[Episode 41] The Success Principles 20 Years Later: What’s Changed and What Still Works

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Welcome to this special episode of my podcast. I'm Jack Canfield and today I have something very exciting to share with you. You know, it's been 20 years since I wrote the Success Principles book, and in that time this book has been translated into 27 languages and has transformed the lives of millions of people who all over the world. But here's the thing. How we need to pursue and achieve success continually evolves. And the way we set goals, what we need to do to stay focused in a world that's more and more challenges and distractions and the kinds of actions we need to take also need to evolve to keep up with our evolving world. And that is why I spent the last year completely updating the Success principles for its 20th anniversary edition to help you navigate success in its current, current moment of time with both the new challenges we are facing and the new opportunities are also available to us today that might not have been 20 years ago. So in this episode I'm going to share with you some of the biggest new ideas and updates in this new edition. How my thinking has evolved. How you can immediately begin to apply these new principles, strategies, practices and techniques to accelerate your achieving your goals and creating the life you want. And if you stick around until the end, I have something very special for you. So I want to start by talking about why this book matters now. When I first published the Success Principles, how to get from where you are to where you want to be, back in 2005, social media barely existed. AI wasn't reshaping our world, and we hadn't been through a pandemic that changed the way many of us worked. Think about just the technology aspect of this. Zoom didn't come along until six years later, in 2011, five years after 2005, when the first book came out. Six years later, the first TEDx talk, of which there are now more than 190,000 of them online, didn't happen until 2009. And the way we learned and consumed information moved into online courses, downloadable audiobooks, podcasts, and many other technologies that we didn't have back then. And there were very few podcasts in 2005. Think about this. The first year, Apple made it easier to discover, download and subscribe to them by taking them, making them part of iTunes. 2010 and in 2010 there were 44,740 podcasts. Today there are somewhere between 3.2 and 4 million active podcasts, according to various sources. Now, TikTok wasn't launched in America until 2018. Even Facebook didn't take off in 2007, and Instagram wasn't launched until October of 2010, and Twitter Now X was launched in 2006, a year after the first Success Principles book came out. AI, which has begun to change virtually everything in the world, only entered the mainstream when Elon Musk and Sam Altman founded OpenAI in 2015. Add to all of this the increasing political polarization, which has deeply increased in the last two decades, and the high prices and inflation that we're currently seeing. And in many ways we are in very different world than we were 20 years ago. But while the technology, tools and outer environments have changed, the core principle of success remain timeless. They may need to be applied differently in different situations, but they're called principles because they do in fact stand the test of time. In this new 20th anniversary edition, I've added a new section on success in the digital age, which includes chapters on mastering the technology you need using AI to accelerate your success, how to brand yourself with an online Persona, using social media in a way that enhances your reputation, and how to use the exponential power of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding on the Internet. Now I've also updated the book with fresh stories and recent research, case studies from today's world, as well as lots of new insights about success from my own personal experiences in my life and the lives of my students over the past two decades. And it also contains new strategies for how to create resilience, how to adapt to the constant and always evolving realities in every area of your life, and for achieving clarity in a noisy, chaotic and often confusing world. Also included some stories of ordinary people like yourself, who have created extraordinary results using the Success Principles. Stories that will inspire you and show you what's possible if you apply the principles and practices I teach in the book. Stories from entrepreneurs, people working in corporations, teachers, coaches, people in the entertainment industry, and a story about a 21 year old high school student, just graduated high school 21 years old, who cleaned up 13 million pounds of trash and in and along the banks of the Mississippi river and then went on to clean up 22 other rivers. In fact, let me read you that story. This is a story about a kid named Chad Prigracki. And I met Chad when I was getting an honorary doctorate at a university in, in. In Iowa, right next to the river in Davenport. And he was also getting an honorary doctorate and he was about I think 25 or 6 at that time. And this, this example showcases the power in believing yourself, believing your dream, taking action, and the power of Simply asking and saying next instead of giving up in order to say no. So I'm going to read parts of it here. 1997, 21 year old Chad Bagracki set out on a one man mission to clean up the Mississippi River. He started with a 20 foot boat.

And his own two hands.

And when Chad realized it was going to take more than his 20 foot.

Boat, he needed barges and trucks and equipment.

He asked state and local officials for help only to be turned down, not to be dissuaded. Chad grabbed a phone book and he went to the listings of business listings.

And he saw Alcoa because it started with the letter A.

And he called them up and he said he would like to get some money.

800, $8,400 would help him buy a barge.

And they said no.

And so he called Al Anheuser Busch, that was the next one.

And he didn't know anything about this. He didn't even know a CEO was.

He said can I talk to the top guy?

And so they put him through to the president's office, the CEO's office.

And when he got Mary Al, Mary Alice Amarez answered the phone he said.

I need you guys to give me some money. And she said who are you? And he said I want to get.

Rid of the garbage on the Mississippi River. Can you show me a proposal? Tad says what's the proposal? This is how ignorant he was, but how committed he was. And she helped him eventually write a proposal. Got 25000 from Anheuser Busch.

And with that he got started and.

Went along the way and every time.

He would get something he would go.

And ask for something more.

And eventually over time he cleaned up 13 million pounds of trash, cleaned up.

22 rivers, had people consulting. He would take these kids that coming out of college and they would spend their summers cleaning up the rivers. And eventually he had several barges, he had trucks, he had these foundations were starting to underwrite him. He got the 13 CNN Hero of the year award and all of that. So I shared a story with you.

Because I want you to get just.

A little more detail in the book.

But I want you to get the.

Power of having a dream, not knowing how to do it. Because we teach in our work about goals, you don't have to know how to achieve it, you simply have to know what you want. He wanted to clean up the river and he just started with his own backyard which was like all these stuff was coming up on his riverbank in this home by the river and tires and Refrigerators that people had thrown out and so forth. He said, this is disgusting. And out of that commitment, he created a movement that's cleaned up 22 rivers over the years. It won numbers of awards, including a Presidential Achievement Award and so forth. So I want you to realize that it doesn't matter how many rejections you get, because he got a lot of them along the way. It doesn't matter whether you know how to do it when you start, if you commit to it and, and then do whatever it takes, ask questions along the way. One of the great questions, by the way, when people say no, and this is important to get, write this one down. When people say no, what I want you to say is what would have to happen for you to say yes? What would have to happen for you to say yes?

And people will often tell you, when.

We went to sell Chicken Soup for the Soul, many of you have heard this story before. We got 144 rejections. And it was around the 140th rejection, someone said the next no. You get asked the publisher what would have to happen for them to say yes. And this publisher that eventually published the.

Book said, I need to know I.

Could sell 20,000 copies of a book, otherwise I'm going to lose money. And so Mark and I went out and we made a little form and said I promised to buy. It was a blank 1, 2, 5, 10, whatever copies of Chicken Soup is sold.

And we connected. We collected enough of those that added up to 20,000 promises to buy, which.

Took us a couple of months.

Took it in the banker's box, put it on the desk of the CEO.

He said, okay, I'll do it.

So again, ask, ask.

You're going to get no's.

Don't let that stop you.

And then again, that very valuable question of what would have to happen for you to say yes.

And if they tell you and you.

Go do it, then you're so much farther ahead than would you be.

So the next thing I'd like to talk about is the very success principle, the very first success principle in the book, which is to take 100% responsibility for your life. And it's still the foundation of all success. But today, strong distractions are everywhere and people seem to be more overwhelmed than ever before. And the basics of this idea of 100% responsibility means I'm not going to blame anyone else. So no blaming, no complaining, which is really blaming in a group context, complaining about how bad everything is. And no excuse making. I can't make excuses for Why I didn't get what I wanted to get. So I want you to think about the question, how can I create my current reality, and what do I need to do differently to create what I want? So one of the things that I want you to think about is this, that whatever you're currently experiencing is a result of, of how you thought, imagined, and acted, or didn't act, talk, didn't talk, whatever asked for something, didn't ask in the past. Everything you're currently experiencing is something that happened in the past that now led to you having this. And if you want something different in the future, you can't keep doing the same things that got you here because what got you here won't get you there. So basically, I want you to realize that if you put these principles into action and you start taking 100 responsibility for your life, that this very powerful question again, how am I creating or how did I create my current reality, and what do I need to do different to create what I want? There's actually a set of questions in the book which I'm not going to go through right now in depth, but about, you know, what am I currently experiencing that I don't like? Well, would I rather have, how am I creating what it is that I currently have? What's my fear if I don't change, and so forth. What would I rather have? How could I create it? When will I do it? And what we start to see is that you are creating what you're currently experiencing. And no matter how horrific it might be, you are allowing it to happen. You're creating it to happen. A lot of people are being physically abused, but they don't leave. They keep allowing it to happen. So one of the people that is one of my great success stories, a woman named Peggy Cappy, and she was making 50,000 a year. And she said, I came to your seminar and I started applying what you taught me. And now my yearly salary has become my monthly salary. What did she do? She started asking herself, what am I doing? What would I have to do different to get where I want to go? And it's. It's going to be outside of your comfort zone. You're going to have to do something new, what we often call outside of your familiarity zone. I can't keep doing the same familiar things over and over. And the mind is programming to want to do that now. I was doing an interview this morning with a group in India where they were interviewing me, a man named Mitesh and his wife, Indu Khatri, and I, they did something I really love. They had a thousand people on this zoom call interview and they started by having everyone repeat a series of sentences that went, I declare that I take 100% responsibility for what I think. And then the group had to repeat that. I declare that I take 100% responsibility for what I believe. I declare that I take 100% responsibility for what I feel. I take 100% responsibility for what I feel do the actions. I take what I create and what I attract. And I love the fact that he was doing that because it was reinforcing this belief over and over and over that I am 100% responsible. So what does that mean today, taking 100% responsibility? And I think one of the things that we've all been confronted with is what we call the technological revolution where there's so many distractions on the Internet, whether it's Instagram, TikTok, you know, your favorite TV show that's got, you know, 17 episodes that you've been watch on the weekend, etc, and so if we're not careful, we're getting our, our energy is. Our attention, as you will, is being stolen from us. And we need to take time to be responsible, to bring it back and focuses on the things we want to create.

Because advertisers are very cleverly and the algorithms of, you know, all these social.

Media platforms are basically feeding you what's going to keep you addicted to watching.

More, watching more, watching more.

But meanwhile, we're not writing book, we're not improving our relationship, we're not getting.

Healthier, we're not getting, you know, more exercise, we're not learning to eat better.

You know, we're not writing the book.

We'Re not starting our coaching program, whatever it might be.

And so we have to be very, very careful because what we end up.

Doing, we're seeing it now in the political reality both in America and around the world. People blaming somebody for their experience, blaming external circumstances, blaming the economy, blaming the president, whichever one it might be, in our case Biden or Trump, blaming the Congress, blaming the Democratic Party, blaming mean the Republican Party, we blame the weather for our life's not working, you know, and whenever you're blaming, that's a response.

To an event that doesn't produce a better outcome.

So whatever it is that's occurring, and I acknowledge some people, some things are difficult, some things are challenging. You know, if you're in Ukraine right now, it's a challenging time to be there. But there are people surviving there, there are people Making money, their businesses are working, they're having happy times, etc. Some people have actually left Ukraine. One of my friends was a motivational speaker, moved to Scotland. It was a different event, you know.

So a different response to that event.

So it's really important that we don't blame what's happening around us for why we don't have what we want, because it's never going to get you where you want to go. So, again, recognize that success is an inner game. You've got to take responsibility for how you respond to what's going on in the world with your thoughts, with your beliefs, with the images you bring up in your mind. You know, like during the pandemic, some people thought, oh, we will never survive. I'm going to die. My business is going to go under. I'll never be able to rebuild it again. I'm going to lose my mortgage, I'm going to be out on the street. All of that cognition, if you will, was not getting you where you wanted to go. And it made you feel worse, got you back into the amygdala, the back part of your brain where fear lives, instead of being in your prefrontal cortex, where your creative mind, your rational mind, can solve problems, create solutions, and get you where you want to go. So be very aware that we're the ones thinking the thoughts. We're the one creating the image. We're the one worrying, we're the one creating anxiety by thinking about how bad it's going to be, by visualizing them rejecting us or saying no or whatever, we can use that same power, the same power that you use to create fear in your main can be used to create an image of success. And I was just interviewing someone else you'll see in a podcast soon named John Asaraf, who is an amazing podcast. So look for it. And we were talking about, in the brain, there's these neural pathways that get reinforced over and over and over. Every time you think a thought, it's like you're digging a little bigger of a deeper groove in your mind. If you've ever been bowling and your ball goes in the gutter, it doesn't bounce out again. We've got gutters in our brain that we have to reprogram so that we don't go there every time we see something, we go, oh, I'll never get what I want. I'll never be happy, I'll never be married, etc. And replace those with positive thoughts. So your thinking is critical. Okay, so the other thing that's related to that, then, is learning to identify the limiting beliefs that we have. Because beliefs are just thoughts you think over and over and over. And you know, you weren't born with limiting beliefs. You learned them. You had them thrust upon you by parents, by teachers, by culture, by the media, by your pastor at church, you know, whoever it might have been. And then that belief began to control your ability to act like, oh, I'm not the kind of person who does that. I'm stupid. I'm not smart, I'm not athletic, I'm not attractive. I'm not, you know, well connected enough. So what happens is that we now then also have to take responsibility for our beliefs, and then we have to reprogram them. That's done through repetition. And we've got a lot of information in this 20th anniversary edition of the book that'll teach you how to do that even more profoundly than we did in the earlier editions. So what's important when we talk about this a lot of the book as well, is the creation of new habits that align with your vision instead of your reactive behaviors. So basically, we get to where we want to go by creating new habits. And one of the habits I want to underline, that we talk about in the book, I've got a great story to illustrate it. It's about a woman named Jeanette Moss. And. And this story demonstrates the power of intuition. What does intuition mean? Tuition is something you pay to go to school. It means to be taught. And so basically we have an inner teacher which most of us have not learned to use. So there's a whole section in the book called Inquire Within. Inquire Within. There's a story, it's in the first book, too, but I wanted to share it with you because I think it's important for those of you who may not have heard it. Some of you have read the first edition, some of you have not. But there's a story about a guy, and he's down on his knees under a lamppost and he's looking for something, moving around, looking for something, can't find it. And some a stranger walks by and says, can I help you? You look like you've lost something. So I can't find the key to my house. He said, well, let me help you look. So he gets down, they look everywhere under this lamppost not to be found. And finally the guy says, well, geez, I don't know what to do here in Dubai. I don't think we're going to find it here. The guy says, well, the truth is I lost it in my house, but there's more light out here. So we tend to look outside of ourselves for the solutions that have to be created inside of ourselves. Sometimes it's the inner work we do, the meditation, the affirmations, the visualization, all that repetition work, mindfulness work, etc. And intuition, which we can develop through practice. And so there's a whole chapter on how to do that in this book. And I want to share the story with you that illustrates the power of learning to trust yourself. So this is a story that's in the book by Jeanette Ma. And she. I write the story. It says, when Jeanette Ma was four months into a new job as a 401k salesperson for a large national bank, management announced that if the sales didn't increase and turn around soon and create some impressive new numbers, every one of these salespeople is going to lose their job. And up to that time, they practice all these prescribed scripts they had. They had a list of people to call and they had exactly what to say and it was not working. And so she said, this is. These strategies don't work. I keep on doing what doesn't work, not going to get what I want. We always say if you keep on doing what you've always done, you're going to keep getting the same result, which in their case was no result. So she said. After learning that the jobs were online if they didn't produce result, Jeanette threw out her pipeline, which is her list of leads and script sheet, and decided to try something else. She remembered hearing about journal writing technique, which I write about in the book as well, to write a page a day about what you wanted if you already had it. So visualizing having your. Your mind maps and your vision boards and mind movies, all these things you can do to visualize and affirm what you want and to describe it as if you already had it. So she gets to the end of the. She takes this little book. She only had a small book. Lily was like 2 inches by 3 inches notebook. It's all she had. But she said, I took out my pen and I started to write and in a couple of minutes I filled my first page. And she wrote about how excited she was to talk to her prospects and how excited they were to talk to her. How they loved her product and couldn't wait for her to implement it. She wrote about the instant excellent rapport she felt and how the product that she offered really was the perfect solution for their company. And after making her first entry, she checked in with herself about what she felt good to do next. She checked in with her ignition, what should I do next? What felt good? Because we say, follow your joy. When you follow your joy, joy is your guidance system. It tells you you're on purpose. We never got taught that as a kid. We were taught, do the tough things, do the things that hurt, do the uncomfortable things. That's where success is. But research now shows the law of attraction proves that when you follow your joy, that's your body's way or the universe's way, nature's way of saying you're on purpose. And so she said, well, what should I do next? What do I want to do? And the answer that came was lunch. Now, she had not eaten lunch in a restaurant for ever since she got the job. She would always just go to this machine, maybe get some potato chips or some Cheetos and a Coke, and come back to her desk. And that was lunch. Not very healthy. And so she basically goes to this restaurant, she sits down, she orders lunch, and it's a favorite Greek restaurant she knew. She ordered a Greek salad club, great meal, kicked up her feet on the table, relaxed, took her whole hour lunch break. And then she's going back to the office, and when she gets to the elevator, on the way back to her cubicle, the stranger in the elevator introduced himself to her and asked who she was. She said, I'm Jeanette and I sell small business, 401ks for banks. And this guy said, I can't believe my ears. He insisted. She followed him to his office, which is where he showed her a desk littered with 401k sales literature from a variety of vendors. He hadn't been able to make heads or tails of any of it, had no idea how her bank sold that her bank actually sold 401k small businesses. And she shared the sales material that she had. He was elated. It was exactly what he wanted. He asked how soon they could open up account with his company. In a bit of a day. She got introduced to his human resources director. And then he said, said whatever she wants, give it to her, sign it. Just bring it to my office, I'll sign it. Within two hours of her first journal entry, learning to trust her intuition and doing a process which we teach, as opposed to just calling mindlessly and doing a script. She had her first sale and she started doing that. And the happy result is that she now does what she wants to do that feels good rather than what she's supposed to do. And she's become a huge, huge, huge success. So again, story illustrates the importance of changing your beliefs and also changing your actions and following that internal guidance. Now, another key principle is to stop blaming and stop complaining. That's part of the 100% responsibility. And I'll tell you a story about Raj Bhavsar. Raj Bavsar was a gymnast. Started when he was 10 years old. By the time he's high school, he had wall full of medals and ribbons, college. He won every competition. He won the national championships. He got invited to try out for the Olympic tryouts. And when he went there, he performed what he thought was a flawless routine. And then when they called out the four people who would be on the team, he didn't hear his name. And then they said, first alternate, Raj Pavsar. So he got to go to Greece. And he said, nothing felt worse than sitting there watching my teammates compete. And I couldn't compete. I was like a real member of the team. I was there in case someone got injured. But it was awful. And he said he came back and he was kind of in a funk. And he said, okay, I'm going to examine what are my motives? And he realized that he was one. He was doing it to win. And he said, what about the enjoyment of the sport? So he decided what he was going to do now is to compete but for the joy of doing it. He did that for a year. He felt very good. But he got to the national championships, which he'd won several years, didn't win. And he said he'd gotten a little rusty because that desire to win wasn't there. So he decided to recommit himself to this desire to win. And he got very disappointed again when he had another failure of success. And so he got depressed. And then his coach, well, friend first told him, here's a book you need to read. It's called the success principles. How to get from where you are to where you want to be. And he thought, how's the book going to help me? And he just decided not to even read it. But four days later, his coach, his gymnastic coach said, I think you need to read this book. And he handed him the same book, the success principles. So he went home and he started reading it. And he realized that he had been blaming the, the judges, blaming the sport, blaming everybody, complaining about stuff, really negative. So he decided to take 100 responsibility, stop blaming, stop complaining, and start really working hard to get into the Olympic level, that he wanted to be the Olympics Came around again. He goes to Olympic tryouts, this time for China. He thought he had done flawlessly again. And they read the four names for the team. He wasn't on it. First alternate or one of three alternates. Raw Bob S. Now he's kind of depressed, but he said, okay, I've learned to stay positive. I'm just going to stay positive and let's see what happens. So a few weeks later, they discovered that Paul Ham, who was amazing gymnast, I remember watching him in the Olympics, injured himself. And they were going to bring up one of the alternates. And so eventually they had this call. All the alternatives were on there. And they said, okay. And he just kept, get to the names, get to the names, get to the names. And they got Raj, Bob Sark. So now he's a member of the team. Goes to China. They're not expected to win. Germans are going to beat the heck out of us. You know, there was a Chinese. The other teams, we were maybe come in fourth, fifth, sixth. He got the team together the night before and he had them all visualize winning. Remember again, using visualization, because he was using visualization and affirmations and always positive thinking. Got the whole team, which were all. None of them had ever competed in the Olympics before. They were all young kids. And they did that. They went out the next day, they did really, really well. And they beat the Germans and they got the bronze medal where they were not supposed to meddle at all. So I tell you the story because I could tell you stories after story after story of people who've read the book who then went on to do extraordinary things because they applied the principles. And the one is again, stop blaming, stop complaining, visualize your success, etc. So we've known for years the power of visualization and the power of taking action. And you know, there's a lot of new research, a lot of new science to call it mental rehearsal. We know about neuroplasticity in the brain, that we can actually grow new brain cells, create new neural path. And I would tell you all top athletes, all top CEOs, all peak performers use visualization today. And so I want to do just a quick exercise with you. So you're here. Let's do a quick visualization exercise that I want to tell you another amazing story about the power of this. But for a moment, let yourself sit up straight and close your eyes. If your feet touch the floor, let them do that. If not, whatever is comfortable. But if they touch the floor, feet flat on the floor, take A few deep breaths and allow yourself to relax.

And one of the things we know is when you exhale longer than you inhale, it creates a relaxation response. You might want to inhale for the count of six, exhale for the count of eight. Do three more breaths like that.

Two more. One more.

I want you to take a moment and think about a goal. You have, something that you would like to have. And if you came here without a goal, you're not working on a goal. Just pick something you'd like to create in your life. It could be an income level. It could be having your own podcast. It could be your book is completed. It could be you've doubled the number of people in your private practice. It could be a vacation you've always wanted to take, or a car you want to own, or a house you'd like to own. Impact you'd like to have in the world, something you would like to see happen out there philanthropically. And when you have that, give you another second to focus on that. I want you to imagine that you've already achieved this goal. It's already happened. And you're looking out through your eyes at the external world, your environment. You're inside, you're outside, you're in a room, you're in a conference room, you're in a hospital. Wherever you are, there may be people there. You might be alone. What time of day is it? Nighttime, Daytime. And start to see the things you would see in your outer world that would confirm to you you'd already achieved this goal. It might be a full appointment book for your practice. It might be a bank statement with the amount of money you have in your. Your IRA account or your checking account or your money market fund.

Might be your 1040 if you're in America.

Your tax pavement there, it shows you.

What your income was. It might be your ideal car parked in your. Your. Your driveway or your garage or the view from your oceanfront property. Or watching your child graduate from college. If it's a health thing, maybe you see people go, God, you walk so better now. That leg you had broken really healed.

That's amazing.

Again, you're looking from your eyes out at the world. Not seeing you up on the stage getting your doctorate degree, but you're walking across, seeing your hands because you're inside of you receiving it. Just keep looking at those images, building in more details.

And then very quickly put a sound track into your. Your movie, if you will. Best to see this. A moving picture more powerful than still photograph.

And what sounds would you be hearing people congratulating you, people thanking you. The sound of your car starting up, the ocean, the waves coming up on the shore, whatever it is, what sounds go with the images. Keep seeing the images, hearing the sounds. And then. And this is most important, and it's a point that most people leave out, and it's why their visualizations don't actually give them what they want.

What would you be feeling in your.

Body, in your emotions? What we call your vibration, your frequency, your. Your emotional state.

If you had already achieved this goal, what would you be feeling?

Happy, grateful. Proud. Powerful. Relief. Gratitude, whatever it would be. And give yourself permission, like an actor, to generate those feelings in your body. What would you be feeling in your face, your chest, emotionally? So you're seeing the picture. Visual, hearing the sound, Auditory. Feeling the feelings, kinesthetic. All three of your modalities working in harmony. Do that for another, let's say 10 seconds. And then we're going to add an affirmation to this. I'm going to start with, I am so happy and grateful now that I. And then complete the sentence. I'm so happy and grateful now that I am earning 100,000 a year. I'm so happy and grateful now that I'm driving a new Porsche McCann. I'm so happy and grateful now that I have this ideal home on the beach. I'm so happy and grateful now that I am serving 30 people in my private coaching practice. Whatever it is. Very good. Then, when you're ready, taking as much time as you need, just gently open your eyes, bring your awareness back into the room. And what I want to suggest to you is that you do this visualization twice a day when you first wake up to kind of set the tone for the day. That is, you're saying this is an intention of mine. I want to manifest this. Do it again right before you go to bed. We know that what you think about, visualize, talk about, believe, et cetera, feel strongly about before you go to bed. The last 45 minutes is what your subconscious mind is going to play with a lot during the night, more so than other things during the day. So rather than watching Friday the 13th, you know, or Freddy, you know, with the scissorhands edge of his whatever, you want to make sure you're putting positive input into your brain. You're programming yourself for success. Okay, so I want to share another story with you. This is a story about visualization, the power of it. So by a woman named Heather Walker, who I used to illustrate this power. And she first learned about, about the power of visualization, self talk, visualization, affirmations. When she saw the movie the Secret, which I was in, as many of you know. And so she said, I saw that and I was glued to the screen when I watched it. And I said, I'm going to start applying this. Because she had worked in Hollywood and she writes, I had worked with people like Elizabeth Taylor, Tom Cruise, Drew Barrymore, Bruce Willis, Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore. And she said they all use visualization to get to where they wanted to go in that world. Jim Carrey visualized being successful. He wrote himself a 10 million dollar check. He visualized making that kind of money in the movies. You know, he. I think he got paid 10 million for one of his movies, 20 million for another movie. But he started with visualization and affirmation. So she said, I'm going to practice that. And so she created a compelling vision for the life she wanted to live.

Live.

And in 2011, she was planning for her perfect wedding. She was visualizing that. But then something happened. She was running a company that was distributing cosmetic supplies. And she was in the warehouse one night and she was taking something off a shelf and carrying it to a different place. Someone had carelessly let a box on the floor and she tripped over it. She hit her head on a metal shelf on the way down. Hit her head that bounced off the concrete. She had a traumatic brain injury. Injury. And she was able to dial her boyfriend, her fiance, he came, he took her to the hospital and they were, the doctors were not very optimistic. They said, you've had a traumatic brain injury. It's very, very intense. I think you need to know. Her legs didn't move. She was slurring her speech. You know, you're going to be possibly paraplegic the rest of your life. Maybe the best thing you can hope for is a life lived from bed, possibly a wheelch. And she did not like hearing this. And she said, no, wait a second, I've learned about this power of visualization. And so she started visualizing herself walking. And one of the things that she had and her fiance had planned was their wedding. And his last name was Walker. And he said, you can't marry me if you, if your last name's Walker, we gotta learn to walk again. And so she visualized walking down the aisle on the beach. Cause she wanted a beach wedding in Santa Monica. I believe it was in the sand. And that was her new visualization. And after several months, in fact, she walked out of the hospital. However, within a Couple of weeks. What happened was she got hit by a car. She was in a passenger seat, her fiance was driving, someone went through a red light, hit the passenger side of the car, threw her against the windshield. And now she had another restimulation of a traumatic brain injury. She's back in the hospital. The doctors are now saying that we think this is worse than before. And she says, no, I'm going to walk. And so every day she visualized, she did her affirmation walking down the aisle. And finally what happened was she actually did that. She got married on the beach in Southern California walking down the aisle. And what happened was she actually ended up writing a book called Don't Give Up, Get Up. And so again, she now is a speaker teaching people these principles when before she was just a student. And she's a great story to tell because what happened, she proved it. So if someone with traumatic brain injury can use this to create something as profound as learning to walk again when told they would never do it. Think about what you could do with just your normal goals of, you know, achieving financial independence or writing a book or whatever it might be that you want to do, being the top real estate person in your world world. So one of the other principles is called acting as if. And I want to talk about that for a moment. And one of the things that we want to do is start acting as.

If you're the new person you need.

To become in order to achieve your goal. In other words, who would you have to be to generate a hundred thousand dollar a year income or a million dollar, your income. Or to build a company up to where you could sell it for $100 million. And you would have to change the story you tell yourself. You'd have to change how you be, how you walk, how you talk. Your self confidence level would have to be different. Perhaps your beliefs about your abilities, your deservability. Some of two of the, the beliefs that really what I want to say that the cripple most people are I'm not lovable and I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy of success or something I did or didn't do that makes me not worthy of having this. Normally it's something that happened when you were a kid. Maybe your dad said, oh, you never amount to anything and you believed him. Had a client recently who she was by four or five years old, she was wanting her mother's attention. Her mother was vacuuming and she didn't.

Respond to the child.

Maybe she didn't hear her, maybe she Was preoccupied with some bigger issue going on in her life. And this little girl at four years old decided, my mother doesn't love me. And if your own mother doesn't love you, it must mean you're not lovable. So she grew up thinking, I'm not lovable. That was running her in her 40s. And so we have these, these limiting beliefs. And so what we want to do is transcend that and say, okay, who would I be if I didn't have this belief? How would I act? And then like an actor to step into the role of that, acting as if. Give you an example, in my live trainings, I will often do an exercise called the millionaire exercise. And I'll get everybody up and I'll say, okay, I want you to all pretend you're millionaires for the next 10 minutes. If you're already a millionaire, you're now a multi millionaire, whatever wealthy is to you. And I want you to just go around the room, mill around, interact with people as if you were that. And all of a sudden the room gets loud, people are interacting, their, their body language is positive, they're smiling, etc, and then I'll stop them after 10 minutes they've been talking about their boats and their planes and their travel and the, the phil, the philanthropic things they do, the foundation they started, the income, the impact that our company, their inventions, whatever, and it's just lovely energy in the room. I'll say, now, how many of you enjoyed that? All hands go up. How many of you feel different having done that? Yes. How many of you feel more powerful, more positive, more life affirming, more liberated? They all raise their hand and then I say, how many of you actually are millionaires? Now a few hands go up because we get those people, but the reality is most of you weren't, but you were acting as if you were. And as you acted as if you were, look at what happened. You changed your emotional state, you changed your vibration, you raised the frequency of your beingness. You were acting as if all these things you had, you were grateful for them, you were talking about them, you own them. So acting as if is a big game you can play. What would it take for me to act more generously? For me to act as if I have more abundance in my life, for me to act as if I was more, more affirming, loving, etc. Strong, able to say no, able to ask for what I want, etc. So one of the things we do in our trainings and I teach you to do in the book so you can do them in your home. And I can tell you story after story of people who've done this in their homes, in their companies, at their conferences, at their with their multi level marketing team. Downlines, et cetera is called a Commercial B part party. And I'm going to share a story with you in a moment of a guy named Sergio Sedos who's from Mexico, who came to one of my trainings, participated in the Commercial B party they said, which you can set up in your own home or your own business, church, wherever you want to do it. And what happened for him as a result of that. So let me get his story over here. Where to go. So this is Sergio's story which appears in the Success Principles book, the 20th anniversary edition. He says I took Jack's training and he's from Mexico by the way. He came up to la, maybe San Diego. And he said in the first two days of seminar I set some goals I wanted to achieve. To be a guest speaker at a TED conference, to write a book on the context based learning model which I had created and was developing. To take my wife to Greece to own a house by the lake. To start a tech museum in Mexico, to develop a national program that would help youngsters develop self confidence and a sense of purpose. Purpose. And he said all these appeared to be distant dreams. I lacked the money, the time and the experience. I even had to cancel my family's vacation that was scheduled to come up because he didn't have the money for that. And he said regardless, I prepared for the Kamajubi party. We always do a commerce will be party the last night and everyone gets to if they want to dress up for that, they can have props for that. Like if they want to be an author they could take make a book cover for over another book that says their title on it, et cetera. They can walk around pretending like they own it. They could get a picture of a boat and say here's my new boat, whatever. So sergeant said I decided to play full out. And so he said I got, I created an album, a mock photo album. There'll be my prop for the show to show people my accomplishment. Pictures of the Greek islands, pictures of Rome, pictures of a house by a lake. My wife even photoshopped my picture to a TED conference station. And I was ready, said I was a little nervous and I started approaching some people and I started, I said oh, I just came back from giving a TED talk at a conference. I got my book Context Based Learning published oh, and I also took my family on a vacation. We went to Greece and we went to Rome. I thanked them for coming to stay with us at our lake house, which I described clearly. Said, please come to my lake house. I'd love to, you know, have you. Be my guest. And he went on and on and on. So. So he said the party went on for hours. I shared my accomplishments that was going to happen over the next five years. Then he writes. A year and a half later, I was invited to speak at a TEDx conference in Chennai, India. My topic was Context Based Learning through Understanding, which the title of his book he said, A couple of months later, I submitted a paper on context based learning in a conference on education Innovation, Innovation. And I received the best paper of the war. But that's not all. A friend of mine from Greece invited me to start a nonprofit organization called Better Life Day in Mexico. Our first conference was in Athens in June. I needed to go to Athens to see what it was all about. Now he's going to Greece, right? And my wife said, well, if we're going to buy tickets to Greece to go to that conference, why don't we go to Rome first? Because you got to stop somewhere on the way. And then after that we could go visit the Greek islands, including Santorini, which you had in your, Your book that you share with the common juvie party, your photo album. And he said, wow, everything I talked about at the comedy party was happening. And he goes on to talk about how his national program for self Confidence for youth got funded. And he started that. It's now being taught at 33 campuses nationwide across Mexico. I'm now an international speaker and trainer. And yes, at the end of each seminar, we hold a come as you'll be party. So the reality is a little bit of acting as if, you know, if you were wealthier, would you dress any different? Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn't. You know, maybe you should start dressing that way now. How would you act? What would you do? Who would you hang out with? What would you read? What books would you read? You know, so again, this is really important to begin to do these kind of things, all of which are outlined in the book. Give you a story like I just told you to inspire you. Every chapter usually has a principle, why it's important, research to back up why it's important that comes from neuroscience, science of success, and so forth. And then also a story to motivate you to realize it works, and then also specific instructions on how to do it. So we want you to, we all like to break it down into a system of techniques that we do them in the right order, in the right way, at the right time. What happens is you're guaranteed success, whether it's in health, wellness, relationships, finance your career, philanthropic endeavors, making a difference, spiritual and personal growth, possessions. You want to have these principles work in any area of your life. Now, I want you to know that this 20th anniversary is not just an update, it's my legacy edition, if you will, because after five decades of teaching success, this is the book that I want to leave behind for future generations. Now, if you've read the success principle before, this is your chance to experience it again with fresh insights, an updated, clear roadmap for achieving success in today's world. And if you're new to it, if you haven't read the first book or the 10th anniversary edition, there's never been a better time to start. And one reason why this is the most practical edition yet is that it's a real life application that's never been easier. My gift is to take complex things, sometimes what we call esoteric neuroscience, whatever, and make it simple and easy to apply so you have steps that you could do. So I want you to know that I want you to take advantage of this. It's available to you and it's a not a huge investment that could change your life forever. And I'm actually writing another book right now which will probably come out in the fall, called Living the Success Principles. There's gonna be a hundred stories of people who read this original book or the 10th anniversary edition, or took one of my seminars and then applied one or more of the principles, usually a whole bunch of them, like 10 or 15. And as a result of that are now living extraordinary lives, having tripled their income and doubled their time off in the same year, having started a new business that they always thought they wanted to do but didn't think was possible, having their own podcast, being on the Oprah Winfrey show, creating their own television show, writing scripts. I've got number of people now who are writing scripts for TV shows that never thought that was possible before. We've got people that have transformed schools that are working in the inner city or in the countryside with kids who would never go to college. They're all going to college. They're getting A's and B's and so forth. They're getting into scholarships and so forth. Kids in the ghetto, kids and you know, in both the urban and the rural ghettos. So we know this stuff works, works. And so I want it to work for you, but it won't work if you don't take advantage of it. So I often will show a cartoon at the end of my seminars that shows two unicorns sitting on a rock. And off in the distance you see Noah's Ark with two of every kind of animals, heads, giraffes and rhinoceroses and different things appearing off the edge of the ark. And, and the, the, the, the, the, the unicorns are saying, oh damn, was that today? You know they missed it, right? So we don't want you to miss the boat. In other words, there's an opportunity here. I want you to take advantage of it. So here's what I encourage you to do next. All you got to do is go and pre order your copy today. The way I want you to go do it is the success principles dot com. Let me tell you why. When you go there, you'll still be able to order the book and get all the normal things you get if you did Amazon.com and so forth. But you're going to get two exclusive bonuses. The first is a private invitation to my 90 minute live master class. On March 20th, I'm going to teach principles one after another of how you can be more successful applying these things. I've given you a couple, but we're going to delve deep into 90 minutes. This is going to be less than an hour today and going to give you the sequence that you need to do the mim. So you're going to get a invitation that people who don't buy the book won't be invited to that master class. The second thing you get as a bonus is a set of implementation guidelines guides to help you apply these principles in three different areas of your life. Now, if you prefer to listen to books like my wife does rather than to read them, the full audiobook is also now available. It's over 22 hours of content. It's a lot, but I personally recorded the entire book, every one of the 67 principles. And if you love learning on the go, the audiobook is a fantastic way to do that, to experience this material. And I will tell you too that if the book is recorded by the author, it brings that energy. So you're going to get my energy coming through as well as just if I had hired a voiceover talent to read the book, it wouldn't have the same impact. So that's an advantage too. So the book, whether it's in print, whether it's digital, like an Ebook or audio will qualify you for all the bonuses, including the Master class and the invitation guides. If you've ever felt stuck, stuck, or you've been looking for a reset, or if you just want to take your success to the next level, I promise you that this book is for you. So I can't wait for you to read it or listen to it. And also I want to invite you to think about who else this book might be great for. You know, we have graduation coming up, not too long for now, high school kids, college kids. And I want to tell you a quick story about how powerful this could be as a gift to someone. A nephew, a son, a daughter, neighbor, maybe babysitted for you a number of years. Whatever. I got an email a number of years ago from a teenager I started out Dear Mr. Canfield, my mother brought your book home. Now, my mother doesn't usually read books. I'd never seen her read a book. And so but she brought your book home and I said, what the heck could be in this book that would make my mother want to read it? So I sat down at night after she went to bed. I was just going to leave through it. I couldn't stop reading. I read almost half the book. I was up to like 2 or 3 in the morning. And I have to tell you, as a result of that book, my life has changed. I was flunking out of school. I was getting Fs and Ds and everything. I was skipping most of my classes. I was smoking dope. I was on the recesses. I would be out in the parking lot with the other kids smoking dope. I would be smoking cigarettes. We were drinking wine. I was getting into trouble. And as a result of reading your book and applying the principles like 100 responsibility, having a clear set of goals, believing was possible, taking action. I now am getting all A's. I've stopped smoking dope. I've stopped smoking cigarettes. I'm not drinking alcohol right now. And I want you to know I think you've changed my life. Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. And another quick story about how it can affect young people is when we were first selling the book, we had a number of different publishers in New York that were interested in it. They would take the book home over the weekend, read it, and then we were going to have what's called an auction where you get several publishers bidding against each other to give you a higher advance. And we had two or three companies that were doing that. And this one company, company, the woman said, I didn't think I was going to like your book that much in terms of the, the sellability of it. Although I love the book itself. I left it on the kitchen table. I got up the next morning and I started complaining about something. And my daughter, who had read the first chapter of your book, unbeknownst to me, said, mom, a plus R equals O, event plus response equals outcome. You're complaining about an event that is a response that will not produce the outcome you want. And she said, my God, if reading that chapter could change my daughter's attitude. Attitude to do that. I want to buy this book. I want to make sure our publishing company publishes it. So I just share that to share with you the re. The. The believability, the credibility that this would in fact have an impact. So all you have to do is go to the Success principles. That's the success s u c c-e s s principles p r I n c-I p l-s.com and everything there, the bonuses there, how to get the book is there, etc. And I really want to let you know, I look forward to seeing you at the masterclass on the success principles on March 20th. And I want to thank all of you for joining me today. And if you found this podcast valuable, please let your friends and family know about the Jack Canfield podcast and especially this particular episode, because I believe if they learn about the book like you just did and get it, it can transform their life. They'll be thanking you, I promise. There was a fundraiser down in Texas that I went to. I was the key. I was the guest speaker at this fundraiser. And they gave away three door prizes that night. They gave away three copies of the Success Principles. They gave away a fur coat, and they gave away a very expensive piece of jewelry. They were door prizes. They got two thank you letters for door prizes. Both of them were for the book, the Success Principles. No one thanked them for the fur coat. No one thanked them for the jewelry. They got thanked for the books. That's how powerful they are. So make sure to also tune in next time when I'll be talking not just me, but I'll have another transformational leader as well. We'll be having a conversation about how you can live a happier, healthier, more conscious, more productive and successful life. So until then, be sure to head over to the success principles.com thesuccessprinciples.com and order one or more copies of the 20th anniversary edition of Success Principles Rules. I promise you, you'll be glad you did. So, see you next.