How to Change Your Life at Any Age | Jack Canfield

Hi there. I'm Jack Canfield, co creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and author of the Success Principles. How to get from where you are to where you want to be. And I'm glad you clicked the play button on this video because I have an important message to share with you today. And it's this. No matter who you are or where you're at, you can change your life for the better. Starting right now, today. It doesn't matter how old you are, doesn't matter what mistakes you've made or what setbacks you've experienced, you can take action right this very minute to start changing your life for the better and put yourself on the path to living your highest vision and creating a life that truly makes you happy. And the first action you can take is to make the commitment right now to watch this video through to the end. It'll only take about five minutes or so. And what you're about to learn could change your life forever. Okay, so you've made the commitment to watch through the end, right? Okay, good. Now, here's what I'm going to share with you today. It's nothing less than the number one secret to getting anything you want in life. You want to know what it is? Here you go. If you want to be successful, you have to take 100% responsibility for everything you experience in your life. Now, this includes the level of your achievements, the results you produce or don't produce, the quality of your relationships, the state of your health and your physical fitness, your eating income, your debts, your feelings, everything. And all of it is a direct result of your thoughts and your actions. Now that might be hard to believe at first, but it is absolutely true. And until you get it, you're never going to be as happy and as successful as you could be. Now, most of us have been conditioned to blame someone or something outside of ourselves for the parts of our life that aren't working and that we don't like. We blame our parents, we blame the government, the economy, our boss, our friends, our co workers. We blame our clients, our spouse. We blame the weather, we blame our lack of money, even our astrological chart. Anything at all that we can pin the blame on to justify why we haven't achieved what we want in life. Now, we never want to look at where the real problem is, and that is ourselves. So the truth is, if you want to create the life of your dreams, then you are going to have to take 100% responsibility for everything that happens in your life. Now, that means giving up all your excuses, all of your victim stories, all of the reasons why you can't and why you haven't up until now, all of your blaming of outside circumstances and all of your complaining about them. You have to give up all of these things forever. Now, this doesn't mean denying that those outside circumstances exist or that bad things in life have happened to you through no fault of your own. If someone hurt you as a child, of course that doesn't mean you were asking for it. And if the pandemic forced you to lose your job or shut down your business, it doesn't necessarily mean your actions are to blame for that either. Events happen that are beyond your control. That's the nature of life. You can't change that. But what you can control is how you respond to those events. Now, there's a powerful success formula I share with my students that I believe everyone should know. In fact, it's so important, I believe it should be taught in schools from kindergarten all the way up to postgraduate school. And that formula is E plus R equals O. In other words, the events that occur plus your response to that event equals the outcome that you get. And the one part of that equation that you can control is your response. How you respond to the events that you encounter determines the outcomes you get. And this is literally the ultimate secret to success in life. If you want to get better results, you have to change the way you're responding to whatever is happening in your life. And the good news is this. That's something you can start doing today, right this very minute, you can choose to respond differently to things. No matter how old you are, how young you are, what your life looks like, you can make the choice to do something different. You have that power, and the truth is, you've always had it. You have the power to change your thoughts, which includes your beliefs, your attitudes, and the stories you tell yourself. You can change your behavior and you can show up in the world in a new and different way so you can get the results that you want in life. Now, it may be true that for whatever reason, perhaps ignorance, a lack of awareness, fear, maybe needing to be right, the need to feel safe. Up until now, maybe you've chosen not to exercise that power. But it doesn't really matter why. The past is the past. You can't change it. But what you can change and what you can do is from this point on is choose. Because I can't stress this enough, it is a choice to begin acting as if you're 100% responsible for everything you're experiencing. So if something doesn't turn out as planned from this point forward, instead of shaking your fist at the universe and saying, why did this happen to me? You now ask yourself, how did I create that result? What were my thoughts that created this? What were my beliefs? What did I say or not say that I should have said? What did I do or not do that created this outcome? And then ask yourself, what do I need to do differently next time to get the result I want? And I guarantee that if you start thinking and acting as if you're 100% responsible for what you're experiencing in your life, you will become responsible for your life. And that will give you a new level of control over your circumstances that you would not believe. And suddenly you'll find that the people and events in your life no longer have the power to control you. What they say and do will no longer affect you because you will understand that you are the captain of your own destiny, that you can steer your life in any direction you want. Now, to help with this, I'd like to give you a set of questions you can regularly ask yourself that will help you do just that. And I'll take you through a quick exercise with these questions now. But I also encourage you to write these questions down and take time later today or tomorrow, maybe go through them again, a little more depth. You'll have time to deeply contemplate the answers. Now, one of my trainers does this for herself as a monthly exercise. So, first, I'd like you to think of a difficult or troubling experience that's happening in your life right now. It could be a relationship you're struggling with, could be a physical problem you're having, or maybe a problem at work or any area of your life. So take a few moments to think of one right now. Okay? I'm going to assume you have one. Now, if you don't, you can always stop the video, think of one, start it again. But here's the deal. Before you go on, let me demonstrate how this process works with the situation from my own life. So the first question is, what is a difficult or troubling situation in my life? Well, I feel overwhelmed with too many emails in my inbox, more than 2,000 right now, and too many unfinished items on my to do list. Now, the next question is, how am I directly or indirectly creating this situation, or am I allowing it to happen? You know, and the truth is, whenever I buy anything online, I forget to use this email address I set up just for orders And I end up with my normal email address. I end up getting marketing mails from them in the future in my main inbox. And I don't take the time to unsubscribe from them and just delete them because I'm in a hurry. I don't ask my assistant to help with the cleanup. So that's what I'm doing to keep it going. Now the next question is, what am I pretending not to know? And what I pretend is, it's not going to ever get better if I don't take massive action to clean this up. Now, what's the payoff I get for keeping it like it is? Well, I think I'm saving time by not doing it, just rushing through my emails that somehow I'm going to go back and read a lot of newsletters and things that are in the queue that have piled up sometimes are a month or two old. Also, I get to be the nice guy and avoid the discomfort I might feel asking my assistant to help take on such a huge unfun task when she has so many other things that are important for her to do. Now, the next question is, what would I rather be experiencing? Well, I'd rather be experiencing a lack of overwhelm and feeling I have everything under control, have less stress, more peace, more space in my life. Now, what actions will I take to create that? I'm going to ask my assistant to work with me for up to 30 minutes a day to clean this up and go through a merciless unsubscribe campaign. And finally, when will I take that action? Now, for me, I'm going to do that right now because she's actually over here in the room with me as we're filming this, so she's heard me say this, but I want you to make a time to commit to taking that action so you do that before the deadline sets. So today I'm going to say by 5pm I'll ask Veronica to do this work with me. Okay. Now I'm going to walk you through it, and I'm going to pause after each question. So think about what's happening with the situation and ask yourself the question, how am I directly or indirectly creating this situation? Or am I allowing it to happen? Good. Then the next question is, what am I pretending not to know? Great. The next question is, what? What's the payoff I get for keeping it like it is? And realize there's always some payoff, some thing we're avoiding, some discomfort, some other, you know, thing that's happening. So just look deeply. What's the payoff for keeping it like it is with the piano? Okay, the next question is what would I rather be experiencing? Which is pretty much the opposite of whatever the difficult or troubling experience is. What would I rather be experiencing? Answer that to yourself. The next question is, what action or actions will I take to create that experience of what I'd rather be experiencing? And finally, by when will I take that action? Make sure you give yourself a clear deadline and commit to taking that action before that deadline hits. So write down when will you take that action by? Okay, so one of the things that's really valuable is if you commit to someone else by when you'll take that action. Making that public declaration puts your butt on the line, as it were. It helps you get there. Now here's the deal. You've just learned about 100% responsibility and what it's going to take to change your life for the better and have given you a tool that you can use to do that. So you look at the problem and then you figure out how to that you're going to, you know, how you're causing or contributing that problem. Then you figure out what you've got to do differently to get different results. Then you commit to taking that action. That's something you can start to do right now, today. No matter how old or young you are or whatever you are in your life doesn't matter. This is your now new tool. All right, well, that's it for today and thanks for watching. Really appreciate you tuning in. And now what I'd love for you to do is to share the action you'll commit to taking to make your life better in the comments below. I love being inspired by your courage and your commitment to improvement. And if you found this video helpful, make sure you like it. Share it with a friend who may need it. And please subscribe to this channel for more videos like this one. And if you'd like some additional tools and videos on how to change your life for the better, be sure to check out the resource page on my website@jackcampfield.com you're going to find a lot of great stuff there. And again, thanks for watching and have a great rest of your day.