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The Share Guide:
Your new book, The Success Principles,
is very large and comprehensive. How would you recommend reading
through this book?
Jack Canfield: This book is meant to be a
blueprint for success. However, if you only know about the material and
don't implement it, that's like knowing you should take vitamins but
don't take them. Here's what I recommend to people if they want to get
maximum value out of the book: find a partner or a group of people you
know (what I call an accountability partner or a mastermind group in
the book), could be a group at work, could be your family members, or
people in your local church, and go through the book together one
chapter at a time, or two or three chapters, and then put the
principles into practice. When it says set goals for the seven
areas of your life, set those goals. If it says write
affirmations, write an affirmation for each goal. If it says look
at the obstacles you're going to encounter and come up with three
solutions for how you're going to get past those obstacles, do the
paper and pencil part, and then share that verbally with your partners.
This
is important because what I've found is that whenever you declare a
goal, or a commitment, or an action step out loud, there's something
about saying it verbally that makes it more real to the subconscious.
Then there's also another person in the world that's holding you
accountable. If I tell you I'm going to lose 20 pounds and the
next day you see me eating donuts, you're likely to say, "Hey Jack, I
thought you were going to lose 20 pounds. How are you going to do
it eating donuts?" But if you don't know I've made that
commitment, you might not say anything.
The Share Guide:
Self-esteem seems to be one of the fundamental principles in the book.
Jack Canfield:
That's true. Self-esteem is a huge piece of my work. You have to
believe it's possible and believe in yourself. Because after
you've decided what you want, you have to believe it's possible, and
possible for you, not just for other people. Then you need to seek out
models, mentors, and coaches. You can also do it through books and
tapes, I think live is more powerful. There is something about
the energy you pick up in the field of someone who's pursuing their
dreams that's different. It's almost like you catch the
enthusiasm.
The Share Guide:
Don't you have a whole chapter on mentors in the book?
Jack Canfield:
Yes, it's called Find a Wing to Climb Under. I talk about how to seek
out a mentor; how to approach them and how to talk to them so they'll
say yes. If they feel they're going to be overwhelmed by you, then
they're not going to want to do it, but if you say that you just need
ten minutes on the phone once a month, they'll always give you more
than that. That's a great way to get in the door.
The Share Guide:
When I was in my early twenties I had a role model with Swami
Muktananda when I lived at his ashram in upstate New York. He had such
a huge energy wave that you couldn't help but believe that if you
followed the principles he was practicing that you could do whatever
you wanted in the world.
Jack Canfield:
Whenever you're around someone who has a big vision, it's very
inspirational, because it really touches the part of you that knows at
the deepest level that you can do anything.
The Share Guide:
When you have an inspiring mentor, then when you go out in the world
and you find a need that you want to fill, you believe in it and you
have confidence and you can cut through the resistance.
Jack Canfield:
Yes. I think we do things in stages. No one goes out and changes the
world from the get-go. I think what happens is you have a
constantly expanding sphere of influence. I started in a high
school classroom, and then it became the teachers of those kids, and
then it became the teachers of those teachers in the universities that
I was teaching. And then I started doing seminars for
corporations, which turned into speaking at the World Business Council.
I always tell people if you do what's in front of you well, then you'll
get bumped up to the next level. You can have big visions, but make
sure you're doing what's in front of you every day the best of your
ability to bring that about success.
The Share Guide:
Right, you need to keep studying and get support because the resistance
is out there.
Jack Canfield:
I have a whole chapter in my book on building your success team. A main
principle of my success is building a team. The more you link up with
others the more you can do.
The Share Guide:
Let's talk about goal setting. What if you don't know how long it will
take to achieve a specific goal? Do you just take a guess?
Jack Canfield:
First, start with what the goal is. Obviously, if you want a $7 million
estate and you say you want it tomorrow, that's unrealistic for most
people. Unless, of course, you meet someone the next day who owns
one already and get married! The chance of that is fairly slim,
although it can happen. What I recommend people do is go out and
do a little research. Say you wanted to own a boat, maybe a
200-foot yacht. Go to a yacht store, and find out what yachts
cost. Then find out what a slip costs to put it into the harbor.
You might also research what used yachts costs, and how often they
become available. Perhaps there's a possibility of living on someone
else's yacht and maintaining it, so you don't have to own it. You
could achieve that rather quickly. So you get into the world of
yachts, and you just start poking around and getting a sense of what's
involved.
The Share Guide:
But you don't want to be too realistic either, right?
Jack:
Right, you want to go for it. Let me explain that. I was working
for W. Clement Stone, my main mentor in the area of success, back when
I was in my late twenties. He said you should set a goal that's
so big, and so unbelievable, that if you achieved it you'd know it was
a result of following his program for success. And I said okay, I
want to make $100,000 in the next calendar year. Now at that time
I had a job as a school teacher, and I was making $8,000 a year, so
that would be twelve times my income in one year. I didn't see
how I could do that; they don't pay teachers extra if they do a good
job. But he said set the goal anyway and let's see what happens. So the
technique I was using was to visualize every day having $100,000.
I made a $100,000 bill by taking a hundred dollar bill and using a
projection screen, projecting it up onto a flip chart, so it was
larger, then I traced it and added three zeros to it so it looked like
$100,000. It was large, about three feet by two feet, and I put
it up on the ceiling above my bed. So every morning I'd wake up,
I'd see the hundred thousand dollar bill, and I'd say my affirmation:
"God is my unlimited supply. May large sums of money come to me
quickly and easily under the grace of God, for the highest good of all
concerned. I am easily earning, saving, and investing a $100,000 a
year." Then I would close my eyes and I would visualize living a
$100,000 lifestyle. What would my house look like? What would my car
look like? What charities would I be contributing to? And so forth.
Then I would get up and take my shower and go about my day, which at
that time was being a teacher. I'd also written a book called A Hundred Ways to Enhance Self-Concept in
the Classroom.
The Share Guide:
How much did you make each time you sold a book?
Jack:
I got 25 cents every time it sold. So my average throughout the
year was about $2,000 from the book. After doing this
visualization process a while, what happened was I was taking a shower
one day and I had this idea. It was my first $100,000 idea, and
it was about six weeks into the process. The idea was: what if I could
sell 400,000 copies of my book? That was the only thing I had
that was leverageable. If I sold 400,000 books at a quarter each
I'd make $100,000. Wow! Of course, I didn't know how to do
that; I'd had the book out two years, hadn't sold that many. The
publisher didn't know how they would do it either. But that was
my new goal.
Now,
according to this principle of visualization, once you start
visualizing the outcome, you'll start to see resources that were always
there that you never saw before because you weren't holding the
question. Once I was holding the $100,000 question, these
resources started to show up. For example, I'm in my
grandmother's bathroom, I look over and I see the Reader's
Digest. It said something like 37,000,000 readers, or 17,000,000
readers in 37 languages, something like that. I remember
thinking, with that many readers, if I had an ad in Reader's Digest,
you know certainly 400,000 people would go buy my book, cause it was a
book for parents and teachers. So I called them up to see what an
ad would cost, but it was way too expensive. But then my wife had
another idea. She said I should write an article. So I wrote an
article for Reader's Digest, sent if off, got rejected. Then I'm
at the supermarket a couple weeks later and I see the National
Enquirer, another resource that's always been there. It had
12,000,000 readers weekly. So I called them up. Ad rates
were still more than I thought I should pay, but I kept thinking about
it. I started incorporating Reader's Digest and National Enquirer into
my visualization. Now I'm down at Hunter College another couple
months later and I'm doing a talk, and this lady comes up to me and she
says, "I'd like to interview you." And I said, "Who are you
writing for?" And she said," I'm a freelancer but mostly I sell
to the National Enquirer." And the theme song from Twilight Zone
went off in my head! I couldn't believe that this was working. So
I told her I'd do the interview if she would tell people how to get a
hold of my book at the end, and she agreed.
After
that book sales started to pop up. Then my wife ordered something
through the mail, and when she got it there were all these little
catalogs in the box. So she said, "Why don't we start a mail order book
store? You could sell your book and instead of making a quarter a
book, you'd make $3 a book." I thought that was a good idea, so
we got a deal from the publisher to buy the books at half price. Then
we started taking ads in little parenting magazines and things that we
could afford. I also started taking the books to educational
conferences and selling them there. After a while my wife
eventually said, "People have already proven they'd buy your books
through the mail. Why don't we send them a little catalog along
with your book when they buy it, and include other things that might be
related to it that they might buy?" So to make a long story short, by
the end of the year we had a 32-product catalog with tapes and audio
books on self-esteem, parenting and all that. The real turning point
was when the University of Massachusetts said they were having a
weekend educator workshop and conference with about a thousand
counselors, and asked that we bring our bookstore over. Our net profit
that weekend was $2,000. So I thought, wow, if I could do that every
week, there's a $100,000 business.
The Share Guide:
Didn't you also raise your speaking fee around the same time?
Jack:
Yes. I was doing a little bit of consulting; charging $300 a day to go
into schools and teach other teachers. I never would have asked
for more money if I hadn't set this goal of making $100,000 in a
year. I was talking to a friend and I asked him, "What do you get
when you consult?" This was hard to ask because my mother had
always taught me you never ask anybody about money, sex, or
religion. But I asked and he said $800. Wow! I said,"How the heck
do you get $800?" He said, "I ask for it." This was amazing
to me. This was back in the days of the counter-culture, and I wanted
to be seen as a good guy doing good things for the world, and to ask
for that kind of money seemed like I'd be just another capitalist
rip-off pig that didn't care about people. But I decided to take
the shot. So I practiced for a week saying $800, over and over
again. I literally looked in the mirror and said, "What's your
fee?" And I'd say $800, just to get used to it. I was
living in Chicago at the time. So this guy calls me from Iowa and
he says, "Would you come out and do a workshop for us?" I told
him I'd be happy to and asked me what my fee was. And I said, "Uhhhhhh…
$600." I couldn't get eight out; I just couldn't do it. And
he said, "Oh, no sweat." And I said, "No sweat? what would have been a
sweat?" He said, "Well, we had $1200 in the budget for the
speaker." So then I realized I was not getting what I was worth,
what people would budget for. After that I instantly raised my fee to
$1200. I figured if that guy was willing to pay me $1200 other
people would too. So I'd basically tripled my fee. Now, I'll tell
you, at the end of the year we did not make $100,000. I think it
was $92,326. But do you think my wife and I were disappointed?
The answer is no, we had over ten times the income in less than a year.
Then
my wife said, "If it worked for a $100,000 do you think it will work
for a million?" I told her I don't know but that we should
try. It took us several years longer before I manifested a
million dollars, but the point I'm trying to make with a very long
story goes back to your original question about how long should your
goal be if you don't know? And I go back to what is it you
want? The old saying is if you shoot for the stars you might miss
but you land on the moon. So I suggest people: don't let your
current sense of what you think is possible run you. Set a high goal
and if you don't make it so what? You'll be much farther ahead
than what you were. Then you can correct based on what you learned
regarding timing for the next step, to actually complete the goal.
The Share Guide:
So you take a shot at it and you modify as you go, and you've certainly
pointed yourself in the general direction.
Jack:
Right. It's like the GPS system. It doesn't need to know where you've
been; it only wants to know where you are. If you go off the route, the
GPS system doesn't get mad at you. It simply says you have left
the designated route, and at the first opportunity you should
make a left and get back on course. I think life works like
that. It's a giant Global Positioning System-or we could say
God-Positioning System, if you want to get spiritual. We have to
learn to trust that more. Our rational mind is useful for
strategic planning, but quite often God's plans are a lot better than
our plans ever could be.
The Share Guide:
So we should all create goals that stretch us in order to achieve
personal growth, but do you think that if they're not a little scary,
maybe they're not bold enough?
Jack:
Well, I'm a big believer in growth. Life is not about achievement, it's
about learning and growth, and developing qualities like compassion,
patience, perseverance, love, and joy, and so forth. And so if
that is the case, then I think our goals should include something which
stretches us. Anytime a goal makes you feel uncomfortable you
know there's a stretch in there. Does that doesn't mean you have
to stretch yourself every single moment of the day? Of course
not. There's a rhythm of contact and withdrawal in terms of
stretching yourself and then recovering and resting.
The Share Guide:
If we set our goals too big, aren't we setting ourselves up for failure?
Jack:
Well, I'll tell you something I just recently learned from a friend of
mine, Raymond Aaron. He teaches what he calls M-T-O: M stands for
minimum, T is target, and O is outrageous. What he suggests is
first determine what would be the minimum. Let's say your goal is to
finally clean out your garage. The minimum might be that you would go
out there and throw out the old tires. You've got four old tires you
know you're not going to use anymore, and you get rid of those, and
then you take the ladders and put them up against the wall. That would
be the "minimum," where you'd feel like you'd done something in the
garage. The "target" would be to take all the boxes on the
left-hand side of the garage and deal with those as well. And the
"outrageous" version would be if you take everything out of the garage,
paint it, hire a closet organizing company to come in and build shelves
and closets, and then take each item one at a time and decide if you
want to put it back in your garage or give it away.
Now the outrageous goal sounds so outrageous you probably wouldn't do
it, but it would be something that would really give you a kick if you
could do it. The target would be something that if you
accomplished it, you'd say, "I did it; I'm fully satisfied." The
minimum would be if you just did something to give yourself a win in
that area. What happens with this process is that people will do the
minimum because it is the minimum, it's easy. But when anyone
starts something they've been putting off, like cleaning the garage,
they start to develop what's called momentum. I'm sure everyone has had
this experience: "I don't really want to wash the dishes. I'll just
wash the glasses and plates and I'll get to the pans tomorrow."
So you start washing them, and pretty soon you've washed the pans,
you've washed the counter, you've washed the floor, you've windexed the
windows-you just got in the momentum and you didn't quit. This is the
system I recommend using as a way to get around thinking that if the
goal is too big, you'll fail. You can't fail if you set a minimum,
target, and outrageous goal. Let the outrageous goal be the really huge
one; let your target be the thing based on past experience you know you
can commit to; and minimum is if you do that at least you've done
something.
The Share Guide:
Isn't having a coach something you recommend as well?
Jack:
Yes, coaches are extremely beneficial. I've got business coaches,
writing coaches, financial coaches, strategic planning coaches, etc.
The Share Guide:
What is the difference between a mentor and a coach?
Jack:
A coach is someone who has taken coaching classes, belongs to The
International Coaching Federation, coaches people on a regular basis
for a living. A mentor is usually someone who does it for free;
they do it as a service. Coaches normally charge you money.
The Share Guide:
But they perform a similar function?
Jack:
In some ways they do. But not every mentor is necessarily a good coach;
they might be helpful in the sense that they can give you ideas, they
can guide you. Coaches tend to put you into a thinking process
mode. A coach may not have been down the road you want to go down, but
they can teach you how to think about solutions, and how to resource
yourself so that you can go down that road, even though they might not
be in your field. A mentor is usually in your field. A mentor will
usually give you about 10 or 15 minutes on the phone.
The Share Guide:
You offer a 7-day intensive training. Can you describe this?
Jack:
It's in Las Vegas in June this year, and it's limited to 400 people. I
have about 25 assistants in the room; people who have taken the
training before who've come back to assist and facilitate when
people get stuck. It's experiential, meaning that I don't just
talk all day. The real focus of the training is success from the inside
out. Basically, I believe everyone has within them all the resources
they need to produce all the results that they want. It's the
idea that we're all driving through life with an emergency brake on;
I'm more interested in releasing the brake than I am in making the gas
go faster. Obviously, you need to link up with other people and
network, and do mastermind groups, and gain new skills and so
forth. But the reason why most people are less successful than
they want to be is the unconscious blocks, the emotional blocks, the
self-talk, the limiting beliefs that are blocking them. So for
the first three and half days of the seminar, we focus on what's called
Releasing the Past. And we do a whole series of activities to
identify and release the internal blocks- emotions, memories, decisions
you've made in relation to that. For example, I had a guy in the group
once who didn't realize it but he had made an unconscious decision
never make more money than his father. Once he realized that, he was
able to release that belief and realize his dad would be proud of him
if he was more successful. If he had more money, he could help his dad
when he need to, etc. So that's the kind of thing that will
surface in the seminar, and we remove those things using different
techniques and technologies. Then the last half of the seminar is
called Creating The Future. And that's when we go into all the
stuff like goal-setting, visioning, getting clear about making sure all
our goals have affirmations, having a strategic plan in place, knowing
who and what we're going to delegate to, developing a mastermind
alliance. So people leave having removed the blocks, and having a
game-plan clearly outlined in their mind of how they're going to live
their life for the next year, and it's powerful stuff. And
everyone falls in love with everyone else because it's so much
emotional healing, and then there's so much mutual encouragement to get
people through, and people become support systems for each other as a
result of that. Pretty amazing stuff happens.
The Share Guide:
Your book is really like a road map for success. What was your goal in
writing it?
Jack:
My goal was to inspire and empower people to live their highest vision
in the context of love and joy. So the stories in the book are there to
inspire people, and the techniques, the strategies, and the principles
are there to empower them, to give them the tools. Yes, it is
like a road map, with information to help you get where you want to go.
And what we're doing on the website at thesuccessprinciples.com
is expanding the material. There'll be many more lessons to pull from
the website so you can make it like a 20-week course. We're
recommending people do one session a week. With each lesson there
is a little homework associated with it--action steps for you to do.
For
more information about Jack Canfield and The Success Principles, visit www.thesuccessprinciples.com
 Read
another interview with Jack Canfield on
writing and getting published.
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