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Which of these do you agree with?
- Intelligence is fixed at birth.
- Some people are creative, others aren’t.
- You can become a world-class expert through enough practice, whatever your starting point.
- You can change your personality.
If you agreed with the first two statements, you’re coming from a fixed mindset. If you agreed with the second two, you’ve got a growth mindset. This is Jack Canfield inspiration.
So why do I believe in Jack Canfield principles? And how can it help you?
Before I found Jack’s book, “The Success Principles”, I was a typical half-empty type of person, never really thought much about mindsets, positivity, or how what you think and aspire to is reflected in your everyday thoughts and actions.
It’s surprising what a good close friend can see that you can’t. Something so simple as to recommend a book changed my total view on who I was—it was if someone had opened a window of opportunity to a world that had so much to offer.
It’s not been easy, trying to remember that you control your attitude and mindset. Learning to adopt beliefs that frame events in a positive way has been a real challenge.
So were should we start? I have read the book every month for the last six months and I’m still learning. I am not saying that you should read it as many times, but I would strongly recommend you do—and have a highlighter handy to mark things that you feel are important to you. If you do it correctly, it should become a working bible, something you that you can turn to whenever you want some reassurance or a bit of a pick-me-up.
In his book, “The Success Principles”, Jack Canfield presents the sixty-four principles which, if learned and practiced, can help everyone to realize their goals. The principles that he teaches are timeless. He didn’t invent them, but collected them from many successful people.
Over time, he has learned and practiced them himself, and finally put them down on paper. His skill was to write in such a way that everyone can read it—young or old—and if they put his principles into action, it can change your life.
I’ve chosen and briefly described the ten principles from the book which have had the biggest impact on my life and I hope, after reading this post, you will feel empowered to read the book. You may find ten different ones—what you take out of the book is personal to you.
1. Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life
The first principle states that there is only one person who is 100% responsible for my life—me.
This is the first principle of success. If we want to be successful in life, we first have to take total responsibility for our lives. We’re responsible for all our successes and failures, health, relationships, financial situation, our feelings, and everything else.
It is me who has created the life I am living now, so I must take full responsibility for it. If I don’t take full responsibility, I can’t achieve things which are important to me, and I can’t re-make my life. That is the power of the Jack Canfield inspiration.
To really take 100% responsibility for our lives, we must stop blaming others for our problems and failures. We have created our current situations by our thoughts (mindset), actions, and activities, so there is no reason to blame anybody.
We can blame only ourselves—but that is also useless because the past is the past; we can’t change it. But now we can create our future. We have always had the power to do it, but for different reasons, we haven’t.
Now we can do things differently and get the results we want. This is because of the rule: E+R=0 (Event + Response = Outcome).
The rule says that every outcome we experience in life—good or bad—is the result of how we responded to the previous events in our lives. We can see that in the same situations people react differently. Some are successful, some are not. We can see that, by responding in a different way, we can get different results.
That is why blaming events for our failures are pointless. We must change our responses to the events and then we can get the results we want. We don’t have control over a lot of the events in our lives, but we have control over our responses. We can change our thinking, our behavior, and our communication. We can also change our old habits into better ones.
Jack Canfield states, “Everything you experience in life—both internally and externally—is the result of how you have responded to a previous event”.
Everything I experience today is the result of the choices I have made in the past.
I have control over three things in my life:
- My thoughts
- My visualizations
- My actions
So to change my life, I need to change my thoughts, my visualizations, and my actions to positive ones.
If I keep my negative responses from the past, I will keep getting the same negative results, so now is the time to stop complaining and blaming others for my bad results and take full responsibility for my life.
How did I change my life using this principle?
My childhood was a bit of a train crash which, when I look back on it, have left their scars. This is backed up by research on early childhood showing that an unhappy child could lead to problems in the future.
Just how much they influence us is a question that researchers are still trying to answer. Two studies look at how parents’ behavior in those first years affects life decades later, and how differences in children’s temperament play a role.
The first study, published in “Child Development”, found that the type of emotional support that a child receives during the first three-and-a-half years has an effect on education, social life, and romantic relationships even 20 or 30 years later.
The second study, also published in “Child Development”, found that those children’s early experiences help predict whether or not they end up developing social anxiety disorder as teenagers and beyond.
My past had become a millstone around my neck. I could not turn back the clock, and for the last 30 plus years, I had been stuck in the past—regrets, anger, distrust, emotional flashbacks, and a complete lack of self-esteem and self-confidence.
Hence, the need for a reality check and the need to change my mindset—to take full 100% responsibility for my life from now; my past was the past. And I found a very simple way of letting go. I simply wrote down every bad memory I had of my childhood on a piece of paper and read it once, read it again, and then simply folded it in half and threw it into the fire.
It may seem a very simplistic action, but for me, it was if the door had closed on my past. It was now time for my dreams for my family and our futures. Dwelling on the past got me nothing but misery for the last 30 years, and it was time to move on.
It’s not been easy, but I would say to anyone in the same situation, you have control of your life, no one else. You can remain as you are or you can make a conscious decision to change. It takes courage to face your past but face it you must, if you want to move on. Try the paper exercise or find your own way of closing the door to your past.
True, you can learn from the past, but don’t let the past stop you from your future. I will say it again: “Everything you experience in life—both internally and externally—is the result of how you have responded to a previous event.”
This principle is the prerequisite to a successful life. It is the basic principle. I personally started with this principle because without this principle, I wouldn’t be able to implement the other principles. This is Jack Canfield inspiration.
2. Believe It’s Possible
If you have a passion to do or be something, whether it be having an idea for a new venture or wanting to go back to college, whatever it is, you need to believe it’s possible to achieve it.
If you start off with the idea that it is impossible, you’ll quit at the first minor challenge. However, challenges won’t stop you when you believe something is possible and you are adopting a positive mental attitude. Instead, you’ll look for ways to overcome any challenges knowing that there are ways that you can overcome them.
According to this principle, we are all able to achieve whatever our minds can conceive and believe. Jack Canfield explains why our brains work this way and gives examples, but the important conclusion for us is that we must replace all our negative expectations with positive ones, and then our minds will start working to accomplish the outcome we want.
People often do not reach their goals, not because they lack required skills, but because they don’t believe they can reach them.
Why this principle underpins everything: Without belief, you can never fulfill your potential and dreams. Here’s an example of how I used this principle to launch menat50ish.com. Every middle-aged man has this fear that one day your boss may turn around to you and say, “We need to make changes and restructure, and part of the restructure is to make your job redundant,” or words to that effect.
That happened to me 12 months ago and it’s been hard to accept that you are no longer wanted. But I have always had the belief that things happen for a reason, and rather than burying my head in my hands, I thought about what would I like to do with my life. Having already been an avid follower of James Clear, John Chow, Yaro Starak, and quite a few more, I thought if they can do it, why can’t I? They all had to have started from somewhere.
I remember seeing this quote: “Always remember and never forget—you are no better than anyone else, no one else is any better than you.”
3. Believe in Yourself
This principle is connected with the previous one. I am able to achieve whatever my mind can conceive and believe, so I must believe in myself. If I want to create the great and successful life I desire, I must believe that I can make it happen. I have to believe that I have all the abilities, skills, and inner resources to do it.
I need to choose to believe that I can achieve whatever I set my mind on. If I think that something is impossible to achieve, I will not do everything necessary to achieve it. If I believe that it is possible for me to achieve something, I will do everything necessary to achieve it.
To be successful I need to give up “I can’t”. My brain is able to solve any problems I give it and reach any goals I have, but my negative words and thoughts have a negative and limiting influence on my mind—so I give up all my negative thoughts and words.
Jack Canfield gives some examples which prove that belief in yourself is more important than knowledge, training, or schooling. Quite a few very successful people dropped out of college. Here’s my personal choice in why you should believe in yourself.
4. Release the Brakes
How would you describe your comfort zone?
I would define a comfort zone as a “behavioral space where your activities and behaviors fit a routine and pattern that minimizes stress and risk”—the operative words here being stress and risk.
When we are in our comfort zone, life is comfortable, generally speaking, and there’s little stress. According to an article in the New York Times, the term “comfort zone” originated in reference to the temperature zone (67 to 78 degrees) where we’re most comfortable, and feel neither hot nor cold. Psychologically, our comfort zone is the place where most at home.
So according to this principle, most people live their lives with their psychological brakes on. Within their comfort zone, the brakes are negative images about themselves, inaccurate beliefs about reality, guilt, and self-doubt. They feel safe in their comfort zone.
It’s like looking through a window covered in dirt—you can only see what’s on the other side if you give it a cleaning. Once you clean it, the world offers so much more and can reward those people who embrace change and can see that by having an open mindset, anything is possible. These brakes cancel out people’s good intentions, no matter how hard they try.
We’re wired to seek out comfort, which is why it’s so hard to let it go. Humans are naturally creatures of comfort—a place where stress and anxiety are minimal, where we know what’s coming next, and can plan accordingly. There’s nothing wrong with being in your comfort zone, unless you get too comfortable and start holding yourself back instead of challenging yourself to learn, grow, and try new things.
Stepping out of your comfort zone can push you to achieve goals that you never thought possible, but it’s also good to be able to go back in. Challenging yourself can help you perform at your peak.
How can we expect to evolve in our lives and careers if we only stick to habit and routine? Reaching new heights involves the risk of attempting something we might not succeed at. Taking risks is what helps us grow.
“We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure,” the author John Gardner wrote in “Self-Renewal”. “It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure—all your life. It’s as simple as that.”
Trying new things can make you more creative. By becoming a person who regularly takes calculated risks, moves out of your comfort zone, and tries new things every day, you’ll cultivate openness to experience, one of what’s known in psychology as the “Big Five” personality traits. Openness to experience—which is characterized by qualities like intellectual curiosity, imagination, emotional and fantasy interests, and a drive to explore one’s inner and outer lives—has been shown to be the best predictor of creative achievement.
Embracing new challenges can help you age better. Our comfort zones tend to get smaller as we get older—but if we can keep expanding them, we’ll open ourselves up to a greater understanding of life and improved well-being as we age.
A 2013 study found that learning new and demanding life skills, while also maintaining a strong social network, can help us stay mentally sharp as we get older.
5. See What You Want, Get What You See
This principle is about visualization. Visualization is the act of creating compelling and vivid pictures in your mind. Jack Canfield gives a scientific explanation for why visualization works. What is important for me: “Visualization simply makes the brain achieve more”. When I visualize my goals in my mind as already achieved, my subconscious mind will work to turn my visualizations into reality.
The author explains the process of visualization and gives a few examples to prove that visualization works. The process is quite simple. I need to close my eyes and see my goals as already achieved. To make the process more powerful I should add sounds, feelings, and emotions to my pictures.
The emotions are the most important ingredient of visualization. We must enjoy the visualization. It can’t be a chore. Doing visualizations properly we feel happy doing it, and we are creating a happy future.
6. Take Action
Many people spend time analyzing, planning, and organizing, but they fail to take action. Successful people also do these things, but they always take action. They are very eager to take action.
When I take action, things start happening. I have observed that I learn much more quickly while I am in action. Things become clear. The next steps become obvious. The point is: “To be successful, you have to do what successful people do, and successful people are highly action-oriented”.
There is no point in being too cautious because even if I make some mistakes, I can learn from them, and can still achieve my goals. If I do not take action because I am too careful or afraid, I will not reach my goals anyway. Taking action brings satisfaction, too.
7. Commit to Constant and Never-Ending Improvement
This principle says that if I want to be successful, I must always try to do things better. I must always try to improve, so I need to look at my goals, and I need to find out what I need to improve to achieve them better and faster.
Canfield advises making small, achievable steps which we can easily improve. In this way, we will not become overwhelmed and discouraged because something seems too difficult to achieve or do.
To improve takes time. It does not happen overnight, but if I improve and learn a little bit every day, one day my skills and knowledge will be very useful in my life.
8. Practice Persistence
Persistence is one of the most important qualities of successful people. There are always a lot of obstacles in life, so without persistence, it is impossible to achieve much. People often quit just before reaching their goals, because they lack persistence. But “If you hang in there long enough, you will eventually reach your goal”.
9. Learn More to Earn More
This principle is about learning. The more I learn and the more knowledge I acquire, the more successful I can be. Canfield recommends reducing the time I spend on watching television and using this time for reading. He suggests reading inspirational books, books on psychology, finance, sales, health etc. He also recommends reading biographies of great people.
Another way to learn is to attend success rallies, conferences, and retreats. To learn from other people, I must be teachable. That means that when I have the opportunity to listen or learn something from people who know more than I do, I should listen and try to learn from them and not try to impress them. Some humility is required.
10. Start Now! Just Do It!
According to this principle, “There is no perfect time to start” so let me start now. As Canfield says, “Once you start moving and producing results, all manner of things begin to happen that will take you further and faster than you.”
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This post was originally published on menat50ish.com, and is republished here with the author’s permission.
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