An Interview With Jack Canfield - The Success Principles

The Success Principles
Interview with Jack Canfield
with Jason Vosu
Better Life Media News

The Most Important Principles

BLM: Is it possible to pick out what you think are the most important two or three principles?


JC: Well I think that if you could only have eight or nine or ten, the subtitle of my book is "How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to be," so you have to know where you want to be. What's your outcome? What's the goal? Where do you want to end up five years from now or one year from now or ten years from now? People have to define their vision and most people have never really sat down to do that. Most people spend more time planning their summer vacation than they do planning their life. It's very important to do that.


And then, it's important to believe it's possible. Most people think, well yeah, being a millionaire's possible for someone else, but is it really possible for me? And so you have to confront those inner beliefs that "I'm not enough," that, "I can't have it," that, "Life is hard," all that kind of stuff that many people grew up with or made decisions about when they were very young.


And then you've got to create a plan for how you're going to get there. Now the plan doesn't always work out, meaning that how you get there is very different than you planned; you may get there faster when some other thing occurs and you say, "Oh, that was lucky," but the luck comes from having a plan and then from taking action on that plan.


And then I think it's critical to spend a few minutes every day visualizing each of your goals as already complete. That actually programs the sub-conscious mind to come forward with more creative ideas; it actually opens up your doors of perception to see more resources that have always been there that you're not perceiving at the moment, and it also motivates you to take action. It also creates something called the Law of Attraction, which is that it will magnetize people and resources to come toward you. That's what most people call luck, but now through quantum-physics, we're beginning to see that we live in a super-consciousness that quantum-physicists call the Quantum Field, and that our thoughts actually create wave-forms that effect that field, and that create manifestations of things and events and so-forth.


So the next couple of steps is simply that you've got to take action. You're going to get inspired, thoughts inspire impulses to act. You've got to take action. Then you have to respond to feedback because your actions aren't going to work. You have to be open, not resistant to feedback. In fact you should solicit feedback. Then you should persevere in the face of obstacles. If you do just those things, that's kind of a blueprint for success, and then everything else added on are nuances of those which really help you make better relationships, and have greater health, greater financial wealth, etc.


What is the Brain's Reticular Activating System and How Can it Help Me Achieve My Goals?


BLM: When you said that there's a part of your brain that is activated, are you talking about the "Reticular Activating System?"


JC: Exactly. There's a part of your brain that acts like a filter. Like right now people listening to this are not aware of what they're feeling in their right foot, but as soon as I say "right foot," the filter that was filtering that out opens up and allows it in because it came into consciousness.


So when we set a goal, it opens up our hearing and our seeing to notice things that before were being filtered out because they were unimportant. Like when you read through the newspaper, most people don't realize there's ads every single day for appliances. You go right by them because you don't need an appliance; you don't see them. But the day your refrigerator breaks, you think there's about five sales going on in town because there are all these ads for refrigerators and stoves. The fact is they were always there, you just didn't see them. We call that a "scotoma." It's a blind spot. So by focusing clearly on what you want, it opens up that reticular system to let in more perception of the resources that could help you achieve your goals.

BLM: When you open up that reticular system, obviously there's an internal element that's happening within me. I don't want to get too ethereal here, but is there something, energy-wise, that's also going to be operating with external forces as well?


JC: Yeah, think of it this way: Every thought you think sends out a waveform. We've all used a wireless telephone and we've all used Blackberry's and Wi-Fi on our computers and so-forth. And so what happens is: How is that possible? Well it's sending out a wave, which is a curve. It has amplitude, which means how high up does it go, and frequency which is how wide apart are the little curves? By coding and decoding those, we can send information. Well when you think a thought, it's sending out a wave similarly.


We know that these waves can go at least a quarter of a million miles, which is the distance to the moon because we've done experiments with astronauts using this and found that we can pick up thought-forms. That was done at Duke University. Dr. Masaru Emoto from Japan has proven it by taking water samples in the United States the day before and the day after ... he does this experiment by having 10,000 Japanese send love and gratitude to the water all around the world. And the crystaline structure of the water actually changes from one day to the next, based on this - it's very scientific - and we know that our thought-forms are affecting water, and our bodies are made up of 70-80% water.


When we think a thought - a friend of mine, Bob Scheinfeld coined a term "the inner net" as opposed to "the internet." And so it's a way we're communicating through that quantum field the physicists talk about, to other people. So it's like we're sending out an email to everyone on the planet saying, "Hey, I wanna solve this problem with hunger," or "I wanna build a hospital for people in Nairobi," or "I want to be a millionaire through selling books," whatever it might be. And people that are aligned with that, who would be served by assisting or participating or benefiting from that, they will literally be attracted to you and they won't even know why.


BLM: How does a person go about actually interpreting a thought?


JC: If you're being influenced by other people's thoughts, which you always are -- if you walk in the house and your wife's upset, you can feel it. If your son is in danger, I mean, women report waking up in the middle of the night at three in the morning and then they'll find out the next day, that's when their daughter had an automobile crash - we feel it. Perhaps the hair on our neck will stand up, or we'll have an impulse to maybe -- I mean everyone's had this experience where you're sitting there at your desk, and all of a sudden you start thinking about an old college roommate you haven't talked to in ten years, and then five minutes later the phone rings and it's that old college roommate. Either you were thinking about them and that made them call you, or they were thinking about calling you and you picked it up - no one's quite sure which it is - but the point being that we do know that we are in fact influencing each other. The main thing is to just, when you have intuitions, to call somebody, to write a letter, to go down to the mall, stop in and see old Bill, to maybe start this new business, whatever it might be, trust those and act on them because they are intuitions coming up into consciousness.


If I Want to be Rich, Should I Hang Out with Other Rich People?


BLM: You say that if you want to make $200,000, you should hang out with people who make $200,000. What is the biggest difference between someone who makes $200,000 and someone who makes $50,000?


JC: Well the difference is there's several things. One, you've got to be playing a game where that kind of money can be made; you're not going to make that as an elementary school teacher in the state of Illinois. That's just something you have to confront -- that certain professions have the potential to make more money than others.


Now we have the option of making money through investments. Teachers could be doing a multi-level marketing, selling Amway or something in the evenings, so there are other ways to generate funds -- money you could inherit, you could win the lottery, but the main thing is that you want to have the thought-form that, "This is something I want." You want to have the goal and the vision. And then you want to say, "What would it take for me to do that?" and then find out people who are already generating that kind of income, preferably in the field that you're in, if you want to stay in that field, and then ask them, what is it that they're doing to generate that?


Mark Victor Hanson is the co-author on all my "Chicken Soup for the Soul" books. We put on, together, every year, these mega-speaker events, mega-booklet or events where we bring in people and we show them how, the average American writer makes $14, 000 to 15,000 a year on their writing. Mark and I make several million dollars a year, and we're not all that extraordinary. I graduated from the half of the class in college that made the top half possible, so it's not about like having the higher IQ. It's about understanding the principles and applying them. In the area of publishing, let's say, you've got to be doing massive marketing. Most writers want to write, and they tend to be more reclusive, and they don't want to be that commercial, but if you don't go out and promote your book, go online, have a website, do affiliate marketing campaigns with other people, do at least one radio interview every day ... Scott Peck who had the best-selling book ever in America, "The Road Less Traveled," it was on the New York Best Seller List for twelve years; he did three interviews a day, every day, for the first year. One interview a day, every day for the next twelve years, and that's what kept that book up there, so the word of mouth kept growing, more people would tell more people, more people would hear about it on the radio, and so-forth.


So you've got to be willing to do what Mark and I call "The Rule of Five." Every day do five specific actions to forward your number one goal. Well most people are walking around - they don't even have goals! Ten percent of Americans have goals written down for the year. I mean, 90% don't, and the 90% are working for the ten percent who do. And so basically you want to make sure that you have goals, and one of the goals should be the income level you want and you find people who are already doing that. Find ways to hang out with them. One of the things I did was, there was a guy who was doing audio training, and he was making about $8 million a year and I was making about $400,000 at the time, and I called him up and I said, "Look, if you're ever in L.A., instead of hiring a limo service to do your speech or whatever you're doing, just call my office; I'll be your chauffer for the day or two days or three days, I don't care what it is, as long as I'm in town. All I'd like to do is be able to pick your brain while you're here." He said, "Great idea." So the next time he came, about three months later, I got to be his chauffer, I picked his brain, and it was only a couple years later that we actually competed for a contract together - it was a $750,000 training contract for the LA County Office of Education -- we were the two finalists, and I won. Kind of embarrassing, actually, I felt a little strange about it, he was my mentor, but he called me up, very, very sweet and said congratulations.


How Can Failure Lead to Success?


BLM:Do you think a person is more driven to succeed after they've had a particularly harsh rejection? In other words, can you achieve success without being rejected?


JC:I don't know anyone who's gotten to the top without having gone through some sort of rejection. You know, the classic stories of them, like Rudy Ruettiger the football player that walked on to Notre Dame, you know, we all know those stories, and they really inspire us because they all speak to something that's really a part of the human condition. I think the other aspect that, you know, I have met people; their first book got accepted by a publisher. It's rare, but for most of us, we're gonna be rejected. I remember speaking at the University of Michigan and asking the Ph.D. Candidates in the school of education, why they decided to become a teacher, and I think about a third of them said, because someone told them they couldn't do it, that they would never be able to get a doctorate. And so they simply said, you know, I'm gonna stick with this, and make a commitment just to prove them wrong.
Certain personalities, rejection can strengthen your result; other personalities, they give up after a few rejections. I teach people that rejection is really not reality. It's something we make up in our mind, because what I say is that if you apply to Harvard and you didn't get in, you're not in Harvard before you applied, you're not in Harvard after you applied. And you can live with that, because you've been living your whole life with that.


And if I ask you to have lunch with me and you say no, I didn't have anyone to eat lunch with before I asked you and I didn't have anyone to eat lunch with after I asked you. The mistake people make is they assign meaning to the event. And the meaning they assign are things like, "nobody likes me," "I'm not talented," "this will never work," "I can't do it," "life's too hard," etc. and it's the meaning that stops you. It's the beliefs you create based on the experience. Experiences are meaningless, it's the belief we assign to them, but unfortunately, we assign, you know, those kind of negative beliefs, to events that happen to us when we are children, and now we keep repeating, without reviewing them, and we keep assigning the same belief over and over to new events when they totally don't apply.


Making of the Success Principles Book


Better Life Media: How is your new book going, "The Success Principles?"


Jack Canfield: "The Success Principles" is doing very, very well. It's now in about 12 languages; it's sold close to 300,000 copies in the United States. You know, I'm getting requests constantly, to go to other countries and speak. I just got a request to go to the Dominican Republic. I've been to Greece, to India, to Korea. I'm going in two weeks to Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and also to Vietnam to speak about it.


BLM: Is there something particular about the message of this book that is driving this foreign interest?


JC: I think what's capturing people is that it's really kind of a success Bible all in one book. I attempted to take 35 years of my life and put it into one document that was, say, OK, if you really wanted to have one manual that would say, here is how I get from where I am to where I want to be, this is everything you need to know. There are 64 principles in that book and I open with a comment that life is like a combination lock, and that most people don't really have all the numbers for the combination, so they're working real hard on the numbers they have but the lock still doesn't open. Once you have the right combination, it doesn't matter if you're black or white, young or old, male or female, you live in America or live in Asia; the lock has to open for you.


BLM: What does one actually expect when they finally find the right combination?


JC: I think what one can expect when one finds the right combination is fulfillment in what I call the 7 major areas of your life, which are financial, job and career, relationship, health and fitness, free time and recreation, and then what I call personal, which is learning goals, spiritual goals, emotional goals, and then finally contribution; leaving some kind of a legacy, making a contribution to your community through philanthropy, volunteerism, and so forth.


BLM: Now as far as the foreign interest goes, you're going to be doing a lot of international traveling. Is there something about the message that translates really well overseas and then maybe not so well? What are the differences between the message here in the United States, or in a Western Culture, as opposed to over there in Asia. Are the messages taken in a different way, or are they pretty much the same across cultures?


JC: I'd say across cultures it's pretty much the same. The same principles work; you're clear about your purpose, if you set goals, if you have a clear vision, if you visualize your goals complete, if you take action, if you respond to feedback, if you persevere in the face of obstacles, if you build relationships, if you are appreciative, you know we could go down the list.


Those principles work in every culture. Some cultures are more competitive than others. India is getting there, but they've been more cooperative, more community-based. If you go up into Norway, Sweden, Finland, into the Soviet block, you find they're more community-oriented, more cooperative, and that's why communism came out of socialism, and why they're more interested in the community. Where as in the West, we're more interested in individual achievements. We do have to be aware of sub-cultural differences, but I was just in the Cameroon in Africa a few months ago, teaching down there, and everyone was just eating it up because so much of what we take for granted in the United States, people in other countries have hardly been exposed to.


BLM:Have you always had this big of an audience overseas, or is this new book really creating some new openings for you?


JC:I've always had a great audience for the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" books overseas -- we're in 44 languages, over 115 million copies sold worldwide now -- but that's not enough of a drive to invite me to come overseas, just to listen to inspiring stories; people are looking for something more in-depth when they want to pay the fees for airfare and hotels -- what with your consulting fees are and everything -- so this book has opened that up to a much greater level, in terms of actually being invited to speak.


BLM: Now I did hear a previous interview with you and somebody had asked you about the 64 principles in this book. You had made some comment about, well, you're gonna need more than eight; some people have seven, some people have four, you know you really need more than that. So I guess you chose 64. Is there a particular reason why you chose 64?


JC: That's the limit of the amount of pages my publisher gave me. I had had 1,000 pages. There are more principles. When I had sat down to outline the book -- I was in my den one morning with my laptop on a Saturday morning with my son sitting next to me. He was watching TV and I was working -- I was kind of reviewing my life and what principles had actually worked for me, and what principles I'd been teaching, and what principles did I know just from the literature. I've read over 3,000 books, taken hundreds and hundreds of seminars, on what seemed to be the universal principles and when I finished, I had 105. Obviously that was too many.


And then when I wrote the book, I had about 84 when I was finished. Originally I was going to make the chapters much shorter. And they ended up being longer, just took longer to make the point, to illustrate it than I thought it would. I was with my editor and the publisher said, "You've got to cut this out." It was like killing your own children, you know? It was, how many can you fit on the lifeboat or something. It was very difficult. But I've been putting those other principles in my e-zine and in my newsletters that I send out, so, we're sharing them.

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