Business Innovators Radio - Jack Canfield – Success Coach – Mark Stephen Pooler

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

Jack Canfield, known as America’s #1 Success Coach, is a bestselling author, professional speaker, trainer, and entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of the Canfield Training Group, which trains entrepreneurs, educators, corporate leaders and motivated individuals how to accelerate the achievement of their personal and professional goals. He has conducted live trainings for more than a million people in more than 50 countries around the world. He holds two Guinness World Record titles and is a member of the National Speakers Association’s Speaker Hall of Fame.Jack is the coauthor of more than two hundred books, including, The Success Principles™: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, The Success Principles Workbook, and the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series, which includes forty New York Times bestsellers and has sold more than 500 million copies in 47 languages around the world.Jack is a featured teacher in the movie The Secret, and has appeared on more than a thousand radio and television shows, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday, the Today show, Fox & Friends, and Larry King Live.www.jackcanfield.comSocial media links:https://www.facebook.com/JackCanfieldFan/https://www.instagram.com/jackcanfield_official/https://twitter.com/JackCanfieldhttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfqec6hc_zc2pM78ozgTbRQSource: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/jack-canfield-success-coach-mark-stephen-pooler

Welcome to Business Innovators Radio, featuring industry influencers and trendsetters, sharing proven strategies to help you build a better life right now. Do Brilliant Business TV, conversations with leading experts in business. I am your host, Mark Stephen Pula. We are streaming live on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube. We're also on the E360 TV network under fresh takes going to go to Apple TV, Fire TV, Android, Roku and many more. We're also on business innovators radio network. And also we are on USA Global Radio and Television Network and also MSPNewsglobal.com. We have an incredible guest today, Jack Cameron.

who I was lucky to see in Toronto a few years ago now and had my photograph taken with him, which was incredible as well. So without further ado, let's bring in the incredible Jack Canfield. Jack, welcome to Brilliant Business TV. Thank you. Thanks to be with you, Mark. You have such a legacy, Jack, with chicken soup for the soul, the secret, being such an incredible author, coach and helping the lives of many, many people. So it's a real inspiration to have you on my show today. And I'm really looking forward to a great conversation with you. Me too. So I'm working on a campaign for November, which is called World Class Changemakers share tips to create their vision using the mind, which is an incredible

conversation which I'm interested in having with you. So my first question, Jack, what word of wisdom do you have for anyone wanting to improve their mindset? Well, first, that it's possible. People need to know that you can do it. Second, it's necessary if you want to be more successful. There was your mindset, basically, it's like a thermostat that's controlling the level of your success, the level of your intimacy, the level of your health, just like the thermostat in your house controls the temperature. And third, it takes conscious effort, sometimes called work. And a lot of people don't put in that time where they don't know how to do it.

I'm glad you're helping people figure that out. There was a study done at Stanford a number of years ago where they compared aptitude to attitude. And what they found was that 8% or less of success was related to your aptitude, meaning your talents, your skills, your knowledge, 92% attitude. And Harvard University did a similar study, and they found out that 15% or less was aptitude, and 85% was attitude, which is mindset. And there's a wonderful quote from Sarah Blakely, who self-made billionaire, creator of Spanx, which is this woman's undergarments.

And she said, mindset is the single most important thing you have as an entrepreneur. Then she said, work on it daily. And I think that's the key. you have to have what I call disciplines of success, disciplines of mindset, using things like affirmations, self-talk, reminders, putting post-its on the wall, having your, I'm going to say treasure map. We call it the vision boards these days, so forth. Reading, reading every day, meditating every day, noticing when you say something negative. I have this technique I use called cancel cancel. So I have these little post-its around my house.

There's nothing written on them, just a little tiny three-by-two post-its. And every time I walk by one, I have to ask myself, what am I thinking? And if I'm thinking a negative thought, I say cancel, cancel, and then I replace it with the positive thought. I did that twice yesterday. And here I am. I'm 79 years old. I've been teaching this stuff forever.

And still these little thoughts creep them, some of them habitual, some of them new. And so it's constant in continuing mindfulness and effort. You know, I just recently interviewed a guy named Sean Acor for my podcast. He's a happiness expert. And he talks about the idea that we all have a lens we look through. And that lens is like the rose-colored glasses versus the negative glasses, et cetera. And that determines how we've experienced life. You know, two people can be looking at the same event, have totally different experiences.

I teach a formula called E plus R equals O. There's an event in your life. You have a response, which can be a thought or an image or behavior, and then you get an outcome. E plus R response equals outcome. And so what happens is that we have to be responsible for the belief system we have, for the attitude we have. I take the point of view that everything it happens in the universe is for me.

It's not happening to me. It's happening for me. Now, I didn't always believe that. But as I've gotten older, I realize that everything that happens is for me. Now, with that lens and I look at anything in the world, I feel happy. I feel up. It's like, okay, what's the opportunity that this is? What am I being asked to learn here?

What am I being asked to develop or grow or become aware of? One of my favorite quotes, Mark, is a quote from Muhammad Ali. He said, impossible is a big word thrown around by small people who find it easier to live in a world they've been given than to explore the power. they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. And so we have to realize that we have the ability to change our thoughts. And it does take repetition.

You know, research shows that it takes about 30 days to change a habit, to change a thought. And here's the interesting thing. They found out at NASA they were doing research on astronauts. And, you know, could they handle the disorientation they would experience in outer space? And what they found was they had them all these glasses. They were goggles that turned the world upside down. So imagine you're trying to eat your breakfast cereal and it's up here and you're reaching up there where it's not.

You have to learn how to change everything. If they couldn't handle that, they didn't think they'd be able to handle weightlessness in outer space and so forth. What they found was it after about 30 days, somewhere between 27 and 30 days, their brain flipped the image right side up. Even though it was coming in upside down, they're wearing these goggles, 24 hours day. Their brain created new neural pathways to be able to handle this new issue they were having with reality. Now, what they did was in a subsequent experiment, they had them take them off on

day 17 and then put them on again a day later. Took another 27 to 30 days before that happened. The answer to that or the meaning to that for all of us is that you can't miss a day. So if you want to change and create a new belief, a new attitude, whatever, you have to do it for 30 days row without missing a day. For a lot of people, that's difficult, challenging, but it requires that level of self-discipline if you want to have a more positive mindset. Well, firstly, the word impossible says are impossible. And you mentioned also about the belief system and how that affects our perception of the world. And when you change your belief system, you get a totally different perception of the world and different opportunities open up to you. And I truly believe in

energy, we're all connected. How much do you feel we're in control of our reality, Jack? Well, I think we're in control of all of it, really. I don't think most of us understand that. You know, we've all been taught to think about other people making our life difficult, blaming the government, blaming our spouse, blaming the neighbors, you know, blaming our parents, whatever. And so it takes us out of control. Michael Beckwith, who is a minister who was in the movie The Secret with me, said there are four stages of spiritual development. The first stage is being a victim. You know, why God are you doing this to me? You know, I'm suffering. I'm a victim. Other outside forces are controlling my life. The second stage, he calls the manipulative stage, where you start using laws like

the law of attraction, the law of energy, the law of compensation, so forth. And you start doing things like affirmations and visualization and meditation, and you start to get better results. And so what happens is now you understand there are these laws that you can use and when you do, you get success. Now, the next stage it happens, you begin to go, well, for all these laws, where'd they come from? There must be something bigger that's controlling all this. We can call it God, source energy, you know, the universe, whatever. The point being that we now start to go, well, maybe it's got more wisdom than I do. Maybe I should actually be surrendering to its guidance.

That's when we start praying and meditating and listening to inner guidance and following our intuition, things like that. And then the fourth stage is when you realize that not only is there this thing we call God or universe or source, but that I'm part of that. I'm not all of that. Any more than one drop of water is all of the ocean, but that drop of water is ocean. So at that point, we become co-creators, so we're creating our reality. Now, that doesn't happen normally by the time you're 14 years old. It takes time to move through those stages. But those are the stages that are available to all of us, and we have to be willing to first

understand they're there. Second, take responsibility, which most of us don't want to do. And then thirdly, we have to learn these principles and skills and laws and use them and then become surrendered to the guidance, and then we can become a co-creator. If you go to India, you see people like Saibaba, who will take a hand empty, go like this over your hand, open it up, and a ring falls into your hand, and it fits you perfectly. So you talk about creation. People have learned to do that, not a lot of people, but that is a possibility for us. But we're certainly creating our response to our situation, which ultimately creates our happiness, our joy, our health, quality of our relationships, I said, and the success we experience in life.

great points again and sometimes it's hard surrendering and having full trust and trusting that intuition i do get to moments of that but it can be hard to have full trust especially when you want a specific outcome as well but you mentioned affirmations which are really powerful i use affirmations as well i do work on my mindset and i also use hypnosis jack which is really really powerful to get into the subconscious mind as well. So my next question, what obstacles or challenges might individuals face when working on self-improvement and working towards their vision for the future? Well, I think the biggest ones are limiting beliefs, which most of us are not even aware we have.

In other words, these are beliefs that were formed normally between the age of two and seven years old. You know, I'm not smart. I'm not athletic. okay to make noise, not okay to ask for what I want, don't be selfish, you know, money doesn't grow on trees, all that kind of stuff. And once we make those limiting belief decisions in our childhood, we forget them. We forget that we did that. And then we go to make a phone call, we go to give a speech, we go to make an offer, we go to ask for something we want, and we hesitate. We don't do it. Why? Because something comes up that says it's not safe for me to do that. And so what we have

to do is we have to be, like through hypnosis, you talked about, there's other techniques as well, to bring up those limiting beliefs into our conscious mind and then release them and replace them with something more empowering, more uplifting, more true. And then basically those beliefs are gone. The other thing is fear. Most of us have fear. Fear is based on those beliefs. Fear is a result of going into the future in our mind and imagining a negative outcome. We can just as easily, use our mind to go into the future and imagine a positive outcome. But it's a habit. So we have all these habits of thought, habits of behavior that we're not even aware of. You know, one of the examples I use a lot is like most people live in a town or a city where there's like anywhere from a hundred to a

thousand restaurants depending on how big the city is. And most people, if you talk to, they go to the same five or six restaurants all the time. They go to the same two or three meals. They have the same drink or the same kind of wine. You know, whatever it is, it is habits over and over and over what we do, it takes effort to break out of those habits. But we can do that. And I think, you know, a lot of people don't realize that they have many, many, many more resources than they think they do. And so basically, we can use those resources, the books, the people like yourself doing hypnosis, et cetera. You know, one of the things I found out about habits recently was really interesting. There's a guy by the name of coach Dr. Nate Zinser. He wrote a book

called The Confident Mind, which is a great book. I don't know if you've read it. He is the peak performance expert at the United States Military Academy at West Point. And he has to teach the soccer team and the football team and all these people like, you know, how to be successful, have positive affirmations, visualize positive success and so forth. And one of the thing that he talks about, the number of people do today when you read books and habits, is to link the new habit with the current behavior.

So like when I was working on doing 100 pushups today, I started able to do 15, the all I could do, and I wanted to work by way up to 100. But every time I went to the bathroom, when I would come out, I would get down and do 10 push-ups. And so that was linking it to something I was already doing many times a day. What he suggests, which I love, is once you have your affirmation, like for your, I call it your breakthrough goal, your number one major thing you're working on accomplishing right now in your life, every time you go through a doorway, you say your affirmation. So you get up, you're going to the bathroom, say your affirmation. coming out of the bathroom, say your affirmation.

Going to the kitchen, say your affirmation, coming back out, getting in your car, getting out of the car. Well, that ends up doing it about 100 times a day. And so you're already going in and out of door. So why not link what you're wanting to do with something you're already doing? And it really has a tremendous impact. And let me say one more thing. There is this thing which we call the law of replacement. You can't get rid of something without replacing it with something new.

If I get rid of an object in my room, or let's say I pull the air out of a room, we've created the vacuum. If I open up that room at all, it sucks all the air vacuum. So what you want to do is the same thing happens in your mind. If I get rid of a negative belief, but I don't replace it with a positive belief, then the negative belief will get sucked vacuum. So it's important to, as soon as you have something you're aware of, it's been self-sabotaging, is to then replace it and then build that up through repetition, like we talked about, about like, you know, use the door technique or post-its or affirmation cards or whatever you want to do.

You know, John Assyraf, who's one of my friends, literally created a tape. It's a, I don't know what you call it. It's a repeating tape. And he has all his affirmations on there. And then he goes for a run every morning. And all he does is listen to these affirmations for like 30 minutes to an hour, depending on how long he's running. And so there's that repetition over time that really makes the difference. And I think a lot of people don't think they have the time.

But even if you just do two minutes, that's better than no minutes. And what I find is if you start with two, it starts to expand. I teach people to meditate. And originally, I don't have time. Do you have two minutes? Yeah. So they start to meditate for two minutes. And then all of a sudden what happens?

Turns into four minutes, five minutes, six minutes, eight minutes. And so you want to keep building that up. Again, some really, really great thoughts. And another thing I think what's great when you are changing your belief system, Jack, is even little things, little wings that give evidence to your new beliefs. It's really important to acknowledge those things. So you're giving yourself evidence of the new belief system because otherwise your mind searching for the new beliefs. So no matter how small, give your mind evidence of the new belief system. You mentioned fear as well, and I have had my moments of really, really intrusive thoughts, fearful thoughts, limiting beliefs.

And that was where hypnosis helped me, because I went back into my childhood to see a new perspective on some of the things that had happened for me. So my programme is really changing. but what I'm noticing a bit, Jack, is sometimes like the old program or the negative words or the fearful images, still try and come down into my awareness. There's no resistance to them. I don't have a reaction in the body anymore. Like I don't believe them anymore. How would you deal with that? Because it's a little bit annoying when you're trying to change the beliefs or get rid of those fears. when you don't actually believe them no more, you know they're irrational, but the program still comes down into your awareness? Well, I think the two things you can do.

One is ignore them. They're just coming by. You know, when you learn to meditate, you have thoughts. And the trick is to not try to fight the thought, but just to watch it go by. I always use the metaphor you're standing on the bank of a river, and there are boats floating down a river. And the trick is not to get in one of the boats. Just let it go by.

You know, that's one of the values of meditation is you begin to notice your thoughts. You begin to see some of them are really ridiculous. Some of them are ones you thought before like you talked about. And then the other thing that happens is that you could just learn not to fight it. Because as soon as I'm fighting a thought and I'm in resistance, then I'm in this battle. I'm not in the present moment. So just allow it to go by. The other possibility is what we talked about before, which is the law of replacement,

which is always have a positive affirmation for the day that you're working on, that's a new belief you have. So the minute the negative thought comes in, you don't have to look for something to think or say to yourself. You already know what it's going to be. It's either the thought for the day or the thought for the week, or it's going to be the standard thought you always think. But it's something like, I have everything I need to do anything I want.

I'm a master of my universe. You know, that's a pretty good thought. And so the reality is you could always think that thought, when the other thoughts could buy or just watch them go by. You kind of smile at them. Tony Robbins teaches something really cool, which I like too. In other words, if your thoughts going by and you start doing circus music in your head, that, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

You start to laugh at the thought because it's funny. And so, in other words, another way to replace what's going on in your head with the thought, so the thought becomes seen as a clown rather than anything really serious to take seriously. Yeah, I like that because it's so easy to believe thoughts that are totally irrational. And I had a problem where I was reacting to really intrusive thoughts and it really sent me into a spiral of hypervigilance. But I got myself out of that and I am the complete observer now and really present. So I do think it's about being in the present moment and just observing and letting them pass.

But I also like having a really positive. positive affirmation for that as well. Yeah. There's a, I'm going to say, I've just lost it. There was something, anyway, it'll come back. So it brings me nicely onto my last question for our campaign together. What is the best way to balance the positive and negative thoughts that individuals face when looking to improve their mindset and create the vision using the mind?

Well, I think we kind of talked about it already. In other words, you know, we talked about mindset being the most important thing. The question everyone has is how do you do it? And I don't think it's balancing negative and positive. I think it's doing as much as possible to eliminate the negative and to replace it with the positive. Some things I do and teach, number one, is having a daily gratitude practice. And you talked earlier about looking for things. You know, if you've got a certain that you're looking for the behavioral change, and then you acknowledge it. And the same thing is true with gratitude. Everybody now is teaching the importance of gratitude. Gratitude actually proceeds, what's the word I want, manifestation, achieving goals, success. There's a study done at the Heart Math Institute where they were looking at what's the difference between a power of intention or a power of intention with the same time having an experience of gratitude and appreciation and love. So they had strands of DNA, and they had people in the

laboratory. These are all PhD people. And they had them send an intention for the DNA to unwind. DNA is a helical thing. You've probably seen pictures of it. And so what happens is they wanted to see if they could get it to unwind. And they just intended it. These are really smart people, strong intention. Nothing happened. Then they had them just send love to the DNA. Nothing happened. Be grateful. Nothing happened. But then they had them hold the intent. that the DNA would unwind while they were focusing on something they appreciated and were grateful for, the DNA unwound. Then they could wind it back up again, doing the same thing. So gratitude is part of manifestation. Most people don't realize that. So you have to be grateful for what you do have

in order to produce more of what you don't have. And most people are focusing on what they don't have and feeling bad about that rather than appreciating what they do have. The second thing is that we're recommending is journaling every day for a minute or two about a positive experience you had in the previous 24 hours. So you take time to really explore it, get deep into it and remember it. When you remember positive events, that creates positive attitude, raises your energy, changes your biochemistry in your body. Obviously, exercise is important because it changes your body, changes your energy. And also you can do affirmations. You can listen to positive podcasts like This one while you're sort of exercising, et cetera, doing a random act of kindness every day.

When you send love, when you do an action for somebody, there's a guy named Dr. Jeffrey Martin, who I was coaching for a while. He has a book. I wanted to help him make it a bestseller. And he wrote a book called The Finders. A lot of people are seekers. He wanted to research the people who found it, who had inner peace all the time, who had joy all the time. And it was solid.

It wasn't something where they were. going up and down all the time. And what he found was one of the key things was doing acts of kindness every day, sending love to people every day, sending appreciation, emails, etc. And then finally, meditation, really, really important. And then like self-hypnosis, you talked about, or having other people work with you, reading something uplifting, almost all the people I know who are successful. And I wrote this forward for two books. One was called The Billionaire Seeker. Then there was called homeless to billionaire. And this is a guy who's 19. He was homeless. By the time he was 35, he had $3 billion. And he read the book The Secret. He read my book to Success Principles.

He started applying those. And so I interviewed all these different people that are super successful. They all read for about an hour a day or listen to, you know, podcasts, watch TED Talks, etc. But always positive information coming in. And they all say affirmations and they all visualize. there's a guy who's 80 years old, makes more windshields for cars than anyone in the world is a multi-billionaire in China. And he meditates every day, he exercises every day, he does gratitude exercise. I was kind of surprised to find that, actually, but it seems to be across the board. And so, again, having these daily practices, and I really recommend you do them in the morning.

So you're setting the tone for the day. And then again, at night, you want to do maybe some gratitude for what happened during the day. Close your eyes. visualize how you want the next day to go, then go to bed, get a good night's sleep. Just great, great words of wisdom there, Jack. And I think that's just given me a reminder to just be a little bit more grateful for some of the things that I do have in my life. Because I do work on my mindset, but I think I've neglected gratitude just a little bit. And it feels good when you are grateful and I know more and more things come in your life.

to be grateful of as well. So I will be definitely taking that into my practice of gratitude. And also I think journaling for the one thing of the day, what you're really grateful for. I think that's great too because it's giving your mind something every day to have a positive focus and intention on. So I think I'll definitely be adding those two things into my practice. Another thing that has been great for me as well, Jackie's breath work, especially because I had not a very good nervous system. Like doing 15 minutes to 45 minutes of breath work, it really helps to regulate the nervous system

to get your state of being a lot better. Yeah, I love breathwork. I've done a lot of it myself and also doing this. When you do the breathwork, you're building up your nitrogen oxide in your body, which energizes your body. an amazing way. And so breathworks really very important. And a lot of you do it really deep breath breath work. You're also going to stir up emotions that maybe are buried and so forth. You do.

It's a constant cleansing and freeing process. So good for you. Jack, I have thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed having a conversation with you today. And I know you're working on so many different things. And also I wanted to mention, I have read your book, Success Principles. You give it to me as a gift in Toronto and obviously the secret I was a huge fan of as well. If anyone is interested in Jack Canfield's work and you want to connect, go for more information at jack camfield.com. That's jack camfield.com. Jack, is there anything we did not cover that you would like to share today? Well, I'm about to run a five-day workshop in a few days, so a lot of stuff we didn't cover. No, I think, I think, you know, if people just take what we talked about today

and make sure you start integrating the gratitude, the exercise, the acts of kindness, you know, affirmations, visualization, you know, putting up little post-ist to remind you what you're thinking about, you know, maybe every time you go through a doorway, repeating your affirmation, all those things. One of the things I found, Mark, is when I teach my students, it's called microactions. I think a lot of times people try to do too much too fast and they overwhelm themselves. So if you pick one or two things and do that for, let's say, 30 days, if you were to develop a new habit every 30 days, that's 12 habits a year. Even if it was just one new habit every three months, that's four new habits. In 10 years, you'd have 40 new success habits. You'd be unstoppable. So don't overwhelm yourself.

You know, do as much as you can. Maybe I teach something called the hour of power in the morning, 20 minutes of meditation and gratitude exercise, visualization information, 20 minutes of reading something uplifting or listening to something uplifting and 20 minutes of exercise. It could be yoga or it could be aerobic, whatever. That hour of power will change your life. I like that and I like the fact that it's manageable. So you're saying don't try and go all in and do too much all at once. Just little steps will get you to your end destination.

Jack, I thoroughly enjoyed having a conversation with you. Thank you for being my guest today on Brilliant Business TV. Thanks for having me, Mark. I appreciate it. The pleasure's being all mine. Thank you, everyone, for joining us for Brilliant Business TV. Conversations with leading experts in business. Until next time. Thanks for listening to Business Innovators Radio.

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