Podcast Episode #1 | Stepping Into the Unknown: The Power of Embracing Change

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Welcome to the first episode of the Jack Canfield Podcast. I'm your host, Jack Canfield, and I'm thrilled to have you join me on this exciting new adventure. Now, you might know me from my having created and co authored the best selling Chicken Soup for the Soul book series. Or perhaps from my book the Success Principles, how to get from where you are to where you want to be. Or maybe as a featured teacher in the book and the movie the Secret. And for the past 40 years my mission has been to inspire people to firmly believe that they can accomplish anything they set their minds to and then to empower them with the information, the skills and the tools they need to make those dreams come true. It doesn't matter who you are or where you're starting out from. I know from having worked with millions of people around the world you have the ability to achieve pretty much any goal you set for yourself. And in this podcast series, I'm going to be doing two things to help you do that. First, I'm going to be sharing with you both timeless and universal, as well as cutting edge breakthrough principles and practices that high achievers and successful people in every field of endeavor use to create breakthrough results in all areas of our lives, both personal and professional, including how to create financial abundance, business and career success, improved athletic performance, relationship fulfillment both in your family and with your friends, and also how to create greater levels of true happiness, true joy, love and inner peace. Now, most of the time I'll have a guest, some of who you may have heard about but not had access to, and some who are my friends and colleagues of mine that you might not have heard of but who have really valuable insights and tools that can take you and your life to the next level. And now sometimes I'll be talking with best selling authors like Marci Schimoff and Joe Vitale and thought leaders like Dr. Joe Dispenza who have created breakthroughs in our understanding of how to make your journey through life easier with more joy and less struggle and less pain. Sometimes I'll be talking with spiritual teachers like Michael Bernard Beckwith who you may have seen in the movie the Secret, Hale Dwoskin who created the Sedona Method, Coote Blackson talking about the magic of letting go and surrendering, or Zen crier to Bruuck on how to access trust and follow your inner guidance students. I'll also be talking with some of the world's master transformational teachers like Mary Morrissey and Dr. John Martini and Lisa Nichols about their latest breakthroughs and Ideas for living an exciting life. I'm also going to have guests like Anita Moorjani, whose near death experience totally transformed her life. And there's so much wisdom to be gained from people who've experienced life after death and return to tell us the wisdom that they've learned. And sometimes I'll be talking with someone like Lynn Twist or with Marianne Williamson about both the challenges and the rewards of living a life as an activist committed to service. And other times I'll be talking with someone like June Ryan, who's a living example of an ordinary person who has achieved extraordinary success by actively applying the principles success that have formed the basis of my work for the past 40 years, so that you can see what is possible when you make a commitment to do this work. Now, June, for example, was the first enlisted woman to rise to the rank of rear admiral in the Coast Guard. She didn't graduate from the Coast Guard Academy. She went to a community college and then to a state university. College and university. And she just enrolled and she enlisted and she became a rear admiral. Hadn't happened before. And then she was the first woman to serve as a military advisor to the Secretary of Homeland Security, and then only the third woman to serve as a military aide to the President, President of the United States. You may have heard of this thing called the football, which is a briefcase that someone carries which has got all the nuclear codes and all this kind of stuff in it that's always with the President, Someone's always carrying it. She got to be that person. And she credits all of that to a decision she made early in her career to apply what we call the E plus R equals O principle, which I teach and have written about in my book, the Success Principles. E plus R equals okay stands for event plus response equals outcome, meaning that everything you're currently experiencing in your life is the outcome or the result of how you responded to an earlier event. And I am really eager to hear you hear Jern's story and then apply.

That life changing principle of your life.

Because she had early in her career.

A mistake that she made, which normally.

Would end your career in a Coast Guard. But she listened to a tape that.

I put together, if you can go back to cassette tapes in her car. And she heard about E plus R equals O. And she realized it wasn't this event.

That had happened that was going to.

Determine the rest of her life, but how she responded to that event. And so she changed her response from one of thinking her career was over to some other things which you'll learn about when you hear her speaking that changed her life and will change yours when you learn about it. Now, sometimes the podcast will just be me unpacking a topic like how to.

Discover your true life purpose, or how.

To build your self confidence, or how to effectively use the power of visualization.

How to access the power of your.

Subconscious mind, or how to identify, release and replace the unconscious limiting beliefs that are keeping you stuck, things you don't even know about, that you decided when you were really young that are below the threshold of consciousness, that if you were to release them, actually can allow your life to just take off in a way that blow your mind. So I'm going to be sharing with you that as well. And I want this podcast to be something that addresses your concerns and meets your needs as well as mine and what I think they are. So I'll always be open to hearing from you about what you want to know about, what you want to know more about, who you'd like me to interview, who you'd like to hear from. So we'll have a way to have you share that with us so that we can answer those questions and address the topics that are meaningful for you. Now, my goal is to always have you walk away informed, inspired, motivated, and ready to implement something that you've learned. My model of learning, of growth, has always been what so what now? What? What have I just learned from what I've heard? What does it mean to me in my life and now what am I going to do to apply it to my life? Because without that, it's just more information. And I often tease people to take lots of notes and you put them on a shelf and you end up with shelf esteem. But you don't have your life changed at all. So we want to make sure that these podcasts actually have an impact to help you get more of what you want in life. So as I said, I want this to be an interactive experience. So I'll also be doing these solo episodes by myself where I'll answer your questions, I'll discuss a topic that you suggest, or I'll do a deep dive into one of the success principles that I teach so you can apply it to your life. I want to bring you the information that you want to know and I.

Want your input and I want your insight.

So you can go to jackcampfieldpodcast.com and there you'll be able to share your thoughts, your questions, your ideas for future people, and topics that you'd like me to explore in Future episodes. Now, since this is our inaugural podcast, I'd like to start by talking today about stepping into the unknown, the power of embracing change and new beginnings. Because we're both doing that. You're here because you've got something you want to do that you haven't done yet, something you want to experience, you haven't experienced yet. Something you want to be, you haven't been yet, Something you want to perhaps own, that you don't own yet. You want more. More of joy, more success, more achievement, more impact. But that requires stepping into the unknown. I always tell people, if what you were currently doing would get you what you want, you'd already have it. So we've got to step in to do new things, things that are uncomfortable. You know, I always ask people to fold their hands. Go ahead and do that with me for a moment.

Fold your hands just like this.

Notice which thumb is on top. Very good. Now, what I want you to do is unfold your hands and move the hands so your other thumbs on top. Don't just move your thumbs, but move all the fingers so your thumbs. The other thumbs are naturally on top.

How does that feel?

And every time I've done this with live audiences, they say it feels uncomfortable, it feels awkward, it feels weird, it feels strange, it feels wrong. And then I'll ask, what does your body want to do? And the answer, I get over it. I'm sure it's yours as well, is.

I want to go back to the way it was, because that's what's comfortable.

So go back to the way it.

Was, the original position.

And this is why most people never get what they want in life. They stay in their comfort zone. They stay doing the things they've doing over and over and over. They're familiar. One of my friends doesn't call it a comfort zone. She calls it a zone of familiarity. You're familiar with it, but keep doing the same things, you're going to keep getting the same outcome. Two plus two is always going to equal four. So we've got to change that second number called two, to three or four to get a number called four, five, or six, which is more of what we want. So that's why I want to talk about stepping into the unknown, the power of embracing change and new beginnings. So this is a new beginning with you for this podcast. It's a new beginning for me doing the podcast. Now, you've probably heard the quote that the only thing that's permanent in life is change. Kind of a conundrum. The only thing is permanent is it doesn't change, it's change. But the truth is, it is true that change always happens, and no one can escape the inevitability of change. It's inevitable, whether it's personal growth. You make a choice to grow. It could be a change in your circumstances, could be the evolution of technology, like the recent advent and proliferation of AI, of the constantly shifting dynamics of the world, like the COVID pandemic, the impact of climate change, the mass migrations that are occurring in the world.

Because of that, there's massive extinctions that.

Are occurring, species that are going out as the rainforest is being eaten up and so forth. We have overpopulation, we have financial instability and political instability that we see in the world everywhere.

Just take AI for instance.

Just yesterday, my stepdaughter, who's 28, came into the kitchen and she shared with me her concern as an artist that AI was now producing better pictures and faster than she could do it. And she showed me some pictures of.

Her Pixart app that she had created.

Of her dog in various settings and various art styles that were I that were truly amazing. I mean, it would have taken her days and days to even think of.

The idea of what came up in a minute and then actually render it.

And so then she started talking about her father, who's also an artist, who.

Had recently lost some work he had.

Illustrating a children's book. He was supposed to work on some posters.

All that got taken over by AI.

That someone could do on their own. He lost that job. So basically, AI is having an impact on us. And earlier yesterday, one of our Campfield coaches told me that during a staff meeting, we had how she was generating amazing marketing copy in 1/5 the time it would have taken her to do.

It in a traditional way.

She was just putting in what her skills were, the audience she wanted to.

Work with, what, where they would live, what kind of income they would have, her background, the work she loves, et cetera. She put all that in there and.

Said, you know, create me a brochure. And sure enough, it spit it out, like, in minutes. Now, she had to do a little bit of tweaking, but that would have taken days of work to do on her own. So change is happening all the time.

In every area of her life. It's constant, and it's often prompting us.

Willingly or unwilling, to step into the unknown, to try something new, to push.

Yourself and to grow and to adapt in unexpected ways.

And by the way, you know, when they talk about Evolution.

Darwin didn't say it was the survival.

Of the fittest, the strongest.

That's what we learned in school. At least I did biology. And when we studied all that, he said, it's the person, it's the animals and the things. It's the survival of that which is the fit in this, that which adapts the best. It's that which can adapt to the changes. The dinosaurs could not adapt to the changes that happen when the meteorites hit the Earth. The polar bears may not survive adapting to what's happening with the climate right now, with all the ice caps melting and the, you know, all of that kind of thing. So it's our ability to adapt to the world as it changes that gives us the ability to succeed and to.

Live the life we want.

So, as I said, change is one thing you cannot escape no matter how hard you try. And yet it's often a thing that you find yourself resisting the most. Many of us are afraid of change because it threatens the familiar. It throws you out of your comfort zone and challenges you to have to confront uncertainties in your life. Most of us don't like uncertainty. We want certainty. You know, we'd like to have that.

Millions of dollars in our retirement fund.

So we're certain that we'll have money.

To live on when we're older.

We want to be certain that this book's going to sell, that people like us, that the sales technique is going to work, and so forth. So life is full of uncertainties, as you've probably noticed. So I invite you to take a moment right now and think about one or more times when you had the experience of change being thrust upon you. You know, you're going along fine, everything seems great, then all of a sudden you're completely blindsided. Maybe by the loss of a job.

Maybe by your spouse who tells you they want a divorce.

Maybe by the death of someone you love, or worse yet, by their suicide, maybe by an unwanted pregnancy or a major injury that knocks you off your feet. Or maybe by a cancer diagnosis a friend of mine just got a few days ago. Or maybe by a natural disaster like a flood or a fire that destroys your house. Or maybe by some person or group who decides to attack you on social media, or maybe your children on social media, or even go so far as to try to cancel you. You know, we live in this cancel culture now. And here's the thing. Everything I just mentioned is something that actually happened to close friends of mine just in the last couple of years. So these are very Real things, they do happen. And so, as you can see, change can come in many forms. Can be a result of external circumstances that are thrust upon you that you were least expecting. Or it can also be the result of a conscious decision you make when you become dissatisfied with your status quo or some aspect of your life that you find uncomfortable or unfulfilling and you desire something more fulfilling. Or maybe you feel yourself being called to let go of your current life and step into a whole new chapter. Maybe called by your inner guidance or perhaps called by God or a higher power. I just had a friend experience that recently. In either case, change is asking you to step into the unknown, to face this uncertainty, to answer the question, what's next? What do I do next? Or sometimes, what do I need to not do next? What do I need to let go of?

Which can even be more unsettling.

So I want to share with you a couple principles that I think could help you embrace uncertainty and also move through change with a little more grace, a little more ease. Remember, change is inevitable. Challenges are going to happen. Life always goes on. It occurs. And remember this by the way. You have survived everything that ever happened to you. Every change has ever occurred, every challenge you've had, every heartache, every, you know, obstacle, you face it, you survived it.

You would not be here listening to.

This if you hadn't. You have the ability to do this. You've done it before. Now, one of the core success principles I teach is called Embrace Change. You can read about it in my book, the Success Principles, if you want to go deeper. But while embracing change is the way to go, it's. It can feel scary. As I said, it requires you to step out of your comfort zone, to let go of what's familiar and secure, and to venture out into previous uncharted territory challenges you, to comfort your, confront your fears, to push you out of your boundaries, and to step into the unknown. But here's the thing. It's in the unknown, out past your comfort zone, that your greatest opportunities for growth and transformation, that's where they are, that's where they live. And transformation is always available to us. When you're willing to let go of.

The known and step into the unknown.

You can open yourself up to whole new worlds of possibilities. And also you're going to discover more of the vast potential that exists inside of you. So there's all these other possibilities in the world, but there's also this infinite possibilities inside of you. So let's talk about some of the things you can do when you're faced with change and your life feels uncertain. So I want to share with you some of the ways you can gain clarity and feeling of certainty in these insecure times of change. Now, the first is to remember this fundamental principle every. And this is so fundamental, so I.

Can'T even say it. So fundamental.

Everything that ever happens in your life is for you, not against you. Now, that's a challenging new concept. It's a new paradigm for a lot of you.

Think about that.

I'm going to repeat it. Everything that's ever happened in your life was for you, not against you. Everything that's happening in your life is for you, not against you. And everything that will happen is for you, not against you. Not doesn't always feel like that, you know, someone embezzles money from your company, someone quits and steals your, you know, your secrets, someone you know goes after you on social media, whatever. However, that challenge, however challenging it is, is ultimately for your benefit. It's happening for you, not to you. And as I said, this is a paradigm shift. But when you start to realize your life and you live your life for this position, the quality of your life will experience change. Think about this. It's happening for your growth. You have to develop new qualities. You have to develop new strengths. You may need to reach out to new people. It's going to force you. If you cooperate with, operate with it and don't just like, you know, go become a drug addict or drink or go isolate yourself and become super depressed or whatever, but you engage with it. You realize this is an opportunity, then you're going to end up coming out of that stronger. You know, we see movies where we talk about the dark night of the soul. Someone had to go through the dark night of the soul, go through that challenge that they had to come out the other side, whether it's Luke Skywalker in Star wars or, you know, Rocky in the movie Rocky, whatever, there's always this challenge. And. But because you take that challenge and you go through it and you confront it and you persist through it, you develop these strengths. So one of the first things I want you to do when you're faced with change is to make the choice, to embrace it with a positive mindset. Make the choice. And it is a choice. It's a mental decision to view the change as an opportunity, an opportunity for growth, an opportunity to become more resourceful, more skillful, rather than seeing changes and insurmountable obstacle. Now, this might mean reframing your thoughts and focusing on the potential benefits of the situation. So a powerful question to ask yourself is, what's the opportunity that this is? What's the opportunity that this is? Let yourself sit in that question, meditate on it, brainstorm it with your family, with your friends, with your work team. You know, Napoleon Hill, the author of Think and Grow Rich, one of the premier books I read when I was younger, that changed my life, and many people consider it the bible of success, said every negative event, every failure, every setback, every heartache has within it the seed of an equal or greater benefit. And he also added, most people forget this part, but you have to look for it and then you have to water it. So you have to look for it.

And then you have to water it.

So change provides you with this opportunity to develop new skills, like asking for support or saying no more. You know, unburdening yourself of too many overwhelming commitments you've made and running the risk of people's disapproval. When you do that, it's going to help you develop new strengths like courage and perseverance or self discipline and maybe build new networks of support. For example, when the pandemic hit us, our company had to develop online training programs and coaching programs. We had to develop more technology skills and new partnerships with companies like Sage, who had this broadcast studio in North Carolina that allowed us to go into the studio where they have like, you know, 10 or 12 or 14 huge screen TVs, and I can see all 800 people up on the screen and walk up to them and, you know, say, joe, unmute yourself on group number two over here. And then all of a sudden, I'm talking to Joe in Singapore. And it allowed us to break people into small groups. And, you know, we couldn't do that on zoom. Like, we had that many people, not something you do sitting in front of your desktop computer. We had to learn a whole new way of interacting with people. But the good news was, and is that we're able to reach more people with our work, as people could join us from all over the world without the expense of international travel, of hotel rooms for a week and restaurant meals and all that kind of stuff. So again, every. Everything that seems like an obstacle, a challenge, a setback, is an opportunity.

An opportunity for you to get stronger, to grow, to develop, to evolve if you embrace it. So if you see it that way and go, oh, this is for me, not against me.

Let's look and see what I can learn from this.

What can I develop from this? What am I being asked to bring forward from inside me.

Now the other thing is to take.

100% responsibility when you're going through change. Now you don't get to determine all.

Of the events in your life like we just talked about.

They can come out of nowhere. We're all dealt a lot of different hands.

Some of us are born into poverty.

Some of us are born into middle class, some of us are born wealthy. Some of us have life changing events. You know, we get hit by a.

Car, maybe we lose the use of.

Our legs and so forth, but we.

All get to choose how to respond.

To what has been dealt to you.

The hand you dealt doesn't mean you can't still create a great life. So I want to go back and.

Revisit this concept of e r equals o for a minute.

Everything you're experiencing right now is a.

Result of how you responded to an earlier event. Think about that. Everything you're experiencing is how you responded.

To an earlier event.

Maybe someone said, you know, you should.

Take that class on computer programming.

And you did.

And all of a sudden you're in this world.

Now you can play with AI. You're, you're, you're, you're technically savvy. Maybe you didn't take that class and now you can't do that. You know, when I was going to school, you only learned to type if you were going to be a secretary. So I didn't learn to type. I still type with two fingers on each hand. And so the reality is that had I learned to type, I would be a lot better off. I could still teach myself to do it. I tried that for a while and went back to my two finger typing. But I've written over 200 books, so it all works. But the point being, we all have these opportunities and we say no to some, yes.

To some.

It affects us. You have 3 responses to any event in your life. One is the thoughts you think. The second is the images you bring up in your head as a result of it.

The third are things you do, things.

You say or do, or things you.

Don'T say or do.

You hold back, you don't communicate. And so if you want your life to be different. I talked earlier about two plus two will always equal four. But sometimes the world comes along and.

It does a one. You know, all of a sudden new.

Technology takes your job away or makes it more difficult or the pandemic happens. Now you got zero plus two. You're doing what you used to do. The world's totally different. You're not getting Four anymore. You're not making as much money as you made me for.

You're not as happy, you're not as fulfilled.

And it's because you didn't change your response to keep the number up at four. You got to learn new things, new skills, new ways of being, new ways of communicating, new ways, you know, etc. And again, that's going to take you out of your comfort zone. So you've got to be willing to be uncomfortable. There was a study done recently at Paradigm Pepperdine University in Malibu, where they found that the people that were most successful, entrepreneurs, business people, people in athletics, et cetera, were the people who are most willing to be uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable the first time you give a sales presentation. It's uncomfortable the first time you ask.

Someone out for a date.

It's uncomfortable to put your ideas on paper or in the computer and put them out as a book or a podcast or a webinar or an ebook or whatever. And so you have to be willing to risk that discomfort and experience that discomfort. And here's the cool thing. Think back to when you first learned.

To drive a car.

Assuming you did. That first hour in that car was pretty uncomfortable. Especially, like me. I had to learn with a stick shift car, you know, I'm pushing the clutch and the gas and the brake, and I'm not letting the breakout with putting the gas right and pushing the clutch in at the same time and the car's jerking and so forth, and, you know. But after I did it for a couple of months, I could drive with one hand, put my arm around my girlfriend over here, you know, double clutch the car, all kinds of things, because I practiced it. First time I gave a talk, it was uncomfortable. Then it got a little more comfortable. Then it got more comfortable. And now I talk to audiences of 10,000 people live and on the Internet. And so had I started with 10,000 people, I probably would have froze up. But the point is, you can. You can step into your new. Your new step out of the comfort zone doesn't have to be huge leaps. You know, it could be baby steps, but you want to keep growing. You know, Bob Dylan said, if you're not busy growing, you're busy dying. And I think that's true. There's no stasis in universe. It's either growing or dying. So you get to choose your responses, what I've done, what I'm going to be sharing with you, and what the people that are going to be on our podcast are going to be sharing with you are they have studied the responses of successful people. Either they were the successful person, and we'll have people like that that have done amazing things, have discovered those responses in themselves. And then there are people who've studied success, people like Raphael Bad Ziag, who wrote a book called the Billion Dollar secret, who interviewed 21 billionaires. I'll have him on. And he found out there was a sequence of things, of attitudes, of belief systems, of behaviors that billionaires do. They were common to all of them. And we can learn those new set of responses. They're learnable. So anyway, E plus R equals O. And this is going to be about the responses of successful, happy, spiritually fulfilled, relationally fulfilled, healthy people. And you can learn those responses as well. Now, another thing you could do when you're faced with change or the prospect of a coming change is to intentionally learn new skills. These are new Rs as well, obviously new responses. And if the change you're experiencing involves moving into unfamiliar territory, take the time to consider what skills or knowledge might help you to navigate your new situation or your new environment. This could be learning a new software program for a new job or just to deal more effectively with a changing world, like with AI we talked about. For example, I just signed up for a course for entrepreneurs and executives to learn how to use AI to stay in a creative state of flow and.

Then also how to develop an AI.

Virtual assistant to handle the non essential.

Parts of my job.

Now it could be learning a new.

Communication skill that you need to learn.

To help you in a relationship with.

Your wife, your spouse, your children, you know.

For example, when I learned about the.

Book the Five Love Languages by Gary.

Chapman and started applying the right love language to the people closest to me, my wife, and my key employees, I experienced major breakthroughs in our relationships. My love language is nurturing touch. So I feel loved the most When.

I'm being touched, I'm being hugged, when.

I'm holding hands, when I'm getting massage, and so on. And my wife Inga's love language is quality time, which I hadn't known before.

So being hugged is not a big deal at all to her. In fact, I had a teacher how to hug me, so I was satisfied. Like honey, count to 20 before you let go. Because I like a long nurturing hug. It just wasn't part of her repertoire because it wasn't her love language.

And her love language being quality time.

She needs to be able to talk and have me listen with undivided attention until she's finished and feels completely heard. And when she receives that, she feels loved. So learning to speak her language, like.

Learning to speak French instead of me.

Speaking English, we were able to connect more. And she does the same thing with me now. When I had young children for the first time, which was certainly a major change for not having children. Those of you who've experienced that, you know what I mean. Reading and practicing something called reflective listening.

That I learned from the book how.

To talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk. That was a real game changer for me and my wife. So again, learning new skills can be really important. Another important success principle that I write about, teach about is called commit to can I c a n I Constant.

And never ending improvement.

And when you're constantly working on improving yourself and your skills so that you'll be better prepared when faced with uncertainty, you're going to be able to show up with more confidence and more competence at the same time and be able to produce more of the results you want. I mentioned the book the Billionaire Secret.

And what we found in that or what, what, what Raphael found. I wrote the forward for his book after he found it. But what he found was that billionaires are all readers.

Billionaires. I was surprised by this too. They all meditate.

You know, 81 year old guy in China makes most windshields for cars in.

The world, meditates every day, exercises every day, reads every day.

So again, there are, there are habits that we can develop that are habits of success. Now I grew up in West Virginia.

It's a coal mining state, steel mill state. And I would have to say people.

Down there were slow to respond to the clear change that they saw coming.

Or maybe they didn't want to see it, they resisted it, which was the.

World was moving away from fossil fuels.

And instead of learning new skills when.

The coal mines are going to shut down or did shut down, how to build new businesses, how to attract new.

Investment capital, they resisted it.

They're still resisting it today with, with Joe Manchin as a senator from down there and a lot of them complaining about and attacking the green energy initiatives. And obviously you know, we're not going to get there overnight.

There's a lot of change that needs.

To happen, a lot of new education and support.

But, but when you resist change and you don't get the new R's and.

You keep doing the same old thing.

That doesn't match the new event called.

We'Re living in a different world, then you get stuck and there's A lot.

Of pain that happens as a result of that.

So I've seen that firsthand in the state I grew up in. Now, another thing I found invaluable in my own life, in the life of.

My students and clients during times of change, is to up level your self care.

Self care, so important.

What often happens when we get stressed out with change is we end up.

Doing things that are less good. We start drinking more, we start eating to numb out our pain, our anxiety, we don't get enough sleep, we don't.

Exercise the way we should, et cetera.

So self care includes a number of things.

And I don't expect you to do.

All of these at once. But you know, start thinking about taking better care of yourself and just start with little baby steps. Pick one and do it. Eating healthier is one thing. Getting more sleep. I'm not going to bed now. I'm going to bed about a half.

Hour earlier than I used to go to bed. Drinking more water, I'm exercising more. You can engage in any kind of.

Movement, whether it's walking, cycling, swimming, doing cardio work, resistance training, getting massages is also good.

Setting boundaries and saying no more so you actually have time to take care of yourself. Delegating more, asking for help, meditating, doing breathing exercises, practicing mindfulness, doing yoga.

And this one is really important. Doing things you love to do, things.

That are fun, things that you just get thrilled to do.

My wife and I play ping pong, we play Scrabble. We're probably going to pick up pickleball.

I'm putting a bocce ball court into my.

I have a three acre piece of.

Property and we used to have horses and the last horse died and we.

Decided we're not gonna do it anymore.

But I have this corral and we're gonna put in a bocce ball court because I love. I was in France and we were.

Playing that, that, this fellow where we.

Stayed, this guest, some, some friends of ours. And so I'm doing just more things I love to do and more things that make you laugh. For instance, it's the only thing I listen to on Sirius XM Radio now are the five comedy channels. And instead of focusing on the negative news, I used to listen to CNN and MSNBC and Fox News and all of that, which was just negative, negative, negative, negative news. It wasn't making me happy. So we know doing things that you love to do and you're good at or doing things you love to do and getting better at them, like playing the guitar. Learning to play the piano. These are all things that are going to help you with self nurturing. As I said, you're not going to do all of these things at once, but start to integrate them into your life. And the best time to start anything is now. You know, they always say, when was the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago, you could get the shade of it now. When's the second best time now? So whether you're in the middle of a big change or not, just lean into starting to think about what can I do to create some change in the area of self nurturing. One of the things I teach is called the hour of power.

Doesn't have to be an hour, it could be the half hour of power. But I divide an hour up in the morning, 20 minutes of meditation. 20 minutes. And in that meditation I include my affirmations, my visualization and a gratitude exercise for a few moments, be grateful for the things that I have in my life. And 20 minutes of reading something uplifting and not a novel, but something like a self help book, a spiritual book, a psychological book. And 20 minutes of vigorous exercise, which usually turns into longer that now because I'm, I'm enjoying it more the more I do it. And as I said in the Billion Dollar Secret found that the billionaires were doing that in their life. Now this has become a big focus of my life. During the pandemic, I sat in front of my computer way too long. Someone once said, during a pandemic you either became a drunk, a chunk or a hunk. I became the chunk. I got out of shape. I'm doing much better now. I've lost. I went from 236 to 222. I want to get down to 195. So I've been losing about a pound and a half a week. So again, find that thing that's going to be enjoyable for you to do. And if you're going to exercise, do something enjoyable. I found for me, if I exercise with my wife, it's more fun. If I go running with someone, it's more fun if I play a sport with someone. Like I used to play racquetball after work every day. That was a fun. I couldn't wait to go there. Different than maybe going out for a run all by yourself. Now another thing I've been doing is at the end of my shower, I turn it to the absolute coldest it could be. And I sing the Star Spangled Banner twice, which gives me the length of time I want to Be sitting there shaking and freezing. But what it does, it releases something called shock proteins in your body and it wakes you up on a very, very high level and gets you in a very stimulated space. So there's things like that. You can type in the word wim, hof, WM and then the last name H O F F. You can learn more about that. He's a guy that teaches about that, but. And then finally, another thing you could do to nurture yourself during change is find ways to laugh. I mentioned I'm listening to a lot of comedy. My daughter is now doing stand up comedy. Someone very shy. I was surprised. So I listened to at least 15 minutes. If I'm not in my car, which I'm not in every day, I'll turn on YouTube and I'll just find some comedian, Dave Chappelle, John Panette, you know, whoever it might be, and I just laugh for 15 minutes. And that's something you can do as well. I know one last thing about this and that's stay connected. Times of change, it's easy to withdraw and isolate yourself. However, it's really important to stay connected and find support. You know, reach out to your friends, reach out to family, join support groups.

You know, this could mean talking about.

Your experiences and your feelings with your friends and your family and really being honest and open about what's going on with you. Seeking advice from mentors, working with a coach, joining or creating a mastermind group, joining programs with like minded people or professional associations like bni, Business Network International or local meetup groups that you can join, or even reaching out if you need to, to professionals like a psychologist or psychiatrist if you're really struggling. And studies have shown that social connection leads to improved mental well being, stronger immune systems, better heart health and a.

Greater sense of purpose.

And as you're going through the pandemic, which you are having a stronger immune system is really important. Yet we were all told to hunker down at home, many of us alone. So again, reaching out, even on social media, connecting continually with people, really, really important. It's also shown to release something in your body when you're connecting with people called oxytocin, which can lead to decreased stress and anxiety, literally, biologically. And the opposite has also been studied. For example, low social interaction has been shown to be detrimental to your health.

Actually similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

So if you spend a day alone feeling alone, you might as well smoked.

A pack of cigarettes that day. It's also more harmful than not exercising.

And twice as harmful as being obese, which is also not a great thing to be. But this loneliness is a huge pandemic.

If you will, in our culture. So have the courage to reach out. All right, so what I want you to do right now is take a moment and as you reflect back on all the things I've just been sharing.

With you, what comes to top of mind about one thing that you could.

Do to embrace a change or changes that you're facing right now? Can you reframe it in your mind.

And see it as an opportunity and reflect on what that opportunity might be?

Is it to reach out to someone and ask for advice, counselor help, maybe.

Someone you've been thinking about, but you.

Just haven't picked up the phone or reached out to them? Is it to increase your self care by maybe watching less TV and getting more sleep, exercising more, eating better, drinking less alcohol, scheduling more fun or more time with friends, saying no to someone? So I want to invite you to pick one thing that you'd be willing to do starting today, before you go to bed, wherever you are, whatever time.

Of day it is, to put one.

Of these ideas into action. Just taking one micro baby step, like committing to 10 minutes of meditation every morning, or maybe doing it right now after this podcast is over, going to bed 30 minutes earlier, going on a 20 minute walk after dinner. But choose something. Remember we said what. So what now what? This is the now what portion of this. All right, as we come to the.

End of this first episode, I want to mention again just why I'm starting this podcast. You know, it was in this spirit of embracing change and stepping into the unknown that I decided to launch this new platform. And for the past five decades, I've been helping people through writing books, conducting live seminars and trainings and workshops, and creating online courses. But the world has changed. And I've also changed. And I thought it was time for me to embrace this new medium of communication called podcasts. This is one of the ways that I'm choosing to connect with all of you more personally, more authentically, more vulnerably about my life, my struggles, what I'm working with, what I'm doing, what's working for me, what hasn't worked for me. And also an opportunity to have meaningful conversations with people that I know and love, who have interesting and important messages to share that can help you. And also with new people that I've always wanted to meet and talk about their work with them. So in the episodes to come, we'll be delving into many more aspects of how to create and sustain a happy and fulfilling life, how to maximize and experience the expression of your full potential, and how to successfully navigate this ever changing, ever evolving world. And I'm delighted that you've joined to join me on this journey. Well, that's it for now. And if you found this episode helpful and you're looking forward to future episodes, I want to encourage you to let your friends and family know about this podcast. And if you have a moment, it'd be great if you could leave a comment or a rating or review on whatever platform you're listening to or watching this on. Your support really does make a difference as we're getting this off the ground. And if you have any feedback or questions or requests or ideas for future episodes, people you want me to interview, topics you want me to to go into, success principles you'd like me to unpack for you, just go to jackcampfieldpodcast.com to share them and I look forward to hearing from you. So stay tuned for our upcoming episodes and make sure to remember that whatever change you may be facing now or in the future is ultimately happening for you and not to you. So remember to embrace it and use some of the things you've learned today to work in harmony with it. Take good care of yourself until next time.