[EP 49] A Heartfelt Goodbye: Reflections on Life, Legacy & What’s Next

Foreign. Welcome to the Jack Canfield Podcast. I'm your host, Jack Canfield, and believe it or not, for a while, this is going to be my last podcast, possibly forever, but maybe I'll come back. What's happening Many of you probably heard that I'm mostly retiring at the end of the summer. Now, when I say mostly, I'm still going to be doing a few things like writing some books and occasional talk, but I've taking my staff from 12 down to 2 and I'm stopping doing lots of things which I'm going to talk about right now. But I wanted to just tell you a couple of things. I want to tell you why I'm doing this retirement thing. And also at the end of this, I'm going to be telling you some of the I'll end by sharing some of the lessons I've learned, the new insights I have about this whole field of personal development, you being more successful, more abundant, all the things that we normally talk talk about. So I'm going to just give you a little sense of what this retirement is going to look like, how it's going to affect you, some of the things that will still be available to you from a company, some of the things that won't. And then at the end I will share some insights with you so you get some value on that level for yourself as well. So on this podcast I thought I want to tell you what you might expect from me in the future. And then I'll end by telling you what I've recently learned and some of the emerging insights and truths that are emerging in the field of self development, fulfillment and personal growth as well. And so let me start talking about this podcast. So far I've done 49 of them and all of them are and will continue to be available on these following platforms, YouTube, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Apple, Spotify, Megaphone, iHeartRadio and Spirit Social. So if you've missed any of the earlier ones and you want to see them, they're all worth seeing by the way you can find them there. And about why I'm retiring now. I never thought I would. My big heroes were people in their 80s and 90s. They were still teaching people 95 out there, writing books and doing talks and so forth. And then last summer I turned 80 and I'll be 81 August of 2025 coming up soon. And after my 80th birthday I took some free time and I actually loved having unscheduled days. And last July I also met Dr. Darren Weissman now he's a developer of something called Lifeline Techniques. You can look him up on the Internet. And he was a new member of our transformational leadership Council. And we were meeting in Vail, Colorado and I was really impressed with his work and I decided to do a session with him and it was amazing. And I got really clear about the next step in my journey was to create a life of more freedom and peace. And part of that work is to create an affirmation burst on, you know, based on the session that you just did with him. And mine was I am freedom, love and joy, feeling peace. And this further solidified that the next step for me was a slow way down. And so I decided to write, to retire and do some writing. And I'd say It's about a 90% retirement. As I mentioned earlier, no more live public seminars like Breakthrough to Success Live, Train the Trainer programs like the Success Principal Certification Program, our Legacy Club Coaching program or any other live online coaching groups. And no more webinars. However, I want you to know that we will continue to provide ongoing support for our Train the Trainer and Certified Success Principal Trainer graduates for both the graduates of the LIVE and the online programs of which we currently have about 5,000 certified people in 117 countries around the world. And there will be regular zoom meetings where you can ask questions and other kinds of support that you might need. You'll also still be able to get certified when you complete the program after doing a few things to demonstrate that you're ready. So all that's going to continue and we'll still be able to access any of our click to buy programs. You'll be able to see like the Success Principles Trainer and Coaching Certification Online, the Breakthrough Success Online and a program we have called your extraordinary life program which focuses on helping you achieve one major breakthrough goal for yourself. So all that'll still be available. And also I will continue to co lead the author Success retreat program that I do with Steve Harrison. We'll probably do that six, maybe seven, eight times a year. It's a two day virtual mastermind on how to write, market, promote, publicize and sell your book. And again takes me two days, maybe every, you know, six weeks or something like that. So it's not a huge interpret interruption to my life if you will. And then with Nick Mann from Celebrity Press and he's got a wonderful project he does where we write these co authored books with me. We'll probably still do that for a while and also a couple events I do because they're in LA, it's 90 minute drive from where I live and they're in Beverly Hills usually. And sometimes I interview people and they can put those interviews on their website for credibility. Sometimes I'll emcee their new keynote speech training program where people can develop like a 12 to 18 minute talk speech keynote and then I introduce them. So again they have this credibility of having participated in this all day seminar there with me introducing them and doesn't require much preparation for me. Also possibly continue, as I mentioned, to participate in the multi author book program. I've actually done 21 such books so far and you get the ability to say I've co authored a book with Jack Canfield and they're usually on a specific topic related to success. But I'm not going to be doing any international tours like I used to do. I used to go to Asia where I'd be gone for several weeks. I remember I probably told you I'm a big believer in Feng shui. I have Marie diamond on one of our podcasts and she I wanted to do more international speaking. So she said put a globe in your wealth corner so you have different corners of rooms in your house, a wealth corner, relationships corner, a health corner, so forth. So I put a little globe there and she'd spin it every day, it'll energize it. So I did that and after about a year my wife says get that gosh darn globe out of the corner. Because I was going on these, you know, three week trips to go to Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Hong Kong and Manila and that would be the Asian tour. I go to the golf where I do workshops in Dubai and the Arab Emirates and Dohar and Qatar and Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Iran. Five city tours in India, you know, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore and Kochi. So in my career I've spoken or conducted live trainings in 51 countries. So I'm no longer going to be a road warrior. I want to spend more time home with my family, with my writing and so forth. And I'm not going to be writing forwards for other people's books and endorsements anymore. I've done about 200 forwards and God knows how many endorsements where I've read the books and said this is a great book if it is a great book. And I learned a lot in the process as I read some amazing books along the way. But. But it does take up a lot of time. I don't want to devote that anymore. However, and this is important to stay tuned here. I will finish six books that I started before the pandemic, five of which are 85% complete. Right now I just need to finish them, but I've been so busy, the Pandemic, I didn't write for two and a half years. We're just keeping our company alive with training and I'll have to do some interviews or podcasts to promote them, but I intend to limit those to one or two days a month. Now, the books I'm going to completing and you might be interested in this, we're doing one with Dr. Elise Janelle on how to identify, release and replace unconscious limiting beliefs that are keeping you stuck. Some of you have been on our webinars where I do this thing called Break Free. And that same process that I do with you, we're writing a book about it so you can do it for yourself. We'll also have some websites thinking of creating an app so you'll be able to listen to that and take yourself through the process without having to have someone, excuse me, we'll edit that out. So in the book it'll explain this process. And also we'll have an app and some websites where you can download and listen to the process take yourself through without having to have a facilitator to do that for you. So we haven't settled on a title for that one, but pay attention. Stay tuned, it's coming. Not too long. For now I'm doing a book called Living the Success Principles, which are all stories of people who've read the book the Success Principles, taken a seminar with me and some few of my other books and have radically transformed their lives. So and the reason we're doing that is I want you to be able to read it and go, my God, if that did that for that person, I definitely need to study those principles or listen to that online program like, you know, Success Principles Online, so forth. Now I'm also doing a book called Ayahuasca for the Soul, Stories of the Transformational power of Plant Medicine. And there'll be stories by me, my wife inga, Larry King Jr. Yana Van Zant, Cesar Milan, who many of you know is often called the Dog Whisperer. Shannon Kaiser, who I had as a guest for one of the podcasts, Kimberly Gamble, number of people, some of which you heard of. Many of you haven't, but there'll be about 70 stories by people sharing an experience of one of their Ayahuasca journeys. They participated in Arrhythmia in Costa Rica to help people realize how transformational these journeys are. And you can always listen to an earlier podcast I did with Jerry Powell. He's the founder of Rhythmia. So that's one of the previous podcasts. If you want to find out more about Rhythmia, you can also go to rythmia.com and check out more of what they're doing there as well. They've had 15,000 people participate in ayahuasca ceremonies at Rhythmia, and in my opinion, it's the safest place in the world to do that. Now I've personally done 22 ayahuasca ceremonies, 20 of them arrhythmia, one in the rainforest in Ecuador and one with a shaman up in Marin county who was from Peru who came up and did that with my wife and Ing and I. Now these are powerful, powerful, powerful stories of transformation. And really I want you to read them because it'll encourage you to participate. Is one of the psychotherapists who was there when I was there last time said he was a psychologist or a psychiatrist from Denver. And he said, I came down to check out to see if this was the kind of thing I should prescribe to my clients. And he said, I have to tell you that one evening of ayahuasca is probably worth, you know, 10 months of psychotherapy. And they do a four day sequence down at Rhythmia. And he said, that's probably worth five years of therapy. So if you really want to break through the patterns, the beliefs, the shame, the guilt, all the things that are holding you back, this is a powerful, powerful way to do it. So watch for that book, which I think will be coming out probably in the next six to nine months. Also, I'll be completing the Power of Wow that I wrote with Raymond Aaron. It's a book about how to create WOW experiences for your clients, your customers, your students. I'll give you a couple examples of things that we write about in the book. For example, in the Ritz Carlton there's a story we're told by the we interviewed the head of culture for Ritz Carlton Hotels. You probably know one of the best chains in the world, very high end luxury hotel. And there's a story of this little boy who had his pet giraffe and it was a stuffed animal giraffe. And he went to the airport after their week long stay there and he left his giraffe and he was crying, inconsolably crying, and his father called the hotel and said, you know, my son left his draft. You think he could find it? And they located it. They didn't have time to get it to the airport. But the guy said, tell your son that the giraffe just wanted to spend a few more days and we'll make sure he comes home. The we'll ship them back to you. And what they did was they took this giraffe and they took pictures of them in their rest different restaurants, in a spa with like little cucumbers on his eyes and you know, sitting next to the hot tub out on a chaise lounge by the pool, you know, all these different activities even on the golf course and next to the putting green. And they put all those pictures in a leather bound album with the picture of the giraffe on the front in a little glass encasement that was on the front of this album, sent it to the parents. They also sent his brother something because they didn't want him to feel like he was left out. Now they've gone back to that hotel like five years in a row because of that level of wow service. High Point University in North Carolina, High Point, North Carolina, that university has a director of wow. Their job is to simply create WOW experiences for the students and remove anything you might call an unwell. Here's an example. One of the big places where you have a lot of unwells in college is the laundry where you go down, you have to put your laundry in the washing machine and you take it out, you put in a dryer, all kinds of problems occur. You don't have a quarter to put in to get your detergent, you don't have any detergent, you don't have quarters or dollars to put in the machine. So they removed all that. One of the problems was these were dorms that were often co ed, different floors, male floor, female floor, whatever. And so sometimes the guys would steal the girl's underw and you know, kind of staple it to their bulletin board like it was some kind of trophy or something. So people were losing stuff or you'd come down, you want to use the washing machine, but someone hasn't taken their laundry out yet and put it in a dryer. So all these kind of unwells. And so what they did was they made laundry free. Everyone gets free laundry in order to use the machine. You don't have to have money, but you have to take your student ID and put it in. Just like when you're at a gas station, you put it in the, you know, pay for your gasoline, etc and it has your phone number on your ID card. So what happens is as soon as your laundry is done. It calls you your cell phone, it tells you your laundry's done. If you don't come down within 10 minutes and move it, you lose your laundry privileges for a month. And so nobody's got to wait for people to get stuff out. You can't get into the dryer to steal somebody's stuff because it's locked until you can put the right cree card in there. And they just did hundreds and hundreds of things like that on a hot. They have literally these vehicles that roam around on the campus giving out free ice cream bars, free cold water to students, just one after the other after another. They also have a first. The fuselage of a plane is attached to their student center and it's all first class seats. So we want to study. Go sit in a first class seat and bring the table down and, and out of the window. As you look out, there's a wall, but it's, it looks painted like there's clouds and there's motivational quotes out there. And everybody has the experience of what it's like to fly first class because they want to create people that are going to go through life as gentlemen and ladies and have a first class experience. They also have a five star restaurant on the campus. Everybody gets to eat there once a month you have to make a reservation. The boys have to wear suits, the girls have to wear dresses. The waiters are all faculty members. They, for each month they'll have like Italian and the Italian teachers there and some other people, they do the same thing French week, etc, and the boys have to learn how to pull the chair out for the girls and so forth. But the point being that they're learning how to be ladies and gentlemen. I could give you 20 more of those. And they're in the book. So that's a very exciting book. We're excited about that. I'm doing a book called the Chakra Activation Cards for success Card, deck and guidebook. And a woman named Jackie Freeman, she's a Reiki master and she discovered that each success principle in the book, the success principles, relates to one of the seven chakras in the body. So these are these energy centers in the body, if you're familiar from maybe your meditation classes or doing yoga, but you can go online, google chakras and read about them really quickly. But each one of them has a different color, a different vibration. They come from the bottom of your body, up your heart, your throat for expression, your third eye, your crown, chakra, etc, and what happens is, what she realized is each of these 67, she has principles from the book relates to a certain chakra in the energy of that chakra that needs to be activated to fulfill what it is that, that that principle is about. So what she did, she created a card deck. It's familiar with things like tarot cards and things like that. There's mandalas, these beautiful paintings on the back of each card. And then on the other side of the card is one of the principles. It mentions the principle, the number of it. And then what you do is you open up the guidebook and you go to principle 17, take action or you know, whatever it might be. And then it tells you what, what, what, what the vibration is of that chakra, what color it needs to be, etc. So let me back up a little bit. So you take the cards, you, you shuffle them, you hold them. So you got these 50, 67 cards, you're holding them to your heart. You ask a question like what should I do about should I marry this person, Should I move, should I sell my company, Should I, you know, whatever. So they're kind of yes or no type questions or just from where you're stuck, you're confused. You know, more clarity about this. And then you put the cards down, you fan them out on the table, you pick one that you're drawn to, you just kind of look and you draw a new pick one. And that is the card that then has what principle is on. And it's really amazing what's happened for people. You look it up and in the guidebook it tells you what chakra needs to be activated to awaken and utilize that energy to support the application of that principle and achieve the outcome. You're weight, you're wanting, it tells you the color. And the color like orange or blue or yellow or purple that you might want to surround yourself with or meditate on or just get a piece of paper and put it on your desk of that like construction paper, maybe you want to wear that color. It tells you the element, like earth, air, water, fire that you want to focus on. It tells you what kind of crystal is aligned with that chakra, like quartz or rose quartz, or amethyst or citrine or garnets or tiger's eye or amber, etc. And then you, you can get a little piece from your local store, you can buy them on amaz. And you want to hold it when you meditate, carry it in your pocket, put next to your desk, tells you what essential oil like rose or lavender, orange or sage to diffuse in your diffuser or to rub in your hands and inhale tells you what sound, frequency or pitch is related to that chakra. And therefore that principle like C is 256Hz or D is 200, I think it's 68Hz. So what happens is that then you can go to YouTube, which I do quite often and there's actually music usually plays for about an hour on that vibration. And so you can have that playing in the background while you're meditating, while you're writing, while you're thinking, while you're washing your dishes, whatever. And also what's called a bees mantra, a beach mantra is a single syllable sound that you can repeat to activate that chakra. And so you something you can repeat over and over. And then also what yoga pose or yoga poses you might want to do that will also activate that chakra. Now I know this probably sou sounds pretty woo to some of you, but let me give you an example from the book with one of the clients Jackie has worked with. I'm going to read you this. It says an example of how the success cards helped a woman who I'll call Evelyn. Use the cards. Evelyn has become a widow. Two years earlier, prior and shortly after her husband passed, she purchased a home in another state, but kept the same home that they had both lived in for decades. She didn't mind traveling between the two homes in different states. But after the first summer in the state she just moved to, Evelyn found the 150 degree summers much too hot. During that very hot summer, she was invited by friends to come visit their state. And it was much cooler than the state she had moved to. And while she was visiting, she began looking around at homes. She happened upon a wonderful home for sale. In fact, the home was just exactly what she wanted and it was on the market. It just gone on the market like the day before. And no, it was actually 30 minutes before she actually started looking for a home and viewed it. She was the first person look at it. She was very savvy about values of property and she recognized it was a great deal. And so she made an offer on it. And the person said okay, we can do it. And it was a full cash offer on a contingency that she needed to know by that night if it was accepted. Now she got a call later that evening as the owner accepted her offer. She was very happy. But she also realized that having three homes and three different states was expensive and way too much for her. So she decided to sell the one home that she and her husband lived in for decades. She would keep the home in the was hot in the summer, live there in the winter, and also visit her friends in a state that was cooler in the summer. It's a great plan, but she wondered how she was going to sell this house, and she needed to sell it quickly, Otherwise, she's going to be paying these mortgages on three houses. So it just seemed overwhelming because there were a lot of repairs that need to be made to the house and as well as, like, moving all of her stuff out that she collected with decades with her husband. So Jackie told Evelyn about the success cards and suggested she might want to try it. So she did, and they sat down. She held the cards in her hand. She asked her question. What success principle will help me in knowing how to go about selling my home and getting all of my stuff up to my new home? And she then spread the cards out, and she pulled the card over. It was a principle. Success leaves clues. And at first, she wasn't sure how that card might help her. But she looked at it in more detail and realized that people who have done what she's wanting to do have left clues. There are experts in the field of moving that could help her. She and Jackie both thought of professional movers and real estate people who would be considered experts. She realized that no matter how daunting something may seem, there are others who've tackled the same situation successfully. She felt the answer was perfect for her, and they reached out and they actually found someone that could help her. And here's a cool part. She's driving home after that event, and she caught herself starting to have some doubts. But she decided to change her mindset. And as soon as she did that, she stopped at a stoplight. And with that thought of asking expert to help, she saw a small sign that caught her attention. It read, we will buy your home no matter what condition. Call this number. So she literally wrote down the number, and she called him, and she made an appointment. The next day, an agent came over, looked at her house. They offered a lower price than she wanted, but she negotiated really well, got it up to one she was happy with, and. But now she had to get all the stuff out of the house. And she delayed for a while because it was so overwhelming. And then again, she remembered, hey, wait a second. You know, those cards help me. Maybe they'll help me. Again she went back to Jackie, said, can we do those cards again, Said, sure. So anyway, she drew another card, and this time, the card was chunk. It Down. Now, chunk it down means to break a big task into small chunks. And so she realized that what she needed to do was take it down a level to where she did one thing at a time. And she activated her solar plexus, which has to do with taking action and chunking it down. She continued all the things that she needed to do with the oils, the crystals, and all of that. And she found a company that had these pods. She could put all of her stuff in these storage containers. And she hired 200 people to help. She started chunking it down by working on one room at a time, and she was able to get all her belongings out and move on time. And now she's safely in a new home. Now, the affirmation on the chunk of down card had been encouraging as well. I said, I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel because I'm breaking down my goals into manageable steps and accomplishing each step. So both cards she chose were perfect for her. And I just. That's just one example. We have about 20 stories like that in the book of different people who had different situations. And every time, the card was exactly what they needed to hear. Now, I was just doing my previous podcast with the guy named Mike Dooley. If you haven't listened to it, I encourage you to do that. And we were talking about how the universe always provides what you need if you're paying attention. And so the Success principles card deck is something you're going to make available to people because we are tuned in. The idea that Mike and I were talking about is you are one with everything. I know this sounds woo again, but you're connected to everything and everything's connected to you through consciousness. And so when we pick a card, whether it's a card out of a tarot deck or any other kind of divination cards you can buy, like from, you know, Hay House, they have a whole bunch of those kind of card decks, if you're interested. And what happens is you always pick the right one. How do you know? Some part of you knows which card because you are connected to it energetically. So anyway, that's the book. And then another book we're doing is called the Abundance Challenge. It's a workbook for a 30 day program of success principles, activities, guided visualizations, meditations, combined with the use of essential oils that create a higher frequency that activates the law of attraction to attract more abundance, whether it's financial abundance or professional abundance, relationships, health, whatever you want into your life. Now, this has been tested successfully with hundreds of people. So it's a 30 day program and we're going to make that available as well. So those are the books I want to finish. So if you would like to know about them when they come out, make sure you go to our website, jackcampfield.com which will still be active. Just sign up for my mailing list and as I said, we'll have two staff continuing to work with me to make sure that you all these activities I want to do could happen for you as well. Now I'll talk about my retirement for just another moment. Then I'll share some of these universal principles I want you to know about. So generally what I want to do and I encourage you listening if you're not, if you're not taking time to nurture yourself, which I didn't do as well as I could have for a number of years. And you want to create more space in your life. So maybe this will give you some ideas as well and just permission to maybe not work so hard. So I want to start waking up and not having anything on my schedule, you know, many, many days a month where there's no podcast, there's no preparation, there's no workshops, there's no coaching that I have to do with anybody. I write if I want to. I can watch NFL football games on the NFL channel all day if I want to. I go downtown, kind of window shop, go to the art museum. You know, just have the freedom to do whatever I feel drawn to do. I can sleep in if I want, I can read if I want, I can get a massage, I can hang out with my w. We have a lot of close friends we have not spent enough time with. I'll be able to do that. I have two grandchildren and I have three boys and I have the stepdaughter and a stepson. They're all in their 30s. And one of the things I'm doing, my. One of my sons lives in LA and every other month we're going to go to la, pick a restaurant he's never eaten in, I've never eaten him. And then another month he'll come up here and we'll keep restaurant exploring different cuisines, different times. I also have several chefs where I've eaten in a restaurant. So we'd be become friends and they've said if you ever want me to come to your home, cook a meal for you, it'd be my, my pleasure, be my gift. And I said, what would be more fun? Come to my house. We'll invite two or three other couples. You conduct a cooking class teaching us how to cook what you're cooking for us. So we're all involved in it and a whole bunch of people are lined up to, to do that. So I'm excited about that. We have a film festival in Santa Barbara every year, like the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. And so I want to start attending that, which I haven't ever done except a couple one nighters. And I want to go to concerts. We have a huge bowl here with all the great acts that roll through. I want to spend more time taking hikes. I'm going to enroll for a painting class, take some piano lessons, studied Tai chi more, meditate more, etc. So now it's possible that over time something will emerge that I might want to share with the world. So if I do that, you know, I might do a little webinar or do a podcast or something. So I just, you know, stick around, be on our web, our mailing list and we'll let you know if and when. But you won't be getting a lot of mailing list mailings from us. So when you do, open it up, see if it's something you might be interested in. Now I know many people who have taken our seminars. They've assisted at them, they've been trained to lead them, they consider themselves part of the Campfield family. I hope you will all, if you're one of those people, continue to connect with each other and support each other, mastermind with each other, etc. Etc. And you know, I, I just know that even though I won't be doing a lot of events for you to come out and hang out with each other, cradle on your own. You know, we had a group up in Canada of all the graduates of bts and one of the Canadians started getting them together every couple months. So you can do that for yourself. So as I said, if you do get an email from me, encourage you to open it. I mentioned I'll be doing these two hour breakthrough break free webinars where I teach the limiting belief change process. They've been free up to now, they may continue to be free. Maybe I'll charge you $10, some nominal fee just to cover the cost of all that. But the point being, every one of us still has limiting beliefs. Even me, when I do this process, I often do it with you. When I go to arrhythmia and do ayahuasca, some of those beliefs come up. So the idea is we want to keep liberating ourselves from these negative, limiting beliefs to that we decided in childhood somehow we weren't worthy, we weren't lovable. It's not okay to make noise, not okay to ask for what you want, not okay to have a lot of money, not okay to make more money than your father did or your sister does. You know, on and on it goes. So we usually have about 700 people on those calls and from all over the world. So I plan to do two a year. I've been doing them for about the last five years. I really enjoy them. So I'll probably still do that. I mean, I know I will still do that that now it might also be information that I send you about our virtual author success mastermind that I do with Steve Harrison or one of the events like our co author books or something like that with Nick Nin. So again, if you're, especially if you're someone who is writing or wants to write a book or have written a book, or if you're someone who is a speaker or trainer, you want to up level your, your brand in the market, these are things that can help you do that, you know. Or it might be announced on one of the books I mentioned. And all those books will be available on Amazon.com when they come out, so you'll be able to easily access them. So before I go and just share some latest awarenesses with you or things I really want to emphasize from my work, I want to thank all of you who've been listening to or watching our podcast and all of you who've attended our previous seminars, our trainings, our coaching programs, our webinars, and those of you who've read any of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books or the three editions of the Success Principles, the first one, the 10th anniversary, the 20th anniversary, and other books like the Power of Focus, the Gold Motorcycle Gang, Tapping into Ultimate Success, and the two children's books I co authored with Miriam Laundry. Thank you and really glad that you got value from them. I've enjoyed working with all of those authors and all of you as well. And so now to, to, to just end this with to give you some value beyond the knowledge I just shared with you. I want to leave you with some of what I've learned about success and what I see is the emerging insights and trends in this world of personal growth, self development, success, abundance, all law of attraction, all these things. So I want to start by sharing something some of you know, but not, maybe not all of you, my original definition of success. So I Became this. I was a self esteem guru for a while and then I became the success guru, if you will. And my original definition of success was achieving any goal you set for yourself. Being able to make as much money, create whatever relationships, lose weight, you know, it was like be able to achieve any goal you set for yourself. Now that's evolved over time. And my definition of success now is fulfilling your soul's purpose. I believe each one of you has a unique purpose for which you were born. You've been given certain talents that you have. Some of you have musical talents, some of you are empathic, you can know what people are feeling. Some of you have physical gifts of dancing or athletic skills, massage, healing. Some of you have, you know, all, all kinds of talents that you were gifted with. Those are clues to maybe what you're supposed to be doing. You have to develop those obviously. Now if you don't know what your purpose is, there's a couple of clues. First of all, in my book the Success Principles, there's a paper and pencil test you can do. It literally takes you through about three or four questions and then at the end you combine the answers into your life purpose. It works really, really well. It's the first way I ever did it, way back when I also we have this thing called a joy review where you simply ask yourself, where have I experienced the most joy in my life? And you start to look, you write them all down. You know, that time when I was teaching summer camp in Maine, that time when I was head of my fraternity and colleagues, that time when I was teaching inner city kids in classroom in Chicago, that time when I started working with the insight training seminars, that time when I. And so you now have this list of have times you've experienced the most joy that might have been when you're traveling, when you're teaching, when you're in a romantic relationship, whatever it might be. And then you look, is there a pattern there? And if you do, most people find a pattern. Like when I was teaching, when I was in a leadership role, when I was acting, when I was singing, when I was, you know, whatever. So that's a very good way to get your sense of purpose as well. Because your purpose, you always know you're on purpose if you're experiencing joy. So joy is your feedback system. If you're not experiencing joy doing your work, then you're not fulfilling your purpose when you're doing that. Now that doesn't mean that every minute of your life, when you're changing your baby's diaper or you're wiping up the, you know, vomit from your cat or something, that that's going to be a joyful moment. But in general, do you, do you really enjoy raising a child? Do you really enjoy your work? Do you really enjoy the non profit volunteer work you're doing? If you're not experiencing joy, you're not doing the thing that is your purpose. And when people live their purpose, two things happen. You start attracting more people to assist you because you're now in a state of joy. Joy attracts energy. I used to use the metaphor with Robin Williams before he died, that if you were walking in a room and Robin Williams was over in the corner there, a lot of people be laughing. Most people be drawn toward that laughter because we're drawn toward joy. We love to experience joy and happiness. And so it's a good measure to know we are on purpose or not. So if you look back at your most joyful moments, that's a clue. Ken Honda, who's kind of the combination of Jack Canfield, Tony Robbins in Japan. He's like the number one motivational self help, self development, abundance teacher in Japan. Written, written tons of books, made millions of dollars and celebrity par excellence over there. And he and I interviewed him on my podcast too. He wrote a book called Happy Money and he wrote another book about abundance and number of them. You can find them on Amazon. Ken Honda. And we were talking and he said, you know, when I want people to get in touch with their purpose, I asked them to go back to be when they were a young child. What did they love to do when they had free time, when they could do whatever they wanted. What did you love to do now? Some people love to solve puzzles. Some people like to build things, Some people like to play music, some people like to play house. Some people wanted to start a lemonade stand, be entrepreneurs. Ken said, I love to talk. I was always talking. In fact, on my report cards that I would get from the teachers, it would say, ken talks more in class than I do now. What did he grow up to do? He's a professional speaker, he's a teacher, he's a trainer, he's on stage, he's talking all the time. You know Jay Leno, who's a comedian, who used to have the Tonight Show? Basically I learned from him. And also I met a guy who was in his class, he was a limo driver when I was in Boston. I said, you sound like Jay Leno. He said, oh, everyone in my little town sounds like Jay Leno because that's where Jay Leno was from. And it was a certain accent they had had. And he said, yeah, Jay Leno, he used to make a deal with the teacher because the teacher, he was always being, interrupting the teacher to get a laugh. And so finally the teacher said, Look Jay, 50 minute class, I'll give you 10 minutes, you do your act, you stand up, you, you'd be a comedian. But I would like the next 40 minutes to be uninterrupted. Would you do that? And Jay said yes. So there was Jay in high school living his purpose, which was to be an entertaining comedian. So get clear about your purpose and then, then do things. If you have to learn some new skills, if you know, develop some. What I want criteria, credibility. If you need to get a certificate to be a certified trainer or you know, whatever, do the work but find a way to do the thing you love to do and find a way to monetize it. Now another thing is intention and discipline. Two very, very important, let's call them attributes, in other words, the power of intention. You are creating your reality by what you decide to think about, visualize, believe, etc, so if there's something you want, make a commitment. I am going to create that, believe it's possible. A belief is just a thought you think over and over. And so if you choose to believe that you can become a millionaire, you can choose to believe you can be a best selling author, you can choose to believe you can find your soulmate, you can choose to believe you can raise healthy, happy children. If you choose to believe that you can take as much time for yourself as you give to the world because you want to self nurture yourself, you want to balance life, you can create that, but it will require some discipline. Some discipline. Sometimes you need to study, sometimes you need to work, sometimes you need to meditate, sometimes you need to exercise, sometimes you need to read more, to take some classes, to do yoga, you know, whatever it might be, have the discipline to schedule it and do it. And we know that most people put the hard things off till the end of the day and by the end of the day you're so tired you never get to it. So I want to encourage you to make a commitment to do the hard things first in the morning and also ask for support. You don't have to do everything alone. When I went away to college, my dad said, if you need a helping hand, look at the end of your own arm. And I took that to mean I knew he wasn't going to give me any more Money. But I also took it to mean I should do everything myself. Don't ask for help. And it took me many, many years before I give myself permission to ask for help, to delegate, to ask for help, to have a personal assistant, etc. When I did, everything changed. It allowed me to focus on my, my gifts, if you will, my purpose, the things I do best and allow them to focus on what they do. Very important to ask for support and then do the things you need to do and work from a schedule. Now you can reach a certain point in your evolution where you're just following inner guidance. And if you get to that point, that's fine, just do what your inner guidance is telling you to do. But even then, often you have to schedule things to make that happen. But I find that if I put something in my schedule, whether it's meditate, take my, I take Eliquis, which is a blood thinner, I put that in there. It's the only medications I take. But I put that in there and otherwise I might Forget. So drink 10 glasses of water a day. I have my alarm go off every hour during the day, not today. I've got it on silent because I'm doing this. But the point is it reminds me to drink water. So I 10 glasses a day and I check them off. I have a checklist. So I have checklists. Keep track what you keep score of improves. It's just the natural way the brain works. All right, you've all heard E plus R equals O. I just want to bring that up again. Take 100 responsibility for your life. If you act as if you are 100 responsible for creating your outcomes, meaning everything you're experiencing in life, then you have the ability to change it. If you're not creating it, you're a victim. They're creating it. If you created it, you can uncreate it and recreate it. So events plus your response to the event equals outcomes. If you don't like your outcomes comes how much money you have, how healthy you feel, how much pleasure you have in your life, the quality of your relationships, etc, that's a place where you need to change what you're doing, change your thinking, change your visualization, change your beliefs, change your actions, etc and I, you know, Tony Robbins says success leaves clues. I agree with that quote 100%. There's very little you want to do that someone hasn't written a book about about it, done a Ted talk about it, done a YouTube video about it. You can pretty much find anything you want to do on YouTube. How to do this, how to do that, how to do this, how to do that. I'm writing a book right now. I mentioned Ayahuasca for the soul. And one night I was interacting with my soul, is talking to it. He was talking to me and we were doing it like a, like, it was like a cell phone, the bubbles. I would, you see my line that. Then she would respond, or he would respond, my soul would respond, then I would respond and my soul would respond. And I. So I said, I want to put that story in the book as a text so you see the bubbles. And I went online and I said, how can you get bubbles to print like a cell phone thing? And like 15 YouTube videos came up showing you how to do that using AI. So the point is, anything at all, you can find somebody that will tell you how to do it, or reach out for mentors, read their books, take their seminars, et cetera, etc. And one of my favorite phrases, everything goes faster when you study with a master. You've heard this 10,000 hour rule to master anything. It's true. However, if you work with a master, you can get there faster. So be willing to invest the time, the money, if it's required to work with the best people so that you can learn the best how to do something. Nick Nan said to me once he was hiring a consultant to help him with something. And this, he said, wow, that's a pretty high fee you're charging. He said, well, do you want hobbyist results or do you want professional results? And Nick decided to pay the fee and he got results that have helped him. I think he's what, 19 Emmys now or something like that. And he's written songs for Nashville singers that have gone on to become country number one hits and so forth, because he plays at that level. All right, let's talk about gratitude and appreciation for just a minute. Highest vibration, love, joy, gratitude. And we could say appreciation as well. So I encourage people to every day. Eventually you'll get to a point where you'll live in an attitude of gratitude, where you'll just be grateful for everything, including, you know, whatever shows up as an obstacle. You go, okay, what am I supposed to learn from this? And you'll see it as a lesson that could be learned. There's a wonderful book called what's in the way is the Way. All these obstacles in your life are actually requiring you to grow, to learn how to ask for help, to learn how to be perseverant, to learn how to have more courage, to learn Discipline, whatever it might be. So basically having gratitude for everything. But start with every day, do a gratitude exercise. Write in your journal, do a rampage of appreciation, which I love to do. Just five minutes of walking around your house, your office, wherever you live or wherever you are, just appreciating everything you see. Like right here, I can appreciate the ring light so you wouldn't be able to see me. I appreciate the microphone, the person who invented the tv, Jobs, Steve Jobs and Apple for my computer here, all the electronic equipment that's feeding everything, you know, it allows all this to work. Ginny Media, who's recording this podcast from me right now. I could go on and on and on. There's just so many things to appreciate. The carpeting on the floor, the bathrooms we have so we don't have to go out of the woods, you know, all things we take for granted. But all of a sudden I'll do this in my seminar. I'll send people out on a rampage of appreciation break and they come back with tears in their eyes. It's amazing. What's possible. We start appreciating the things we take for granted. I want to share a technique I learned recently that my wife and I have been doing. It's called a mutual appreciation journal. So one of our transformational leadership councils, someone suggested if you're a couple, get a journal. It could be a simple stenography, spiral bound thing. We have a leather bound journal because I can afford to do that from stationery store. And every morning we write each other an appreciation. You know, I appreciate you for X, Y and Z. And I also appreciate the quality that it speaks to me that you have, you know, compassion, service, love, whatever it might be. So my wife was just in a hospital, had a, an operation a week before I'm recording this and she wrote me an appreciation this morning about how thoughtful I was in taking care of her in her recovery stage. Even though I'm busy doing all these normal things I do every day. And so, and I'm appreciating her for how funny she was when I went to visit her in hospital and for three hours she was still on pain medications, she was like doing almost a stand up comedy routine, non stop talking. And so what happens is you have to look for something to appreciate in the other person every day. And, and it can be a couple lines. We've written each other a full page sometimes, but what happens, she said to me recently, I love this exercise. We've been doing it for a couple of months and she says now I'm always looking for things to appreciate about you. Before, I was noticing the things you did that irritated me. Now I don't see that as much because I'm focusing on what you do well. So it's changing the quality. And you know, Words of Appreciation is one of the five love languages. It's one of my two top ones, Nurturing Touch and Words of Affirmation. If you haven't read the five Love Languages book, please do that app. There's Quality Time, gifts, Nurturing Touch, Acts of service, and what else? Nurturing. I've just had a. A mind freeze there. Let me, let me do this. Q. Quality Time. I. I remember quang Q W A N G. Quality Time, Acts of Service, Nurturing Touch, and gifts. What's the W? Oh, Words of affirmation, which is what I was just talking about. Words of affirmation. So those are your five gifts. And many of us are. We're loving someone in our language and they're not receiving it because they. My wife is Quality Time. So when I spend time with her, she feels loved. I could tell her wonderful things. She likes that. But I give her a gift, hardly makes any difference. I could clean up the kitchen. She hardly notice it or say anything because that's not her love life language. So you want to be talking to your children, your spouse, your employees in their language of love or appreciation. Just a couple more things before we bring this to an end here. I want to talk about what is called Michael Beckwith, who I also interviewed on a podcast. You might want to go watch that. He talks about the four stages of spiritual development. And I think it's important to understand these. They are what he calls the victim stage, the manifester or the manipulation stage, the surrender or the channel stage, and then the creator stage. What he means by that is that you're growing. You start out, you're a victim. Oh God, why'd you do that to me? You're blaming and complaining about other things that other people done. It's the President's fault, it's the Democrats fault, it's the Republicans fault. It's the mega people, it's the woke people. What happens is you're thinking if someone out there would change, your life would be better. So you're a victim. The next stage is you start to realize there are some universal laws, like the law, law of attraction, you know, the law of reciprocity, the fact that everything is in vibration and vibration can be trolled by thought and so forth. So when you start to realize There are things you can do, affirmations, visualization appreciation exercises, all these things we're talking about. What happens is your life gets better because you're working in accordance with the law, but you're manipulating reality through your thoughts, through your behavior, through your images, through your feelings, etc. Now the next day age is you realize, well, if for all these universal laws there must be a law maker, who's that? Then we often talk, call it God, source, energy, universal intelligence, etc. And that's when you begin to say, well, maybe it knows more than I do about what's good for me. So I'm going to surrender not my will, but thy will, you know, to walk the walk that they're inviting me on, to follow my intuition, to listen to my inner guidance. What are the angels telling me? You know, a lot of different ways to hold that. And, and people find when they do that their life works a lot better because they're not trying to control everything. They're surrendering to something that actually has your best interest in mind. And sometimes it'll give you lessons you need to learn that may not feel like it, but there it's on your side. And then the last stage is you realize, wait a second, I also have the ability to create. And you begin to realize I'm not all of God, but I am a part of God. Just like one drop of water in the ocean is not the whole ocean ocean, but it's still ocean. And so you begin to realize you can create things, feelings, reality. And just as God does, we're saying we're made in the image of God. If you're a Christian or you read the Bible and we have the same, if we're made in the image, we can create, we talk about the Creator. So I encourage you to believe it's possible to move up through those stages of spiritual development. And if you're down at the victim stage, really look at these universal laws. They're in my books, all the books out there, the secret, the Abraham, writings of Esther and Jerry Hicks, and on it goes. Now, last couple of things. I've always followed my joy and I want to encourage you. Follow your joy. We talked about a little bit, my journey, you know, I was in graduate school, I started to realize I wanted to work with inner city kids. So I went to graduate school in Chicago. I did that, that I lost that job. And they were, they were not hiring. I was a, what do you call, part time teacher because I was in graduate school. This job corps job opened up where kids who dropped out of school were learning stuff. So I went and worked with them. That got shut down by the government after a couple of years because it was in a Democratic congressman's district. When Richard Nixon was elected Republican, he closed it as a way of kind of punishing the Democrats and no punishment putting up in a Republican district. But I ended up going back to Chicago and working with W. Clement Stone, who was a friend of Napoleon Hills. And he taught me all these success principles, many of which I still teach. I've learned a lot since him. And then I realized I wanted to get a doctoral degree in education. So I went to the University of Massachusetts. While I was there, I started the New England center, which was a retreat center. I then decided I want to move to California where all the big names in this field were. I always just kept following my nose and going where I wanted to go. Ended up working for another training company. Decided to leave that started my own. Now we have a tfield training group. So I want to encourage you to have the take the risk. When you get these inspirations to. To do something new, follow it. Listen to your inner guidance. Finally, I want to just talk about Byron. Katie. I often talk about her. She wrote a book called Loving. What is one of the biggest things I've learned is that the main reason we saw offer is we think something shouldn't have happened the way it did. Someone shouldn't have said what they said or did or something that they should have done. They didn't do. You know, my wife should have done this, My husband shouldn't have done that. Those people should have done this. The government shouldn't be doing that right now. You know, whatever. And whenever you have those feelings, those, those thoughts, it creates unhappiness in your life. So her book Loving what is you really kind of move to more of a neutral observing position in your life where you just notice what is without feeling the desire to change it or making them wrong for doing it. And as you grow in consciousness, you begin to see that everything that's happening actually is for the greater good. So I want to encourage you to. To go with that. And finally, I would say one of the things I'm most interested in right now are something called near death experiences. I've been watching a lot of videos on YouTube, people that have had near death experiences because they come back with this wisdom that they've learned while they were dead. Otherwise they went through a tunnel, they met Jesus or Buddha or Krishna or whoever, and they then got to do what's called life review, where they see all the things in their life where they either acted in an honorable way or maybe they hurt somebody and they get to feel the pain of that. So you're some empathically realizing what you create in the world and then you're looked at. Where did you learn to be more loving? And I realize that that's the curriculum on the earth that everything is about love and we're all moving toward, can we be more loving toward each other? Can we experience more love? The opposite of love is fear. When we're afraid of something, we try to control it. When we love something, we try to nurture it, support it. So love is where we're bound. It's the lesson that we all want to be experiencing at some level. It's what every spiritual teacher that's ever lived has talked about. Love is the answer. Love is the way, whether it's eastern religion, religions, Western religions, etc. So I want to encourage you to, to look at some of these videos on YouTube, they're called Near Death Experiences, NDAs and maybe Read the book Life After Life by Raymond Moody, who interviewed 52 people who had those. And what you begin to see is these people come back with this wisdom and they're learning that the universe has their back. Everything's happening for you, not to you. That life is good. All we need to do is move to a greater love and stop. Suffering is optional. I like to say, you know, suffering comes from having these negative thoughts about things and pushing the river when we need to let it flow. Resisting what is doesn't work if you're sitting on a train track. It doesn't work if you're in a relationship. You know, you have to like learn to be present to it all. So lots there to play with. I want to encourage you, keep reading, keep taking seminars, keep letting people coach you, follow your nose. Who knows what you might want to learn, but give yourself permission to be a constant and never ending learner in life. If you do that, you're going to keep unfolding to the highest level. I love you guys who've worked with me. You're watching now and I am so thankful for you. Listening and watching and coming to seminars, reading books and being part of this work. And just keep on keeping on trusting yourself, loving yourself, asking for what you need, realizing you're a good person and make sure, as I said, become part of our mailing list so you'll know about the new books and all the other things we're doing. So I want to end by wishing you a wonderful life full of love. Love, full of joy, full of happiness, full of peace, abundance, growth and fulfillment. Thank you all for being part of my journey. And I'm sure I'll see some of you in the future in different ways. Till then, know that I love you.