on top of a door now we walk around like these little balls and you know like billiard balls all looking shiny another absolutes and our mom plunk pens and our forces and so forth but we're afraid to look inside because when we take the nail polish off what we see is manure and yet what we forget is underneath that is the diamond and if we can all remember that then it's willing we're willing to go through that letting go of the fears and the ruins and the negativities and all that and get back to our true essence well you know you've always taught that and and I just want to let everyone know actually how I ended up meeting you because it relates to this story and ever this whole idea of following your passion in and I don't even know if you know the backstory don't worry so I had always known I'd seen my first motivational speaker when I was 13 my sauce Ziggler oh yeah and many years ago and I knew that's what I was supposed to do and I knew that I wanted to teach something about how we could find that inner beauty in essence inside in self-esteem was the term as in those days and I was working in a corporate training and I was teaching business writing and I was teaching stress management things I didn't really want to be teaching but it was at least giving me the training that I needed and I knew it was time my heart said it's time to study self-esteem and to study how to have people really have that experience and so I did some research this was in 1989 before the internet was around didn't have a computer and I did some research on who could I study with him self-esteem and the sky is named Jack Canfield kept coming by weight came in came to me three times over a period of two weeks and we know the rule that if you hear something at least a few times in a short period of time you got to listen so I said already okay so anyway I I listened and I I did some research and Jack was teaching his course at the time it was called the self esteem training facility facilitating skills training is now called breakthrough to success and I said that's it I'm going and I brought my best friend with me Carol Klein is also my co-author on many things and we went and I sat in that class and in the first five minutes that you spoke I said this man knows what he's talking about and he's living it this is my mentor me and that was four years before Chicken Soup for the Soul ever came out so it was you know before all of that was happening and you you really teach people back then so for the last and and I think you did it of course before then too for the last 35 years of your career you've been teaching people how they can remove the blocks to the experience of their inner exclusiveness movie and what do you think are some of the biggest obstacles that people have to that experience of their exquisite mmus and especially as it relates to doing their life purpose and their purpose well I think you know there are a number of things that keep people from let's break that to the two different questions of the exquisite 'no siz that starts with self-awareness it has to be self awareness self acceptance self expression then you get self-realization and self actualization a lot of selves but anyway the idea is that I can't appreciate something I doesn't I don't know exist so I have to first especially if you're a normal person that's been you know wounded by all the kind of growing up of a Western culture it's universal but mostly I work with people in Europe and America but in Asia as well but the point being that we have to become aware of what's in there so there's a number of activities that I have created that allow people to really connect in through through visualization and it's really you know exercises back and forth you're getting feedback from people about you know the magnificence that I see in you I mean most people when I ask them to simply say you now have 90 seconds to tell people what you love admire appreciate and respect about yourself most people can't fill up 90 seconds and by the end of a week-long workshop they can probably wax on for five minutes you know because they've gotten so much aware of what's in there in terms of their qualities or strengths the love the compassion the patience the fairness all that stuff that most people don't think about because we haven't directed our attention there I think the next thing you have to accept all of you and that includes you know there's new work this is very understand just read this article yesterday the new work evolving in this whole work about self is what's called self compassion okay but self self esteem is often with parenting based on rewards for things you didn't really do and so we're pumping up self esteem right and when it wasn't earned and you don't have to have earn self esteem in the sense that just you know they you know God don't make junk that kind of idea that Who I am is beautiful but there's another kind of self esteem there's there's lovable and capable so the lovable part of you is is all of you including your sadness your fear your grieving and I think for a lot of times people have tried to be this perfect person and not own the essence of who they are and that sometimes I can be I can have feelings and I can be lost I can be depressed that I you know we have this ideal I should be happy every minute yeah and I think it's possible for some people I think you know we have the gurus that probably have achieved that but I remember this one story about a guru in India who said that everything's an illusion he was happy all the time because he realized he was just living in this Maya was all leading and his son died and he was crying and his disciples said master he said everything's illusion why are you crying your son was an illusion he said I know but it was a bigger illusion than most so I think you know there's this attempt sometimes to deny the human side of us yeah and that we have we have all these emotions you know we do have anger you know and sometimes you know Christ got angry at the moneychangers in the temple there is kind of an anger that comes out of when your rights are being violated you know you stand up for yourself and we have sadness when we lose something and you know I I don't experience a lot of grief because I realize people are walking I love the metaphor watching fun memory to the house to the other when they die that their spirit and essence goes on but as much as I know that there are certain things that have left my life that I've grieved over research says what if you cut your hair you actually have a small grief and if you don't think that's true talk to most women after the game or get their hair dyed not quite the shave me was you know they've lost that image of who they were yeah but so I think we can be happy most of the time and we can let go and work on letting go of the things to keep us from that but I do also believe that we have to acknowledge that my sadness my anger my ambition all those are parts of me I once read a you know you introduced me in this video and there's a guy named Robert Resnick who's one of my mentors who was an install therapist and I remember once he his bio in a brochure when something like Robert Resnick is a therapist he is sometimes happy he's sometimes sad he sometimes angry he's sometimes very patient accepting and he went on with all these polarities yeah yeah and I remember getting get him just smiling like god that's so honest and true you know and as you know my wife Inger is absolutely the most spontaneous person you've ever met and very transparent and very real and people love her realness of what you see is what you get I think you know Scott Peck wrote a book called people of the lie which was about spiritual teachers and leaders who try to hide their human side we see all these scandals right now about people having affairs and and and so on and so forth and and you find people that were having affairs crucifying people that were having affairs you know in the public light and and so there's this projection and disowning of parts of ourselves I think we need there the more of us we own the more compassion we have and the more compassion we have then those things that are like self destructive they tend to fall away though when we judge them and push them down they're like in this you ever leave something on refrigerator in the back for like a month you know potato salad and then you this big green moldy thing growing well that's what happens when we reject parts of ourselves so it's important that we accept all of our self what stops us from being successful and stops us from being I think ultimately fulfilled to be successful in be fulfilled you first have to know what is my purpose you know do I have a purpose and I believe we all do but how do i tune into that there's a bunch of techniques from guided visualization or psychics you can talk to there's some you know what I call a joy review you look at your life and say when was I happy and usually you find a pattern like one of the women I write about in my book the success principles was a Miss Virginia and Julie lately and when she was at Ohio State University she thought she wanted to be a veterinarian because she'd studied she'd loved animals all you should be a vet you loved animals well she loved animals what she didn't like was biochemistry you know Anatomy and all that stuff and she was miserable and she just one day woke up and went I'm not happy when was I happy and she said I started doing a review of when I was happy I was most happy when I was a leader I was a leader in my school I was on her student council I led different teams that I was part of she said I led debate teams and all this and then she said when I was at Ohio State they'd have these leadership conferences where all these people would come from different high schools and that she would lead and mentor them and she went I like leadership that's what makes me happy but she went to Ohio State University said you have a Leadership Program they said no she said can I design an independent study course I'm putting different things together I think would help me be a leader communication skills media training speech you know all these different kind of things that she studied and she got the first degree ever from my house state university in leadership and when I met her she's now about 30 I think when I met her she was 26 and she was running workshops in the Pentagon for Colonels on leadership I mean you know so because she became an expert in leadership and then she you see her she's always smiling and now she's one of the leadership programs for girls it was relevant to our women's talk - yeah yeah all around the world so it's like she found her passion by looking back but when was I happy yeah and that is the clue are there other ways to get there there's paper and pencil tests you can do so once you know your purpose then the next question is what's my ideal vision of how I would manifest that purpose in all areas of my life relationships healthy fitness financial philanthropy etc so most people don't have a vision of their ideal life you have to have a vision in order to get there Walt Disney had to have a vision of where the movie was going to look like before they could start shooting it did you have a vision of this of the way your life is now kind it you know was very interesting my uncle was one of the richest men in the time he grew up in my father was one of them that was just fitted to cific dad poor dad well yeah two sisters my mom married a guy who was you know lower middle class I think made eight thousand dollars a year that's eight with three zeros afterward and worked as a florist and then my uncle owned the insurance agency in town and probably had investments in about everything else in town restaurants car dealerships etc and so he had a mansion and he has to fly to New York to buy clothes and take my cousin to go to see plays and private schools and best medical care always was reading had lots of had a nice home and and and you know three-car Garage and the barn horses and tennis courts we people and I remember thinking I want that ya know and and I think it's okay to want what you want now I live in a beautiful home and I just saw this movie I am under the feet I tell ya I think it's a great ladder and one of the things he said in that movie I loved he said it's okay to have a large home if you use it if you use it to make films like we're making today they have meetings with people we've had 30 people in this living room out of which we created the transformational leadership there I've had um you know salons with Barbara Marx Hubbard with 50 people sitting in this room Marianne Williamson said on the other end of that couch when she was deciding to run for Congress and you know I wrote a check you know that's like that so the reality is this home in our offices are on this problem so it's you know it's reassures and it's a multi-million dollar home but it's being used you know it's not like a 17 bedroom house that we talked about in the movie that wasn't being used which is for ego so I think I knew I'll tell you a quick story Jean Houston I know you said it was in the series I was taking a workshop with Jean and she had us light we were in Connecticut on the grass outside and she said reach down take some dirt today I'm not sure anyone would do this because of what we know about bacteria but I want to take a little piece in her roll it into a seed swallow the seed and imagine the seed grows into a plant what is it and where everyone afterwards they're mostly women in the workshop everyone well I saw this daffodil is beautiful this carnation this little I was growing I saw this bamboo shoot up and you know what a bamboo they send out runners that pretty soon the whole world was covered with bamboo it was sending out runners for the moon and then week later we had to write a poem out of this gibberish language we created done that works out exercise with me and you know I was one month ago dr. Drew good luck could make a bucket bucket being sorted translate it and it was like the Russian general was covering the hordes of the you know going across the steppes of Russia with his hordes of armies I thought oh my god I'm a megalomaniac so I said to Jeanne I said I'm really worried about myself you know all these images are so huge and overwhelming and overpowering she said no you're not a megalomania you just have a huge destiny you're going to affect millions of lives before you die now this was 20 years before chicken soup and but I I just trusted that that was correct you know and I've always lived my life trusting that what I'm attracted to there's a reason for it there's a purpose for it so for me I never set in question my guess myself I think one of the things that in the Abraham work they talk about is one of the worst things you can do is once you make a decision to start second-guessing your decision you don't make a decision do the best you can with it live with it for a while not that doesn't work out it's painful if you're pushing the river and you come back off any point but don't be constantly doubting yourself that's one of the things that really gets in the way mm-hmm you know those bows noise-reduction headphones yes yes well I actually did some studying on how that works so here's the wave of the sound of the airplane engine or the kid crying in three rows above and then they create that comes into the headphones it creates the opposite way so these two waves are like this going along like that and it collapses the way and so when you have an intention something you want that you feel passionate about but then you get well if I can afford that or both my people think of my mom might not like it or my wife then you've instantly taken this wave and created the counter wave and collapse the way now there's no power for that intention to go out into the universe and actually attract to you that what you want let alone your subconscious mind won't work on it in terms of coming up with solutions for it well yeah but now so what do you do with those doubts that come up in those things because I think those are you know as you know we think these are amongst the biggest obstacles that we have to really having that vision be created manifesting what do you do I just had this image like a aerosol can you know like yeah like raid you just spray the down if you have if you package that in having a can I'm sure that you will uh that will be a successful as chicken so I may have come up with it over that's right no I think what you have to do with that this one goes back to self-awareness my meditation is so important most of us live our life unconsciously in other words we having thoughts were not aware we're having thoughts we're just having them they're just like almost like the air we breathe we don't notice them if you meditate or if you do affirmations or if you do any kind of self awareness self-help work you start noticing I was working with a client today on the from a coaching planet before this interview and he was saying I'm really afraid I've got this 15-minute product I want to do and I've rewritten it and rewritten and rewritten it for a month and I'm still not ready to do it I'm just so afraid and I said well what do you how I said how are you scaring yourself mm-hmm because to have fear you have to be in the future and you have to be imagining something bad happening even if I have a gun to your head and you're afraid you're still in the future you're afraid I'm going to pull the trigger and kill you that's what's scary about not the metal touching your head thank you it's the image of like I'm not going to be here any longer that thought right so if I stay in the present 99 times out of 100 things are fine when they're not just do something you know respond to the situation yeah yeah yeah but mostly they're situations in our head that don't exist so when a doubt comes up and whoa so when you when you first become aware of the doubt you have to notice it so if I'm not happy if I'm in pain if I'm struggling if I'm you know worrying whatever stop and say okay what am I thinking you know in many of the people say think a better feeling thought because all odds create feelings so create a thought to produce a better feeling we'll give you an example I live in a town where all the men are taken there's no men available the women are all married so that thought will make you miserable if you're single but if you say well wait a second how did all those women get married has to be someone around yeah you know the perfect guy is not in my field of vision right now but he's on the way now if I order a pizza from dominos I know it's on the way if it doesn't come within 30 minutes it's free okay so there are they're working yeah you know and it does go back to doubt German if I call up Domino's and I say I'd like a pizza and they go great they give me a dress and I call five minutes later how's my pizza doing I just I started worrying about it I'm wondering if you're gonna send it now if I do that every five minutes for a couple days in a row every time they're gonna put me under don't pick up the phone right right and it's like the universe does the same thing so when the first thing has become aware if I'm not happy if I'm not producing results what is my thinking what am I thinking and then say okay what is the opposite of that what would what would be the opposite so you know this person who was afraid to you know produce his product he said I'm afraid of success I'm afraid of failure if I'm successful people are going to judge me I was an overnight success he didn't deserve it he doesn't you know he hasn't worked that hard for it if I'm successful people will come to me my family will all want money they're gonna like you know I wonder if anyone likes me for me you know that big fear a lot of rich people have and successful people have but I said so what you know a lot of people can come to you for money say no a lot of people are going to like you not for you but for your fame some of those people will be fun to hang out with you know I want to be close to Ken Kragen because I thought he was a neat guy to be around but as I got to know him I really like them yeah you know so there are people that are attracted to me that are not for any kind of reasons other than old Jack Canfield maybe it'll rub off or he'll Norse my book or whatever and some of those people have become lifelong friends others I just write them off they're not for me they're just there's no simpatico so basically when the doubt comes up think about what would be the opposite feeling that would make me feel good or thought that would make me feel good and then choose this is where intention comes in you know we can choose to bring our attention back to something we get so distracted by well what am i friends call shiny things you know things that really aren't that important but they're sparkly and they're distractions you know but we have the ability to focus like right now everyone watching this you're probably not aware of your but you're feeling in your right foot but as soon as I say right foot you're aware of it now if I go on talking about something else you lose track of your right foot but let's say your life depended on every five minutes paying attention to your right foot you'd probably set a timer you know so you wouldn't blow that and die so the idea is when we know how important it is to focus on our thoughts surround ourselves with positive people positive books like you're happy for no reason and what was the first one you did not love for November second one was left for no reason happy who's first in love happy okay love that's right the second one yeah and you know whatever you read books like that what happens is you end up feeling better because you're surrounded in a thought-form of positivity what radio stations do you listen to you listen to Fox News and CNN someone said CNN is constantly negative news that's what it stands for or do you listen to something uplifting like a talk show like this where you're learning new ideas or listening to a CD in your car rather than the country station that has songs like I'm lying on my back with tears of my ears crying are not over you you know so it's if you have to like take responsibility for the mental set you live in and and then the doubt start to go away and if you read inspirational books like the Chicken Soup for the Soul series for example plug plug plug but no really we have like 225 books in this series now and what happens is all those stories uplift you and so if you were to surround yourself with that better than you know all the let that you know we know people have died in hurricanes and tornadoes and so forth in the last week if you want to do something do it but don't dwell on it because it's not going to make you feel good so there are so many things that you I mean you are an encyclopedia of all of the most important success principles I mean you had 64 of them is that right and you'd be the Jaka PD asleep yeah the Jaca PD exactly for success you are it so this is going to be a hard question for you but I am asking this of everybody sure if you had to pick three things do you think are the three most important things that people can do right now in their life to love their lives more practical things they can do on it and I know by the way that you practice the things you try everything out and you see what works so out of everything that you've seen everything that you've done what are the three most important thing well that's a good question first of all I'm going to give you I'm going to give you a list of what I want a warning statement okay then I will explain exactly what I what I couldn't find him looking up for the word disclaimer number one I don't think it's just three things that will make you happy I think you know I wrote a book the successful sixty four principles why Michael I I thought those were the ones that made my life work I remember actually I was helping you a little bit on the editing at work and I kept saying will you could take this one out you said no no can't take that one out that one's really important got to keep that one in no it's like asking which of my organs which of my failures are the most I try living without your kidney or your brain or your lungs or any or you know whatever you you know even your your anus and you know you need it because if you can't get rid of toxic waste you're in trouble so the reality is that I think that there are lots of things and I would really encourage people you know this whole series everyone's going to say different things right and I'll just say one more little proviso before I get into what I think my three might be there's a guy in transformational leadership councilman Steve kevlita you may remember and Steve lives his life as a series of 30-day experiments and I think this is one of the most brilliant idea overheard it started when someone asked him he said I want you to I think he should be a vegetarian you feel better he said well no in the argue with the guy he said no I'm not going to do that then were they well why not how do I know if I feel better or not if I don't try it so he said for 30 days I like a vegetarian I felt better he said so someone said you shouldn't watch the news so for 30 days he didn't watch the news for 30 days he only listened to positive music for 30 days he read for now every day whatever it was he said I'm going to experiment with that and see how it makes me feel but at different times so we're going to do all the experiments at one at a time exactly and that's one of the real problems in self-help is people try to do too much too fast and overwhelm themselves and give up and we say it takes 30 days to create new neural pathways based on some neuroscience research that's out there which I won't recount right now but the idea is like you know pick one or two or three things max work on those get those logged in and then move on to the next one so I think by the way I'm always leading people to say you know as you hear all of these interviews with everyone pick what really resonates with your heart in the moment for you now because exactly in two months it may be something else that somebody else said but right now it may be exactly what Jack's about to say and I think you can relate to this too Marcy that you've read a book come back to it tears later read it again yeah it took something totally different away from the book because that's where you were and that's where you are now is totally different so one of the first things I would say it to create really good you know happy life is to accept things the way they are and you know I'm a big fan of Byron Katie I don't know if you're interviewing her for this series but her work of learning and I did this work for about a year every night religiously of looking at every time during the day when I was upset which meant I wasn't happy and asking what belief was i holding about how that event should have been where that person should or should not have been and then saying could I absolutely no that's true but I can't know how you should be or what that person should think or what they should do and then how do I feel when I hold that belief I end up feeling separate from them judgemental unhappy myself constricted and contracted who would I be without that belief I would be this happy peaceful person and I did that every day for a year and the result of that at the end of the year I was absolutely at peace with 90% of everything that happened in my life I didn't even have to do the worksheets anymore it just whatever showed up it's okay my kid threw up on the back seat of the car the dog peed in the living room you know the dog the cat fell off the roof and asked to go to the vet my what my daughter didn't clean up a room my wife was like picking me up it just is what it is mm-hmm and I love Katie's expression with that Katie Byron Katie's expression is loving what is and let's just very simply give people the four questions this is Byron Katie's the work and it involves four questions you take a belief that you have and you ask these four questions number one is that true number two do I absolutely know that that's true can i really know that that's true number three is how do I feel when I have that thought and number four is who would I be or how would I feel without that thought and then you look at a turnaround statement and we'll give this what we'll give this in your in the rhythmic materials that go along with it to be either all wrong but Byron Katie's the work is brilliant yeah just the work calm go and I love all things I do it I support her work 100% cause she's or work supporting the other person I'm much happier with it but it is adaptive it's a daily discipline I talk about daily discipline things you do every single day and that was one that I really recommend grateful hey I think another thing is I teach this thing called the rule of five which is everyday do five specific action steps toward the achievement of your number one purpose intention or goal so if your number one purpose is to lose weight right now and that's a fair goal for people what are five things you can do every day I could do a real big exercise and cut out carbs I can read something inspirational motivational about weight loss I can have a countability partner to make sure that I do what I say I'm going to do I can keep score and you write down all my food all the research shows if you do that you're more likely not to eat as much because now you're aware of what you're eating I can take a walk after dinner I can drink 10 glasses of water a day I can do hyperventilation kind of breathing at a rate of my metabolism exercise before I eat breakfast I mean there's a lot of things but five things a day when Chicken Soup for the Soul came out as you may remember we did five interviews every single day if we couldn't find an interview we spent at least an hour trying to get an interview sending out free books as you remember we said free books to the OJ Simpson jury and as a result of that we got national news coverage and so you never know what's going to work but five specific action steps every day and you know that has been something that I looked I remembered that story I mean to me that was amazing Jack and Mark when she can sit for this whole getting him out they would do things like you would go to hair salons and give a book to a hair salon for free because you knew that a woman sitting under the hairdryer would would read the book loved it and go buy it or you go to a flea market and you'd stand out in the middle of the aisle with an open book and say you got to read this story it's so great and I remember your commitment to each other to do five things a day and I have that's lived with me I don't always do that but I really remember that I think it's a beautiful rule so the rule of five is you're number two I think the last thing I would say is really a combination of two things I'm always trying to speak something will let you buy on this one okay okay a little cheating but it's all right remember we did a hundred and one stories and every chick that's right right couldn't be a hundred had 300 yeah but they're related in the first is to ask I think one of the things that stops people from being happy in life is they don't ask for what they want and there's several levels of asking is what I call asking on this plane asking your husband asking your children asking your colleagues asking your employees asking your friends specific requests most people are so afraid of rejection they don't ask for what they want and my belief is rejection is a myth if I asked if I would ask you to have dinner with me tonight you would say no and you know this would be on the ailment ago Jacob rejected in front of all those people and I say that's not really true think about this did I have any one date there was before I asked Marcy know that I have anyone to eat dinner with after I asked Marcy know that my life really get worse no it stayed the same so if there's nothing to lose which there never is and everything to gain by asking ask the worst that happens is you'll get a note you've already got to know so you're not going to get worse than it is and I always say you can handle no like if you apply to Harvard and don't get in you weren't in Harvard before you applied you're not in Harvard after you apply and the fact is you spent your whole life not going to Harvard you know how to handle that it's not that big a deal so ask ask ask ask ask and ask a lot of people you know there's a numbers game I find most salespeople they find is one out of every eight or what not about 25 and it buys so you just got to ask a lot of people and be willing to hear the no it doesn't mean you're bad it simply means that person right now is not going to give you what you want I remember Barbara Kingsolver who's an author wrote in one of our chicken soup for the writers Souls he said if you get a rejection letter from a publisher it doesn't mean your book is bad it simply means the editor that will love your book does not live at this address haha okay and so that the second part of that is gratitude there was a lot of us asked but we don't we don't say thank you so whether we're asking God or the universe or Source Energy how we hold out or whether they're asking on the physical plane for whatever we want whether it's prayer or whether it's a simple request start with gratitude and gratitude actually comes before they ask if you start from a place of gratitude rather than from a place of lack so if I start go I'm so desperate I knew this thing as opposed to wow my life is so full the asking comes from a different place and there's a different vibration to it so my big exercise and I learned this from you know Jerry and Esther Hicks and their work through a.m. is the gratitude exercise every single day so I start my day with shoot for seven minutes I'd like I said I do that wrong every day but I will either write in my journal or I'll just lie in bed and focus on what I'm grateful for there's a lot of redundancy my wife my cats which I absolutely love this incredible home I live in my staff to be living in America with such abundance to have all the friends I have that share this work and the great gifts and blessings of that the good weather the fact that I'm alive I think with them Norman Vincent Peale said any day above ground is a good day yeah so there's so many things to be grateful for so whether you do it in the morning to set the day or at the end of the day to go back over all the things you appreciate should have daily habit to be grateful and then what we find is when you're in a state of gratitude you know give universe gives you more to be grateful for and I've never seen that not work so it's a very powerful daily exercise fantastic and I think my experience has been the way that you can accelerate these things is to do them in groups and to do them in actual in periods of time in trainings you and I have both taken every training Under the Sun would you say pretty much combined I think the two of us have covered it all up until the last two years there's now like 8 billion trainees that's so it's true it's like I always say a 2-0 Rica to Zen training yeah yeah yeah and that actually you are not here by accident you are here because you've done the work and you've done the work on yourself and you've seen this with with thousands of people that you've trained it isn't that right no I would say when people say what's the best thing I can do to become a better speaker and be more successful be better work on yourself yeah you know when you change and transform yourself everything around you transforms and reaction to them whatever is true on the inner world will manifest itself out here so the more abundant your consciousness the more abundant your external environment will be and you know the more you learn about how to live a successful fulfilling life and here's the deal Tony Robbins said success leaves Clues mm-hmm successfully exclude everyone has been successful has left clueless books tapes audio programs franchise manuals whatever it is go study the clues you know hang out with people who have done what you want to do and learn from them how they did it it accelerates W Clement stone said you can 10 times the speed of your growth if you'll study other people's methodologies for success I spent one year working with him and it totally changed my life you know I went from making eight thousand a year to making 80 thousand a year in just a very few years using those kind of principles what I've learned in workshops and ever since then my first year of getting into this I took thirty eight weekend workshops the only time I didn't take workshops was when they weren't offering them Mother's Day Christmas New Year's Thanksgiving and I was a junkie they said you know workshop junkie but look at me now yeah I mean the results are here and I claim it's because I studied and exposed myself to be impression what would allowed other people to make an impress yeah and so what you've done is you've actually taken all the best of the things that have worked for you and you put together the breakthrough breakthrough to success workshop right so I want you to just explain a little bit because I know you've got one coming up in August yes and to me as I said earlier this was the workshop that changed my life there is no question about it I mean not only did I meet Jack during that workshop but the workshop itself was so powerful in terms of helping me in in that in that week break through the interior internal barriers that I had to achieving success that after that my whole career turned around I mean I had my speaking engagements just flourished and then of course I helped with the Chicken Soup for the Soul books and everything changed after breakthrough to success so I want you to tell people what what it is and why is it different well it's a seven day seminar it was like 10 or 12 days we got better yeah I'm working efficient there it's a seven day seminar is usually about 300-400 people in the room we limit it to that people from 20 countries usually come it's an experiential workshop which means I don't sit and talk at you like we've been doing here because we've been talked at and read the book but why is that we've read the books taking the seminars etc and our life still don't work it's because those principles weren't embodied inside of us they were just intellectual constructs so we've created a series of activities over the course of seven days that when you leave you are absolutely transformed into a different person not like a lot of people are figure well what my husband still love me and my friends still like yeah absolutely but you're going to be much more effective just naturally without thinking about it you will respond in a more positive way you know we talked about asking you came to me after that seminar and said and you asked you said yeah you guys ought to write a book for women Chicken Soup for the woman's soul and I said that's a great idea and I started to walk away you see wait I said what he said we should write it with you it was you and Jennifer hunter and I said well why would I want to do that you know it's our idea the book you said well second of all the first of all the chickens were woman soul was my idea about yours and you said we're women you're not it will have more credibility which it did and I went makes sense let's do it and that was the I think the woman's soul in the teenage soul books of any books we did in that series sold more book that you said like 19 million 15 million books you've sold many teenage with 19 million out of the 125 million at that point that we were over talking about until last week so the reality is you started living those principles and immediately put them into action and created yourself being a millionaire where you weren't that before and impacting all these lives and opening up yourself to meeting incredible people so basically you're going to be clear about your life purpose you're going to get your goals clarified your vision clarified you're going to learn why most people set goals and don't achieve them you're going to learn all the blocks that people have and you're going to manifest how to get through those so that they're embodied in you before you leave not something you're like oh I have to do it I'm going to struggle we remove limiting beliefs we go back and heal but childhood wounds but more importantly what we do is what you get as a result of it most people double or triple their income within a couple of years we had one yoga teacher it took it from Boston a few years ago her January income the following year was better than her previous whole year's income and we hear that kind of over and over and over Nigel Wisner who took the workshop from England came because he want to make more money as and speaker went back and his kids now talk about Nigel dad before Jack and dad after Jack he said I'm the perfect father and husband my kids love me I'm so glad for how you transformed my life and so if you want to have more health more more abundance more freedom your body's going to feel better and look better etc anything you want you know whether it's nonprofit impact or whether it's personal gain it's all available to you and if you go to our website which we can give just jack canfield comm you can click on our trainings button and you can find out about the training we'd love to have you come taken we do this every year usually in August on the state to 14th if you're watching this in 2011 and that we would love to have you I mean literally we could fill this room with people with stories like Marcy's who've gone from being ordinary people to ordinary people doing extraordinary things and perceived by the world as extraordinary but not any different than you and I who grew up normal who now have extraordinary lines because we learned the principles what I would say this is true for everything and watching in this series that you're viewing is if you work the principles and the strategies the principles and strategies always work that you have to work them they're not something they're just going to like appear because of watching the secret one time mmm well I will say from obviously my personal experience that if you were to take one seminar ever this is the one to take and if you're to take hundreds of seminars ever this is the one to take this seminar has as I said I mean it's completely changed my life I live by the principles that you taught there I still do the practices that I learned in 30 21 years ago in 22 years ago and the the entire no way that kids under 10 oh yeah thank you so much I actually assisted with the seminar a few years after that yeah very kind so this truly is a absolutely transformational experience and so I from my heart I just urge you to check this out and and I believe this will sing to you so Jack any any last minute comments you know you you just you're a marvel to me because you you have just this wealth I don't think I know anybody else that has as much knowledge about breaking through to another level in life than you do I mean you just Hey you just live it it's I love being around you and and I love how you live it's okay what would be your last closing statement of anything that you would love to share with people about loving their life well you've just watched however long this interview was and you know you've heard a lot of different ideas and couple strategies and some options of choices you can make and I would say that everything you're currently experiencing your life right now is a result of the decisions you made the actions you took in the past and if you want your life to be different next year than it is this year you have to make some new decisions and take some new actions that you're not taking because if what you're currently doing would produce what you want what you want would have already showed up so you have to take on some new behaviors make them new to say whether it's taking my workshop or doing the Byron Katie work or whatever it is that you now are drawn to do that you feel inspired to do make the decision to do it don't just watch this and let it be entertainment you know we have enough entertainment you can turn on HBO and you can watch a movie but if you really want your life to change make some decisions to apply the principles and strategies that you're learning in this series and I promise you your life will be transformed and you will be fulfilled and you will be happy and it will be for a reason because you made some new choices but yeah that's great so you can go to Jack's site which is WW jack canfield comm and you can just see the breakthrough to success seminar there you can pick up any of these books anywhere and really the man is legend and so please I I just I know that you will get so much out of out of spending more time with Jack and in any way that you can and I'm I'm so happy to have gotten to do this with you Jack we could love you you are just such an exquisite man I mean truly beautiful soul on this planet who is so deeply changed in life and the lives of millions of people so glad that you listened to the call of what you're here to do that you thank you and it goes both ways and thank you all for joining us on the love your life summit because when you and Jack and I and everyone start loving our lives more and more this planet changes so love live and love grow and love flourish and love today and every day thanks for joining you you

Channel: Jack Canfield

Views: 84,888

Rating: 4.845304 out of 5

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Id: lx5vHq7WQvQ

Length: 60min 59sec (3659 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 21 2013