PNTV: The Success Principles by Jack Canfield (#17)

Foreign. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we're going to do an episode on Jack Canfield's Success Principles. You probably can't tell that's my Kindle. I read this one on my Kindle which is a lot of fun and as always we've got the great book. I actually have the book as well, but I don't have the COVID for it, so that won't help. But great book and My Philosopher's Notes PDFs will be our guide. I've got maybe about a dozen big ideas from this note and this book. The Success Principles is awesome. It's essentially one big idea after another. Jack Canfield, as you probably know, created Chicken Soup for the Soul, which has sold some silly number of copies and is just an extraordinary guy. He's written a lot of books on some great stuff and in this book he, he captures some of his favorite big ideas and I have pulled out a few of my favorites. But it's an awesome book. If you haven't checked it out yet, highly recommend it. I think you'll dig it. So the first big idea we're going to cover here is this idea of doing your own pushups. Canfield quotes Jim Rohn who says you have to do your own pushups. You can't have someone else do your push ups for you. So too often we forget to do the work in self development. And Canfield talks about the importance of we've got to put in the effort if we want to see the results. We've got to actually put these things into practice. He says, remember the principles only work if you work the principles. So all this stuff works. We just need to actually do it as we talk about in all of these episodes. Now I'm just going to ask you right now again, what's the number one thing you know your highest self would be doing that you're not currently doing? What's the number one thing that you could be doing that would have the most positive benefit in your life you could start doing right now? Is now a good time to start doing that? Yes, is the answer. Alright, so principle number one, he's got all these different principles. Principle number one to his success principles is taking 100% responsibility. It's what all the great teachers talk about in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Note and episode. It's habit number one, be proactive. All the great teachers talk about this. We've got to be response able. We've got to take 100% responsibility for our Life. We can't be a victim. And Canfield has an awesome formula. He says, E plus R equals O. So the event happens. We have our response. Event plus response equals outcome. E plus R equals. Okay, now too many people think the event equals the outcome because something happened. The outcome occurred. No, no, no. Event happened. It was neutral. Pretty much. Your response to it determined the outcome. It's a really big idea we're going to come back to again and again and again and again and again. And he tells a story, and I talk about it in the note of someone caught in traffic after a big earthquake in la. And freeway was down, terrible traffic. And the camera crews are out there. They're interviewing two different people. One person. They roll down the window, and they're just a grump having the worst day ever. They're late for work, can't believe it, and just totally frustrated. The event plus their response created an outcome of them being frustrated. Then they interview this other woman who's totally happy. She's like, yeah, well, you know, I got up early. I left for work early so I'd make sure I wouldn't be late. And I packed some food. I've got some coffee here, and. And I've got some motivational tapes I can listen to on the way to work. The event happened. It was neutral. She had a very different response, and she had a very different outcome. Really big idea. Principle number one, take 100% responsibility for your life. If you're complaining about anything, that's a good sign that you aren't taking 100% responsibility. And you might want to change that. Just a friendly reminder. So principle number two is, is to be clear on why you're here. What are you here to do? What's your purpose? What's your dharma? What's your destiny? We need to get clear on that. In the note, I talk about an incredible exercise he's got. He's got all kinds of exercises in the book. Check out the note for more on that. But essentially helps us walk through what our purpose is. Amazingly cool stuff. One of the ways we can arrive there or kind of guide ourselves there is to make an I want list to get more clarity on who we are and what we want in our lives. And Jack Canfield suggests that we create a list of 20 of 30 things, rather that we want to be 30 things we want to do and 30 things we want to have in our lives. 30 things we want to be, 30 things we want to do and thirty things we want to have in our lives. Awesome. We come back to these kinds of things again and again and again to increase our self awareness and get a clear sense of who we are, what our gifts are, what we're passionate about, and how we can go out and give ourselves most fully to the world. Really big idea. So next big idea is it's all about attitude. So again, coming back to the idea of responsibility, that kind of thing. But he tells a great story about the baseball legend Ty Cobb. So apparently when ty Cobb was 70 years old, a reporter came up to him and asked him, hey, Ty, if you were playing baseball today, what do you think you would hit? And Ty Cobb was like a. He was a 367 average hitter, right? He had a batting average of.367. He reached base 37% of the time, essentially with a hit OR whatever. Anyway, so.367 average reporter asked him, what would you bat today if you were playing baseball? And he thought about it and he said, I don't know, maybe 290 or 300. And the reporter said, well, well, why is that? Is it because there are night games, Astroturf, artificial turf, that kind of thing? And, you know, pitchers got new pitches and stuff. And he's like, no, I'd hit.290 or 300 instead of 367 because I'm 70 years old. I love that he's 70 years old. Now. That's attitude. Canfield tells us we've got to have an attitude that we can basically do anything we want to do. That level of belief in ourselves is huge. Another big idea here is an idea of becoming an inverse paranoid. So one of Canfield's early mentors, a guy named W. Clement Stone, liked to talk about being an inverse paranoid. So a paranoid is someone who's worried that the world is out to harm them, right? An inverse paranoid is convinced the world is conspiring to help him or her. Right? So how do we become an inverse paranoid where everything that happens to us, we imagine that it occurred for our own good, for our benefit, for our growth, for our enlightenment, whatever it is we're passionate about. Imagine that something happens, the event happens. Our response is, we're inverse paranoids, inverse paranoids. We think everything's happening for our benefit. So we interpret everything that way. That's really powerful, really cool. If something's stressing you out, can you imagine looking at it through that lens? And then imagine your life not as a paranoid that everything's out to screw you, but as an inverse paranoid, everything's out to liberate you and enliven you. Really cool idea. So one of my favorite big ideas out of all of the ones we've done is this idea right here. Canfield says that 99% is a bitch, 100% is a breeze. So he says that if we only make a 99% commitment to something that's really hard, it's much harder than if we make 100% commitment to something. And I know this has been true for me several times in my life. Most recently when I decided I was going to meditate, I had thought about it a bunch. I had done it in fits and starts. I'd done a ten day silent vipassana meditation, but it never stuck. It was always like a 90 or 95% or even 99% commitment, but it wasn't 100%. So when it's a 99% commitment, in my experience, there's always that question of, well, is today the day you deserve a day off? So for me, I committed to meditating daily. It was 100% commitment. And that little voice of oh, you deserve a day off was still there in the first couple few weeks. But I was clear, no, I don't care if I'm a little bit tired today, I'm still meditating. This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to get up early, I'm going to meditate. And there was 100% commitment. That made it a breeze. It was way easier than having to negotiate with that little gremlin voice every time I had doubts or laziness or whatever. So you may want to think about that. Think about what in your life deserves 100% commitment. See if you can go up from 90 or 95 or even 99% commitment and make it 100% commitment. Go all the way. And I would ask, what's the number one thing that you could make 100% commitment to making a part of your life? And is now a good time to do that? Go for it. Go from 99%, which is a bitch, to 100%, which is a breeze. And remember the final big idea here, which is the fact that all of these ideas take time to become part of our character. It's not going to happen like that. We've got to put in the work consistently over months and years in order to start really seeing the impact. So now is a good time to get started. So there you go. Success principles. Hope you enjoyed and look forward to sharing more with you soon. See you.