Attracting Everything You Want in Midlife with Jack Canfield

Today on Midlife Conversations. I am so excited for this interview. I've been waiting for this for a while. This is one of my mentors from afar. I've listened to every single Audible that has a book. I've listened to almost all of your interviews. I've got Jack Canfield here, who to me has been a silent mentor from afar. He doesn't know me. I know him. And he's really who I learned all about. Law of Attraction and visualizing and being able to create what we want for our lives. I mean, my Gosh, back in 2007, I remember watching the Secret and you just popping out from the screen. So thank you so much for being here today.

My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me, Natalie.

So I have so many questions and I want to start first with gosh, you've, you've just created so much and you've inspired so many people. And when people don't understand Law of Attraction or they sort of poo poo it as, that's woo woo. That's ridiculous. You know, I want to like arm wrestle them because you've changed so many lives from, from living that and teaching that. So I'm just curious, like, where did that even come from with you? Like, how did you first even figure that out?

Well, it all started back when I was in Chicago. I was probably in my early 20s, I was teaching high school and I took a training with a man named W. Clement Stone, who was a self made multimillionaire. He was worth about $600 million that would be a billionaire by today's inflationary stuff. And he, he called it positive thinking, positive expectation. He didn't, he never called it the Law of Attraction, but that's what he was living and that's what he was teaching. I used to teasingly say after I learned more about it, that he was a reincarnated Tibetan monk in a, in a Republican body.

He was very, very successful. He had an insurance company which he started with $10,000 that he borrowed, I think from somebody I don't know, his mother maybe. And he built it up into this multi million dollar business. And he had a foundation called the Achievement Motivation Program at the W. Clement Jesse the Stone Foundation. And I went and took that weekend course and then I ended up, they hired me because I was, they wanted to get into the high schools and teach kids positive. And so I started applying it to my life. And then he challenged me one day. He said, you know, I was making $8,000 a year as a teacher. You can believe that back in 1972, something like that. And he said, I want you to set a goal that's so big that if you achieve it, you know, it's only because of what I've taught you. So I said, okay. So I created the goal, made it specific. I started visualizing it, affirming it every day. The goal was $100,000 a year. And so I said, you know, God is my infinite supply. And large sums of money come to me quickly and easily under the grace of God for the highest good of all concerns. I easily spend, earn and invest a hundred thousand dollars. Earn, spend and invest. So I made a hundred thousand dollar bill. I put it on the ceiling of my bedroom. So when I woke up, first thing I'd see is a hundred thousand dollar bill. I didn't even know there was such a thing. Actually, banks trade them. But I just took a hundred dollar bill and kind of blew it up and then put it on the ceiling with a lot of extra zeros. And I would say about a month into it, I started having $100,000 ideas.

I had this book called 100 Ways to Enhance Self Concept in a Classroom.

Okay.

I think I made my highest royalty payment ever, was like $2,000 and been out for a couple years. And so what I did was I woke up with this idea, I'm in the shower and I thought, wow, if you sell 400,000 copies of that book, because I was getting 25 cents royalty for every book, you'll make a hundred thousand dollars. So now I had a how, you know. Yeah, that came out of nowhere really. Except it came up from my subconscious, from the universe. And so sure enough, started to come up with all ideas how to do that and started putting them all into practice. I won't bore you with all the details, but that year I made 92,325. And I was like, whoa, this stuff works. And my wife said, you think it'll work for a million?

Find out. So we made a million dollar bill, put that on the ceiling, started visualizing the lifestyle we'd have if we're making a million dollars a year and all that kind of stuff charities would give to. And I, when I'm doing my seminars, I would put on the screen a check I got for $1,135,000. Wow. And my publisher drew a smiley face in the signature because his name's Peter Veggo. So in the big part of the people, it was the first million dollar check he'd ever written to an author. Wow.

How did you. How so you. I'm trying to visualize. It's like it's on the ceiling. Because people are probably thinking, well, it's on the ceiling. So what were you doing with it on the ceiling? You just look at it and start daydreaming. Or would you start thinking, okay, I need to think of the how. Like, what was your process, looking at that every morning?

It's kind of like daydreaming, but a little more specific. So what you want to do is whatever your goal is. So you want to decide what's your vision, what's your goal. Most people decide too small because they don't think they can do it. And as I say, focus on the what, the how will show up. And the how shows up from doing the exercises that accelerate and Law of Attraction, let's say. So what happens is I would look at the hundred thousand dollars, but just to remind me, close my eyes, then visualize the life I would be living if I had a hundred thousand dollars a year income, I think. And then I would also hear the sounds. I would hear, you know, people congratulating me, giving me standing ovations when I gave speeches. Oh, my God, this is amazing. You know, those kind of things. And then I would feel the feelings. And this is the part that most people leave out. Okay, you have to feel the feelings you would feel if you had already achieved the goal that you want. And one of the speakers that I sometimes listen to names escaping me at the moment, but he says, really say thank you. Because if you say. If you say thank you for this $100,000, in order to say thank you, you have to already have it. You need to be feeling gratitude. So I ask everyone to create an affirmation with two words in it. I'm so happy and grateful now that I am. So it's present tense. And then you put in the words, earning, spending, investing a hundred thousand dollars a year. I'm so happy and grateful. I'm now, you know, saving the lives of 700,000 kids in Africa. Yeah, medical work, whatever. So you're describing the feelings, and then you want to feel the feelings like an actor. There's an interesting study done by the Heartmath Institute which proves this. Now, we always knew this intuitively and spiritually. People have been teaching it forever, but they did some very interesting research. DNA is a spiral. And at the end of that spiral, dominator is a little like a shoelace. And as you get older, that shoelace, called telomeres, begins shorter. And when it Gets so short, it starts to unravel. So what they did in this experiment, they purposely had people try to intend this DNA that they take it from a human being, put in a test tube, try to unravel it by intending it and visualizing it to unravel. So they intended it, they visualize it. Nothing happened. Then they said, just send love and joy and gratitude to the DNA. Nothing happened. Then they said, now feel the feelings of love, joy, peace and gratitude and then visualize and intend for the DNA to unravel. And it did.

Wow.

They also could ravel, you know, wind it back up again, but only if they were sending that intention with the feelings of love and joy. So. And gratitude. So what happens is we now know that the, the vibration, it's kind of like, you know, I can send you a message for Valentine's Day, but if I send you a message for Valentine's Day with a love song behind it, it's going to have more impact. Yeah, of course the vibration is different. So basically it's all. Everything in the universe is vibration. Law of attraction says that everything's vibrating. You're vibrating, I'm vibrating. Our voice sounds different because it's vibrating. The colors you're seeing, I'm seeing are vibrating. And what happens is that you can change, you can, but you can change your own vibration. Emotional, spiritual vibration by being grateful, appreciative, loving, allowing, non judgmental forgiveness, play, laughter, fun. All these are high vibrations. So I don't. Only channels I listen to in my car are the comedy channels on XM radio. Because when I do, I laugh. Yeah, vibration, right. So smart songs with uplifting lyrics, you know, usually not. Because if you probably heard the joke, if you play a country music song backwards, you lose your car, your house.

I have not heard that. But that's funny.

Oh, I know. You get your house, car and your. Okay again. Yeah. If you play it backwards. But the point is that what happens is we need to surround ourselves with things that uplift us and uplift our vibration. This is why feng shui is so important in here. This is why listening to positive lyrics of music, reading uplifting books, visualizing the life you want to have, having a gratitude practice, all those things are going to raise your. So then you attract things at a higher vibration into your life.

So I have a question for you. And I and I fully align with everything you're saying. Oh my gosh, I've learned so much from you. I have, I have a vision book. I have all the things that you've said to do. I've. I fully practice it. This is my question, and I'm sure I. Cause you're human. So I'm sure you've navigated this at times and I'm wondering how you get out of it. So what happens when there's an actual circumstance that like, like somebody's listening right now and they actually have a big mound of debt, they actually are losing something. They actually have a big diagnosis, like something's happening. Very circumstantial. How did they interrupt this going down the rabbit hole or this spinning of the negativity and replace it with being grateful in those moments?

Well, first of all, you just acknowledge what is is. In other words, you don't want to live in a fantasy world and pretend that you don't have debt or you don't have, you know, cancer or whatever it might be, but that's just called an event. You now know this exists. I teach a model in my trainings, you probably heard E plus R equals O. Events plus responses equal outcomes. The outcome you get in terms of called you're no longer in debt, you're healthy, you're cancer free, you're. You've lost 30 pounds, you got the job, you know, etc. You have to immediately go, okay, this is what's. So now how am I going to respond to that to create the outcome I want? And that's where you start doing the practices. So you, you may not be grateful that you have debt, but grateful that you have a home, that you have a computer. You're listening to this, you know, whatever. You're grateful that you have a car, you have food in your refrigerator, you have carpeting on the floor, friends that love you. You have doctors that know what to do. They're just, you know, whether they're holistic or, you know, trad. Whatever it is. So be great, just be grateful for that. You know, like, one of the things I teach is called a rampage of appreciation. Like right now, if you look around your office and anyone listening, I see all kind of things to be grateful for. My ring light, my phone, my microphone, the amethyst crystal I have on my desk, the pen someone just gave me recently, my phone that works, you know, whatever. There's so many things to be grateful for. You know, the average, I think it's half the world lives on about 2 or $3 a day. That's 50% of the world's population. So if you make a hundred thousand a year, you're in the top 1/10 or 1% of earners on the planet. Most people are always comparing themselves to the billionaires and feeling like they're losing.

Yes.

The reality is if you're a middle class American in a house, even if you have a mortgage, you're doing really, really well. We forget because we're always, we do, which is above us. So appreciate the things you have that are not necessarily the debt, but also appreciate the opportunity that you had to make all that money and get all those things that you have. The car, the TV set to put you to death. You still have it, you know, and your friends and on and on. So just shift your focus and then visualize, just like we talked about. Visualize and affirm the results you want. You're cancer free, you have a nice house, you have a boyfriend or husband, whatever. They immediately shift to that. Because continuing to focus on what you don't want will just attract more of what you don't want. It'll put you in a negative position. It'll create an acidic situation in your body whenever you're opposed to alkaline. Alkaline keeps you from getting cancer. Alcohol, you know, acid will help you maintain it. And then when you, when you do that, then obviously take obvious steps, you know, reach out to people who've survived what you are in. Teach how to get out of debt to, you know, Google is a good friend and now we got, you know, AI and all that good stuff.

Well, I love that you said that because I think some people automatically go to law of attraction as woo woo or it's like, it's just. But what you're, you're saying, it's, it's, there's a lot of parts to this. Like yes, you're visualizing, yes, you're having gratitude, you're being grateful, you're shifting your focus. You're not ignoring what actually is. You're just shifting your focus. And, and you said a really important thing. You're taking action. You're finding ways, you're finding evidence, you're taking those action. And I think people skill skip that. They just think I'm going to dream of my new car and they wonder why it's not appearing.

Yeah, I always say unless you live at the bottom of a hill, there's not going to be a Cadillac show up in your job unless somebody stop signing. So you got, you got to do the things that produce cars, earn money, whatever it might be, talk to people, maybe have three of them and see if you can order for one of them, whatever it might be. I Think I'll give you a story though, about the power of getting out of negativity. Joe Vitale, who's a wonderful. He teaches, which is a. I've heard that. Yeah, It's a Hawaiian version of what we're talking about. They've known this in Hawaii forever. The shot, the, the kahunas. And so what happens is Joe was living in one of these typical like bottom end apartments. Like one light bulb hanging from the ceiling, a plastic chair in front of a plastic kind of desk table you could buy like at Costco, and you had a mattress on the floor. I mean, just, it's the bottom of the pits. And, and he went to the library and he bought a book or bought, borrowed. A book on how to get out of debt and how to live successfully and all that. And it said you have to, you have to make a list of what you're grateful for. And he said, because gratitude precedes manifestation. Sure. And he said, what the hell do I have to be grateful for? I'm living this crappy apartment, I don't have anything. And he said, well, the book said so. So I'm going to do it. Said, well, I have some paper and I have a pencil. I'm going to write my gratitude list. Well, first of all, I'm grateful I have a pencil. I can write down my goals. I can wr on my gratitude. I have paper, I could do that. And he started to think of all the things he was grateful for, that he had a roof over his head, that he wasn't outside in the cold. And, and then he set, he set some goals. He wrote, I think of 12 goals. Three years later, he's living in a million dollar home. He's got exotic cars, you know, I mean, the guy really took off. He's featured in the movie the Secret, like I am. And, and he's, you know, it's called Mr. What's he called, Mr. Vitality or something.

To go back and rewatch that, because I don't remember that story. That's a pretty, that's pretty impressive.

Yeah. I don't know that he shared that exact story in that movie, but I shared him the book I wrote. Yeah, but the idea is that you could be at the bottom of the bottom of the bottom. I'm writing a book right now, Living the Success Principles, because I wrote that book, the Success Principles. It's all stories of people who read my book or took my seminar and applied it. And I'm just editing a story this last week of a guy who Wife. He lost his business. His wife left him because of it. He was living in a little tiny, you know, one room apartment with a two burner, you know, kind of stove thing and a little refrigerator. It was the size of the mini bars you get in a, in a hotel. And he started reading my book, started applying everything in it, visualizing goal setting, taking action, you know, doing his affirmations every day. And now he's, he's got three businesses going. He's happily married to another person. He's writing a book called the ABCs of Success. I mean, it's just super successful. So it doesn't matter where you are. It literally doesn't. You can start anywhere if you do the principles.

It's so good. You changed my life years ago. Well, back in 2007, I was going through my own massive setback. I had just had a baby, I had gotten a divorce. I lost my house in the housing market crash. I just, everything was going wrong in my life. And I remember.

Walking one day and I just had this moment with myself of, but do you want something different? But do you. It was a thought like, do you want something different? And I went home and that's the day that I turned on Oprah and saw about, about Secret. The Secret. So I watched the Secret and you and Lisa Nichols stood out to me and I made a vision board. And I remember just like that's when everything shifted for me and my whole life changed because of that. So when someone says to me that it's not possible, it's like, but, but I lived it and what I find with myself and I know somebody listening is going to relate to this, that I know it. And then I forget it too. Like I know it. And I also will get sucked into a circumstance. And I, it's like a, it's a continual practice. Just like working out would be or just like eating healthy. Like, I feel like it's a continual practice. And I'm assuming that that's what you think. It's a habit. It's something you have to practice.

Yeah. You have what we call a psychological set point in terms of success and happiness and so forth. It's just like the, the, what do you call it, the thermostat in your house. And so what happens is, you know, and the same thing happens with weight. You know, people that get up to like 2:30, they. Their body gets used to being at 230. When you start to lose weight, your weight set point says, wait, we're in trouble, we're Losing weight, we got to go back to where we were. That's healthy because that's what's used to. So the same thing happens with your brain. So basically you want to be having a practice. I, I think a daily practice I teach called the hour of power. So every morning, 20 minutes of reading something uplifting like Field, which is not.

Social media, by the way.

Everybody listening, we're talking about books and podcasts and you know, things that are teaching you these principles and that and, or things that would help you in your business, you know, finance, investing, whatever that might be. The second thing is 20 minutes of high intensity exercise. So like high intensity interval training where you just go really hard for two minutes, rest for a minute, go really hard for two minutes, rest in 14 minutes, you can get what's equivalent over for sure. Some exercise and also weightlifting we're finding is really important to stave off Alzheimer's. And then the third thing is 20 minutes of visualization, your affirmations and your gratitude exercise. You can extend that if you want. I do. I spend about 40 minutes doing that.

So that's every single day.

Every day, except I will, I don't want to lie. If I, if I'm getting up at 4:30 to catch an airplane at 6, I probably don't do it. I'll do it on the plane. Sometimes I don't.

But most days is your routine an.

Average of six out of seven. And then at night I also visualize how I want my day to go tomorrow. I think about all the problems I have. I visualize everything working out perfectly. And then I do another gratitude exercise. What happened during the day that I'm, you know, appreciative of? That takes me, you know, five minutes max. And also say my affirmations with the visualization before I go to sleep. We know that. Here's a little science for you. We know that when you think about your visions and your goals before you go to sleep, your unconscious tends to think about that which you focus on right before you went to bed more than most of the things you did during the day.

Wow.

So literally that's why prayer, meditation, visualization, positive journal writing, reading, something uplifting, not watching Friday the 13th, Freddy Krueger, you know. Oh yeah, this is not good for you. Yeah, comedy, I think that's okay. Get your energy up and happy. And so that, that then is your subconscious mind is actually working on how to create that the next day. And so while you're sleeping, it's working. And the other thing about visualization Being woo. There's more data on that. So what happens when you visualize. You imagine you've got a go up here, then you have the current reality down below. And so you've got these reality vision. They don't match. You know, my. My reality is I'm in Santa Barbara. My vision is I'm living on the ocean in Maui.

Sure.

And so I'm not there. But when I visualize being on the ocean in Maui every day, what starts to happen is my brain goes, you know, I don't think he's going to give this up. We better figure out how to get him to Maui. That's a metaphorical way of saying, wow, creative. Because it wants. The brain does not like tension. The brain wants to resolve tension. That's why most people don't like arguments. We want to solve them, we want to resolve it, etc. So what happens? I'm purposely putting that tension in the way an advertiser does, you know, or if you go, say you go visit a friend, their kitchen just been remodeled, yours hasn't for 10 years. You come home, you see your kitchen, you now have my kitchen.

That's me. That's me. I do that every day in my kitchen, by the way.

There you go. See? And one of two things is going to happen. Eventually, that tension will rise so much you'll say to your husband or your, you know, whatever, but you'll say, honey, we need to remodel the kitchen. Because that.

Right.

All that tension.

Right, right.

Same thing. When you see an ad for something you want over and over and over, eventually you got to have that purse, you have to have that belt, you know, whatever it is, the new thing.

Sure.

So, you know, advertising uses that against us all the time. We need to use it in favor of us. And the other thing that happens, when that tension is formed, three things occur. Number one, creative ideas come up. That's when you wake up in the morning and you go, oh, my gosh, I could call Bill. He knows how to do that. Second thing that happens is motivation increases. You just. You just more likely to do the hard thing to do. And the third thing is it. It basically.

It sends out a. How to say this? It sends out a wave, like a radio wave. Like right now you're. When you're broadcasting through an airwave, what happens is there's a wave that goes out, two waves. One's called a carrier wave. Says this is channel 79.5 on your FM dial. And then there's the voice or the music that's the information wave. Now that can be sent by your cell phone all the way to Singapore with no wires.

Right.

Your brain works the same way. And we know from research that the minimum that brainwave can go is 250, 000 miles, which is 10 times around the Earth. How do we know that? The astronauts on the moon and well, orbiting the moon. And they open up these envelopes, they have 10 of them. In each envelope is a shape. Square, triangle, circle, they're numbered. They, they shuffle them up. Number seven. They write it down before they even look at it. Now we know it's number seven. 11:00am that's the state. They open it up and they focus on it for about three or four minutes. Meanwhile, same time, students at Duke University down in North Carolina in a psychology class, they close their eyes and they focus in on the astronauts and they wait for an image of a symbol to show up. And way beyond physical chance, they get it right. Why? Because a brainwave of the focusing of the astronauts traveling 250,000 miles and there's, there's other statistics like that. I want to go into all the science, but it's not. Woo. It's a sign.

Yeah. No, it's so wild and it's, it's so hard to. When I try to logically think about it, I, my brain can't do it. I just know that it does work when I focus on. And it works the opposite direction too. If you are focused on something you don't want, you'll keep creating it. And I know, and I'll catch that. Like you don't even realize you're. I don't realize I'm doing it until I think through that. So it's, it's. And I've heard you say many times that your brain doesn't really know the difference. When you say like, I don't want to gain weight. I don't want to gain weight. I don't want to gain weight. All it's hearing is gain weight.

That's right. The unconscious does not hear the word no.

Yes.

The standard. You know, every speaker does it. But it's like right now, don't think of elephants.

Yeah, you're gonna think of elephants.

Everyone thinks elephants because you can't exist. That so always. Like I would say, think of roses. And when you're thinking of roses, you're not thinking of elephants, you know, so you don't ever want to say. You don't ever want to say. I just said it. So you, you want to avoid Saying don't forget to do homework because you've just had your kid forget to do your homework.

So you sort of. You just like, will seriously cancel it. It sou. If you, if a thought pops in that's not supportive.

Yeah, cancel, cancel. It comes from Silver mind control. Silver method. Whenever you have a negative thought and you're aware of it, say cancel, cancel. And then immediately replace it with the positive thought. You know, I can do this. This will happen. This is happening. I'm happy. I'm happily weighing, you know, 130 pounds, whatever it might be. And so we call it the law of replacement.

Okay.

You can't get rid of a negative thought without replacing it with a positive thought, because what will happen? Getting rid of the negative thought creates a vacuum. What is nature of war from science?

Fill it in. You've got to fill it in.

Then, yeah, it pulls the negative back in. So immediately. One thing I've been teaching lately, I learned from somebody, I don't remember who, last year, but take little three by five cards. These are bigger ones. But take something like that, put it around, you know, write your, write the words cancel, cancel on it. Maybe put places in your house, your refrigerator next to your computer screen, your bathroom mirror, the bottom of the staircase on the wall as you come down. What you do is anytime you see that post it, you go, oh, what am I thinking? And if it's negative, you say, cancel. Cancel. Because you said earlier, the hardest thing is to remember.

Yes.

So if you have, you have a schedule for your meditation, you do it every day, just like you brush your teeth. Then you also want to be able to catch yourself in the middle of negative thinking. How do you do that? You can have the alarm go off. Like when I was first learning this, I would take my. My cell phone, I'd set the alarm to go off every 15 minutes and then do is. What am I thinking? Oh, I'm thinking negative thought. Cancel, cancel, replace it. Eventually, what happens is it takes about between 30 and 66 days to. To create new neural pathways in your brain. So if you're thinking all the time, I can't lose weight. It's go straight to my hips, whatever. That's a neural pathway. And all I have to do is say, wait, how is your way. And that neural pathway fires off. I can't. So what happens is we have to replace it. Stop talking about it, stop saying those words. And the neural pathway starts to fizzle out a little bit.

Okay.

And replace it with a new neural pathway that you want to Be enforced by saying it every day. This is where the affirmations come in, because they're intentional repetition. Neural pathways are created through repetition. There's a book, I don't remember the name of it, but I did review it for somebody gave me some feedback on. Came out this year by a neuroscientist who basically said, in 12 weeks you can change your psychological set point. You can go from being a negative person and a mean person to a loving, kind, positive person. There's exercises every day for about 40 minutes. You said you got to exercise your brain and your attitude as well as your muscles. And so I wish I could think of her name, but, you know, look around for it.

But the question is that the negative person know they were negative because they don't.

Well, I'm sure if you're married, your wife has told you.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's true. Yeah, it's, it's. So it's the hardest thing for me, or I'm thinking just ahead to what people think is, is this idea of wrapping around when you have actual circumstances. So I love all the things you're sharing about the cancel Council. And just. It's not that you're ignoring what is. You're acknowledging what is. You're just saying, what do I want instead? And then I love your example of just if, if everything is just completely rock bottom, there's still something good. So what? Even if it's I have air or I have a bed to sleep in or whatever it is, it sounds like that's where you're creating the focus on it. So when, when people do Law of Attraction, I think also sometimes people set it like a goal. And I'm wondering how you do that, because I don't, I don't feel. You could say, by September 30th, I'm going to have this, because then you're setting yourself up for that didn't work. So how do you do that? Do you put time frames? You just think general, like, how do you, how do you actually do that?

I put time frames on goals, but I don't put the time in the affirmation because the affirmation is a tool to accelerate the achievement of the goal. I don't achieve all my goals on time. Like I told you earlier, My goal was $100,000. 92.3. Whatever it was.

Sure.

So. But, you know, a couple of years later, I was making over 100,000 all the time, and then I made over a million all the time. Rarely does a year go by that I don't make a million plus in revenue. And so the reality is that sometimes, you know, the universe. The pandemic came along. All of a sudden I had $800,000 in speaking deposits that I couldn't deliver on. So we had to shift everything to online. We had a tough first year in 2020. By 2021, we developed all these online courses. We learned how to do, you know, group coaching programs. We even did weekend workshops. You know, you've probably seen Tony Robbins with these big screens around all of them. Yeah, we use the same people. We get 600 people and they see them on the screens and all. And so what happens is, you know, we, we made less gross income, but higher net income because we didn't have all the expenses of travel.

Right.

Live seminar, I'd be bringing 10 of my staff. You know, that's 30 nights of hotel food, air travel, etc. So we, we adjusted. So again, wasn't expecting the pandemic. No, we didn't grouse about it. We had a, okay, what do we have to do? Let's. I want everyone to keep earning money. No one got fired. All the things we had to do, we did.

In listening to all of your stories, I, I fully see a pattern of, like you, you constantly turn obstacles into opportunity. And I feel like that's another thing with focusing on what you want because things might show up in a way that you're not expecting. But you and I, what stands out to me is, well, you've told a number of stories, but also even how the secret came about, how when you first were asked about it, you were, this is an, you were doing an event where you had people coming in and it felt like a take, like, well, why would I, during my event let people interview for this? Or why would I do that? Could you share a little bit about that? Because that was really eye opening for me about how you turn that obstacle into an opportunity.

Sure. First of all, Napoleon Hill's famous quote, which I'm sure you're aware of, is every obstacle and heartache has within it the seed of an equal or greater benefit. Part that's not quoted very often follows it, but you have to look for it. So this is the thing that most people, they're not looking for that, you know, so always teach my students to say when anything negative happens, the first question is, what's the opportunity that this is? Now to go back to your question, I was putting on a transformational leadership council, which I started about 140 people who do this work, the John Gray's, Elisa Nicholson of the world, so forth. And what happens is.

One of Rhonda Byrne's friends called me, Janet Atwood, and said she. She did this movie. You're gonna have a lot of the people she'd like to interview. Could they come and interview? My first reaction was, no, it's going to pull people out of the meeting and some people won't get invited. That's going to create bad feelings and, you know, all that. So that night I'm meditating, which I often do before I go to bed, just kind of. Kind of clear what I might need to focus on during the day that I might have missed. And all of a sudden I hear this big voice. I call it the voice of God. Who knows? It says.

Call Janet and tell her yes.

So I did. And I'm a big believer in those inner voices that come to me, especially when the goosebumps.

Yeah, I get those. The inspire, inspired thoughts.

So I called. I called Janet, she called Rhonda. Rhonda came and she interviewed, I think, 17 of the people that were at that conference. I made at least $3 million off being in the space, you know, from speaking. I even spoke in Iran. You know, to get a passport to Iran, you have to go to the Pakistani Embassy, because America doesn't even have a Iranian. Yeah, 800 people showed up because they had seen the secret on Iranian television, which I would never have figured out, let that happen. But he did. So I spoke all over the world. I wrote my own couple of books about the lava track. As a result of it, I started doing, you know, cruises on it. I mean, all because I said yes.

And you didn't even really know why. You just heard it, had an inspired thought, and you got the goosebumps and you thought, okay, makes sense.

That's the thing about inspired thoughts. The art of allowing, the art of surrender. You know, the idea that you're going to get these things that make no sense, and yet if you don't follow them, you miss things. You know, A friend of mine was in Ireland, and he got this inspiration that he should call up this friend of his, and he called him and found out he was in a hospital. And he said, I think I'm dying. And he said, okay, I'm gonna come visit. He waited two days. When he got there, his friend was dead. Had he gone there, the moment he had the inspiration to go there, he would have seen him alive.

Wow.

Wow. So one of the things W. Clement Stone taught Me was do it now. Mark Victor Hansen, co author of Chicken Soup, said, as soon as you think it, ink it. And then the next 10 seconds, take one step that will take you and move you forward into action. Make a call, write it down, put it in your journal, make an appointment with somebody.

You know, I need to play this part for my husband because he, he makes fun of me for being a quick start. He's like, as soon as you have an idea, you just go. But that's. I feel that way. I have to do it while it's the inspired action or it just loses its steam.

I think what, what Esther Hicks, who trainers Abraham, the big law of attraction teacher, says every, every inspirational thought comes in a vortex of energy. So think of it as a hurricane or cyclone moving and you're getting this download that says do a blog on this call. Jack Canfield, you know, do, do it. As you're waiting and not doing it, that cyclone is moving past you. So that vortex of energy is not as strong. Still doable. You can do it. Yeah, whatever. But that vortex, that was the moment. And most people don't act in that moment. So you see these books, like the 10 second rule and all that kind of stuff, they're, they're, they're right.

Yeah. I think, I mean, and it makes sense too because if it doesn't, you, you're acting on that energy and that higher vibration. And I think it also moves other people into saying yes, because you've got conviction and certainty and excitement around it where if it becomes a to do list for later, that it loses its whole steam.

Exactly. In that law, in that, that vortex of energy is in the, what the, the Germans called the Zeitgeist. It is the, it's in the space. It's not just you that are having that thought. There's something in the universe that's happening in that moment that says now is the time.

Yeah. Wow. So. And I've also heard theories that like if you don't act on it, that will keep moving and somebody else will get that inspired action.

Yeah. It's important to know. It's like sperm. It's a little bit rough, but you know, the average ejaculation is about 50 million sperm. So what happens is nature knows they're all not. Yeah.

By having a lot of them, one of them is definitely going to get there, you know? Yep. So by, by what the universe does when something needs to evolve and happen for the evolution of consciousness, the evolution of the world, etc, it, it sees that into A lot of people, you know, a lot of people will get the idea all of a sudden, you know, the, the body heals itself if it has enough of the right food. You know, that wasn't the, that wasn't in the culture 10 years ago. You know, now everybody's talking about it. You know, like pharmaceuticals are not what they used to be in terms of the consciousness of people.

Sure.

And they stop certain things, but they don't cure you. You know, that wasn't that well known before. Now it is, it's in the culture.

How do you think things like so, because things have changed so much since you first were practicing law of attraction. Like if you look at technology, everything's so quick right now and there's just so much incoming. Like you said, you made a point to share that. Like you're really intentional on what you listen to, what you watch, what's who you're around. But now with everything being so digital and fast and easy accessible, what's your take on that? Do you think that helps this? Do you think it hurts it? Because I feel like so many people go to like just the scrolling and they're not controlling what's coming in. I'm curious your thoughts on that because so much has changed.

Well, the outer world has changed, but how I related to it has not changed. I'm still intentional about what I watch and listen to. So the thing we know about TikTok and other programs that are out there, all the social media, it's. Excuse me, it's designed to keep you there, to keep you in television. I once had a talk with the head of NBC. I was in his office, he's the CEO of NBC. And I was trying to push a program that would help educate kids self esteem. And he said, jack, you don't understand television. And I said, well, educate me. He said, television programming has only one purpose. I said, what's that? To keep the viewer coming back to the next commercial. So if we can hook the viewer to come back and watch the next commercial, then I have a program. I want that because we make our money selling ads, you know, wow. Why is it that the pharmaceutical company controlled the entire messaging around COVID 19? Because like just on CNN alone, $150 million in ad buys a year.

Yeah.

What happens is you're not going to hear about vitamin D because that's, there's no profit in that, you know. And so the reality is that you have to. What am I going to say? To be honest, you have to be specific and focused So I watch YouTube videos. I watch, literally, TED talks. TEDx talks are almost positive. I watch some things on LinkedIn. I watch those. I watch certain people's, you know, YouTube channels because I know they're doing, like, Tony Robbins and Lisa Nichols. And so, yeah, so I'm picking things that are uplifting, inspiring, empowering, and educational. And if you do that, then you're in good shape. But if you start scrolling like, and I've done it. I've done it. Yeah. You go to do some research, and all of a sudden there's something in the bottom. Like 25 actors who are popular as kids. Look at them now in their age.

Yeah, yeah. And then you're just totally distracted.

I wonder what she does look like that. Oh, my God. Terrible. You know, then the next thing comes up, you know, 20 of the best, sexiest movie scenes, you know, oh, let's watch that. And you can do that for hours. So, yeah, you have to be careful. And.

Yeah.

And so one of the things I also do is when I'm, even when I'm researching, I set my timer for a certain amount of time, and then I'm off. I get off. Because it is easy to fall into that rabbit hole. And the AI is trained to do that to you. You, it's trained to get you to just keep staying there, staying there, saying, it's all money.

It's so smart. It's so smart how it does that? It's so smart. Oh, my gosh. How do you.

How did, like, give me. I'm so curious. Like, during COVID So we had two years that the whole world is in chaos, right? And a lot of. I really saw a divide with people that people either went down, this doomsday, my everything is awful circumstance and the world is ending and all the things. And then I saw this whole other group just really emerge and get creative and find themselves and step into a new thing. I'm curious, like, how you navigated that time. Like, what was. How did you stay in this place that you are with such a big circumstance happening?

I, I, you know, it's funny, I go back to a story I was doing a talk to real estate agents in New Hampshire. They were all remax owners of the franchise, and everyone was down 40%. This was during the Gulf War 3, something like that. And I said.

And this was across the board almost every, every profession. And I said, this one guy said, well, he's up. I said, you're up. He said, come to the front of the room. Why are you up? And they're all down. He said, it's mindset. It's all mindset. I said, what do you mean? He says, they all say, when the recession comes, cut back. Don't put as many ads. Maybe gonna cut back on staff. You know, all this stuff. My belief is, no matter what the economy is doing, I always do well. And. And that was his belief, and that's what he produced. So remembering that attitude, which I Learned, you know, 29 years ago, whatever it was, I took that. I took that on. No matter what the world's doing, I'm going to be. And so what happens is I immediately connected to about 20 people in the same world who teach this work. We all did blogs and summits and stuff, and we all talked on each other's channels and we interviewed each other. I was the fear guy, getting into fear. So the fear up lights up your amygdala in the back of your brain. The amygdala hijacks the prefrontal cortex, and you go down that rabbit hole of all the bad things are going to happen. So we looked at what is going to take you out of fear. Well, focusing on things you do well, doing things you do well, having fun, visualizing positive things, reaching out to friends, exercise. So that was kind of my message. Everyone had their own message. We all started speaking on each other's platforms, and then we would brainstorm how can we earn money during this time. And so we're teaching our clients to do this. For example, one guy had a exercise studio. One of our clients, he was going to go out of business. Someone can come and exercise. So what he did was he rented all of his exercise, got on his mailing list. I'm renting the ex stuff. I will do video classes. And pretty soon all the exercise equipment was the people's homes. He was getting money for teachers. A patio furniture store, you know, well, you're going to probably spend summer at home this year, so, you know, you're going to want patio furniture and come online, send us your measurements. We'll go ahead and we'll outline what your patio and backyard could look like. And we'll sell it, we'll deliver. So every business take out food, you know, whatever it was. One guy was doing more meals, having people drive by and pick up and have his staff run out. They only did one. One choice of meal every night. So they have to worry about people's choices. Everybody. Everybody did. Well, why? Because they said, I'm not. They didn't say, I'm not going to lose. I said I'm going to win during this.

And they believe, they believe that they would. So when I'm picturing this happening and I feel like that's how I was during the pandemic. And I would, every now and then I'd run into, you know, talk to a friend or family member or someone that would tell me why that's not possible, why I'm living in the sand and my head's in the sand or whatever. And I would. And for me, I just had to say that's, you know, thanks for your opinion and just kind of move on. I didn't even want to engage it. So I'm wondering how you handle that when you encounter the. That your head's in your sand or what are you doing?

Or I, I do the same thing you just said. I say thank you for caring enough to share that with me. And then I don't listen.

Yeah, because we can't take it on. I feel like as soon as we take it on, it just brings that. You. It can totally bring us down too. So.

Yeah, yeah, like, like, you know, again, it goes back to people's set point, what their, what their habitual brain patterns are. You know, I always say, look, here's the deal. I know you can achieve during this period of time. If you're interested, here's my website, here's the YouTube channel I have, etc. I encourage you to go there and if you don't, that's fine. You'll get to be right. Most people would be right than happy.

That's okay. That is true. I have a. Maybe this is a strange question, maybe it's not, but it's something I'm genuinely curious about when I. When people are very strong in their faith.

Faith.

So they're very strong religion, whether it's Christian or Jewish or whatever it is. I find that sometimes they will like poo poo law of attraction because they think it's too New Agey or too woo woo. And to me, I personally think it can go along with it. I'm just wondering if you have any opinion about that or if you've ever been asked that before.

Every religion has a conservative wing, a moderate wing and a radical wing, more liberal wing, if you will. So it's not religion. It's the beliefs about the religion. It's how they interpret the, the statements. It's dogma, you know, everything's open to interpretation. You know. And so what happens is that like Joel Olstein.

Huh?

My favorite Christian minister on Television, you know, I'm not, I don't consider myself a Christian anymore. I believe in Christ and Christ consciousness and all that. But I've studied Buddhism and Taoism and Hinduism and, you know, Sikhism. I've studied every religion you could possibly study experientially. You know, I've rolled with the whirling dervishes and I've sat for 11 days in a row and so on and so forth. But the point is that one of my friends who died recently wrote a book called the Bible. So sort of about biblical scripture that validates the law of attraction. Her name was Beth Meisner. M I S N E R. You can go on Amazon, look up Beth Meisner and you'll see that. And she extracted all of that. The Jewish tradition, the Kabbalah. The Kabbalah teaches all this stuff. You know, every religion has a mystical arm. There's mystical Christianity, there's mystical Judaism, which is Kabbalah, there's mystical Islam, which is Sufism, etc. And so Buddhism taught this, Hindus teach it, Taoism teaches it. So it just depends. Most of the conservative people want to control you with dogma based on fear and won't go to heaven. You're going to burn in hell, you know, whatever. If you live in, if you live in Pakistan, you might burn up before you get out of there. But the point being that it's, it's not. You can counter it if you want to get scriptural. I decided not to do that. Yeah, that's the best place for me to be spending my time. I'd rather educate people who are interested and try to not. And then I always say, this is a great quote from Ram Dass, you know, remember who Ramdas.

Yes, of course.

So he said to me once, not to me, but he wrote in something I read, he said, I, one of my students, he said, went home to Alaska and she wrote me and she said, every time I talk about Buddhism, my parents hate me. Every time I act like the Buddha, they love me.

I think the same thing is true with Christianity.

Yes, you're right. You are right.

But if you're acting Christ like they.

Love you, you are exactly right. You're exactly right.

So be the love that be the model. Why are you so happy all the time, you know, and then, then you have a chance.

Oh my gosh, this was so good today. Thank you so much for doing this today. I learned a lot and this was so helpful. I know it's going to be so helpful to so many people. Thank you. So much for doing this.

Can I say one more thing?

Yeah, of course.

There's one thing I learned last year. It's a nuance about the law of attraction and there's so many nuances, but it has to do with impatience. Have you ever ordered something and it didn't come for a while and you get impatient?

Yeah, of course.

When you're impatient, you're focusing on the not having of it.

Says whenever you focus on the not having of it, you increase the likelihood of not having it. So one of the things you have to give up is impatience. And okay, you want to affirm. I know it's on its way. It's coming to me as fast as it can.

And that, that's so good. Now you have. Your team had told me that you have a way that people can go get some affirmations.

Yeah, I, the, the website is way too.

Okay, I'm gonna put it in the show notes though. I'm gonna absolutely put the show notes.

You can do that. And also people can just go to my website, jackhamfield.com. there'll be a pop up screen. There's some free offers on that as well. Just for like amazing. But yeah, do the thing. It's the, it's a lot. It's the affirmations booklet. It's really valuable information about how to use affirmations, a correct way to form them, a list of affirmations you can use how to use visualization with it. It's a whole little mini course three.

Thank you so much, Jack.

You're welcome.