Jack Canfield struck gold as a co-author of the best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, but it took him years to achieve success. In The Success Principles, he details 67 principles to help anyone achieve their goals and dreams. The basic formula for success is to identify what you want, know that you deserve to have it, and use the book’s principles to get you there.
We combined and reorganized the principles by theme for clarity and coherence. We’ve grouped them into eight parts by theme (two more than Canfield’s six), combined similar principles, and omitted repetitive principles (Principle 9: Success Leaves Clues; Principle 22: Practice Persistence; and Principle 24: Exceed Expectations).
Key Takeaways: Believe you can get what you want, work to get it, and take responsibility for your life.
Top Principle: Principles 1, 30—Take Responsibility for Your Life: Accept that your life circumstances are within your control, and operate with this formula: Event + Response = Outcome. An Event is something that happens in your life; your Response is how you choose to respond to the event; the Outcome is the result of how you choose to respond. If you’re frequently dealing with the same event but don’t like the outcome you’re getting, adjust your response until you get the outcome you’d like.
For example, if you hate your job, you may blame your boss. But you accepted that job and chose to stay in it, even if it’s keeping you from doing work you’re more passionate about. Instead of blaming your boss, get what you need to make the job worthwhile, or make a change. For example, ask that you not be expected to work weekends, or ask for a raise that’s long overdue.
Principles 2-3—Identify Your Life’s Purpose and What You Want: When you know your life’s purpose, you can tailor your actions to support that purpose. In contrast, if you don’t feel a sense of purpose, it’s easy to go aimlessly through life without feeling as though you’re achieving anything worthwhile or meaningful. Principles 4-6—Believe in Yourself and Your Dreams: Science has shown that what happens in our lives tends to follow what we think will happen, or what we’ve been conditioned to think will happen. So, to achieve what you want in life, believe it will happen, believe you can do it, and don’t be deterred by conventional wisdom that says otherwise.
Principles 7, 8, 11, 23—Set Goals: Goal-setting helps you develop new skills, grow as a person, and do things that scare you but are good for you. Write goals with plenty of detail, interact with them daily, break them into steps, and work on those steps every day.
Principle 10—Expand Your Comfort Zone: As we grow up, we often let limiting thoughts about ourselves and our abilities guide how we live our lives. Writing affirmations is a great tool to envision your ideal reality and motivate yourself to leave your comfort zone to achieve it.
Key Takeaways: Achieving success requires taking action. Learn to forge ahead, even in the face of challenges and fear.
Top Principle: Principles 15-16—Face Your Fears, and Do the Work: Though everyone has fears, successful people learn to feel their fears and do the work anyway. They also recognize that reaching their goals isn’t just going to happen—they have to be willing to do what’s necessary, which often requires sacrifice. Train yourself to set your fear aside by reframing it, focusing on positive imagery, and focusing on positive feelings. To do the work, evaluate your plan of action, assess whether your steps are sufficient, and be willing to practice and fail until you can do the work well.
Principle 12—Act Like You’ve Made It: Acting as though you’ve already achieved your dream activates the Law of Attraction: You start attracting and recognizing the people and opportunities that could help you reach your goals. To start acting like you’ve made it, think about how your life would be different, including what you’d feel, think, talk about, and wear.
Principles 13-14—Push Yourself to Act: Even when you have a plan of action, you may make excuses that prevent you from following it, such as waiting for the right time to start. Identify your main excuse for waiting and address it so you can get to work.
Key Takeaways: To be successful, communicate your needs and wants to others, and ask others for feedback on your performance to continuously improve yourself.
Top Principle: Principle 19—Seek Out and Use Feedback: Feedback is a useful tool to achieve your goals because it can help you tell when you’re getting off track and need to correct your course. Though you may be afraid of what you’ll hear, the benefits outweigh the downsides.
People are often afraid to give feedback because they don’t want you to react in a negative way. To benefit from feedback, learn to ask for it and accept it graciously. Here are two questions to ask:
Principles 17-18—Ask for What You Need and Want: Learning how to ask for what you need and want, even when you’re afraid of the answer, can help you reach your goals. To ask for what you want, use clear language, assume what you’re asking for is possible, and if you’re rejected, try again another time.
Principles 20-21—Always Strive to Improve: Working to improve yourself and become successful means that you don’t stop once you’ve achieved one goal—it means you’re constantly working on improving yourself or your work, and you recognize that even slight improvements can make a big difference. To keep improving, plan what you’re going to improve on and develop a scoring system to track your progress and motivate you to hit your targets.
Key Takeaways: To achieve success, find people who can support you in your endeavors. Also, develop new ways of thinking about yourself and your efforts.
Top Principle: Principle 26—Appreciate Your Successes: It’s common to focus more on our failures than our successes. We tend to take even small successes for granted. But over time, this can diminish your self-esteem and make you less likely to take risks. For example, maybe you see a job posting for a customer engagement associate with a local software company. You’re relatively qualified for the job, but you talk yourself out of applying because you’ve never held a similar role. Instead of letting poor self-esteem erode your confidence, actively work to celebrate your success, and use it as a tool to persevere in times of doubt or difficulty.
To boost your self-esteem and remind yourself of your successes, do activities such as writing down 100 times when you were successful, or surround yourself with symbols of your success, such as diplomas and certificates.
Principles 25—Surround Yourself With Nurturing, Successful People: If you spend a lot of time with people who stress you out, aren’t successful, or aren’t supportive, you’re less likely to succeed. Aim to spend time with people who uplift you, support and nurture your dreams, have a positive attitude, and are successful.
Principle 27—Improve Your Bedtime Routine: How you reflect on your day has a huge impact on what you learn and how you approach the next day. Use the last 45 minutes of your day to ask yourself how the day went, and visualize your success the following day.
Principle 28—Finish Your Projects and Declutter Your Life: The more unfinished tasks and clutter you have on hand, the more time you spend thinking about them when you could be putting that energy toward achieving your goals. Make a plan to systematically finish your unfinished projects and get rid of clutter.
Principle 29—Resolve Past Hurts: When you experience something painful but don’t process it, it diminishes your ability to take on future challenges. Learning to forgive can help you overcome your fears through fully expressing your emotions.
Principle 31—Welcome Change: The world is constantly changing, from new technologies to the economy. Learn to welcome change by reflecting on a time change made your life easier and training yourself to anticipate change with excitement rather than fear.
Principles 32-33—Practice Positive Self-Talk: Negative thoughts about yourself can make you feel powerless, unmotivated, and weak. Deal with negative thoughts by resolving to listen only to constructive feedback, expressing your grievances with yourself in a gentle way, and asking yourself what to do differently.
Principles 34-35—Master Four Success Habits Per Year: Studies suggest it takes 13 weeks, or a quarter of a year, to develop a new habit. Identify which four habits or behaviors would be useful to your personal and professional success, and work on them, one at a time, over the course of a year.
Principles 36-37—Learn Throughout Your Life: Learning throughout your life is key to being successful and adapting to changing times. To make time to learn, watch less television and read more, listen to inspirational audio programs, attend success rallies or conferences, and help your employees develop new skills throughout their careers.
Key Takeaways: Being a successful leader means taking steps to improve your leadership skills, growing your professional network, and focusing your time on the work you do best.
Top Principle: Principles 38-41—Focus on Your “Core Genius”: Passion and enthusiasm can drive you to do your best work and achieve success. Successful people turn their passion and their core genius—what they do best—into their business.
To align your work with your passion and core genius, first determine what each of these is. To identify your passion, ask yourself:
To identify and align your work with your core genius, follow these three steps:
Principle 42—Align Your Time With Your Values: From the workplace to home, our lives are filled with distractions that prevent us from spending time on what’s important to us. Learning to say no to distractions and mediocre business opportunities positions you to achieve your goals and dreams.
Principle 43—Cultivate Your Leadership Skills: Successful people are often leaders in their field because achieving their vision or goals required motivating, recruiting, and leading groups of people to action. Leaders know how to:
Principles 44-45—Network and Find Mentors and Coaches: To be successful in your life and career, cultivate a network of people whom you can call on for advice and do business with. Meet regularly with a mentor who is successful in your field, and form a professional network to open doors to new career opportunities such as new clients, business partners, and jobs.
Principle 46—Convene a Mastermind Group and Choose an Accountability Partner: Professionals in and outside of your field can offer insight and encouragement that helps you achieve your personal and professional goals. Form a mastermind group of five or six people who convene regularly—weekly to monthly—to confidentially help each other navigate challenges and reach their professional or personal goals. You can also pair up with an accountability partner and hold each other accountable for getting your work done, meeting deadlines, and reaching goals.
Principle 47—Consult Your Intuition: When confronted with a challenge, many people know how to seek outside help, but few have learned how to access their inner wisdom or intuition to overcome a challenge. Learn to tap into your intuition at will by asking yourself questions, meditating, and calming your emotions so that you can focus on solutions.
Key Takeaways: Successful relationships require a suite of skills, including showing appreciation for others, learning to listen and ask questions in a way that helps people feel heard, and following through on your commitments.
Top Principle: Principle 53—Show Your Appreciation: In personal and work relationships, showing your appreciation helps others feel affirmed and valued. Yet we may hesitate to show appreciation or not show it in the way the other person prefers. Becoming familiar with the five “love languages” can help you show appreciation to people in the way that suits them. This principle can also be used to recognize your employees. Here’s how it works: People have a preferred “language” or way of receiving appreciation, as well as a secondary way. If you show your appreciation with a love language that doesn’t register with someone, it won’t have the same impact as their preferred language.
The five love languages are receiving gifts, benefiting from a service, touch, kind and encouraging words, and quality time. You can discern someone’s love language by listening to what they ask of you, watching how they behave with others, and noting their complaints, all of which can reveal how they would like to be appreciated.
Principle 48—Hone Your Listening Skills: Active listening is an important skill to facilitate communication and ingratiate yourself with others. Active listening includes observing body language, showing your attention with your own body language, considering the message underlying what the person is saying, and asking clarifying questions.
Principle 49—Host “Heart Talks”: Most of our institutions are structured around telling people what to do rather than listening to what they have to say. To remedy this, create space for discussions, or “Heart Talks,” where people can share their concerns, wishes, and dreams so they feel heard and can put forth their best effort.
Principles 50-51—Speak as if Words Have Power, and Tell the Truth: Your words—spoken and unspoken—have a powerful effect on you and those around you, yet we don’t often think about this power. To become successful, be conscientious in how you use words, and strive to tell the truth.
Principle 52—Ask Questions to Learn the Truth: It’s common to make up negative “stories” to interpret a situation rather than asking questions to learn the truth. Instead, ask questions to find out what’s going on instead of letting negative interpretations affect your emotions and guide your actions.
Principle 54—Rethink Your Agreements: Making agreements and delivering on them is an important skill, yet we sometimes hit roadblocks and fail to deliver. Commit to only what you can deliver on, and record your commitments so you don’t forget them.
Principle 55—Act With Class: Acting with class can help you distinguish yourself from others. This includes accepting responsibility for your actions and results, enriching yourself and those around you, and maintaining grace, even under difficult circumstances.
Key Takeaways: Financial success involves growing your wealth and giving back to the people, charities, and institutions you care about.
Top Principle: Principle 57—Choose to Be Wealthy: To become wealthy, choose to become wealthy. First, understand your finances by reading to develop financial literacy, calculating your net worth and how much money you need for retirement, and tracking your spending. Then, decide what being wealthy means to you and create goals to reach it. For instance, make a table of everything you’ll spend money on when you’re wealthy and calculate how much you’d need to earn per year to support that spending.
Principle 56—Develop Positive Thinking Habits About Money: Making enough money to enjoy the lifestyle you want can help you feel successful, but it’s easy to let limiting beliefs about money get in the way. For instance, if your parents told you growing up that rich people are evil, you might hold back from taking steps to reach your preferred level of wealth. Address limiting beliefs about money, and use techniques like visualization and writing affirmations to cultivate positive thinking around money and how you’ll use it.
Principle 58—Save and Invest Your Money: Saving for retirement helps you reach financial independence—not having to work for money—but many people don’t know how to effectively save. Plan to save at least 10 percent of your income and start investing early so that compound interest can grow your wealth over time.
Principle 59—Spend Consciously: Conscious spending means two things: You spend only the money you have, and do what you want while spending little. To spend consciously, work to pay off your debts, pay in cash instead of relying on credit, avoid paying full price, and consider options apart from loans to fund education.
Principle 60—Increase Your Income: Increasing your income allows you to save enough money for retirement while buying what you’d like in the present. Strategies to earn more money include helping your company earn more money and receiving a cut, and participating in a network marketing business.
Principle 61—Donate Your Money and Time: Though growing your wealth is a worthy goal, so is sharing it to make the world a better place. Share your wealth through tithing—giving money or volunteering your time—to spiritual institutions or philanthropic organizations you care about.
Principle 62—Serve Others: Serving others enriches your life while making the world a better place. Serve others by volunteering or focusing your company’s products or services on helping others.
Key Takeaways: There are many technologies available today that you can use to advance your career and achieve your goals.
Top Principle: Principles 64-65—Develop Your Online Brand: Successful people understand how their online presence, or brand, affects their entrepreneurial or philanthropic endeavors. They actively cultivate a brand that frames them as an authority worth listening to. Cultivate your brand with the following four steps:
Principle 63—Learn What Technology You Need, and Use It: Technology can make your life easier, but adopt only the technology that helps you succeed. Learn how to use technology wisely and limit consuming information that doesn’t help you achieve your goals.
Principle 66-67—Crowdfund and Crowdsource Your Endeavors: Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing can help you fund and support your endeavors when traditional financing isn’t an option. To effectively crowdfund, use video to tell your story, encourage donations, reward donors, and reassure people you can finish the job.
Jack Canfield made it big as a co-author of the best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, but it took years for him to achieve success. In The Success Principles, Canfield details 67 principles to help anyone achieve their goals and dreams. To develop the principles, Canfield interviewed successful people, from athletes to authors. He applied the principles to his own life, and he teaches them to people all over the world through seminars. His students have accomplished feats such as becoming millionaires, receiving a Teacher of the Year award in their school district, and sustaining fulfilling relationships.
The basic formula for success is to identify what you want, know that you deserve to have it, and use the book’s principles to get you there. Think of the book as a road map: It can show you where to go, but you have to drive the route. In other words, achieving your goals requires you to make the time and effort to do the work.
We reorganized Canfield’s principles for clarity and coherence: We’ve grouped them into eight parts by theme (two more than Canfield’s six), combined similar principles, and omitted repetitive principles (Principle 9: Success Leaves Clues; Principle 22: Practice Persistence; and Principle 24: Exceed Expectations). The eight parts are:
Canfield offers the following tips for applying the principles in this book:
While reading, try to:
While it’s easy to blame your quality of life on things you can’t control, this isn’t an effective way to improve your life. To achieve success, it’s better to believe that you’re completely responsible for your quality of life and have the power to improve it. In this section, you’ll learn why it’s easy to not take responsibility for your life and how to change your behavior.
If you accept that your life circumstances are in your control, then you operate with this formula:
Event + Response = Outcome
Your Response to an Event affects the Outcome of that situation. If you’re frequently dealing with the same event but don’t like the outcome you’re getting, you have two possible responses:
Choosing to adjust your response means that you refuse to complain about your circumstances. Generally, complaining is a sign that you have realized you want a different outcome, but you aren’t motivated to make the changes in yourself or your life to achieve it. We often complain to people who have no control over the situation. For example, maybe you’re unhappy with your partner, but instead of having a conversation with them about what you need from them, you complain to a coworker and don’t do anything differently.
If you need help to stop complaining, create a complaining/blaming jar. Every time you complain or blame someone for your circumstances, put $2 into the jar.
There are three ways to change your behavior:
1. Look for signs that your behavior isn’t going to yield the outcome you want. These warning signs might include:
But it’s easy to let these warning signs go unheeded because doing so would make you feel uncomfortable or you don’t want to change. Change is often scary because it involves risks, such as:
Face your fears about change and choose behaviors that’ll yield your desired outcome. You don’t always have to pick the most extreme solution. For example, if you’re unhappy with your job, you don’t have to quit—you might be able to have a conversation with your boss about what isn’t going well and discuss what needs to change for you to feel fulfilled going forward.
2. Proactively seek feedback. Seeking feedback from those around you might allow you to understand how your behavior is unhelpful and what you might do differently. Though taking criticism is difficult, it’s important to work through your fears and make a change.
3. Ask yourself questions to guide your changes:
For example, if you’re trying to lose weight, maybe eating excessive sugar is sabotaging your efforts. Consider cutting back on it and increasing your exercise to achieve your goal.
Going for the Glory: Raj Bhavsar’s Story
Raj Bhavsar knew he wanted to compete as a gymnast in the Olympics. Through high school and college, he racked up wins in tournaments. But when it came time to try out for the Olympics, he placed only as an alternate—he’d join Team USA at the 2004 Athens games, but he’d only compete if one of his teammates dropped out.
Bhavsar decided he still wanted a shot at the Olympics as a competing athlete, not just an alternate. He loved the sport enough to keep practicing, but his performance suffered because he was less focused on winning. After a poor performance at nationals, he read The Success Principles, which taught him to take responsibility for his life rather than feeling at the whim of the world. He learned that it’s normal for successful people to experience negative feelings and fear, but they work through them to achieve their goals. He needed to change his attitude to improve his performance and make the team. He qualified as an alternate for the 2008 games, and after gymnast Paul Hamm dropped out, Bhavsar competed and helped lead his team to a bronze medal.
Practice taking responsibility for your actions.
Describe a situation in your life (event, response, and outcome) where you blame the event for the outcome.
Describe your preferred outcome.
Now, considering that same situation, identify one or two ways that your action (or inaction) enables the undesirable outcome.
Now that you recognize how you contribute to the undesirable outcome, describe one or two things you could do differently to create the outcome you want.
If you don’t feel a sense of purpose, it’s easy to go aimlessly through life without feeling as though you’re achieving anything worthwhile or meaningful. But when you know your life’s purpose and direction, you can tailor your actions to support that purpose. When your actions align with your purpose, you feel satisfied.
This section explains how to identify your purpose and take your first steps to achieve it.
Canfield suggests several strategies:
1. List the times you have felt most happy. Evaluate whether they share any similar characteristics, and brainstorm ways you could earn your living from them.
2. Meditate. Quiet your mind and ask yourself what your purpose or role in the world is. (How to meditate is discussed further in Principle 47.)
3. Make a Life Purpose Statement. Here are the steps:
4. Complete a “Passion Test,” a 10-question exercise described in the book The Passion Test by Chris and Janet Attwood.
5. Complete Canfield’s “Life Purpose Guided Visualization” from his Awakening Power meditation series.
When we were babies, we knew what we wanted and acted swiftly, without shame, to get it. For example, if you were hungry, you would cry and be fed. But as you got older, your wants became more complex, and you likely got more negative responses, such as:
Over time, giving up on what you want can lead you to consistently put the needs of others above your own rather than identifying and working toward what you want and need. For example, you might want to be a teacher, but you become a lawyer because it’s what your parents want.
Try the following exercises to rediscover your wants:
1. Be mindful of your preferences in every situation. When someone asks you what you’d prefer, you might choose to avoid confrontation by saying that you don’t know or don’t have a preference when you actually do have a preference. For example, maybe you’d prefer to eat out at a different restaurant than your friends prefer, but you don’t want to upset them by speaking out. To build mindfulness of your preferences, learn to recognize when you have wants and needs, even if the situation feels inconsequential. Learning to stand up for what you want on the little things will build your confidence to work toward bigger achievements.
2. Write 30 things that you want to be, 30 things you want to have, and 30 things you want to do before you die. For example, maybe you want to become an admired chef or win a Scrabble tournament. In later chapters, you’ll learn how to get there.
3. Have a friend ask you “What do you want?” repeatedly for 10 minutes and write down your answers. Some of your first answers may be basic things, like a trip to San Diego. As you go on, your answers may become more complex, like, “I want to improve my relationship with my sister.”
4. Write 20 things you love to do. People often think they can’t do what they love to earn a living. But with some creativity, there are ways to align your passions with your work. List your passions and consider ways to earn money from them. For example, if you love sports and want to make your living from it, there are many careers where you can do so, from playing a sport to journalism.
5. Create a vision for your ideal life, focusing on seven key areas:
Teaching Others Martial Arts: Logan Doughty’s Story
Logan Doughty needed help recovering from drug and alcohol addiction. He checked into a program that helped him gradually reclaim his life. While he was in the program, his sister gave him The Success Principles. When Doughty read the section on identifying what he wanted to do, he realized he’d always thought about earning a living from a money standpoint, rather than making a living from activities he enjoyed.
When he wrote down 20 things he loved, he realized that the answer to aligning his passion with earning a living was in front of him all along: Teaching martial arts. He’d started developing a program to teach women self-defense, but his alcohol and drug addiction had slowly eclipsed his life, and he lost the self-respect and discipline needed to practice martial arts. When he left the rehab program, he started earning money through a yard work business while also becoming the martial arts instructor at the program.
Evaluate how your wants in inconsequential situations affect your behavior.
Do you have a go-to response when you have a different preference than others around you? What is it?
Why do you think you developed this behavior?
Does this behavior help you be true to yourself and your wants? Why or why not?
Do you act this way in situations with bigger consequences? If so, is there any way you’d like to adjust your behavior to be more true to yourself and your wants?
The human brain is a powerful tool, when used correctly. Science has shown that what happens in our lives tends to follow what we think will happen, or what we’ve been conditioned to think will happen. So, to achieve what you want in life, believe it will happen, believe you can do it, and don’t be deterred by conventional wisdom that says otherwise. In this section, you’ll learn techniques to change your thinking and achieve success.
Sometimes we don’t think we’re capable of achieving our dreams because we don’t have the right characteristics for success. Canfield offers the following tips:
1. Cultivate good self-esteem. Your self-esteem, or how you see yourself, ties into how readily you achieve your dreams. You likely developed your sense of self from your parents, and they may have passed along to you negative attitudes about themselves and what they’re capable of. Instead of seeing yourself as capable of taking on challenges, you may hold yourself back.
Instead, strive to see yourself in a positive light and believe you’re capable of what you set your mind to. When you believe in yourself, your brain is more likely to take steps to make the dream a reality. Also, research shows that most people are capable of most things if they take time to learn, train, and practice. Of the successful people Canfield interviewed for this book, most reported that they weren’t naturally talented at what they’re good at—they just put in the time to practice and get better.
2. Stop saying “I can’t.” Words can have a powerful effect on your self-image and ability to achieve your goals. If you use phrases like, “I can’t,” or even, “I wish I were able to,” you might convince yourself that you’re incapable of doing something.
In his seminars, Canfield does an exercise to demonstrate that your thoughts can affect your physical strength. He asks a volunteer to hold out their arm and say different phrases. Canfield pushes down on their arm as they speak. When people say, “I can play the guitar,” their arm strength holds steady or is stronger as Canfield pushes. In contrast, if they say, “I can’t play the guitar,” their arm weakens and is easier to push down. If you remove phrases like “I can’t” from your vocabulary and amend negative beliefs about your abilities, you may achieve impressive things.
Example 1: Canfield attended a workshop to learn to walk on hot coals. At the beginning of the workshop, participants wrote out all of the things they didn’t believe they could do on paper, such as, “I can’t be a millionaire,” and “I’ll never meet my soulmate.” They then burned them in a fire as a symbol of letting go of limiting beliefs. Later that day, all the participants walked across burning coals without anyone getting burned.
Example 2: In another instance, a mathematics graduate student at UC Berkeley came late to class and saw two problems on the board that he assumed were the homework assignment for the class. He didn’t know the problems had never been solved in mathematics before. He worked on them over a few days and came up with solutions, surprising his professor. Had he known the problems had never been solved, he wouldn’t have attempted to solve them.
3. Ignore people’s judgments and ideas about how to live your life. It’s easy to let what others think of you—perceived or suspected—shape how you see your capabilities. It’s also easy to let the opinions of people we care about, like our partners and parents, factor heavily into which dreams we pursue. Instead, ignore the people who question your abilities, and work to achieve your dreams rather than the dreams others have for you.
Example: Catherine Lanigan was told by a professor in her freshman year of college that she was a terrible fiction writer and had no promise of succeeding in that field. The professor told Catherine he’d give her a B in the class if she promised to change majors at the end of the semester. She didn’t write for the next 14 years, until an acquaintance encouraged her to try again. She wrote a book that was picked up by a publishing company and went on to publish 33 best-selling books, some of which were made into movies. If she hadn’t listened to the naysaying professor, she could have pursued her writing and reached her dreams much earlier.
4. Know that any time is the right time to pursue your dreams. You may tell yourself you’re not the right age to pursue your dreams. You may think you’re too old—if you wanted to become an actor, you should have started years ago. Or, young people may think they lack the expertise or experience needed to pursue their dreams. Such beliefs are often untrue and prevent you from doing things that would make you feel fulfilled as a person.
Here are some examples of people who succeeded at various ages:
5. Don’t think you have to go to college. Many people think that completing a college degree is required for success, but this isn’t always the case—one in four millionaires in the U.S. didn’t go to college, and founders of many successful tech companies didn’t complete a college degree. For example, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard, founded Microsoft, and is now one of the richest people in the world.
The Law of Attraction, which states that your thoughts can attract what you want, is another important tool that can help you achieve success. The law comes from the field of quantum mechanics, which says that two different particles can exhibit linked properties even if they’re on opposite sides of the universe. Here’s how it works: Almost everything is made up of energy-containing atoms that interact with one another to form materials and objects. Our thoughts register as brain waves on medical scanning equipment, which suggests that they’re also a form of energy and can interact with the universe around us. For example, if you think about needing to talk to your friend, only to get a call from them shortly thereafter, this is an example of your thoughts interacting with the universe and attracting what you want.
With this knowledge, we can train ourselves to think positively so that we channel energy to achieve what we want: If everything in the universe has a specific vibration, you can adjust your thoughts to match the frequency of the things you want and attract them into your life, similar to the way you’d tune a radio to the frequency of your favorite station.
One famous example of thought transmission was tested on the 1971 Apollo 14 mission. Edgar Mitchell sent a thought message to four people on earth, and three received the correct message—how to place a series of cards in the correct order.
Canfield participated in the documentary called The Secret (also a book) in which he shared his insight about how to use the Law of Attraction to get what you want. The two basic steps are: Believe you can get what you want, and take action to achieve it.
(Shortform note: Read our summary of The Secret to learn more about the Law of Attraction.)
To achieve your dreams, think positively about what you want rather than focusing on what you lack or what isn’t going well. Each time you have a thought, you’re making a request to the universe about something you want. If you go through life thinking negatively, you’re placing negative requests with the universe and negative results will enter your life. Worrying is equivalent to negative goal-setting—by putting that negative energy into the universe, you’re willing your worry to happen. For example, if you’re constantly thinking about struggling to pay your mortgage, you may continue struggling to pay it.
Here are two techniques to hone a positive mindset:
1. Write affirmations. Affirmations are positive, present tense statements about something in your life or something you want. For example, say something like, “I am so happy to live in this beautiful house across the street from Dolores Park,” instead of, “I hope to someday live in a house across from Dolores Park.” By writing statements in the present tense and imagining how it’ll feel when you’ve achieved your desire, you’re placing yourself in the happy emotional state, or right vibration, necessary to achieve it. You’re also creating a mental gap between what you experience now and what you’d like to experience, which encourages you to take steps to close the gap. Principle 10: Expand Your Comfort Zone explores affirmations further.
2. Practice gratitude and appreciation. Practicing gratitude and appreciation will open you to making your dreams a reality. This is because if you had what you wanted, you’d—hopefully—feel gratitude and appreciation for having it. So, proactively cultivating these feelings will put you on the path toward getting what you want by attracting it into your life.
One way to practice this is taking five to 10 minutes each day to make a list of things you’re grateful for. Or look around and note things you appreciate. In his workshops, Canfield asks participants to take a walk around the meeting space and note the things they appreciate. Even something like the carpet can be appreciated for improving a room’s acoustics, and in addition to appreciating the carpet itself, you can appreciate things like the people who made it and the building designer who selected it for that space. This technique also works for people in your life: Focusing on why you appreciate someone can improve your relationship by giving weight to the qualities you like about them rather than what you dislike. You may find that the things you like outweigh the things you dislike, making your dislikes feel less relevant.
(Principles 32-33: Practice Positive Self-Talk discusses how to address negative beliefs.)
Once you’ve developed a strong belief that you’ll get what you need, there are two types of action you can take to make it happen:
1. Obvious. An obvious action is any step you must take to achieve your goal. For example, if you want to become a nurse, you might select a school to do your studies and enroll in classes.
2. Instinctive. Listen to what your instincts tell you to do and take action. For example, you might have a gut feeling that you should attend a certain conference. Acting on your instincts and attending the conference could put you on the path to getting what you need and may present additional opportunities to do so. You also might get ideas for what to do through meditation or other activities; keep a pen and paper with you to jot them down so you can decide whether to act on them.
Example: Jeanette Maw worked for a bank that sold 401(k) plans to businesses. One day, the bank announced that they weren’t hitting their sales goals, despite each employee following a standard protocol for making sales. They were told they’d be let go if they didn’t increase their sales.
Jeanette had heard about a writing exercise where you write a page a day about something you want and by the time you get to the end of your notebook, you have it. She found a small notebook and wrote a page about having a friendly relationship with clients and people being excited about her service. Next, she decided to go out to lunch instead of just getting a snack from the vending machine between sales calls. On her way back, she met a man in the elevator who was trying to decide which 401(k) plan to buy for his company and wanted her bank’s services. By doing what felt right rather than following a rigid protocol, Jeannette began to quickly increase her sales.
Somatic decision-making can help you determine which ideas are worth acting on. Here are the steps:
Note: If an idea comes up for you repeatedly, or you find yourself thinking about it frequently, that could be a sign you should act on it. For example, Canfield thought about starting an organization called the Transformational Leadership Council, but he didn’t take any action at first to make it a reality. When the idea continued to surface at seemingly random times, with even more specific details, like who he’d invite to join, he decided it was something he should pursue.
Assess which of the five “believing in yourself” tips you do well, and which you’d like to improve on: cultivate good self-esteem, stop saying, “I can’t,” ignore people’s judgments and ideas about how to live your life, know that any time is the right time to pursue your dreams, don’t think you have to go to college.
Out of the five tips to believe in yourself, which ones are you already good at? How so?
Which of the five tips do you feel most inspired to improve on? Why?
Choose one tip to implement in your life. Describe one or two things you can do each day to start working on it.
Setting goals is a powerful way to evaluate your dreams and make a plan to achieve them. This section outlines how to write goals and how to increase the likelihood you’ll achieve them.
Goal setting has three main benefits:
When writing goals, incorporate these characteristics:
Sometimes, a goal might start as just an idea: something you want, or a wish. It may be a good idea, but if it’s too vague or you can’t measure when you’ll achieve it, workshop it into a goal. Here are some examples:
| Idea | Goal |
| I want to own a house in Costa Rica. | I will own a house in the beach town of Sámara, Costa Rica by 5 p.m. on September 23, 2023. |
| I should eat better. | I will have transitioned to eating only vegan meals and snacks by 8 p.m. on February 9, 2021. |
| I should talk to my grandmother more. | I will have talked to my grandmother four times (two times per month) by January 31, 2021. |
In the previous table, the goals include more detail than the ideas, which gives the brain a more specific outcome to work toward.
Studies indicate that increasing your interaction with your goal makes you more likely to achieve it.
Researchers recruited participants from North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia to study the effects of different goal-setting habits. They divided the participants into five groups, asked each participant to set a goal—something they wanted to accomplish in the next four weeks—and gave them one or more techniques to follow while working toward their goal. The table below summarizes which techniques each group of goal setters used and how they fared:
| Group 1 | Group 2 | Group 3 | Group 4 | Group 5 | |
| Think about goals | x | x | x | x | x |
| Write goals | x | x | x | x | |
| Write steps to achieve goals | x | x | x | ||
| Send list of steps to a friend or mentor | x | x | |||
| Provide weekly updates on your goals to your friend or mentor | x | ||||
| % Participants who achieved their goals | 43 | 56 | 56 | 64 | 76 |
The study showed that the more ways participants engaged with their goal, the more likely they were to achieve it.
In another study, people who wrote down their goals and reviewed them regularly earned nine times more over the course of their lives than people who didn’t set goals.
In addition to the techniques in the above study, here are five ways to engage with your goals:
1. Read and visualize your goals two or three times per day. As you read a goal, visualize how it will feel to have achieved it. Visualization is a powerful tool to help you realize your goals. Studies have shown that the brain activity for doing an activity and visualizing the activity are the same. The system in your brain that does this is called the reticular activating system (RAS). Regular visualization activates your RAS, makes your goals feel achievable, and motivates you to take steps to get there: It creates a disconnect between your lived reality and what life will be like once you’ve achieved your goal. This disconnect is called “structural tension” and it motivates you to make your reality match your visualizations. For example, use it to speak up more in class, take on more ambitious projects, or other activities that will help you achieve your goal.
An important note on visualization: Some people see bright, colorful, three-dimensional pictures of their visions, while others just think about how things will be. Both work equally well for activating your RAS and working toward your goals. Principle 10: Expand Your Comfort Zone further discusses using visualization with your affirmations.
2. Write down your most important goal and keep it in your wallet. Every time you open your wallet, you’ll remind yourself of what you’re working toward.
3. Create a goal book or vision board. Use a journal, notebook, binder, or display board to record your goals. Write each goal at the top of a separate page and write about it in detail below. If you’re artistic, consider making art that represents what achieving your goal will look like. Or, place pictures of things you hope to achieve in the book or on the board. This could include places you want to travel and things you’ll own. Read your goals at least once a day to motivate you to act.
4. Write yourself a check. This strategy could work well if one of your goals is to increase your earnings over time. Make the check out to yourself for the amount of money you’re hoping to get, write what it’s for in the memo line, and mark a future date that you’ll have achieved it.
Example: Actor Jim Carrey wrote himself a check for $10 million dated five years in the future, motivating himself to expand his acting career. Within five years, he had exceeded his goal, making about $20 million per movie.
Besides writing down your goal and interacting with it, break it into smaller steps you’ll take to reach it.
To identify the steps necessary for achieving your goal, ask yourself:
There are six main ways to answer these questions:
1. Talk to others. Ask people what steps they took to get where they are now. For example, if you want to become a freelance writer, make appointments with freelance writers you admire and ask them what steps they took to succeed. They can also clue you in on pitfalls to avoid.
2. Talk to a coach, mentor, or teacher. These people can advise you on how to approach your goal, even if they don’t have specialized experience in the area you’re considering.
3. Volunteer or do an internship. These experiences can help you learn the skills it takes to operate a business or thrive in a chosen career. From there, apply what you learn to achieve your goals.
4. Consult books, manuals, or online courses. Chances are you’re not the first person pursuing this particular goal. Exploring written materials or courses can provide you with a specific sequence of steps to follow. For example, maybe you want to become a graphic designer. Reading a variety of materials on the subject can help you learn the steps.
5. Imagine that you’ve already achieved your goal and imagine the steps in reverse. For example, if your goal was to become a marriage and family therapist, and you’d already achieved it, the steps you’d have taken would include leasing office space, logging hundreds of hours observing therapy sessions to get your counseling license, and earning a degree in psychology or a similar field.
6. Create a mind map. In this instance, mind mapping consists of thinking of every task you’d need to do to achieve your goal, sorting them into categories, and deciding what order you’ll do them in. Here’s how to make one:
Now that you have a plan to achieve your goal, work on it every day. This allows you to keep up your momentum and achieve your goal faster. Here are some tips:
Use the Achievers Focusing System worksheet to outline the steps to achieving your goal over 13 weeks.
Once you’ve settled on your goals and your plan to achieve them, it’s common to encounter challenges that impede or discourage you from working on them. Embracing these challenges as a normal part of life allows you to work through them. They are:
Example: Stu Lichtman wanted to salvage a shoe company in Maine that owed $2 million to creditors. To help the business recoup some money, Lichtman arranged for the sale of one of the company’s unused factories. However, the state had a lien on the factory, so the sale wouldn’t result in any proceeds for the company. Lichtman asked the governor if they’d be willing to remove the lien, arguing it would help prepare the company for takeover by another business, saving 1,000 jobs. The governor agreed.
In the book, The Magic of Thinking Big, author David Schwartz suggests readers write down all the goals they hope to achieve in their lives. Making goals you’ll achieve throughout your life rather than just within a short span of time can motivate you to work toward them over the long term. Here’s how to do the activity:
Example: Before Lou Holtz became a famous basketball coach at the University of Notre Dame, he read Schwartz’s book and wrote down all of his goals. He came up with 107 goals, which included things like eating dinner at the White House, shooting a hole in one golf game, and of course, coaching at Notre Dame. He has now achieved 102 of his goals twice!
(Shortform note: For more on achieving goals, read our summary of The Magic of Thinking Big.)
We often let limiting thoughts about ourselves and our abilities guide how we live our lives. In this section, you’ll learn about your comfort zone and how to use affirmations to expand it and achieve your goals.
Most people develop ways of thinking about how they should act and what they can achieve. The things they feel comfortable doing form their comfort zone. If they get close to the limits of their comfort zone, they’ll opt to stay inside it, which restricts what they can achieve.
For example, Canfield limited himself to buying shirts for $35 or less. Then, one of his bosses took him shopping at an Italian clothier in Los Angeles. The minimum price for a shirt was $95. Canfield started sweating, telling himself he couldn’t afford the clothing in the store and wouldn’t enjoy owning such expensive things. He bought one shirt while his boss bought a number of new items.
When Canfield wore the shirt later, he liked how comfortable it felt. He realized that his stories about who he was and what he should wear had limited his comfort. He now often custom-orders $300 shirts to get exactly what he wants. In this spirit, learn to recognize when you get nervous about leaving your comfort zone and try to work through it.
As Canfield’s story illustrates, limiting thoughts and beliefs can keep you in your comfort zone, preventing your progress toward your goals and self-realization. These could include shame, thinking you’re inferior, or thinking there’s nothing you can do to change your circumstances and achieve your goals. You may have developed these beliefs in childhood and have never processed them or worked through them.
Successful people recognize that you can’t ignore limiting beliefs and behaviors; you must acknowledge them and process them in order to make progress toward your goals. It’s like driving a car—if you discovered the emergency brake was on, you wouldn’t press harder on the gas, you’d release the brake. Similarly, identifying how you’re limiting yourself will help you stop doing it. For example, instead of telling yourself and others that you’re terrible at public speaking (a limiting belief), be positive about yourself and your abilities: Think, talk, and write about the reality you plan to create.
Writing affirmations is a great tool to envision your ideal reality and motivate you to leave your comfort zone to achieve it. Here are seven steps to write helpful affirmations:
Engaging with your affirmations regularly, like your goals, helps you draw the most benefits. Here are four steps to use your affirmations each day:
Here are some other ways to regularly use your affirmations:
Canfield decided he wanted to increase his earnings from $25,000 to $100,000. He wrote an affirmation that captured his intent and made a drawing of a $100,000 bill that he put on the ceiling above his bed so he’d see it when he woke up or went to sleep. Each time he saw it, he’d close his eyes, say his affirmation, and think about what it would look and feel like to have achieved it. He thought about where he would live and how his lifestyle would change. He started getting ideas for increasing his income. One idea was to sell more copies of one of his books. First, he realized he could make $100,000 by selling 400,000 copies of his book (he made 25 cents per book). Then he realized he could make $3 per copy if he published his books on his own, so he started doing that. He also started earning more money for his speaking engagements. Within one year, he had increased his income to $92,000. Now, he consistently earns over $1 million per year.
Craft an affirmation using Canfield’s tips.
What is a long-term goal you’d like to achieve?
How will it feel to achieve that goal? What will your life look like? What will your senses perceive—sights, sounds, smells?
Write the affirmation using the techniques Canfield outlines, such as positive phrasing and using verbs with “ing” at the end.
Achieving success requires taking action. In Part 2, you’ll learn to forge ahead, even in the face of challenges and fear.
One powerful technique to achieving your goals is to act as though you already have. In the same way that visualization stimulates your reticular activating system (RAS), acting as though you’ve already achieved your dream activates the Law of Attraction: You start recognizing the people and opportunities that might help you reach your goals.
To start acting as though you’ve achieved your goals, think about how your life would be different. Consider:
You can also try to model the behaviors of successful people. Successful people tend to:
To practice acting as though you’ve achieved your goals, plan or attend a “Come as You’ll Be” party: a party set five years in the future where you act as if you’ve achieved your goals. Canfield first attended one in 1986. Participants had to act in character for the entire four-hour party. They brought props, like “books” they had written and photos of themselves achieving their goals.
One participant, Susan Jeffers, brought three books she had written, though she had yet to publish even one. When Jeffers shared that she had published these books, attendees responded that they’d seen her interviews on popular talk shows. Another attendee who was an aspiring stock trader had someone call him every 15 minutes. He’d talk animatedly and then give commands about whether to buy or sell shares. Canfield carried copies of his yet-to-be-written New York Times bestseller.
Most of the party’s attendees went on to achieve their dreams, including Canfield. He attributes their success to marinating their brains in the imagery of achievement for four hours, which in turn activated their RAS and motivated them to achieve the goal. The attendees had to put in concerted effort going forward to reach those goals, but the party provided an important starting point.
Throw a Come as You’ll Be Party for your close friends, or consider making it part of your company’s training program. You’ll create a supportive jumping-off point for the people around you who are looking to propel themselves toward their goals.
Acting the Part: From Bank Teller to Branch Manager
When Canfield visited his local bank, he usually saw one teller who was more dressed up than the others. Instead of wearing just a shirt and tie, he wore a suit like the managers. Over the course of a few years, this employee went from teller, to loan salesman with his own desk, to loan officer, to branch manager. When Canfield asked him about it, he said he’d planned to become the branch manager. In preparation for the role, he’d studied how the managers dressed and how they treated employees and customers. He studied and acted the part long before reaching his goal.
Success in the PGA: Jim Nantz and Fred Couples’s Story
In college, Fred Couples and Jim Nantz discovered that they both wanted to make it big in the golf world. Couples wanted to become a pro-golfer and win the Masters Tournament while Nantz wanted to become a sports announcer for CBS. They role-played Couples winning the tournament and Nantz interviewing him countless times. Over a decade later, Couples succeeded in winning the tournament and Nantz was his interviewer, just like they’d practiced. Acting as though they’d already succeeded put both men on the path to making it come true.
Once you’ve developed your goal and have a plan to reach it, it’s time to follow it. But even with a plan, you might delay acting for a variety of reasons:
In general, it’s best to act on your plan as soon as possible. Examples include enrolling in online courses, networking with people in your field, or saving for the downpayment on a house. Here are some of the effects of taking action:
Feedback from personal observations and from others can help you determine if you need to make adjustments. Though unpleasant, look at failure as a sign to adjust rather than quit. Look at both as opportunities to learn something new, and make your plan stronger going forward.
Consider the start-up world: Most start-up businesses will fail. However, businesses started by leaders 55 years and older were 73 percent more likely to succeed. This is likely because older leaders have more professional experience, and they have learned from their past failures. In other words, learning from failure can help you achieve your goals.
Important Note: Sometimes, you have an idea of what you’d like to achieve, but your path to getting there isn’t clear. Maybe no one has done what you’re trying to do, or there are multiple ways to reach your goal. Even if you can’t tell which path to take, act anyway. If you encounter obstacles, adjust and keep going. You may discover a path toward a different outcome that suits your interests that you didn’t know existed.
At Canfield’s seminars, he does an exercise where he holds up a $100 bill and asks the audience who wants it. Nearly everyone raises their hand. Canfield continues to hold it as people shout that he should pick them. Eventually, someone jumps from her seat and retrieves the bill.
When Canfield asks the other participants why they didn’t come get the bill, he gets the following reasons:
Canfield then points out that whatever excuse stopped them from taking the bill could be the same one that stops them from pursuing their goals. For example, if they’re worried about doing something wrong in front of the group, they may be worried about making mistakes and don’t take action on their goals as a result. By recognizing these tendencies in yourself, you can interrupt them and take action.
Writing Rocky: Sylvester Stallone’s Story
Sylvester Stallone was an actor who wanted to write a screenplay about an underdog boxer who stages an upset against a known boxing champion. But he stopped short of writing it because he thought it was too unrealistic. Then, in 1975, he watched the match between reigning world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali and Chuck Wepner—a lesser known boxer with 30-to-1 odds of losing to Ali. Wepner stunned the world by lasting 15 rounds with Ali, though Ali did recover and take the title. As a result, Stallone felt ready to write. Over the next three days, he wrote his screenplay for Rocky, which later won three Oscars.
Acting When the Path Isn’t Clear: Jana Stanfield’s Story
Jana Stanfield wanted to become a singer and songwriter, but she wasn’t sure exactly how she’d get there. Her first step was to take singing lessons, which led to singing on weekends at a country club. At age 26, she moved to Nashville in hopes of landing a recording contract. But she soon realized there were more interested singers than there were labels looking to sign them. At first, it had seemed like the only way to fulfill her dreams was to become a singer. But when she reflected further, she realized that her underlying motivation was to use music to touch people. She shifted from looking for a recording contract to playing wherever she could and taking odd jobs to support her music. She played at different churches during services, and soon, people were asking her to sell her songs.
At first, she sold cassettes that she made, but with the encouragement of friends, decided to pay an engineer to record a 10-song album. One day, after a concert, Stanfield realized she’d made $300 selling tapes, which was more than she made from her freelance job per week—making a living doing work she loved was finally within her reach. She decided to start her own recording label to produce more of her albums. Her songs have since been performed by artists like Reba McIntyre and Andy Williams.
Olympic Luge in Four Years: Ruben Gonzalez’s Story
Though Ruben Gonzalez had always wanted to become an Olympic athlete, he never committed to actually doing it until he was 21 years old. He decided to pick a sport that played to his toughness and unwillingness to quit. He chose luge, reasoning that a sport that often gave athletes broken bones would cull would-be competitors, leaving him to succeed.
He wrote to Sports Illustrated to learn where to practice luge. They wrote back telling him to train at Lake Placid in New York. Gonzalez called the training facility there and asked if they’d help him become an Olympian in four years. The speaker was skeptical of Gonzalez—luge athletes typically started training 10 years earlier. But when Gonzalez shared that he was from Argentina, the person got excited. At the time, there were so few countries competing in luge that the Olympic committee was threatening to cut it from the games. If Gonzalez trained, qualified in four years, and competed for Argentina instead of the U.S., there would be more countries competing in the sport, and it might not be cut.
Gonzalez flew out to Lake Placid to start training within a few days of the phone conversation. Training was grueling, but he was able to qualify for the Olympics in four years, and he went on to compete in three different Olympics.
Fear can prevent you from achieving your goals. Everyone has fears, but successful people feel afraid and take action anyway. They also recognize that reaching their goals isn’t just going to happen—they have to be willing to do the necessary work, which often requires sacrifice. This section offers tips to move past fear and encourage yourself to do the work.
As humans, we’ve evolved to be fearful in order to survive. Fear helped us realize when we faced danger and released the energy to help us escape. Most situations we face today aren’t a matter of life and death, but we may still feel as though they are.
Often, we’re fearful not because we face immediate danger but because we imagine a negative outcome. To counter this, think of fear as an acronym meaning:
Fantasized
Experiences
Appearing
Real
Instead of imagining the worst outcomes, train yourself to set your fear aside by reframing it, and focusing on positive imagery and feelings.
Follow these steps to reframe your fears:
Just as visualizations can help you achieve your goals, visualizing positive imagery can calm your fears. If you worry about bad things happening, practice substituting positive imagery for negative imagery. Replacing negative imagery with positive imagery can help calm you down and work through what scares you.
Example: On a plane about to depart for Orlando, Florida, Canfield noticed that the woman next to him was gripping her armrests tightly. He introduced himself, explained he was a coach, and asked if she was feeling afraid. When she said yes, he invited her to try an exercise with him. He asked her to close her eyes and tell him what imagery she was seeing that made her afraid. She said she kept picturing the plane crashing. Canfield asked her why she was traveling to Orlando, and she replied that she planned to take her grandchildren to Disney World. Canfield asked what her grandchildren’s favorite ride was. It’s a Small World, she replied. He asked her to visualize enjoying the ride with her grandchildren. Then, Canfield began singing the ride’s signature song, “It’s a Small World.” The woman began smiling and relaxed her grip.
Sometimes, fear is a physical feeling. Follow these steps to lessen it:
Try these additional techniques to manage fear:
Once you’ve addressed your fears, use these tips to do the work and achieve your goal:
1. Evaluate your plan. As discussed in Principle 8: Break Your Goals Into Steps, making a plan for how you’ll achieve your goal is critical to succeeding. It’s also a chance to assess whether you’re willing to put in the work and make the sacrifices necessary to achieve it, like less quality time with family or less life balance. For example, if starting your own restaurant means working 60 hours a week for at least the next 10 years and you have small children, you may not be willing to sacrifice that time. First, identify what it will take to succeed and decide if it’s worth it to you.
2. Embrace practice. Children usually don’t expect to succeed the first time they try something. But as adults, we often expect to be good at what we do immediately. Though many people have skills and talents, the most successful are the ones who practice regularly to hone their skills over time, working on specific mini goals.
Remind yourself to be patient with your performance in the beginning. You often have to stumble and make mistakes before gaining proficiency. This is called “deliberate practice.” For example, a clarinetist might practice a tough bar of music until it feels second-nature to play.
Being Willing to Feel the Fear: Peter Douglas’s Story
Peter Douglas ran a successful ranching business until an uncomplicated shoulder surgery changed his career prospects: The anesthesiologist made a mistake, nearly paralyzing his arms and hands. Even with therapy, he can still barely move them.
At first, he felt afraid to go anywhere without his wife in case he needed help. Eventually decided he needed to face his fears and travel on his own. Douglas learned he had to ask for help many steps of the way. For example, he was worried he wouldn’t be able to swipe his credit card when checking in for his flight at a kiosk, but he asked an attendant to help him. He also worried about being able to dress himself. He had his wife pre-button most of his shirts so he could just pull them over his head, but some shirts still had two buttons that needed buttoning. He learned to ask for help from the hotel staff—at first, they’d be surprised, but if he stayed at the same hotel for a few days, they’d learn to spot him and assist him without him having to ask. On the whole, Douglas learned there were kind people willing to help him everywhere, creating solutions to his problems.
Taking Gradual Steps: Wyland’s Story
Despite discouragement from his mother, Wyland was determined to become a painter. He spent time painting in his basement studio, and he created enough art for a portfolio, which landed him a full-ride scholarship to a Detroit art school. Eventually, he realized he wanted to move to a community known for its art: Laguna Beach, California. He continued to paint and participated in art festivals. Some art dealers from Hawaii asked to sell his work, but then they refused to pay him for it, citing high overhead costs. At this point, Wyland realized he needed to cut out the middle man—he’d open his own galleries where he could control all aspects of selling his art. He now makes up to 1,000 paintings a year, some of which sell for $200,000, and he has collaborated with Disney.
Reframe your fear.
Describe a personal goal.
Describe one or two fears that surface when you think about pursuing this goal. Focus on things you’re afraid of doing rather than things you’re afraid of.
Rewrite your fear using Canfield’s template: “I want to (BLANK) but I scare myself by imagining (BLANK).
Instead of the negative imagery you imagine, describe two or three types of positive imagery you can imagine when thinking of yourself pursuing this goal.
In Part 3, you’ll learn how to communicate your needs and wants to others, and ask for feedback on your performance to continuously improve yourself.
Sometimes, all it takes to get what you want is asking for it. But it’s easy to hold yourself back—maybe you’re afraid of rejection, so you decide it’s better not to ask than to face a “no.” Learning how to ask for what you need and want, even when you’re afraid of the answer, can help you reach your goals.
Follow these steps to ask for what you want:
1. Use clear, precise language. If you ask for something vague, you may get a vague answer or something that isn’t what you want. Learn how to phrase three common requests for change:
2. Assume it’s possible. When you make your request, ask with confidence, imagining that they’ll say yes rather than assuming they’ll say no, whether it’s getting a refund when you don’t have a receipt or upgrading to a suite.
3. Ask for the right person. Make sure that the person you’re asking is the person equipped to handle your request. If not, say something like, “I’d like to speak with the person who directs…?” If you’re not sure who the right person to talk to is, ask, “Who is the person who’s involved with…?”
4. Don’t accept rejection. People may not answer yes for a variety of reasons, but if you ask them again another time, they might say yes because:
One study found that 60 percent of sales are made after the fourth call, but that 94 percent of salespeople give up after the third call. So continue to ask, even if it means asking more times than you’re comfortable with.
To encourage yourself to ask for what you need, work through the different areas of your life. Here are the steps:
1. Make a list of things you need to ask for at home, work, and school. Write down how you would benefit from getting each thing you want to ask for. Then, rephrase each item to say, “I want (BLANK) but I don’t ask because I’m afraid of (BLANK).”
2. Write your asks for each of the seven categories from Principle 3: Identify What You Want: relationships, leisure, health, finances, community, career, and personal growth. Examples might include hugs, a higher hourly rate, or an endorsement of your work.
A Rejection That Turned Into “Yes”: Susan Mabet’s Story
Susan Mabet grew up in a poor Maasai village in Kenya. She hoped to attend a girl’s boarding school so that she could pursue an education and career beyond being a homemaker like other girls in her village. Where she lived, girls were married young, became pregnant, and often didn’t survive childbirth. In primary school, Mabet studied hard and earned top grades ahead of applying to the only prestigious boarding school in the region, but she didn’t get in—the school accepted 40 girls that year, and she wasn’t one of them. She decided to go talk to the school to make sure there hadn’t been a mistake.
Mabet arrived on the first day of classes and asked the principal about the decision as other girls arriving for class looked on. The principal explained that the school only had funding to accept 40 girls and Mabet was 41st on the list. Mabet started to cry and the other girls came to her aid, saying they would share desks and do what it took to allow Mabet to study there. The school agreed and a generous donor later agreed to cover her tuition.
Cleaning Up the Mississippi River: Chad Pregracke’s Story
Chad Pregracke wanted to help clean up the polluted Mississippi River. But because there was more trash than his 20-foot boat could handle, Pregracke decided to ask for money to buy equipment like barges and trucks. He went through the phonebook, asking big companies if they’d donate money. His strong desire to make a difference and his willingness to ask resulted in a variety of companies giving him thousands of dollars to buy the equipment and allowed him to lead tens of thousands of volunteers in cleaning up the Mississippi River and 22 other rivers.
Feedback is a useful tool to achieve your goals because it can tell you when you’re getting off track and need to correct your course. In this section, you’ll learn about different types of feedback, why we aren’t always great at responding to it, how to respond better, and how to use it to achieve your goals.
There are two main types of feedback:
Though negative feedback can be upsetting, reacting to it in a positive way can help you grow and achieve your goals. Instead of feeling criticized, think of feedback as an opportunity to learn and adjust accordingly.
Here are three unhelpful responses to negative feedback:
1. Getting upset at the source. When you receive feedback you dislike, your tendency may be to attack the person who gave it to you. For example, if your coworker reminds you to be on time for the next team meeting, you may respond by angrily telling them it’s not a big deal. As a result, they’ll be less likely to give you feedback that could be helpful in the future.
2. Ignoring it. When people give you negative feedback, you may choose to ignore it, even if it means that you risk failing. For some people, it may be because they value their own opinion over everyone else’s, or they’re convinced they’re doing the right thing. However, listening to what others say instead of ignoring it could improve their life.
3. Giving up. When some people receive feedback, they give up on what they’re doing, rather than adjusting and doing something differently.
People are often reluctant to give feedback because they don’t want you to react in one of the negative ways listed previously. To benefit from feedback, learn to ask for it and accept it graciously. Though you may be afraid of what you’ll hear, the benefits outweigh the downsides.
Ask these two questions:
When you get feedback, look for patterns. If you’re hearing the same thing from multiple people, chances are it’s true. Work to respond to the feedback constructively rather than choosing one of the three negative responses.
If all of the feedback points to the fact that you’ve failed in some way, follow these steps to grow from it:
Assess whether you react well to feedback.
Think of a time that you reacted negatively to feedback. Describe the situation and how you reacted.
Consider the three negative ways to respond to feedback. Based on how you reacted, what could you have done instead?
Think of other times you’ve reacted negatively to feedback. Was your reaction in this particular situation an isolated event, or can you see a pattern? If so, describe one or two things you might do to train yourself to react differently in the future.
Working to improve yourself and become successful means that you don’t stop once you’ve achieved one goal—you’re constantly improving yourself or your work.
The world is changing rapidly. Working to improve and grow is a necessity for successful people. But if you let the fast pace of the world dictate the pace at which you improve yourself, you may feel like you’re barely keeping up; creating changes in yourself takes time. Working systematically on small changes can help improve yourself and your work.
In The Slight Edge, author Jeff Olson discusses the outsized impact that making small changes can have on your life. For example, doing slightly more of something, like substituting a glass of water for your daily soda, can save you hundreds of dollars a year and spare you thousands of calories. Similarly, watching one hour less of TV each day adds up to 365 hours that you could use another way, like improving your cross-stitch skills.
Try the following steps to implement improvements in your life:
1. Consult the list of categories from “Principle 3: Decide What You Want” and pick one to work on. For example, you may want to improve your strength and flexibility and commit to practicing yoga twice per week. Whatever your interest, decide what you want, and make a plan to reach it.
2. Use a scoring system to track your progress. Scoring yourself allows you to evaluate whether you’re improving or have succeeded. For example, to deal with his hectic schedule, Vinod Khosla, the founder of Sun Microsystems, made a goal of getting home to eat dinner with his children at least 25 nights per month.
Keeping score can work for your company, too. Some companies use scoring metrics called “critical drivers”—specific, positive outcomes—to work toward important benchmarks and improvements. If a critical driver reaches or exceeds a certain threshold, it results in increased revenue and profits for the company. For example, a critical driver for an insurance company might be the number of customers who are insured with more than one type of insurance. Learning to identify these drivers and develop a plan to improve them increases your company’s success.
In Part 4, you’ll learn to prime yourself for success by finding people who can support your endeavors and developing new ways of thinking about yourself and your efforts.
If you spend a lot of time with people who stress you out, aren’t successful, or aren’t supportive, you’re less likely to achieve success. Aim to spend time with people who uplift you, support and nurture your dreams, have a positive attitude, and are successful.
To start surrounding yourself with supportive people, identify those who are negative and holding you back. Here’s how:
You can find supportive, successful people in many places. Try the following:
John Assaraf is an entrepreneur of many trades, from real estate to virtual tour software. But before he became successful, he learned a lot from spending time in the men’s sauna at the local health club where he worked. There, successful men talked about successes and failures with their companies, as well as with their families and health. Assaraf learned that obstacles are part of life and running a business, but with perseverance, it’s possible to find solutions. He also learned that it was possible to build a successful life whatever your race, ethnicity, or educational history.
It’s common to focus more on our failures than our successes. We tend to take even small successes for granted. But over time, this can diminish your self-esteem and work against your continued achievement. In this section, you’ll learn why celebrating your success is important, as well as several techniques for how to do so.
There are three main reasons we tend to focus on failure rather than success:
In some of Canfield’s seminars, he asks participants to share successes they had in the past week. Many people struggle. One participant didn’t think he’d had any success in his life. In 1979, after the Iranian shah was deposed, he moved his family from Iran to Germany, where he became a car mechanic and learned the local language. Then, he moved to the U.S., started learning English, and was working to become a welder. To him, success was living in a rich part of Los Angeles and owning a fancy car. He didn’t recognize all of the success he’d already achieved.
Having good self-esteem is a key ingredient for success. Research shows that the more self-esteem you have, the more likely you are to take risks that can lead to success. But if you focus on your failures, you erode your self-esteem and are less likely to take risks. For example, you might see a job posting for a customer engagement associate with a local software company. You’re relatively qualified for the job, but you talk yourself out of applying because you’ve never held a similar role, and you convince yourself you wouldn’t be selected. Instead of letting self-esteem erode your confidence, actively work to celebrate your success, and use it as a tool to persevere in times of doubt or difficulty.
Try these activities to celebrate your successes:
Identify nine major successes.
Divide your life into three equal time periods. Write three successes for each chunk of life.
Which accomplishment was easiest to identify? Why?
Which accomplishment was hardest to identify? Why?
How did this exercise make you feel about your accomplishments?
How you reflect on your day has an impact on what you learn and how you approach the next day. This section discusses two activities to restructure your bedtime routine for success.
The last 45 minutes before you go to sleep is an important time to reflect and plan for the next day. This is because your brain processes what you think about during this time up to six times more than everything else you did during the day. It’s also why studying before you go to sleep can be an effective test-taking strategy and why you might not sleep as well or might have nightmares if you watch scary television just before bed.
Put the 45 minutes before you go to bed to good use with these two activities:
1. Reflect on your day. Use this activity to quickly develop a new helpful behavior. Each night, close your eyes and ask yourself one of the following questions:
Listen to your answers. Avoid criticizing or judging yourself. Visualize the events in your day happening again and acting the way you would have preferred. You’ll be more likely to act this way the next time.
2. Visualize tomorrow. Take a mental walk through your schedule for the next day. Visualize yourself doing your best in every situation, from enjoying your breakfast to leading a team check-in with your coworkers. This activity encourages your brain to devise ways to make it happen. Also, under the Law of Attraction, by broadcasting your positive intentions to the universe, you’re more likely to act positively, elicit positive behavior from others, and attract supportive people into your life.
Finishing projects and decluttering your life can give you a sense of accomplishment and the confidence to move forward with your goals. This section explores the importance of these tasks and how to tackle them.
Seeing something through to completion involves the following steps (steps 5 and 6 look the same, but they’re different):
We often go through all the steps except the last one—we finish, but we don’t do the last thing that would make the task complete. For example, you choose to start a new filing system for your home office. You buy a filing cabinet and some file folders and file most of your paperwork, but you neglect to file your invoices. If you’d just finish filing the invoices, the task would be complete, but instead, it sits unfinished for weeks.
Why does it matter? Because the more unfinished tasks you have, the more time you spend thinking about them being unfinished when you could put that energy toward other things.
We leave things unfinished for several reasons:
To avoid letting unfinished tasks pile up, use the following system:
Many people have things they don’t need. For example, you might have clothes you don’t wear. Just like unfinished business, this clutter can distract you, stealing energy you’d use to get important things done. Clearing clutter helps you feel more at ease in your space. It can also help you make room for new things in your life, both mentally and physically. Some people find that the act of cleaning their living space helps them welcome new business and other opportunities for growth.
To start ridding yourself of incomplete tasks and clutter, try these activities:
1. Consider the following list to get some ideas about what you haven’t finished or given enough attention to:
Make your own list of things you have yet to complete. Commit to addressing at least one a month. Or, commit to completing several in just a weekend.
2. Inventory your home. Walk from room to room and note things that bother you. Then, make a plan to deal with them, one at a time. For example, maybe your garage has a pile of broken items. Make a plan to either repair or discard them.
3. Hire a professional organizer. They can help you get organized, get rid of clutter, and suggest tips and tricks to make your life more efficient. The National Association of Professional Organizers is one resource. You don’t have to work with them long term—just one session can provide useful pointers toward better habits.
Make a plan to eliminate clutter in your life.
Walk through your home, and make a note of all of your clutter. Examples include piles of paper, broken tools, or t-shirts you never wear.
Make a plan to work through this list. For example, you might dedicate the next two Sundays to completing six decluttering tasks.
When you experience something painful, but don’t process it, it diminishes your ability to take on similar or new challenges. In this section, you’ll learn how to recognize when you’re holding yourself back and learn two techniques to overcome hurt or discomfort.
Negative emotions like anger or resentment rob you of energy that you could use toward more positive outcomes like achieving your goals. For example, if you’re trying to work on a project but can’t stop thinking about that mean comment your friend made about you, you won’t move as quickly or accomplish as much. From a Law of Attraction perspective, whatever emotion you’re releasing into the universe is what you attract—if you harbor anger and resentment, you’ll attract more of it into your life.
Forgiveness is the key to breaking this cycle. It helps you express your emotions and move on. For example, forgiving a business partner who stole money from you allows you to acknowledge your resentment and put the past behind you so you can focus on the present. This doesn’t mean what the person did is acceptable or that you should trust them, just that you acknowledge what they did so you can move forward.
In the midst of the Vietnam War, a photographer snapped a photo of a screaming young Vietnamese girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, running naked down the road. She was in excruciating pain because her village was bombed with napalm, a chemical agent, which had given her third-degree burns on over half of her body. After treatment and surgeries, she survived, became a Canadian citizen, underwent a forgiveness process, and founded an organization to help victims of war. People remark that she is amazingly calm and forgiving given her experiences.
When someone upsets you, you may experience anger at that person, but you may not fully express to them how you feel. When you don’t express how you feel, it can fester inside you as resentment, making it difficult to have a productive relationship with that person. Plus, hanging on to negative emotions hampers you from feeling happy, which is where joy, creativity, and inspiration come from. To restore your relationship, express your emotions fully: The Total Truth Process is one way to do this.
The Total Truth Process means expressing your emotions equally in six different stages, beginning with the negative and transitioning into expressing gratitude and love. This sequence helps you address your emotional distress and truly forgive someone who has wronged you. However, it doesn’t mean you’re trying to change the person. You can do this verbally, or in writing.
First, make a list of every person who has wronged you and how. Use this template:
(PERSON’S NAME) hurt me by (BLANK). Then, go through the total truth process with each person using either of the following options.
1. Identify the person you need to talk to. Ask their permission to tell them what’s on your mind.
2. When you meet with the person, discuss each category of emotions, giving equal time to each. Here are the categories, along with prompts to get your ideas flowing:
This option works well in the following situations:
Here are the steps:
Tapping therapy is another way to address past wrongs, as well as fears and phobias. For centuries, healing in Eastern cultures has addressed energy flow through different parts of the body, or meridians. Sometimes, chronic pain is thought to be a result of previous emotional distress that is held in certain parts of the body. Based on these ideas, clinical psychologist Roger Callahan developed tapping therapy to release pain from different areas of the body and to get over fears and other negative emotions that hold you back.
Here are the steps:
1. Close your eyes and think of a fear or emotion you’d like to rid yourself of. Assess how strong it is on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the strongest.
2. Think of the feeling as you tap the heel of your hand (the area near your wrist) 10 times. Tap firmly enough to feel it without hurting your hand. Phrase your thoughts in a way that connects them with the emotion they bring out. For example: “Even though I’m scared to lead the meeting at work tomorrow, I deeply and completely love and accept myself.”
3. Tap these other points on your body while thinking of the emotion:
Tap each point firmly five to seven times while thinking variations of the first phrase you used. For example, while tapping the top of the head, you might say, “I’m afraid people will be bored during the meeting.” As you move to the eyebrow, you might say, “I’m afraid no one will want to do the ice breaker.” The exact words don’t matter as long as you’re focused on your emotions every step of the way.
4. Repeat the sequence from the top of the head down, saying the phrase in your head until the intensity of the feeling dissipates or to a level one or disappears.
After witnessing the 9/11 terrorist attacks, actress and television host Kelly Ripa was afraid to fly. When she got a call asking her to record an episode of her television show at Disneyland requiring her to fly, she called Roger Callahan for help. Callahan led Ripa through tapping therapy over the phone and she was able to take her five-hour flight without trouble. She invited Callahan to join her at Disneyland and give tapping therapy to people who were afraid to ride rollercoasters. Seventeen participants underwent tapping therapy and were able to ride a rollercoaster, with most saying they’d like to go again.
Learning to embrace change is an important part of readying yourself for success. In this section, you’ll learn why it’s important and some techniques to help you do it.
It’s common to become accustomed to the way things are and not want them to change. But the world is constantly changing, from new technologies to the economy. Learning to welcome change makes it easier to adjust to it and benefit from it.
There are two types of change:
Structural changes are the most significant. If you refuse to get on board with these changes, it makes the rest of your life harder because you spend time resisting them when you could embrace them and the benefits they afford.
Example: Canfield was once hired to give a seminar for the Naval Sea Systems Command. The government had decided to relocate its entire headquarters to San Diego, which affected many jobs. Though the government had offered to pay to relocate everyone, transferring their jobs either to San Diego or helping them find new jobs in Washington, D.C., many people felt inconvenienced and angry. Canfield spoke to those who didn’t want to go to California. Using the formula Event + Response = Outcome, he helped them look at the situation as an opportunity. They could get new, possibly better-paying jobs in D.C., or they could consider embracing the opportunities California had to offer—nice weather and a new community. Framing the situation in this way helped people move from a mindset of fear to one of possibility.
Here are two activities to help you embrace change:
1. Think of a time you were resistant to change. What was the change you resisted? Why? What happened when you finally embraced it? Was it as bad as you feared? Probably not. Remembering times when change benefited you will help you embrace future changes.
2. Identify potential changes in your life. Ask yourself:
Asking yourself these questions helps you address your fears around the change and learn to anticipate it with excitement instead.
Evaluate how adapting to a past change impacted your life.
Think of a time that you resisted a change that you eventually embraced. Describe what the change was and why you resisted it.
What factors made you decide to embrace the change?
What effect did embracing the change have on your life?
Knowing what you know now, what steps could you have taken to help yourself embrace the change sooner?
Research has shown that when we talk to ourselves, it’s mostly about ourselves, and it’s mostly negative. Negative self-talk colors our view of what’s possible and makes us unmotivated to act. Plus, our body reacts physically to the negative things we say about ourselves. Learning to speak positively to yourself can help you in many facets of your life.
In this section, you’ll learn to recognize negative self-talk and limiting beliefs and how to counter them.
Lie detector tests are a good illustration of how your thoughts affect you. If you were hooked up to a lie detecting machine, and someone asked you whether you stole money, physical changes might start to happen in your body, regardless of whether you lied or not. For example, your heart rate might increase, and you might start sweating.
Negative and positive thoughts do different things to the body. Negative thoughts can make you feel powerless, unmotivated, and weak. Positive thoughts can make you feel more in balance and relaxed. They can also release endorphins in the brain, which are associated with pleasure. Learning to retrain yourself to think positive thoughts helps you achieve your goals and much more.
Dealing with negative thoughts requires understanding that not all of your thoughts are true. When you recognize a negative thought, you can challenge it and change it to one that helps you achieve your goal.
Here are the main types of negative thoughts and how to reframe them:
Sometimes, we start second-guessing our behavior or harshly judge ourselves. For example, maybe you gave a presentation that you feel didn’t go well, and you start telling yourself that you messed up. To change the experience from a negative one to a positive one, have a conversation with yourself about how to do better. Here’s the basic formula for addressing your negative thoughts:
Successful people make a continuous effort to become successful. This requires letting go of destructive behaviors and developing new success habits. This section will discuss how to develop new habits and how to stick with them.
Habits automate some of your life. Over time, you’ve learned to live your life a specific way, from safe driving to how you eat breakfast. But habits can also be undesirable behaviors, like drinking too much soda or being late. Eventually, you may suffer the consequences of your bad habit. For example, the consequence of drinking too much soda might be developing diabetes. The solution? Rid yourself of bad habits by replacing them with good ones.
Studies suggest it takes about 13 weeks, or a quarter of a year, to cement a new habit. Aim to learn one new habit every quarter. Here’s how:
Forming a habit takes time, and barriers may arise that prevent you from succeeding. Try the following three techniques to increase the likelihood a new habit will stick:
Identify your bad habits and make a plan to work on the worst four.
List your bad habits.
Select four from the list that you’d like to work on in the next year. Describe why each habit is a potentially harmful behavior.
For each bad habit, list one to two suggestions for behaviors you could do instead.
Choose the habit you’d like to work on first. List the steps you’d take to make it a reality.
Just like developing new habits, learning throughout your life is key to being successful and adapting to changing times. Canfield offers four strategies to learn more:
1. Watch less TV; read more. The average person in the U.S. watches six hours of TV a day. Eliminating one hour of TV a week would help you make time for other pursuits, such as learning a language, spending more time with family, or reading. Reading is one of the most beneficial activities because it allows you to learn from people who have already achieved great things.
If you’re hoping to become an expert in your field, reading for an hour each day on related topics can greatly accelerate the pace of your learning. If you read a book a week, you’ll have read over 1,000 books in 20 years, putting you in the top 1 percent of people in your field.
2. Listen to inspirational audio programs. Listening to inspirational audio programs allows you to learn from experts. People spend an average of 30 minutes commuting each way, which adds up to 1,250 hours in five years. Filling that time listening to the wisdom of experts allows you to learn and adjust accordingly. Visit JackCanfield.com to access Canfield’s audio programs on a variety of topics.
3. Attend success rallies and conferences. Success rallies and conferences are events with speakers, coaches, and other professionals who can provide guidance and inspiration that’ll help you become successful. Similarly, you can find telesummits—recordings of conferences—online that feature between eight and 24 speakers. Type “telesummit” into your web browser to access them.
4. Train your team. To ensure that you’re constantly moving forward as a company, everyone needs to be learning how to advance themselves and their work. Here are two ways to train your team:
5. Visit this book’s resources page for additional information, including:
In Part 5, you’ll learn how to improve your leadership skills, grow your professional network, and focus on the work you do best.
Passion and enthusiasm can drive you to do your best work and achieve success. These qualities come from within when you do activities you feel passionate about. You also probably have skills and abilities that are so effortless for you that you do them willingly, possibly without charging people. But successful people turn their passion and their “core genius”—what they do best—into their business. In this section, you’ll learn how to identify both, build your time around them, and create a support team to help you along the way.
Ask yourself these questions to see if you’re following your passion:
Rafe Esquith has taught at the third-largest elementary school in the U.S, Hobart Elementary School, located in East Los Angeles, for over 30 years. Esquith has actively worked to keep his passion for teaching alive, refusing to lose it despite working 12-hour days, six days a week. His fifth-grade students average 50 points higher on math and reading tests than other students at the school. Esquith has taught many children to aim high by having them perform Shakespearean plays. Over the years, his classes have performed in a variety of venues, from local stages to the White House, and graduates have gone on to attend prestigious colleges.
Like your passion, focusing on your core genius requires figuring out what your genius activities are and devoting time to them. Follow these steps to identify what to spend more time on in your current job and what to delegate to others:
Canfield offers two main strategies to focus on your core genius: Delegation and the “Entrepreneurial Time System.”
Delegate activities that don’t use your core genius to other people. Though delegation may require training people, it ultimately saves you time by allowing you to pass tasks on to people who like doing them or are more efficient at doing them. Canfield recommends complete delegation of tasks: Assign a repeated task to someone as a part of their role rather than deciding who will do it each time it needs to be done. That way, it’s taken care of automatically, and you’ll be less tempted to do it yourself.
For example, imagine you’re a real estate agent who excels at selling. You currently close one sale a week. You could be focusing your time on closing, but instead, you insist on performing other duties that could be easily delegated, such as writing descriptions of homes or taking photographs for the multiple listing service. If you hired someone for these duties, you could show more homes and close three sales a week.
Here are some tips for delegating:
The “Entrepreneurial Time System” helps professionals use their time more effectively by organizing work into three types of workdays:
1. Genius days. On genius days, aim to spend 80 percent of your time working on core genius activities. For example, Canfield’s core genius activities include giving seminars, writing books, speaking, and coaching. Since this work is the easiest and most effortless for you, increase the number of genius days over time.
2. Preparation days. Preparation days are days you spend preparing for genius day work. For Canfield, preparation days might include practicing a speech or presentation he’ll give on a genius day. Scheduling activities like these on preparation days ensures they don’t cut into genius day work.
3. Leisure days. Leisure days are days with no work activities or contact with coworkers. Though you may feel inclined to work long hours without days off, taking time away helps you recharge and return to work able to focus and work efficiently. These days might involve spending time with family or doing a hobby. The only work activity on these days should be dealing with true emergencies like natural disasters.
Leisure should include some time away from your children or spouse. Use babysitters or swap babysitting responsibilities with friends—one day a month, you watch their children and another day a month, they watch yours.
Aim for 130-150 leisure days per year. If you take every weekend off, you’ll already have 104 leisure days, and adding a few long weekends, holidays, and other time off will get you in that range, although it may take time to work up to that number. If you have paid vacation, use it. People can be reluctant to use vacation time—in one study, a quarter of people in the U.S. didn’t use their vacation time, and in another, 57 percent had unused vacation time.
To schedule your time around the Entrepreneurial Time System, follow these steps:
Examine the intersection between your core genius (what you do best) and your daily work.
List three to five of your main talents.
Do you use any of these talents in your job? If so, how?
At your current job, are you able to spend most of your time doing work that suits your talents or core genius? Describe why this is or isn’t the case.
Based on the previous question, what steps could you take to focus more on your core genius activities? Examples include adjusting how you spend your days in your current job or finding a new job.
From the workplace to home, our lives are filled with distractions that prevent us from spending time on what’s important to us. In this section, you’ll learn how to say no to distractions and pursue the activities that matter to you.
As a child, you learned that saying no to something your parents wanted you to do wasn’t an acceptable answer. Later, as an adult, you may have avoided saying no because you didn’t want to upset someone. But successful people learn how to say no to benefit their career and personal lives. For example, if your boss gives you an impossible deadline, it’s reasonable to refuse to do the work or negotiate a different deadline.
Here are two strategies to make saying no easier:
Some opportunities yield great benefits, like increased pay or networking potential, while others deliver far less for the time they demand. If you focus too much on good or mediocre opportunities, they may consume so much of your time and energy that you can’t seize better opportunities when they come along.
For most people, about 20 percent of their activities contribute to 80 percent of their success. Successful people learn to identify and pursue great opportunities over good ones, which helps them achieve their goals with less effort.
Here are three steps to assess potential opportunities:
When Sylvester Stallone wrote Rocky, many producers were eager to make the film and pick its lead actors. But Stallone wanted to play the role of Rocky and produce the film himself on a small budget. He found a studio that would let him star in it and produce it for under $1 million. The movie earned more than $225 million and Stallone achieved stardom, all because he said no to good—but not great—prospects offered by other filmmakers.
Successful people are often leaders in their field because achieving their vision or goals required motivating, recruiting, and leading groups of people to action. Though not everyone will have a large impact like Nelson Mandela or Steve Jobs, you can still make a big difference in your place of work or community. However, leadership skills aren't innate—it takes practice to develop them. This section discusses five leadership skills to hone.
To recruit others to work toward your vision and do their best work, present a clear, compelling vision of what you want to achieve and why it’s important. Use your own natural enthusiasm for the goal to convince people to follow your lead. In addition, tell people how your vision will make those working on it better. For example, if you’re starting an urban garden, inspire volunteers with your vision of how they and the community will benefit from it. Appealing to people’s emotions creates a sense of connection and motivates them to act. You can do this by telling stories about yourself, volunteers, partners you work with, and so on.
In addition to being able to communicate a vision, leaders must be willing to listen to the concerns and opinions of their employees. People feel valued when leaders listen. In contrast, if employees feel they aren’t being heard or their concerns are being ignored, it builds resentment that doesn’t support a healthy work environment.
Leaders also need to be open to learning. Feedback from employees is an opportunity to learn and create new practices together that will benefit the company as a whole. For example, if an employee expresses interest in a matching 401(k) contribution from the company, explore why the employee is interested in it. Then, if you determine it makes sense, create a plan to see it through. If you don’t think it makes sense, explain your reasoning in a way that acknowledges the employee’s perspective.
Expressing gratitude is another way to make employees feel appreciated and foster commitment. In one survey, only 17 percent of U.S. workers said they felt sufficiently appreciated by their boss. Yet 80 percent of employees said appreciation motivated them to work harder, and 50 percent said they’d stay at a company longer if they felt sufficiently appreciated by their boss. In addition to motivating employees, practicing gratitude directly benefits you—choosing a positive attitude can lower your stress and boost your mood. (Additional tips on appreciating the people in your life are discussed in Principle 53: Show Your Appreciation.)
Being a leader doesn’t mean solving every problem yourself. Coaching employees through challenges empowers them to lead and gives them the tools to solve problems. Ask the following questions:
Being accountable means delivering on your promises. When you consistently follow through with your commitments, you build the trust of your employees in your leadership and encourage others to do the same. For example, if you tell employees that you plan to give a holiday bonus and follow through, employees learn that they can trust you to be true to your word. That said, there will be times when you will fall short of your commitments. When that happens, it’s important to take ownership of the outcomes that you were responsible for rather than placing blame on others. Then, reflect on the situation and adjust your approach so that you get a different outcome going forward.
To be successful in your life and career, cultivate a network of people you can call on for advice and do business with. This section covers how to find mentors and coaches, and how to network.
Sometimes, we seek career advice from friends and family who aren’t well-equipped to provide it. They may not have pursued a similar career or have experience with the challenges you face. Cultivating a group of mentors in your field whom you can call on regularly for advice helps you advance your career and achieve your goals.
Though you may have a sense of what you’d like to do in your career, you may still be shortsighted or need help overcoming challenges. A mentor who has been in the field longer than you have has experience and advice they can share to help you.
Here are the steps to finding and securing a mentor:
Jason Dorsey was an undergraduate student at the University of Texas when a local entrepreneur spoke to his business class. Inspired by the speaker’s career, Dorsey asked him to be his mentor. During their first meeting, the mentor asked Dorsey about his career plans. Dorsey wanted to graduate from college and pursue a career on Wall Street before earning an MBA, starting his own business, and retiring early. He also dreamed of inspiring youth to secure their dream jobs. Dorsey’s mentor suggested a modification to his plan: Instead of waiting to work with youth, Dorsey should work with them sooner while he was young and could relate to them better. Dorsey decided to write a book to share his ideas with youth, speak at schools across the country, and offer training to teachers and counselors. His nickname became Gen Y Guy. He now trains companies on how to retain young employees.
A coach is a professional whom you pay for advice that can help you advance your career farther, faster by:
There are different types of coaches for different needs. For example, Canfield offers coaching for professionals as well as coaching for people who want to publish a book.
Just as a mentor can provide guidance on your career and personal life, forming a professional network can open doors to new career opportunities such as new clients, business partners, and jobs. Seek out networking events to build these connections.
Further, you’ll have people you can count on when you need help. For example, when Canfield and his business partner need help, they ask themselves, “Who in our network can help us with this?”
Build your network in three stages:
Sometimes, people unthinkingly undermine their networked relationships. For example, if you’ve made a connection with a vendor you like, but whose prices you don’t, you may continue shopping around for a vendor with better prices. However, you’d be better off negotiating a deal with the vendor you already have a connection with, thereby nurturing a long-term relationship.
After her niece committed suicide, Miriam Laundry made a goal to help 100,000 children around the world believe in themselves. She wrote a children’s book on the subject and sought to break the Guinness World Record for the largest online discussion in a 24-hour period. As Laundry started sharing her goal, the people she told used their networks to share her book with more children and encourage them to participate in the discussion. In one instance, after Laundry won an award for her endeavor, the award-giver connected her with a company that wanted to help her finance the cost of making the discussion an international event and bringing a Guinness World Record judge to her city. On the day of the event, over 103,813 people from 29 countries participated. Laundry credited her networking connections for her success.
Professionals in and outside of your field can offer insight and encouragement that helps you achieve your personal and professional goals. This section covers how to form a mastermind group, how to work with an accountability partner, and how to form a support team.
Many successful people use mastermind groups—five or six people who convene regularly to confidentially help each other navigate challenges and reach their professional or personal goals. The concept originated in a 1937 book Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill.
Joining or forming a mastermind group gives you:
Members of a mastermind group draw on each other’s support, as well as energy from a higher power—God, or however you refer to a greater power. When people gather for a shared purpose, they’re able to channel energy they get from this power toward their endeavors and goals.
Here are two questions to keep in mind when forming a mastermind group:
For the first few meetings of your mastermind group, ensure that everyone has a chance to get to know everyone else by focusing on one group member at each meeting. This allows each member to showcase their goals and challenges and allows the rest of the group to think through ways to support them. Visit The Success Principles website for a guide on conducting mastermind meetings.
(Shortform note: Read our summary of Think and Grow Rich to learn more.)
An accountability partner is someone you work with one on one to share and work toward your goals. You meet regularly and hold each other accountable for getting your work done, meeting deadlines, and reaching goals. Your partner may also be able to provide you with contacts or other resources. Plus, they may offer enthusiasm that motivates you to follow through. Ideally, you’re each committed to the other’s success.
Professionals of all kinds benefit from having a support team that can advise and help them live their best lives. Who is on your support team depends on your stage of life and your goals. For example, athletes may consult doctors, chiropractors, and nutritionists, while a teen’s support team might include their parents. Forming this group early can help you continue to develop your core genius work and skills.
Consult with members of your support team regularly. Unlike a mastermind group, you meet with these advisors one on one, and they’re all dedicated to helping you. Schedule meetings or appointments with each member at intervals that work for you.
When confronted with a challenge, many people know how to seek outside help, but few know how to access their inner wisdom or intuition. In this section, you’ll learn how intuition works and how to use it.
You’ve likely had an experience where your intuition told you something. For example, you might have felt a prickle on the back of your neck and realized someone was looking at you. Everyone has intuition, but successful people learn how to access it at will so they can use it to their advantage. Consulting your intuition can help you solve problems, make decisions, earn money, access your creativity, and more.
There are three main ways your intuition speaks to you:
There are three techniques to access these intuitive experiences and learn from them: meditation, asking questions, and the “quick coherence” technique.
Meditation is a time-tested technique in which people quiet their minds and access their own wisdom and insight. It can help you feel more grounded with a sense of purpose and can help you hear your own voice or the voice of God to guide you.
Meditation can be formal or informal. In formal meditation, you take a few minutes to quiet your mind and look within yourself for clarity. In contrast, informal meditation can take place throughout the day whenever you have time to think—for instance, during a run or while taking a shower, standing in line, driving, or praying.
When Canfield was 35, he attended a week-long meditation workshop in which participants meditated nearly constantly from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. At first, his thoughts ranged out of control, but by the fourth day, his mind calmed down. He still had thoughts, but they came and went more slowly and were more profound. He found a sense of inner peace as he understood that he could access ideas from within to solve any of his problems and reach his goals.
Asking yourself questions and listening for answers is another way to access your intuition. For example, you might ask yourself whether you should take a job, how to increase your sales, or how to become healthier.
In addition to simply listening for the answers, employ the sway test discussed in Chapter 6: Let the Universe Help You Get What You Want.
Coherence is a state in which four of your body’s systems are balanced: hormones, cardiovascular system, nervous system and immune system. When these systems are in balance, you’re able to consult your intuition, but when you’re irritated or upset, your heart rhythm is erratic, and these systems aren’t coherent. Emotional issues and stress block your ability to access your intuition. The “Quick Coherence” technique helps you relax your heart and access your intuition.
Here are the steps:
Once you’ve mastered the process, do it several times a day or any time you need to recenter yourself. For example, if you find yourself getting frustrated with waiting in line, follow the steps to calm yourself down.
To get the most out of your intuitive experiences, consider the following tips:
Madeline Balletta dedicated part of her time each day to prayer and seeking God’s voice. When she experienced fatigue, she asked God how to make herself feel better. The phrase that came to mind was “fresh royal jelly.” Balletta hadn’t heard this phrase before. Upon further research, she discovered it’s a substance worker bees feed the queen, and she started taking it as a health supplement. Her fatigue dissipated, and she began asking what she could do to share the goodness of the product with others. Her answer that time was, “Start a business.” Today, her business, Bee-Alive, is thriving.
Decide how to approach consulting with your intuition.
On a scale of one to 10, with one being “completely disconnected” and 10 being “completely connected,” how would you rate your connection with your intuition? Why?
Of the three techniques Canfield presents for consulting your intuition—meditation, asking questions, and quick coherence—which one most appeals to you to try? Why?
Write a few sentences about what steps you’ll take to try this technique. Include details such as whether you plan to do any additional research before beginning, how often you’ll practice, and where you’ll practice.
In Part 6, you’ll explore the suite of skills required for successful relationships:
Active listening is an important skill to facilitate effective communication and ingratiate yourself with others. This section covers the basics of active listening and how to do it.
Active listening requires more than merely listening to someone. It includes:
The main way people fall short of these techniques is focusing on speaking rather than listening. If you’re focused on talking in order to show your intelligence or knowledge, you may fail to listen to what people around you are saying. For example, this could happen if you’re thinking about something that you’d like to say instead of listening, or if you’re mentally arguing with what the person is saying instead of thinking about why they’re saying it.
To develop your active listening skills, be curious and show your interest in others by asking questions. The benefits of active listening include:
Canfield once met a photographer from New York City who did photo shoots for a variety of clients. Frequently, clients were unhappy with the results, and they would ask the photographer to redo the photoshoot. The photographer’s impulse was usually to argue with the client about why they didn’t like the photos. After losing several clients, he started taking an active listening approach instead: When a client told him he needed to do it over, he’d agree, and ask clarifying questions such as, “I’m hearing you say that...Is that correct?” By considering clients’ feedback, he eventually produced work they liked.
To start a relationship or strengthen an existing one, ask these four questions:
Try writing the questions down and carrying them with you so you can use them. Consider using them with the following people:
Ask Canfield’s four questions to identify your priorities.
In three years, what will you need to have done to feel happy?
What risks or dangers will you face in the process of achieving that?
What are the most promising opportunities at your disposal to achieve it?
To seize those opportunities, what one or two existing skills and strengths can you draw on? What skills will you need to develop?
We’re often better at telling people what to do than listening to what they have to say. And many of our institutions, like businesses and schools, are structured around talking with little listening. Yet people need the ability to discuss and express themselves. Without this opportunity, people may hold their discontent or issues inside, fostering resentment or distrust. To remedy this, create space for discussions, or “Heart Talks,” where people can share their concerns, wishes, and dreams so they feel heard and can put forth their best effort. In this section, you’ll learn how.
Heart talks can be used with most kinds of groups, such as work teams, sports teams, or civic groups, and in a variety of situations, including:
Heart Talks can be done regularly or as needed. For example, your team might choose to do a talk at the beginning of every team meeting, while others might do them only if there’s an emotionally challenging situation at hand, like a conflict between two employees.
Follow these steps to host a heart talk:
1. If your group is larger than 10, break it into smaller groups. Having groups smaller than 10 people lets everyone participate more often, and you might finish the activity faster.
2. Have participants sit in a circle, and introduce the six guidelines for the talk:
3. Pass the heart object around the circle at least once so everyone has a turn to speak. Go around as many times as necessary for everyone to say what they need to say. End the conversation when the heart object goes around twice with everyone saying “pass.” Though this is ideal, it takes a lot of time. If you’re on a more limited schedule, you have two options:
The benefits of hosting a heart talk include:
Saving the Family Business: James’s Story
James ran a business with his wife. Later, the couple’s two sons joined the business, and James hoped it would bring his sons and their growing families prosperity once James was gone. He hosted his sons and their families for dinner once a week to build cohesion, but it wasn’t enough. The sons were competitive, which resulted in withheld resentment, snide comments, anger, and in one instance, a physical fight.
After the fight, James decided to host a heart talk. At their usual family meal, he had everyone sit in a circle and introduced the rules for the discussion. Then, they started passing the heart object around the circle. At first, no one wanted to participate, but family members soon got the courage to speak and get to the heart of their misgivings. When one of the wives shared that tension in the family had left her at a breaking point, everyone in the family had tears in their eyes. The conversation helped everyone feel heard and their frustration dissipated. James credited the conversation with salvaging the business, as well as his family relationships.
Your words—spoken and unspoken—have a powerful effect on you and those around you, yet we don’t often think about this power. To become successful, be conscientious about how you use words.
Being honest and telling the truth can be difficult—you might worry about being judged, feeling uncomfortable, or facing someone’s anger. But telling the truth is an important part of being an authentic person. Lying requires energy, and when you don’t do it, you can put that energy toward becoming your best self instead. In this section, you’ll learn about the power of words, the benefits of telling the truth, and a process for telling the truth faster.
The Law of Attraction holds that If we focus on negative ideas, we’re directing energy into making those things happen. To make positive change in the world instead, it’s important to speak positively to ourselves and others. Use language that shows:
Ideally, your words should align with your purpose and values. For example, if you hope to inspire self-confidence in those around you, speaking about yourself in a critical or negative way isn’t in line with your values. If people see you treating yourself harshly, they may do the same to themselves. Instead, adjust your language to align with your values.
Similarly, how you talk about people can alter others’ perceptions of you. For example, if you criticize one coworker in talking to another, the coworker you’re talking to may wonder if you also criticize them behind their back. If they can’t trust you to speak kindly of them, they may not feel comfortable speaking freely or sharing themselves. Aim to use positive language about people—even if they’re not present—to nurture relationships.
Just as speaking in a negative way shapes your life, lying affects your ability to be successful, too. Low self-esteem is at the root of lying: People who lie aren’t confident of getting what they want based on their own merits or they don’t feel people can handle knowing the truth about them. In both cases, lying requires energy to keep track of what you’ve said that you could be putting it toward more positive pursuits.
You can tell that you’re using the right language when you feel physically comfortable and happy. If you feel uneasy, examine whether you need to change how you speak.
There are two main benefits to truth-telling:
To tell the truth, follow these steps:
1. Learn to recognize when you have something to say. Some common indicators are:
2. Decide the purpose of your expression. Generally, there are two purposes to truth-telling: Expressing yourself and/or solving a problem.
3. Arrange enough time to have a conversation. For example, if you need to talk to your boss about something that’s bothering you, don’t try to catch them for five minutes at the end of a meeting if you need 30 minutes—schedule as much time as you need.
4. Prepare for the conversation. You may feel nervous during your meeting, so plan your main points to ensure you say what you need to say.
5. Ask the other person how they see the situation. You may worry that the other person will feel a certain way upon hearing the facts, but you can’t know for sure without asking them. This allows them to share their point of view rather than leaving it to your imagination.
6. If you’re looking for a solution, ask what they’d like you to do to resolve the situation. Write down what you’ll do to resolve it and what they plan to do. For example, you might talk to your book club about not getting enough time to discuss the book due to spending time catching up about your lives. One solution might be to agree to limit personal catch-up time to 10 minutes at the beginning of the hour rather than letting it go unchecked.
Improving the Direction of Nike: Marilyn Tam’s Story
Marilyn Tam heard that Nike was dissatisfied with how their shoes and clothing were being displayed in sporting goods stores. Nike planned to hire someone to help with the roll-out of stores dedicated exclusively to its own products. Before the interview, Tam visited a local sporting goods store to look at how Nike’s products were being displayed. She thought the footwear was top quality and priced well, but noticed that the quality of the apparel was inconsistent: Product sizes and quality varied widely and different pieces weren’t color coordinated. At the time, Nike was going through some growing pains: It had begun as a shoe company and added clothing because of popular demand. However, the company purchased the clothing from a variety of retailers and put their logo on it rather than making it themselves.
Two hours into her interview, Tam decided to tell the CEO, Phil Knight, what she thought he needed to do to fix the clothing problem despite the risk that it could upset him. Her comments essentially ended the interview, but two weeks later, Knight contacted Tam to tell her she was hired. He had listened to her advice and wanted her to lead the company in rolling out a new line of Nike-made apparel that was consistent with the quality people associated with the company.
It’s common to make up “stories” about a situation or experience to help us interpret it rather than asking questions to learn the truth. Often, our stories are negative, and they affect how we choose to act. In this section, you’ll learn to ask questions to determine what’s going on rather than letting your negative stories affect your emotions and guide your actions.
When you spend too much time thinking about what others think about you, it’s common to assume the worst. If you don’t check into it, you can’t know how others feel, and you run the risk that you’ll start acting based on how you think they feel rather than how they actually feel. However, you may feel hesitant to check in with someone because talking about feelings can be intimidating. Instead, push through your insecurity, and check in with the person you’re wondering about so you can learn the facts and act accordingly. You may find out their behavior has nothing to do with you.
For example, during one of Canfield’s seminars, he could see a participant whose body language indicated he wasn’t enjoying himself: The participant had his arms crossed and a displeased expression. Canfield approached him during the first break to check in. He explained what he saw and asked if there was anything he could do to improve the presentation. The participant replied that he was greatly enjoying the presentation but was feeling under the weather, and it was taking all of his energy to concentrate. Canfield felt proud of himself for checking in with the man and not letting himself be consumed for the whole presentation with whether the participant was enjoying himself.
Checking in can also help set clear expectations for the future. For example, instead of assuming your coworker knows when you expect them to turn in their report, ask them directly for verbal confirmation that they’re okay with the specific deadline you have in mind.
In addition to the benefits of avoiding assumptions, asking questions can help you succeed in your career and achieve your goals in two ways:
Here are a few ways to begin your questions:
Even with these kinds of questions, you may get “no” responses that don’t inform you about what the person actually thinks of the situation. Men may be vague about why they feel or think a certain way while women may explain in greater detail. If you encounter a vague “no,” keep asking different questions to get to the heart of the matter.
The “Do you mean…?” question can be especially useful in these situations. For example, you ask your spouse if they’ll help you clean the garage on Friday night, and they reply, “no.” At that point, you can ask, “Do you mean that you never want to help me clean the garage or you just don’t want to help me on Friday night, or something else?” Phrasing questions in this way encourages people to clarify their thoughts and feelings.
From personal relationships to the workplace, showing your appreciation helps others feel affirmed and valued. Yet we may hesitate to show appreciation or not show it in the way that the person prefers to receive it. In this section, you’ll learn about five “love languages” through which people like being appreciated, how to discover someone’s love language, and how to apply this knowledge in a professional and personal setting.
Studies indicate that employees and employers value appreciation differently. For example:
The data suggest that employers need to appreciate employees more. Learn the love languages to appreciate people in both your workplace and personal life.
People have a preferred “language” or way of receiving appreciation, as well as a secondary way. If you show your appreciation using a love language that doesn’t register with someone, it won’t have the same impact as their preferred language.
Here are the five love languages:
1. Receiving gifts. If this is your love language, you feel appreciated when given material things. For example, Canfield gave one of his employees with this love language a bottle of melatonin when he heard she was having trouble sleeping.
2. Benefiting from a service. People with this love language enjoy having things done for them. Examples include offering to help someone with a project or doing the dishes for your partner.
3. Touch. Receiving touch is how people with this love language feel appreciated. At work, a handshake or hug could do the trick, while with a romantic partner, it may be sexual intimacy or cuddling. Canfield has given employees with this love language a gift card for a foot massage to show his appreciation.
4. Kind and encouraging words. People who prefer this love language need to hear kind words to feel appreciated and loved. It shows them you believe in their work and abilities.
5. Quality time. People who prefer quality time need to feel as though they’re spending uninterrupted time with someone to feel appreciated. For example, Canfield’s wife prefers Canfield give her his undivided attention when they spend time together rather than looking at his phone or the television.
Here are three tips to discover someone’s love language:
You can tell you’ve identified someone’s love language when they respond favorably to what you did. But figuring it out can take time. For example, someone’s love language might be receiving gifts but it might be a very specific kind of gift, like a romantic card. Be persistent in asking questions, and keep trying until you get it right.
(Shortform note: For more on identifying and learning to speak the love languages of others, read our summary of The 5 Love Languages.)
Given the benefits of making others feel appreciated, Canfield suggests tracking your acts of appreciation each day. Here are the steps:
Reflect on what makes you feel appreciated at work.
Do you feel appreciated at work? Why or why not? In your answer, include an example of what people at your company are or aren’t doing to appreciate you.
Based on your answer to the previous question, what do you think your primary love language is? For example, if you felt appreciated, whatever they did might be an example of your love language. If you don’t feel appreciated, what you wish people were doing might indicate your love language.
If you don’t feel appreciated at work, do you think it’s worth sharing that with your employer? Why or why not?
Making agreements and delivering on them is an important skill for successful people. This section will discuss why following through with your agreements is important and how to ensure you deliver.
When you deliver on an agreement, you demonstrate that you have the integrity to see commitments through to completion. Yet we sometimes hit roadblocks and fail to deliver. There are three common reasons for failure:
When you fail to follow through, you risk losing the trust and respect of those around you. Subconsciously or consciously, you may start to doubt your capabilities, which can erode your self-worth.
Here are two tips to follow through on your commitments:
If you discover you’re not going to be able to keep your agreement, let the other person know as soon as possible so you can negotiate a new one. For example, if your car won’t start, immediately make arrangements to reschedule the meeting.
Sometimes it’s helpful to create a significant consequence for not meeting a commitment to motivate you to fulfill it. For example, Martin Rutte wanted to learn to do a high dive, but he’d been reluctant to practice because he was afraid. To move past his fear and achieve his goal, he created a big incentive: If he didn’t learn how to do a high dive by a certain date and time, he’d donate $1,000 to the Ku Klux Klan. Because Rutte was Jewish, the incentive to avoid making the donation motivated him to reach his goal.
Acting with class can help you distinguish yourself from others and achieve success. In this section, you’ll learn what it means to be a class act, tips for acting with class, and how doing so can help you succeed.
Acting with class means striving to improve in many areas of your life for yourself and those around you. Improving yourself attracts people into your life who can help you further. For example, acting with class can help you attract business partners who hold themselves to high standards like you do. Your chances of success are greater when your values align.
Here are seven guidelines for acting with class:
1. Accept responsibility for your actions and results. As discussed in Chapter 1, taking responsibility for your actions and their results means taking ownership of your role and recognizing that you have the power to act differently to elicit different results if you don’t like the ones you’re getting.
2. Develop personal standards and follow them. People who act with class establish standards for how they want to live, apart from the standards society prescribes. For example, if it’s common in your industry to take 72 hours to respond to an email, make it your standard to respond in 48 hours.
3. Achieve your goals, and help others achieve theirs. Create goals, and push yourself to achieve them. To achieve your goals, select opportunities and structures that help you grow and gain confidence in your abilities. In forging this path for yourself, you pave the way for others to do the same. Once you’ve achieved your goals, create new ones, and work to support others in achieving their goals.
4. Find meaning in everyday experiences. Develop the ability to enrich yourself and those around you by seeking greater meaning in ordinary experiences. For example, getting the groceries isn’t just something to check off your to-do list for the day—after doing it, take a moment to appreciate your accomplishment in taking care of yourself.
5. Maintain grace, even under difficult circumstances. There are two main ways to do this:
6. Express appreciation, and act with courtesy and generosity. You might fall into the habit of being bothered by small matters or taking out frustrations on others. Focusing on appreciating and treating others well trains your brain to be more compassionate and to see the world in a more positive light, making small difficulties feel easier to overcome.
7. Treat everyone as a unique individual. Though humans share many commonalities, each of us is a product of different genetics, life experiences, and circumstances. Treating everyone as unique broadens the definition of what it means to be human while supporting people on their particular life journey.
In Part 7, you’ll learn how to grow your wealth and give back to the people, charities, and institutions you care about.
Making enough money to enjoy the lifestyle you want can help you feel successful. But it’s easy to let limiting beliefs about money and unhelpful behavior get in the way. In this section, you’ll learn how to change your thinking to better position yourself for financial success.
You likely developed your ideas about money during childhood. Phrases you heard and experiences you had can color how you think about money as an adult, causing you to hold back from taking steps to attain your preferred level of wealth. Some common phrases you may have heard include:
When Canfield was a child, his father employed many of these phrases, and told him that rich people were rich because they exploited poor people. Canfield also watched his dad work hard for a month selling Christmas trees only to break even. He concluded that you can work hard and still not get ahead.
Try the following activity to address your limiting beliefs about money:
Once you’ve started reforming your ideas about money, continue to cultivate positive thinking about it with the following three techniques:
As you attempt to change your money mindset, you may find yourself thinking contrary thoughts. When this happens, write down the thought and the negative emotions it brings up for you. Then, work to release the thought using tapping therapy (see Principle 29: Resolve Past Hurts) or using Sedona Therapy.
In life, you get what you focus on, and the same is true for wealth. To become wealthy, choose to become wealthy. This section offers tips on how to begin that process and how to gain knowledge about wealth.
We tend to think that rich people are famous, but this isn’t necessarily the case. In 2014, the U.S. had about 9.6 million millionaires, the majority of whom were ordinary people who used smart saving strategies to grow their wealth. They make saving and investing money a priority: They direct money toward their savings or investments first, then live off whatever is left.
Many people aren’t conscious of what they spend money on, how much they’d need to save to retire comfortably, or even how to save for retirement. Taking steps to understand your personal finances will position you to grow wealthy in the way you choose. Here are the steps:
The choices you make today affect your ability to live the life you want in the future. To get from where you are now to your desired level of wealth, follow these three steps:
1. Decide what being wealthy means to you. What being wealthy means varies for everyone. One person might want to become a multimillionaire, while another may want to earn enough money to take an annual two-week vacation. Brainstorm, and consider revisiting Chapter 3: Identify What You Want.
2. Calculate how much you’d spend in one year. Make a table or list of everything you’d spend money on when you’re wealthy. Include expenses like housing, food, bills, vacation, and investments. Research future costs, like a new car, or membership at a country club. Tally how much you’d spend to determine how much you’d need to earn to comfortably afford those costs.
Also, consider how much money you’ll need to earn to retire comfortably and maintain the level of wealth you want. Consider how your spending may change when you retire. For example, you may spend less on clothes for work, but you may spend more on gas for road trips.
One rule of thumb is that for every $1,000 per month you earn, you need $230,000 invested when you retire. Example: If your taxable income is $4,300 per month, have $1 million invested when you retire to be able to withdraw 6 percent per month.
3. Create goals to help you achieve wealth. Examples of goal statements include:
Remember, the key is to make your goal as descriptive as possible in terms of what you’ll be doing and when you’ll have accomplished it. Revisit Principles 7, 8, 11, 23: Set Goals for a refresher.
Sheila and Mark Robbins worked hard but didn’t think much about how to grow their wealth. Mark managed a car dealership and Sheila worked as a flight attendant, each contributing automatically to their employer’s 401k plans. When they were in their mid-fifties, the stock market plummeted and they witnessed half of their retirement savings vanish overnight. They decided to research a safer way to invest their life’s savings, taking courses and reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. They determined that buying real estate would be a safer bet and bought 15 houses worth a total of $2 million in the span of a year. These houses also produced rental income. They also started two additional businesses. Overall, making the effort to learn and take steps to reshape their financial future put them on the road to the wealth and financial security they sought.
(Shortform note: Read our summary of Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.)
Saving for retirement will help you reach financial independence—not having to work for money. But many people don’t know how to effectively save. This section discusses how to start saving money to be able to retire comfortably.
Many people balk at the idea of consistently saving money. They may be deeply in debt or may not think saving is important. Though saving money may not seem important, it’s necessary to ensure you have enough money to retire comfortably. Plus, if you force yourself to save a certain amount of money each month, it’s easy to see when you don’t have enough left over to live on, which encourages you to earn more money so that saving feels comfortable.
Even saving a small amount of money each month can go a long way over the long term. Saving early and regularly not only helps you put money away, it allows your money to earn interest that compounds over time.
Here’s how compound interest works: If you invest $1,000 into a fund or account that earns 10 percent in annual interest, you’ll earn $100 by the end of the year for a total of $1,100. If you reinvest the $1,100, you’ll accrue $110 in interest for a total of $1,210. If you keep reinvesting your initial investment and the interest you earn each year, the amount of money you have will double every seven years. The earlier you start investing, the more time the money has to grow and earn interest.
Example: Mary and Tom each invest $150 per month into accounts that earn 8 percent interest. But Mary starts when she’s 25 years old and stops investing when she’s 35. In contrast, Tom starts when he’s 35 and continues to retirement age. When they each turn 65, they’ll have different amounts of money, as shown in the following table:
| Age (Starting investing) | Age (Stopping investing) | Amount Invested Per Month | Annual Interest | Amount Invested Over Investing Period | Money at Age 65 | |
| Mary | 25 | 35 | $150 | 8% | $18,000 | $283,385 |
| Tom | 35 | 65 | $150 | 8% | $54,000 | $220,233 |
Even though Mary only invested money for eight years, she reaches age 65 with an additional $63,152 due to interest compounding over 40 years versus Tom’s 30 years.
Here are five tips to save enough money:
1. Save at least 10 percent of your income per month. It may not seem like much, but even just saving a small amount now helps you save later.
2. Save more than you spend. This tip is also called the 50/50 law because to save more than you spend, you effectively can’t spend more than 50 percent of what you earn. This rule was developed by Sir John Marks Templeton, a stockbroker. He and his wife decided to invest 50 percent of what they earned in stocks and give 10 percent of their income as tithes to their church, leaving them to live on just 40 percent of their income. He became a billionaire.
3. Invest automatically each month. The best way to ensure that you save money each month is to set up automatic contributions to retirement funds. Depending on your employment situation, there are two ways to do this:
4. Consult with a financial advisor. A financial advisor can tell you how to best invest your money, or can do it for you. Ask friends if they have a financial advisor they recommend, or look for someone who has experience managing the finances of someone in the same stage of life as you. Make sure they charge a flat fee rather than a variable rate based on how much money you have.
5. Insure your assets. Protect your assets with insurance or legal agreements. This could include a prenuptial agreement between you and the person you’re planning to marry or liability insurance if you’re self-employed.
Don’t Just Save; Invest: Oseola McCarty’s Story
Oseola McCarty, a resident of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, had to drop out of school in the sixth grade to care for her family. She spent the next 75 years doing housework such as ironing and washing clothes while saving as much of her earnings as possible. By 1995, she had amassed $250,000 in savings and chose to donate $150,000 to the University of Southern Mississippi to be used for scholarships for students in need. As generous as this was, McCarty could’ve grown her wealth even more if she’d invested it in the stock market. In 1965, she had an estimated $50,000 in savings. If she’d invested it at that time in a fund earning an average of 10.5 percent interest, she would’ve had approximately $999,628 by 1995.
It’s common to think that being successful means living a lavish lifestyle and not having to think about what you spend money on. Though living the lifestyle you want while investing and growing your wealth is an admirable goal, it’s still important to learn how to consciously spend money. Conscious spending means two things:
On the whole, conscious spending will allow you to get what you need without having to go into debt or spend much to get it. This section covers four tips for developing a conscious-spending mindset.
To encourage yourself to spend only on what you need, pay in cash for most things. Counting the amount of cash you spend on a given purchase and seeing what you have leftover makes you more aware of the money leaving your possession than when you use a card. You may find that purchases you deemed essential feel less so. It’s also harder to make large purchases because you can’t use credit and may have to save up for them.
Another way to buy expensive things is to buy them for less. Here are five ways to do it:
U.S. residents have more student loan debt than credit card debt. This is in part because it’s fairly easy to get an education loan. This may allow universities to justify increasing tuition and fees because they figure students and their families will have no problem paying. Instead of resigning yourself to taking on massive debt to attend college, strive to take on as little debt as possible using one or more of these methods:
When you have debt, you have to pay a portion of your earnings toward it each month instead of putting this money toward things you care about in the present. To free up your money for things you want to buy in the present, pay off your debts. Here are some tips:
1. Don’t borrow money. It’s hard enough to get out of debt, let alone if you continue to take on additional debts. The solution is to spend only the money you have—no credit cards, no payment plans.
For example, if you’re considering taking a $10,000 loan with 10 percent interest to purchase a car, and you have 60 months to pay it off, you’ll end up paying an extra $3,346.67. If you can’t stomach the idea of paying $13,346 instead of $10,000, consider buying a car for less money, or decide whether you really need it.
Also, don’t take a home equity line of credit to pay off your credit card debt. Though this allows you to bundle your debts and get a lower interest rate, it means effectively starting your payments over from the beginning—where you pay more toward interest than principal. If you’ve been paying certain debts for a while, you may already be paying more toward the principal than interest, making it worth it to stay the course and pay it off.
2. Start with the smallest debt and work up. Even paying off a small debt can give you the motivation to pay off more: You can now direct the money you had to put toward that small loan toward your larger debt instead. For example, once you pay off $5,000 in credit card debt, you can put the money you were paying toward that toward your $17,000 in student loans.
3. Pay off your debts early. If you don’t work to spend more than the minimum payment on your mortgage or credit card, you can end up paying thousands of dollars more over the life of the loan. To avoid this, pay more than you owe each month. When buying a home, look for a lender who offers bimonthly payments, meaning you pay half of your monthly mortgage twice per month. These loans reamortize with each payment, shaving seven years off of a 30-year mortgage. If you can’t find a lender who offers this, pay a bit more toward your mortgage each month, or make one extra mortgage payment per year. This works for credit cards, too.
To assess your spending habits, try these two activities:
To build your wealth, you can either spend less of your earnings, or earn more. Earning more is better because it allows you to save money for retirement while not having to forgo things you want to buy in the present. This section offers suggestions for how to earn more.
Here are three steps to earn more money:
Optional: Consider developing additional streams of income. This could allow you to earn more money on top of full-time work. Plus, if demand for one of your income streams fluctuates, you have your other income streams to fall back on. Aim for sources of income that don’t require a large initial investment of time or money. That said, don’t be shy about developing the skills you need to reach your goals and build new income streams. This includes taking online courses or going back to school.
There are four strategies to earn more money. You can choose some or all depending on what suits you.
To increase your income within your current company, find a way to increase your company’s revenue in exchange for a cut. Companies are increasingly open to employees doing this. Here are three ways to increase your company’s revenue:
Even if you work in your off-hours to make this happen, having the extra cash could make it worthwhile.
Network marketing jobs are another way to make extra cash selling specific goods. You become a representative of the company and work to grow the network of people buying your product. Products include toys, cosmetics, and vitamins. It can be very lucrative: Approximately 20 percent of all new millionaires in the U.S. achieved their success through network marketing.
Visit the Direct Marketing Association’s website (www.dsa.org) to browse companies. Because some direct marketing companies don’t last, find one that has been around a while and is widely liked. Try the products to make sure you like them, as it will be difficult to convince people to buy them if you don’t like them.
One of the best ways to create a new income stream is to think of a problem you’d like to solve, and devise a product or a service you can provide to address it. Ask yourself:
Example 1: Ira and Linda Distenfield decided they wanted a career change. They asked themselves what need they could fill in their community. One thing they identified was reasonably priced legal services and paperwork: Often, law offices charge hundreds of dollars for paperwork or services that take them only minutes to do. Getting a divorce can cost between $2,000-$5,000 while bankruptcies cost around $1,500. The Distenfields decided to start a business that offered legal paperwork and some services for less than $399. They called their business We the People and have now served 500,000 customers across 30 states.
Example 2: While surfing, Nicholas Woodman realized that athletes were interested in a low-priced camera that could attach to their bodies during sporting adventures. He decided to finance the company by buying shell necklaces for $1.90 in Bali and selling them for $60 in the states. With some additional help from his parents, he founded GoPro and made his camera a reality. When Woodman was 38 years old, a Taiwanese company bought 8.88 percent of the shares for $200 million, which lifted the total market value of the company to $2.25 billion. Woodman, who owned the majority of the shares, became a billionaire.
These days, it’s easy to sell products or services online from the comfort of your own home. Here are a few ways to do it:
Example: Shane Lewis wanted to support his wife and two children while he attended medical school. He decided to find a product he could sell to make some extra money and set up an online storefront through www.StoresOnline.com. He found a rapid urine testing product that he could market to people who wanted rapid drug testing. It took a few months for orders to start coming in, but he was soon exceeding his goals for sales per month. Lewis began selling two other products and now earns enough so that his wife doesn’t have to work and he can afford medical school without having to depend on student loans.
You don’t have to make a full-time or even part-time job out of your side hustle. Becoming an occasional entrepreneur allows you to make products or sell services only when you need extra cash. Here are some methods that Janet Switzer, author of the book, Instant Income, recommends:
Evaluate how you might supplement your current income.
Which one to two strategies appeal to you most to increase your income? Why?
What additional information would you need to consider pursuing each of these strategies?
Focus on the strategy that appeals to you most. What kind of adjustments would you need to make to your schedule, lifestyle, and so on to implement this strategy? For example, if you decide to become an occasional entrepreneur selling handmade pottery, but you’re still working full-time, you may need to dedicate some evening or weekend hours to this work.
Though growing your wealth is a worthy goal, so is sharing your wealth to help make the world a better place. This section explains the benefits of sharing your wealth through tithing.
Tithing means giving your wealth to spiritual institutions or philanthropic organizations that you care about. Corporations can donate a portion of their proceeds to worthy causes. For example, the CEO of Medtronic pledged to give 2 percent of the company’s profits to charity. As a company has grown, they’ve gone from donating $1.5 million in the first year to $17 million in more recent years.
For individuals, there are two types of tithing:
1. Give money. God created a world where the success of an individual contributes to the success of others around them. When you share your wealth and care for others, you bring additional prosperity for yourself. To celebrate this reality, a common practice is to give 10 percent of your income to the church, mosque, or synagogue you attend or derive spiritual guidance from. You can also dedicate a portion of your income to donating to charitable organizations you care about.
Example: Canfield and his co-authors for the Chicken Soup for the Soul series decided that they wanted to donate a portion of the proceeds from their books to organizations that addressed pressing issues in the world such as homelessness, teen suicide, and the environment. Over the years, Canfield and his co-authors have donated millions to worthy organizations. They also donate part of their personal incomes to their respective churches and chose to recruit additional co-authors for their books. Though this meant that they’d earn less money per book, it gave them the ability to produce over 200 books, which they couldn’t have accomplished with just two co-authors. They’re convinced that sharing wealth in these ways brought them maximum prosperity compared to holding onto it.
2. Volunteer. Many charities do work that benefits the community. But many of them rely on volunteer help rather than maintaining a dedicated staff. Volunteering your time to these organizations is a way to share the wealth you have with the community to help make it better.
It may seem counterintuitive that giving away money would bring you more prosperity while buying things for yourself wouldn’t. Yet this is what many dedicated tithers report. One reason could be that tithers consciously choose to grow and share their wealth while steering clear of greed. Instead of feeling a sense of scarcity that makes them want to hold onto their money, they feel a sense of abundance: They have enough wealth to meet their needs and share it with others.
This sense of abundance is good for the environment. When you feel you have enough, you aren’t interested in overconsuming material goods, which depletes the environment of its limited resources. Instead, you share the money that would’ve been spent on goods with the world to make it a better place.
Tom, a neighbor of Canfield’s, is part of the Director’s Guild of America and helps produce films around the world. Tom’s contract specified that he’d be flown first class anywhere he went. On a shoot in New Zealand, he wanted to fly his sons there and asked what the cost of a coach class ticket was. It was $1,800—Tom’s first class ticket had cost $7,700. Tom hadn’t known just how expensive it was to fly first class. He wondered if his company would be willing to book his tickets in coach class and give him the difference to use for things like motorcycles or vacations. But he also thought of people who couldn’t afford to attend college and decided to use the difference in cost to pay students’ tuition.
The first year, Tom was able to pay one student’s tuition for a whole year and now gives to conservation efforts. As Tom told more colleagues about his decision, they started following suit, too. His decision illustrates how getting enough and sharing the rest can make the world a better place.
Just as sharing your wealth brings you prosperity, serving others enriches your life while making the world a better place. This section discusses how to start doing it, and the success stories of those who have started on this path.
To serve others, ask yourself the following questions to determine which opportunities align with your interests:
Here are some common ways to serve others:
1. Volunteer. Volunteering is one of the best ways to serve others. Many organizations rely on volunteers with business expertise for accounting, fundraising, and recruiting volunteers. They also need board members knowledgeable about business.
The benefits of volunteering include:
2. Focus your company’s products or services on helping others. Sir John Marks Templeton, the billionaire who didn’t spend more than he saved, looked at the success of businesses over time. He found that businesses that focus on improving people’s lives by improving their services or products are the most successful. To determine whether your company does this, ask whether the service or product you provide will be beneficial or useful to the public over time.
Growing up in an economically depressed part of Wisconsin, Kenneth Behring earned money through jobs like caddying and working retail. After high school, he sold used cars and became a millionaire by age 27. His wealth continued to grow when he started a new career as a real estate developer. He now regularly makes the Forbes 400 and Fortune 500 lists for wealthiest people in the U.S.; his net worth is about $495 million.
Behring’s interest in serving others began later in life. First, he went through several stages of trying to find happiness in things. When one stage didn’t bring him happiness, he moved onto the next one. Here are Behring’s stages:
Behring’s life changed when he agreed to deliver a small order of wheelchairs to Romania for a friend, using his private plane on his way home from a trip to Africa. During the visit, he helped lift a man who had lost his wife and survived a stroke into a wheelchair. The man was so moved, he began to cry, and Behring experienced deeper levels of joy than he ever had before. He started the Wheelchair Foundation to give wheelchairs to people with disabilities.
When Canfield first published this book in 2005, the world had yet to undergo some of the major shifts in technology that we enjoy today. Canfield added this last part on technology to teach readers how to take advantage of today’s digital tools and resources.
In this section, Canfield shares tips to embrace digital tools that make life easier while being selective and strategic enough to prevent feeling overwhelmed.
The digital age has produced myriad resources for accessing information and learning new skills. For example, if you want to learn how to make sourdough bread, there are plenty of YouTube tutorials to guide you. However, there is so much information that it can be overwhelming. Consider taking steps to limit the information you consume and the technology you use.
Canfield recommends putting yourself on a “Low-Information Diet” as recommended by Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week. Ferriss says exposure to too much information is harmful because:
Due to these negative factors, choosing to limit time with media can positively affect your well-being, freeing your time to focus on things you care about. Instead of consuming all information you encounter, try these tips:
As discussed in Principle 31: Embrace Change, it’s important to be open to trying new technologies that can make your life easier and allow for more fulfilling uses of your time. But you don’t need to adopt everything. Follow these 10 tips to maximize your relationship with technology.
You might think you need the best technology available to achieve the most success. But if you have excellent technology and a bad idea, you’re not going to succeed. Focus on your ideas first and technology second. For example, Łukasz Jakóbiak, a resident of Poland, wanted to create a television show, but he didn’t have the resources to buy equipment or rent a studio. Instead, he decided to film the show in his tiny 20-square-meter (215-square-foot) apartment. He records video with two iPhones and shares it online. Using inexpensive resources allowed Jakóbiak to succeed.
To learn a new technology, search for resources to help you. Given all the information we have access to, there are few excuses for not learning how to use a new technology that you’d find useful. Having access to these resources allows you to learn quickly and move on to learn additional skills.
Even though most Internet browsers automatically complete the rest of the web address once you start typing, typing in addresses for sites you frequently visit still wastes time. Instead, use a bookmarks tool to get to your most important sites quickly.
We have so many accounts on so many websites that it’s tempting to create a simple password to use on multiple sites. Or you might create lots of different passwords and list them in a document. Both of these methods leave you vulnerable to hackers who can use programs to guess less secure passwords or could gain access to your password list. Instead, use a password manager service to generate and secure passwords for all of your accounts and profiles. They’ll also remember your usernames. Because this service streamlines logging on, log out of your accounts when you’re done using them—this prevents your usernames and passcodes from being stolen.
There are many ways the information you share online can be accessed or spread. For example, people can take screenshots of photos and share them in other locations apart from where you posted them. Hackers can intercept email and read it while it’s being sent. Canfield recommends assuming that anyone could see your online activity and keeping this in mind as a guide for what you decide to do and share online.
Cloud storage allows you to store information and files on a server rather than on your devices. It was first developed for storing files that take up a lot of memory, like movies, but now it’s available to store anything, and can act as a back-up in case your devices are damaged or stolen.
There are two ways to use cloud storage:
Though these services are generally reliable and private, there are no guarantees. If you have files that must remain private, consider storing them only on your devices. However, you run the risk of losing them if the device is stolen.
Most devices allow you to do multiple activities, such as browsing the Internet, sending email, and taking photos. But because we have so many devices available, we often let ourselves do whatever task we feel like on whichever of our devices is nearby without being strategic about which device we’re using or limiting our use. Plus, having a device on hand at all times has created the expectation that you’ll respond instantly to any kind of communication, from texts to emails.
Canfield offers one main suggestion to more effectively use your devices: Assign specific purposes for each device, and stick to it. Canfield recommends the following uses:
Managing email is one of the most time-consuming activities for any professional. It’s common to spend three to four hours per day dealing with email. To reduce your time spent on email, try these tips:
With so many subscription-based services automatically charging you each month, it’s easy to lose track of what you’re being charged, leading you to pay high costs for services you seldom use. If you’re a business owner, you could be especially vulnerable to paying for services you don’t use. Periodically go through expenses to identify any services you’re not using that you can cancel.
Example: A friend of Canfield’s who runs an advertising company discovered they were being charged about $1,500 per month—$18,000 per year—for services they no longer used. Canceling the services allowed them to put that money toward better uses.
In Principle 28: Finish Your Projects and Declutter Your Life, Canfield suggests listing things that annoy you and projects that you have yet to finish. Similarly, create a new list for technology annoyances or projects you have yet to finish. Then, systematically address each of them so they’re no longer barriers to your success. Canfield offers a series of tips and activities to work through your list on his website.
Successful people are hyperaware of how their online presence, or brand, affects their entrepreneurial or philanthropic endeavors. They actively cultivate a brand that frames them as an authority worth listening to. In this section, you’ll learn four steps to cultivate a brand that’ll help your business succeed.
To create your brand, it’s important to know what you want to do. Whether it’s starting a new business or leading volunteers in cleaning up a local beach, make a plan to get people to engage with you or align with your cause. You may also want to make yourself attractive to prospective employers. Do this by creating content that positions you or your company as credible, forward-thinking, and authoritative.
For example, if you aspire to become a C-level executive someday, creating an online presence or offering content that shows you’re forward-thinking and competent will make potential employers more confident in your abilities. Some executives also hire media relations personnel, write books, or accept speaking invitations to grow their presence in their field. People with a significant presence in their field are often perceived as bringing value to their employer.
Canfield offers three tips to create and share content online.
A personal website and blog allow you to showcase your work, accomplishments, perspectives, and solutions. As you share stories and respond to comments, you can build confidence while growing your presence on the Internet. Google’s algorithm favors blogs, so having one is a way to drive traffic to your website.
Here are the steps to create your blog and website:
After creating your blog or website, identify the people you want to reach by asking:
Social media profiles are a helpful way to share content that grows your online brand. They accomplish this in two ways:
LinkedIn and Facebook are the top two social media sites. LinkedIn is designed specifically as a professional network, whereas Facebook’s users include people who use it for personal use, business, or both. You’ll learn more about how to use these platforms later in this section.
Once you’ve created your online footprint, create content and act in a way that aligns with your brand. Your online behavior affects how people perceive you and your work. When your behavior is trustworthy, people perceive you as someone worth listening to. But many people aren’t careful about how they act online—they may post comments, photos, or other information that paints an image out of alignment with their entrepreneurial or philanthropic efforts.
Follow these five tips to align your behavior with your brand:
1. Participate more, and aim to develop more meaningful relationships. When you sign up for an online profile, you have a new way to interact with people online. But it’s easy to browse conversations without interacting. To further your brand, be an active member of the online communities you’re part of. This could include commenting, answering people’s questions, and showing an interest in others.
Being active in online communities is a great way to form a team that supports you, as discussed in Part 4: Nurture Your Best Self. For example, you could learn about the work of potential mentors and strike up a conversation with them through an online forum, growing your personal support network.
2. Explain your motivation and share your passion. Telling people about your product or goal won’t necessarily draw in others to your mission—tell people why you do what you do. Sharing your passion and enthusiasm is one way to express this. For example, you may be able to gather a following by telling people you’re raising money to engineer an improved bicycle helmet. But if you share a personal story about your sister suffering a bike accident and severe brain injury, even though she was wearing a helmet, you help people understand why you’re motivated and passionate about engineering a better bicycle helmet, which can draw more people to support you.
3. Help others learn. At a basic level, a brand is a demonstration of what you’re good at. To show you’re good at something, strive to inform people, teach them something, or offer advice. It means showing more interest in people and their needs than sharing your message (though these often go hand-in-hand). Do this in most online interactions, such as comments, blog posts, or a post on social media.
For example, if you’re a personal coach, offer advice through your blog that demonstrates the service you provide.
4. Project positivity and share your success. There are many sarcastic or negative people online. Choose the path of positivity instead to stand out from the crowd. This means treating others with respect, kindness, and love and having an optimistic outlook about the world.
Also, share stories about how you became successful. Stories help people see you in a fuller light and show them how to chart their own path to success.
5. Give a TED Talk. Canfield recommends visualizing yourself giving a TED talk someday as a motivation to build your brand. TED talks are generally given by leaders in their field at TED conferences around the world; each talk runs for 18 minutes. Though videos of this length don’t tend to go viral like shorter clips, TED videos often do. The CEO and curator, Chris Anderson, thinks the following five techniques allow speakers to engage deeply with viewers:
Social media is a powerful tool to connect with colleagues, followers, and customers. As you create social media posts, you encourage people to engage with you and your brand, and share what they see with their friends and colleagues. LinkedIn and Facebook are two of the most popular social media platforms.
LinkedIn is best used to professionally connect with colleagues. Canfield offers four steps to begin with LinkedIn:
Facebook is the largest social media site today, with 900 million users, so it’s the most valuable for you to learn. Canfield describes two tips for maximizing your success on Facebook.
Try the following ideas to create compelling posts that engage people and build a large base of followers:
Once you’ve decided what kind of content you’ll post, use these two tips to make a plan for when you’ll post:
Given the ease with which personal information ends up online, it’s possible that some negative information about you will circulate. For example, sometimes photos end up online that show questionable or unprofessional behavior. Or you may have experienced a falling out with a business partner that leaves a digital trail. Services that specialize in cleaning up and managing people’s online reputations can help you cultivate the image you want, but Canfield offers steps you can take on your own, too.
The European Union’s Court of Justice requires that Google allow people to petition for the removal of information about them from searches that is “inadequate, irrelevant, or excessive.” This “right to be forgotten” is designed to help prevent damaging information about an individual from circulating online forever. On the first day it was in operation, 12,000 people submitted petitions. Though the law is only in effect in Europe, it can be worth checking on whether this service is available where you live.
Reflect on your professional social media habits.
Do you use social media to advance your professional brand? Why or why not?
In Step 3 of the previous section, Canfield offers tips for effective social media use. List one or two recommendations that could be most useful to you and briefly describe how they could advance your career.
When you need funding for a new business and can't attract venture capital, crowdfunding and crowdsourcing offer an alternative. In this section, you’ll learn tips and strategies to effectively raise money through crowdfunding and familiarize yourself with different crowdfunding platforms.
Crowdfunding means giving money to people, causes, or companies you care about. Companies and individuals around the world have used crowdfunding campaigns to fund all kinds of endeavors, such as launching new companies or products, or creating documentaries. In 2010, crowdfunding generated $89 million; by 2013, it generated $5 billion, an amount expected to double every two years.
Here are four crowdfunding strategies:
Crowdfunding websites include:
Eric Migicovsky wanted to raise venture capital to fund the creation of a smartwatch that could display messages users received from their smartphones. When no one wanted to back him, he used Kickstarter with the goal of raising $100,000. Migicovsky and his team created a tiered rewards system for donors so that anyone donating $115 would get a watch when it became available, a discount from the $150 they planned to sell it for. The campaign reached its $100,000 goal within two hours of going live, and a little over a month later, they had raised $10,266,844. They also created a video expressing their passion but lack of money. The video was honest and earnest, convincing people to contribute.
In contrast to crowdfunding, crowdsourcing is tapping into your network to find people, services, or other resources. With the internet at your fingertips, it’s easier than ever to search for these resources and use them to your advantage. For example, Robert Kiyosaki, author of Conspiracy of the Rich, wrote the book’s introduction first and posted it on social media to ask his followers what topics they hoped he’d cover in the book. In this way, he used the Internet to generate interest in his book and learn what would be most useful to his audience.
Another example of crowdsourcing is gig economy services like Uber. Customers who use Uber’s app can hail a ride, similar to hailing a taxi, except these drivers don’t work for a specific taxi cab service—they’re just locals who have become drivers for Uber’s company. In this way, Uber effectively crowdsources others’ work to achieve its objective of providing ready access to taxi-like service.
You can also crowdsource other services you might need for your business. For example, websites like Fiverr and Elance can connect you with freelance professionals for help with one-time projects, such as proofreading or editing your marketing materials.