Why Do My Dreams Remain Elusive? | Jack Canfield

Hi, everybody. I'm Jack Canfield, and I'm here with my colleague Patty Aubrey, who's the president of the Canfield training group. In addition to being a business genius who's been with me growing our personal development business for the past 30 years, Patty's also a multiple New York Times best selling author and a great coach who coaches many of our top students. And she helps me lead all of our online and in person mastermind groups. And today we're here to talk to you about answering some of the questions that you're sending in. Welcome.

Thank you.

It's fun to have you here working with me. We haven't done this for a while.

Around the corner, but I was like, I never see you.

Well, with COVID we haven't gotten together that much. Now we're starting to do that.

It's exciting to be here. It really is. And I know today we're talking about. The question that came in for today was about someone who's having a really hard time achieving their breakthrough goal. And basically the question is, why does my breakthrough goal seem to be so difficult for me to reach? And so, you know, he says, I want to revive my stagnating business and create something even better than it was before. I'd also like to improve my health and my fitness and my relationships. But although I feel like I'm making all the right moves, I haven't made the progress I want.

Well, a couple things. Let's define breakthrough goal first. So a lot of people watching this may not know what that is. So what we teach is a breakthrough goal is something that quantum leaps your life in some area. So like, doubling your income Instead of like 10% increase or, you know, getting interviewed by Oprah would be a breakthrough goal for any author out there. Having a million Facebook followers would be a breakthrough goal. Having your own podcast, something that's going to quantum leap you. And usually we ask people to think about achieving that within one year. So that's the first thing. Second thing is, in this question, he talked about three areas of his life that he's working on simultaneously, and it's definitely possible to make progress in those areas. And then he used the phrase the progress I want to be making. Sometimes we are unrealistic in how much we want to achieve in a short time, especially if we're working on a business, working on relationships, working on our health. That's a lot. And there's a lot of research lately, you know, that shows that the more goals you're working on with a Lot of energy, especially if they're breakthrough goals that can kind of burn you out a little bit and spread your energy too thin. So I would say I would pick what's the most important one, put the most time into that second one. Now, obviously, you can get up every morning and run. You can build that into your daily routine, you can eat more healthy, etc. You can take a walk after dinner. But I find especially when you're trying to revive a quote unquote stagnating business, you know, one of the things we studied with Michael Gerber, who wrote the E. Myth, and he talked about it's important to work on your business, not in your business. And if you're someone who is the business, meaning you're a solo entrepreneur, maybe you don't have an assistant or you don't have other staff to help you, you know, and there are all kind of ways to do that, which you're a genius at helping people do. Getting virtual assistants and all that, that can be something. Or not knowing what to do, you know, so one of the things we always say is find out someone who's doing what you're doing. And I just gave my first live seminar in person with the 70 people in Dallas two days ago, got on a plane, flew somewhere and forgot how much fun it was. But one of the things I said to the. The guy that was producing, I said, before we start, I need to go to the restroom. He said, let me walk you to that. As we were walking, he started telling me all these things he was doing on YouTube and social media and how their ad spend is half and they're making twice as much money. And I thought, wow, you know, he's doing this in that arena perhaps maybe even better than we're doing it. So I said, I want to call you and get Patty on the phone with me and Russ and so forth, and we're going to ask you all the things you're doing. Is that okay with you? He said, absolutely. Said, I would teach you anything. I know. And we have a lot of people who would do that for us. So we want to reach out to people who are being successful and find out what to do. Because a lot of times we want to take it to the next level, but we don't know the how.

Absolutely. I mean, that happened for us on several levels throughout the years, from teaching self esteem in the classroom, to teaching teachers how to facilitate it, to going into corporate, to starting to write books, to build the biggest brand in self help ever. And you Were constantly reading the next thing, like, I don't want to learn anything new today. But you were always looking at the E myth or we were going to some other program, but we always took time and stepped outside of our business, off property, off whatever, use consultants and different things like that to look at. Okay, we're stuck here. How do we get to the next place? I think so many people, they get stuck because they're either burned out or they have lack of clarity and they just get frustrated. And then it feels even heavier and heavier. And then next thing you know, you're watching Netflix and now you feel really bad. So it's important to really look at those things, being a learner. And I know you've just been reading a book recently that you were talking about, kind of based on this.

Yeah, there's a book called Changeology, which I just finished reading a few days ago, and I wrote down the author's name because I want to give him credit. It's John Norcroft. I want to make sure I get that right. The book's called Changeology, and he talks about five steps to actual change. This is based on really rigorous scientific research that they've been doing in a couple different universities. And the first step in chain is what they call pre contemplation. You don't even know you're thinking about change. You just know maybe something doesn't feel quite right in your life, but you have no idea what to do about it. You're not even thinking about them. The second stage is called contemplation, where you start contemplating and thinking about, yeah, maybe I should lose weight. Yeah, maybe I should really refocus on my business and get this business going. Or maybe I should put more time into my relationship with my teenager who's going to go off to college in two years. I'm never going to probably, possibly see her again or whatever it might be. But now I'm contemplating. I haven't done anything about it yet, but I'm thinking about it. The next stage is called preparation. And preparation is when you start planning. You start studying things, you reach out to people, you find out what are the things to do and you actually create a plan. And I was thinking about that in my own life with my books that I've not been writing since the pandemic started. And I was saying I want to make sure I start finishing those books this year because I just want them off my plate. I thought, okay, what's the plan for that? I looked at my calendar for the next Three months. And I said, okay, you've got a four hour block there on that date. And I wrote in, write, book. I went through my entire calendar for the next three months and wherever this space was called, write for two hours, edit for two hours, write for three hours, write all Saturday, whatever. And now I have a plan. It's in my calendar now. The next step is to actually do it, which is the practice stage. So most people get stuck in planning, they don't ever finish the plan. You know, like we have to do a book proposal to sell a book, you know, so you have to have a proposal and a plan. The practice part is actually doing it and that's where it falls down because most people start, they don't know what to do, or they start and they stop and they don't continue, they don't keep doing it. So what are the practices that will change your business? You know, maybe it's more marketing, maybe it's spending more time asking the customers what they need, getting more feedback, you know, hiring a new person, creating new systems, you know, figuring out how to reduce costs and increase, you know, reduce your overhead. So what are those practices are going to take that business forward for this gentleman and the same thing for his health and relationship we talked about. And then the next stage is, and this is the hardest one, it's called perseverance, which means you got to persevere to actually reach the goal. Like you got to Persevere through the 30 day diet or lifestyle change, which you're very good at doing. And, and then the last part is persistence, which is interesting. This is a little bit of a nuance, a new distinction for me. A lot of people get to the end of their diet and then they start putting on their weight again or they get their business up and running and then they pull back and they'll spend as much attention and it starts going down again. You're doing your community management online and all of a sudden your numbers are up and all of a sudden you say, oh, it's great, I'll coach for a while. And numbers start going down. So the idea is you've got to keep doing all of that. And I think the thing we've learned over time is by having a coach or a mentor or an accountability partner or a mastermind group, that's what keeps you in action. And if you don't have that, most solo entrepreneurs or the person at top of the organization, which this person will be, one of those two things, without that support, you tend to fall back into your old habits. When it gets tough, you tend to pull back and then you're doing the binge watching on Netflix. You know, I saw someone, they said they've watched the entire series of Friends now three times. That's a little much, you know.

No, it's true. I always tell people, if you're going to build a house, you start with a blueprint and you have an architect and you go through it and you build it out completely. You don't say, hey, you know, builder, let's go throw up a bathroom. So you really have to plan it out. I mean, you wrote the Power of Focus. We know what that looks like. It really is true. But in today's world, what's one tip that you would give people? Because there's stuff coming at you from every angle. You know, it's not just, it's not just a fax machine anymore. It's fax machine and email and you got mail and, you know, and Twitter and Facebook and all these platforms. How do you take, take the time to stay in that zone? What are like three things that you could say are guaranteed? If you do these three things every day, you're going to get better no matter what.

Number one, visualize the outcome, Affirm the outcome, and visualize what it looks like in each of those areas that he's focusing on or you're focusing on whatever it might be. The second thing is commit to the rule of five, where we say take five actions, steps on your primary breakthrough goal and, you know, stay up till 10 o' clock at night if you have to do it, to do it. But get those things done. It's the completion of activities that produce results. And I would say finally, probably make sure you have an accountability partner or someone like that, a coach, a mentor, a mastermind group to make sure you stay in action. Those would be. If I had to narrow it down to three, three, that would be it. And if I could add a fourth one would be continually asking for feedback, both from your mentors, other people that are successful, and also your, your clients, whatever they are in your business that will make sure you keep being relevant to what's needed. That's really, really important.

And, and share your vision with everyone you know.

Yeah, let people, let people know what your goal is for sure. I would say just two more things to bring this to a close. One is if you're doing all of that and you're still not getting there, there's probably some limiting belief you have. It's stopping you from doing Some of the things you need to do, you know, I don't have enough money. I can't afford it. There's nobody available in my community to be an assistant. You know, I tried three times and they all failed. You know, I'm going to give it up. There's something in there, and it could be from your childhood that's stopping you from being successful. You know, we've had people that literally had an experience where they bought home a paycheck more than their dad, and their dad got all upset and felt bad about it. And I don't ever want to hurt my father. So I made a decision when he was 23 or 24. I never want to hurt my father again. Now at 40, he was not making money. When we cleared that belief that he made when he was younger, he five times his income in one year. So those beliefs circular. And then sometimes there's just fear, fear of success, fear of doing the things I need to do. And that's where you have to use things like eft tapping, feel the fear and do it anyway and keep moving forward. But if you do all of that and then notice what shows up in terms of beliefs, thoughts and fears, and then process those using all the tools we have available. Many of them are online on our YouTube videos and on our website@jackieville.com then you're going to. You're going to succeed. Especially if you do the rule of five every day.

I would say one last thing. If you. And I love the principle, act as if. So if you were acting as if you were all three of those things, healthy, awesome relationship and thriving business, what would it look like and how would you be out there in the world? Because if you really did all those things, it most likely would happen. And so it's be that person you think you're going to strive to be today.

Yeah. Start acting like the person that's already achieved all that. How would I be? What would I do in the morning? What would my routines be? How would I show up at work? What calls would I be making? What would I be saying no to in terms of distractions or people that I don't want to deal with, etc. Become that person. Visualize yourself being that person. That works really well. Good idea. All right, well, thank you for watching today, everybody. And now if you will please leave a comment below sharing your biggest takeaway from this video and I'll be sure to follow up with you. We want to hear from you and make sure we're helping you overcome your challenges so you can get better results in everything you do. And if you have a question that you'd like us to answer in a future video, please post it in the comments below. And if you found this video useful and helpful, please make sure to like it, share it with a friend who may need it, and subscribe to this channel. For more videos like this one, and for some additional tools and videos on how to overcome your obstacles and thrive more in life, make sure to check out the resources page on jackcampfield.com there's a lot of great resources there for you, so thanks again for watching and have a great rest of your day.