[00:00] Jack Canfield: If you don’t have 100, 000 goal, you’re never going to have 100, 000 idea. You know, if you’re not trying to solve hunger in the world, you’re not going to have ideas for how to solve hunger. So whatever level you’re playing at, you’re going to attract people at that level. So I started attracting people that were making 100, 000 that year.

[00:20] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Welcome to another episode of success through failure, the show for successful people. And for those who want to become successful, the only show. That reveals the true nature of success. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today I’m bringing you Jack Canfield. I’m dusting off one of my all time favorite success through failure podcast episodes.

[00:40] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: This is a conversation that left a lasting impact on so many people. It’s an episode that’s been downloaded more times than I can count. One of our most downloaded episodes. Why? Well, because it’s a one of a kind conversation. It’s going to leave you wondering like, how in the heck did I not know this stuff before?

[00:55] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I’m sitting down with Jack Canfield, who in the, you know, in the slim chance, you don’t know who he is. He’s a Guinness book record holder for holding seven, yes, seven books simultaneously on the New York Times bestseller list with the chicken soup for the soul series, he’s also one of the most well known and respected motivational speakers in the planet.

[01:16] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: He’s a guy who’s graced the biggest stages and spoke with the, some of the biggest names out there. And he is one of the biggest names out there. And he’s also a practitioner of the law of attraction. And in this special republish episode, we look back on this conversation, where we did a deep dive into a few things that you’re going to be really, they’re going to really help you in your journey.

[01:35] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: One of them is the power of visualization. This is really what he considers the secret sauce behind his amazing journey from where he started, which was humble beginnings to where he got to and where he’s at now. We also uncover why he sees failure as feedback. Rather than a roadblock. And he also shows us how the law of attraction can transform our lives.

[01:55] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So if you’ve ever had a dream or a goal or just this desire to live your best life, this one is a must listen or a realist. And if you have listened to this before, so if you’ve ever wondered how to make your dreams come true, you know. Prepare to be inspired in this one. So without further ado, let’s get into it.

[02:11] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: The republished episode of my interview with the amazing Jack Canfield. When you were young, growing up in Texas and in Wheeling, West Virginia, did you ever imagine all of this, like all of this success that you’ve created, all of the impact that you’ve created? I mean, was this ever a seed planted in your mind when you were young?

[02:31] Jack Canfield: No, no, not at all. I, um, you know, like everyone else, you do what your parents thought you should do. You go to school, they want you to go to college, you go to college, you graduate. My dad wanted me to be a lawyer or go to work for a big corporation, which I didn’t particularly want to do. And, uh, no, I didn’t at all.

[02:49] Jack Canfield: And I got into my work. Through a class I took. I took an elective class in college. It was on psychology. It was really like an encounter group where people just sat around and talked about their feelings and what they wanted out of life and told each other the truth. Big secrets you’d never told anybody.

[03:03] Jack Canfield: And I went, Hey, this is cool. I want to learn how to do this. This guy’s getting paid to run this class. You know, But no, I was just a normal middle class kid in Wheeling, West Virginia. You know, I never had that big a dream. I, I remember once I heard Adlai Stevenson, who was a U S Senator talk on television, but when it was black and white, you know, and I’m 76 now.

[03:25] Jack Canfield: And so what happens is I thought, well, maybe I could grow up and be an egghead Senator, you know, do something good for the world. But that was like a short lived. Thought, you know, I went off the call. I just want to graduate, you know, just want to escape tests and go on with the rest of my life.

[03:40] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So where did the catalyst happen?

[03:41] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I mean, was it one moment? Was it that class or was it a journey of transformation? Because. You sound like you started out as a pretty normal kid. And, you know, like you said, you didn’t have real big dreams or hopes or goals for yourself. I mean, what happened?

[03:54] Jack Canfield: Well, I got to Chicago university, Chicago for graduate school and no undergraduate psychology training.

[04:00] Jack Canfield: Right. This is my senior year. I took that class. So someone said, well, you could sneak into psychology through education. You’ve majored in history. You could go teach history and in graduate school, you could start studying, you know. Emotional intelligence and all these kinds of things. And so I went to the university of Chicago and I ended up teaching an all black high school in the South side of Chicago.

[04:20] Jack Canfield: And I became very interested in why my kids weren’t motivated. You know, I was motivated. I just want to learn and do and be and have fun and go for it and all that. And they didn’t. And so I discovered this guy named W Clement stone, who was worth about 600 million back in the seventies, which would be a billionaire today.

[04:38] Jack Canfield: And he was a friend of Napoleon Hill who wrote, think and grow rich. And he had a foundation. He was running this course called achievement motivation program. How do you motivate people to achieve more? I went, that’s what I need for my kids. So I went and took this class and it really transformed my life.

[04:53] Jack Canfield: I learned that. Money was not a four letter word because I grew up in kind of a union household, you know, where people resented the companies and I learned that you can set goals and you can have visualizations and affirmation, the law of attraction and all this stuff that stone was teaching. And so I started applying it to my own life.

[05:11] Jack Canfield: In addition to teaching it in the classroom, I got elected teacher of the year, my first year I had students, it would get kicked out of school and they would sneak back into school, come to my class and sneak back out of school because they didn’t want to miss my class. So I got really good at what I was doing and I started training other teachers to teach what we call self esteem, motivation, goal setting, all of that.

[05:32] Jack Canfield: And it was then that I began to realize, wow, you really can create any reality you want. You know, you just have to choose it. You have to believe it. You have to work at it, have a plan. Visualize it, affirm it, be willing to fail, respond to feedback, persevere, don’t give up, you know, all the basic principles.

[05:51] Jack Canfield: And so W. Clemens Stone challenged me one year, I was making 8, 000 a year as a teacher in the Chicago school system, and, uh, which is not a lot of money. And he said, I want you to set a goal. That’s so big. That if you achieve it, you’ll know it’s only because of me and what I’ve taught you. So I set a goal to make a hundred thousand in one year and part of me thought, this is ridiculous, but I’m going to do it.

[06:12] Jack Canfield: I’m going to, I’m going to act as if it’s true. And so I did all the things I was supposed to do, visualization, affirmation, acting as if following my intuitive guidance when I would get internal. Kind of what I call inspired ideas. And sure enough, by the end of that year, I made 92, 328, which was a little short of a hundred, but I was not upset at all.

[06:33] Jack Canfield: And then my wife looks at me and says, do you think it’ll work for a million? I said, sure, let’s do that. That took a few more years, but when I do a seminar, I hold up a, I show on a slide, a check that was written to me for 1, 138, 000 from my publisher for the first chicken soup for the soul book. So.

[06:50] Jack Canfield: That’s when it all began to happen. And then we had goals like, you know, let’s transform a billion lives. Let’s have 1 million trainers teaching my work by the year 2030. And so now I just live in that world of big dreams, thinking as possible and going for it.

[07:04] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So you said all of the basic stuff, you said, visualization, affirmations, law of attraction, all the basic stuff.

[07:09] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Most people don’t do that. It’s the basics. Why not? I

[07:13] Jack Canfield: think two reasons. Number one is they’re not taught. They didn’t see their parents do it. I mean, rich kids obviously get rich because they watch their parents, the disciplines they had, their houses were full of books. They went to summer camp. They had tutors.

[07:25] Jack Canfield: They, they believed that they could have that because they experienced it already. You grow up poor. You know, you don’t have that belief system that this is reality for me. And then you’re not taught in the schools. There’s some schools, but very few who teach this work. And so I think, unfortunately, as adults, we have to learn to spend our hard earned money to go to courses, to take seminars and trainings and buy the books.

[07:48] Jack Canfield: You know, I used to say cassette programs way back when, now it’s all downloadable, you know, MP3 files and so forth. And there’s so much online, like your TED talk, for example, you know, those TED and TEDx talks and, uh, the, uh, YouTube videos that everybody has out there, there’s masterclasses, there’s very inexpensive material.

[08:06] Jack Canfield: If you want to go after it, you know, if you’re not exposed to it, You never heard the words. I mean, some people to this day don’t know what a coach is. You know, they think a coach is a guy who coaches football. And so they don’t know about affirmations. Well, what is visualization? What is the law of attraction?

[08:21] Jack Canfield: I never heard of that. You know, is it like the law of gravity? You know, what are you talking about? And the farther you get away from the coast and big cities. The less people know about this stuff and then a lot of people think it’s Ruru. They have no reference point. If this is so true, why didn’t they talk about this in school?

[08:35] Jack Canfield: If this is backed by quantum science, how come I never heard about it in my physics class? You know, so there’s just a lack of awareness. Now, Oprah Winfrey and, you know, some of these TV shows, you know, and all the shows that are out there, Deepak Chopra and so forth. People are getting more and more exposed to it in the mainstream.

[08:54] Jack Canfield: But it’s still, I still think less than maybe a fourth of the population really knows about this and actually does it. And the other thing is it requires discipline. You know, when I was on the track team, the coach would say, run three laps. Now I want you to walk one and I want you to run one as fast as you can.

[09:09] Jack Canfield: Then I want you to walk one. Then I want you to sprint a hundred yards and walk the corners, you know? And I did it cause the coach told me, I never said, well, why should I do that? Coach, do you have research to back that up? You know? So we haven’t had that experience of people just being part of our culture.

[09:24] Jack Canfield: You know, it’s foreign to a lot of

[09:25] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: people. Quick interruption. Hey, if you like what you’re hearing, be sure to get the notes, quotes, and links in the action plan from this episode. Just go to JimHarshawJr.com/action. That’s JimHarshawJr.com/action to get your free copy of the action plan.

[09:42] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Now back to the show. Yeah. And I would say even the folks who have heard of it. They have a hard time going, okay, visualization. I knew what that is, was when I was an athlete, like if they were an athlete in high school or whatnot and affirmations, that’s a little bit different. Right. I think some people think of Stuart Smalley for any of those who are in, you know, my age bracket or above, we remember Stuart Smalley from Saturday night live when he said, uh, you know, I’m good enough.

[10:06] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: I’m smart enough and doggone it. People affirmations. Meanwhile, Muhammad Ali said it’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief, and when that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen, like this is real stuff that world class performers use, and then you said law of attraction, so I think fewer people have heard of that, so can we start with visualization, like So for the person who’s heard of visualization, they know they should do it.

[10:29] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Like, how do you do it? Is it something that you do while you’re laying in bed? Do you wake up and do it in the morning? I mean, and how do you visualize and what do you visualize? Can you put some, you know, a little bit of a framework around that?

[10:40] Jack Canfield: Sure. Let’s talk for about a minute about why to visualize.

[10:43] Jack Canfield: And I’ll be glad to give you very specific instructions. So what happens is the unconscious mind cannot tell the difference between a real event and a vividly imagined event. And I demonstrate that to people in a workshop by having them close their eyes and imagine on top of the tallest building in the world, like the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, or 135 stories up.

[11:03] Jack Canfield: And you’re on a terrace, but this terrace has no railing, just like the edge of a stage. And you have to walk to the edge of this terrace and look down. And everybody reports their hands get sweaty, their heart beats faster, you know. And then I say, look, here’s the deal. Where were you really? Well, in this room.

[11:18] Jack Canfield: What’s happening? I was responding to the visualization. So your body is always responding to the visualizations that you have. Fear is visualizing the future bad things happening. Your fear of losing your house, fear of losing your job, fear of getting COVID and dying, fear of, you know, the snake’s gonna bite you when you see a snake.

[11:37] Jack Canfield: You know, you have to go into the future and imagine something bad. So what happens is we want to use that same function that we have a visualization for ourselves to rehearse and to imagine having the successes we want. When you do that, your body and your mind. Actually experiences that they had that success.

[11:58] Jack Canfield: I’m doing a talk on self confidence in a couple of weeks. I’ve been kind of, you know, outlining my talk and self confidence generally is the result of surviving a risk. If you go out and give a talk and people like it and it was scary, but you did it and they liked it. Now you survived that risk and you go, Oh yeah, I got a little more confidence.

[12:15] Jack Canfield: I can do that. First time I asked to go out for a date, she said, no, well that didn’t increase my confidence, you know, but then I tried it again. Someone said, yes, that increased my confidence. So. You have to take little risks at first. Don’t overdo it. You know, if you’ve never spoken to a group before, don’t start with 5, 000 people in an auditorium, you know, start with 20 in a church group or something.

[12:35] Jack Canfield: So what we want to do is when we visualize, we are laying down this experience that we’ve already had it. And we’re activating our subconscious mind to do a couple of things. Start to perceive things in my environment that I never saw before. So, have you ever had an experience of walking into a bookstore and some book just jumps out at you?

[12:54] Jack Canfield: The letters fade into the background. Or you buy a new car, and then the next day you’re driving around, you see that same model everywhere. You never noticed them before. But so what happens you have in the bottom of your brainstem, a thing called the reticular activating system. And that’s the part of your brain that filters what comes in through sensation and eyes and ears that actually gets up into awareness to consciousness, and I’ll demonstrate that for you and your listeners right now.

[13:20] Jack Canfield: You’re not aware of what you’re feeling in your right foot until I say it, but now can you feel your right foot? Yeah, so all that information was streaming up your spine into your brain. Your brain was going not important, not important. We’re not paying attention to that. We’re listening to Jack and Jim.

[13:34] Jack Canfield: So how do we program it to let in stuff and keep out stuff? Because we can’t. Perceive everything at once. It would overflow. That’s why when people take a drug like acid, they get overwhelmed by all the images because that opens up a little more than usual. And you’re just perceiving so much stuff. So what happens is when you are visualizing what you want, The reticular activating system starts to notice anything in your environment that was always there that will assist you in achieving that goal.

[14:02] Jack Canfield: So it opens up the doors of awareness. The second thing it does is it stimulates your creativity to come up with creative ideas. Have you ever been in the shower and all of a sudden you go, Oh, I could do that. You know, because you’ve been thinking about something and all of a sudden, or you’re driving to work and you’re kind of mindlessly driving to work or for women are putting on their makeup, you know, and so we call it hands, busy mind, free time.

[14:23] Jack Canfield: And so what happens is that you are having these creative ideas show up. Now you wouldn’t have those creative ideas if you weren’t focusing on hope for a solution for a problem you have. So obviously your vision of what you want is a solution to something you have a problem with. You want more money, you want more free time, you want more clients, you want more people to listen to your podcast, you want to have people buy your book, you know, whatever it is.

[14:46] Jack Canfield: So what happens is now you’re starting to get creative ideas. That usually happens after about 30 days of repetition of affirmations of visualization. And then the third thing that happens is you’re activating the law of attraction. So what is the law of attraction? The law of attraction is the law that says what I focus on.

[15:05] Jack Canfield: And think strongly about, think actively about, feel strongly about and visualize, talk about, think about, I am going to bring about. So what happens is if I’m visualizing having a million trainers training, my success principles work by 2030, which is one of our goals, then when I’m doing that every morning, I’m sending out.

[15:28] Jack Canfield: An email, if you will, through the, I call it the internet as opposed to the internet. And what happens is people that are interested in making a difference in the world, pick that up. And all of a sudden they’re finding my Facebook ad. It was always been there, but they never saw it before, or they don’t know why, but they open up an email from me that day that they normally wouldn’t open up and normally just spam, spam, spam.

[15:49] Jack Canfield: And there’s an invitation to my training program. I know a woman who’s one of my major trainers who was walking through a bookstore. And my book fell off the shelf right in front of her. She picked it up. She put it back on the shelf and it fell off again. Cause it was like one of those face out things.

[16:04] Jack Canfield: And it was too many books in that row. And she didn’t even look at it at first. Then she picked it up and she looked at it and she said, this is interesting. Started to read it, bought it, read it, called my company and said, I want to work for you guys. So that’s the kind of thing that weirdly, oddly starts to happen.

[16:19] Jack Canfield: All of a sudden your brother calls out of the blue. You don’t know why, or you decide to go to this Starbucks instead of that Starbucks. You don’t know why. But you do. And then you’re standing in line and the guy behind you, you start talking to, and he turns out to become a client or a partner or an investor or, you know, whatever, or you marry the guy, whatever.

[16:35] Jack Canfield: So the point being, all that starts to happen. Now, how do you visualize? First of all, when I recommend you visualize a minimum of twice a day, when you first wake up in the morning, I go to the bathroom first. And then I come back and I sit down. I have a nice, comfortable chair. You can do it in bed if you wanted to, it doesn’t And you close your eyes and you visualize.

[16:56] Jack Canfield: And you have to do it this way. It’s called associated versus disassociated imagery. You visualize what you would see out through your eyes. So if you were visualizing getting your master’s degree in something, you wouldn’t imagine watching you walk across the stage. You’d imagine your hands reaching out because you’re looking from your own eyes out into the world and receiving that diploma, maybe getting a handshake or today, a fist bump or whatever from the Dean.

[17:20] Jack Canfield: And then you would imagine walking off and your parents are there taking pictures of you and high fiving you or whatever. So, Always be seeing, like, if you’re visualizing skiing down a mountain, you see the tips of your skis, the top of your hands, cause you’re holding your ski poles. That’s an important difference because if you’re out watching you out there, it’s not as powerful when you’re visualizing, you want to be hearing the sounds you would hear and feeling the feelings you would feel if you’d already achieved your goal.

[17:44] Jack Canfield: So auditory visual kinesthetic, the three modalities that we all learned from their own linguistic program, we want to activate those because when all three are happening simultaneously, it’s a synergistic effect. It’s like, you know. Energy cubed if you will. So I’m looking at the movie. I’m hearing people applaud.

[18:01] Jack Canfield: Let’s say I’m on stage speaking to a thousand people. I’m visualizing a standing ovation. I’m visualizing people coming up afterwards and saying, that’s the greatest speech ever. Thank you. How do I get your book? I want to sign up for your program. I’m hugging people. I’m feeling what I would feel joy, enthusiasm, love, peace, you know, relief that I’m did a good job, whatever.

[18:22] Jack Canfield: That’s how you do it. And do it again right before you go to bed. I don’t do it if I’m about to make love that night. I got other things on priority, but if you’re just going to bed normally, take a few minutes and visualize your goals as complete. So let’s say you have five goals for the year that are really important.

[18:37] Jack Canfield: I’m gonna finish the book, gonna double my podcast membership, I’m going to take a vacation with my wife, let’s go to the Maldives, off India, you know, whatever. All five of them have an affirmation for and I use the formula. I’m so happy and grateful that I now am so I am anything you say after I am the subconscious takes as a command.

[18:57] Jack Canfield: So when people say I’m fat the subconscious goes, okay, we’ll give you that. Watch this. Take off food, put on hips, you know, that’s what the subconscious will do. So you never want to say that. Always be I aming that which you want, you know, and if you’re lying to yourself because you’re saying, I am so happy and grateful.

[19:15] Jack Canfield: I am on the beach and on a poly Hawaii enjoying my week long vacation with my wife and family. And your brain’s going, come on, dummy, you’re in Indiana, you know, and you’re going, no, no, no, no, I’m in Hawaii. Now, if you keep that up long enough, your brain goes, this is a little metaphoric, but your brain says, Jim’s not going to give this up.

[19:32] Jack Canfield: We better figure out how to get him to Hawaii so we can take a rest, you know, so we can resolve this tension because the brain doesn’t like tension. It’s always going for homeostasis and peace. The way it gets there for most people is they give up the dream. Now, back to peace. I’ll just watch The Bachelor and The Voice and we’ll be happy and no big deal.

[19:47] Jack Canfield: But if you keep on doing the exercises, the brain goes, Oh, the only way we’re going to get peace is figure out how to get Jim to Hawaii, figure out how to get his book done, you know, make sure he does all these things. And that’s what then provides the motivation that gets you out of bed. Do you do the action and the actions required?

[20:03] Jack Canfield: You got to do the things like, you know, book a vacation, write the book, all of that. That’s a long monologue, but I hope that was helpful.

[20:09] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Absolutely helpful. And for the listeners, like this stuff works, it works in the real world. So I can think back of at least, well, at least two major incidents in my life where this worked.

[20:18] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Like when I was competing as a wrestler, I got a chance to finally wrestle the fourth rank guy in the nation in front of 15, 000 people. This was the match of my life. I had 16 years of. Competition, this being my 17th year and final year of competition comes down to this moment where all the pressure’s on the line.

[20:34] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: It’s seven minutes and it’s either you go home with nothing or you actually achieve the thing that you’ve worked all these years for. I visualize this hundreds, hundreds of times in, in different formats, you know, a match going, you know, where I’m dominating the guy or, or it’s a close match and it goes into overtime where I have to come back from losing.

[20:53] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: But I visualized it in this magical thing happened in that moment where it was a foregone conclusion. So that’s one instance. And then you fast forward in the business that I’m doing right now, this mission that I get to live out of my own, like I visualize this right here, right now, talking to Jack Canfield.

[21:09] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And there’s others who I’ve visualized talking to as well that haven’t come to fruition yet. But these things are, it’s magical. All these things are happening. I visualize. Many, many times driving and my old boss may be listening to this. So if you’re listening to this boss, like I, I’m sorry, but this was what I was visualizing when I was driving to work for several years was walking into your office and tell you, Hey, like I quit, you know, a great place to work.

[21:30] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Loved working at my old, my alma mater, University of Virginia, but I visualized it. And it happened. So you’ve got to take this stuff. This is like Jack called. He said, this is the basics. Most people don’t follow the basics. You’ve got to do the basic stuff. This is the basic stuff. Rewind about 10 minutes and listen to that monologue again from Jack, because it will change your life.

[21:49] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So Jack, the movie in the book, the secret popular movie. Can you share what the secret is? Yeah, you, you touched on it a little bit, but you know, depending on the person you talk to, like, there’s this idea of the, the secret that I want to talk a little bit more about, and some people think it’s woo woo, it’s far out there, but other people like buy into it.

[22:09] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Can you talk about, you know, what is in your own words, what is the secret? And for those who are kind of on the fence about it, how can you help them sort of. Wrap their head around it and actually utilize it. Well,

[22:20] Jack Canfield: the reason Rhonda Byrne called it the secret was all these people that were in secret societies for years, the masons, the different secret societies.

[22:28] Jack Canfield: Like, you know, we read these books, you know, the Da Vinci code, you know, so on and so forth. There were these people who were the Pharaohs of India, the Kings of France and England, the Knights Templar, et cetera, they all understood this. It’s a spiritual principle because you’re working in the realm of.

[22:44] Jack Canfield: Spirit as opposed to the realm of intellect or the realm of physical or the realm of emotions. Now they all play together, but the idea is that there’s this law called the law of attraction, which says when things are vibrating at the same level, they’re attracted to each other. In other words, we learned in science that opposites attract, and that’s true on the physical magnetic level down here, but on the energetic level, and everything is energy.

[23:10] Jack Canfield: Your energy, I’m energy, your voice is energy. Your voice sounds different than my voice because it has a different wavelength than mine. Every idea has a different wavelength. Every emotion has a different wavelength. Joy has a different wavelength than grief and depression. We all know that. We talk about those being higher vibrations, higher emotions.

[23:29] Jack Canfield: We feel down. We feel depressed when we’re down in the lower vibrations. So, uh, we say, Oh, I feel up today. You know, I feel lighter. Well, let me give you one more example. So think of the bars in your town. You live in Charlottesville, Virginia, right? I would bet you there’s bars that the wealthy people go to, and they used to be called fern bars way back when, because they all had like ferns hanging in them, but they’re the nice bars.

[23:52] Jack Canfield: And then there’s bars that the poorer people go to. And if you walked in as a wealthy person into the poor section bar, you’d feel uncomfortable in there. It’s sleazy, it’s dark, it’s dirty. If you’re a lower vibration person, you’re going to walk into the rich bar and you’re going to feel out of place.

[24:06] Jack Canfield: Right. So like attracts, like the people that belong to the country club are not the same people that are hanging out homeless under the bridge abutments. And so we attract each other. I noticed when I was in Hawaii, the people wearing Tommy Bahama shirts would find each other. The people wearing polo shirts, which is more preppy would find each other and the people that were wearing, you know, Harley Davidson shirts or to be wearing a shirt like drinking problem.

[24:28] Jack Canfield: I don’t have a drinking problem. I get drunk. I fall down and get back up again. No problem. They find each other. Right. And so we are attracted to that same level of vibration. And that happens for income levels and happens for how happy I can be. One of my clients wrote a book that got published recently.

[24:45] Jack Canfield: It was called drug tested for being too happy. Like this person was so happy. That some people thought she should be tested because they thought it was on drugs all the time and some people like, oh, she’s Pollyanna. She’s too rude. She’s too airy fairy, you know, or that person’s to grow set, you know, we don’t want to hang out with certain people because our vibrations are different.

[25:05] Jack Canfield: So what happens is that in life, when you are in a state of joy, when you’re in a state of happiness, when you’re in a state of forgiveness, non judgment, accepting things the way they are, not that you don’t work to end things like racism and. Environmental degradation and all that going on, but you’re not angry about it.

[25:24] Jack Canfield: You’re just knowing, Hey, I feel drawn to do this. You know? And so what happens is when you’re feeling that sense of aliveness and expansion, you’re gonna attract more things into your life that are vibrating at that level. So when I started, uh, visualizing making a hundred thousand a year, we talked about earlier, I started attracting ideas.

[25:42] Jack Canfield: I had my first 100, 000 idea in the shower. I had this book called 100 Ways to Neon Self Concept in the Classroom. And I realized all I had to do was sell, you know, I was making a quarter per book, 25 cents. So I’d sell for 400, 000 books, I’d make 100, 000. And then my wife said, this was about a month into it, we tracked another idea.

[25:59] Jack Canfield: She said, you know, honey, If we were a bookstore, we’d be selling that book for 3 profit because we’d be getting the retail markup only to sell 33, 000 books. So we started them online. Well, it wasn’t online yet. We started a mail order bookstore and then we started adding stuff. And, you know, by the end of the year, I had a whole book company, you know, selling stuff.

[26:16] Jack Canfield: And these ideas just keep coming because I’m attracting, if you don’t have 100, 000 goal, you’re never going to have 100, 000 idea. You know, if you’re not trying to solve hunger in the world, you’re not going to have ideas for how to solve hunger. So whatever level you’re playing at, you’re going to attract people at that level.

[26:33] Jack Canfield: So I started attracting people that were making a hundred thousand dollars that year, Tony Robbins and I met once in the back of the room, backstage in New York. That’s when he was making 50 million a year when his infomercial was at its height. Makes more than that now, but he was making that then. And I think I was making like 140, 000 a year, head written chicken soup for the soya.

[26:52] Jack Canfield: And said, Tony, you know, I got a, you need to graduate high school. I don’t think I said, I graduated college. I have a master’s degree. I almost got a PhD. Teach me, mentor me. What do I need to do? He says, do you have a mastermind group? I said, yeah. He said, what’s the most anyone in your mastermind group makes?

[27:08] Jack Canfield: I said, I don’t know, 150, 200, 000 says that’s the problem says no one in my mastermind group makes less than a hundred million a year. So I’m hanging out with people who are thinking bigger ideas, having a higher vibration, introducing me to people that are more able to play at that level. And so all of a sudden, Mark Victor Hanson and I came back.

[27:28] Jack Canfield: We said, we have to up our mastermind group. So we started inviting people that were making a lot more money into that group. So if you don’t know a mastermind group, guys, if you’re listening as a group of about six people, you meet once a month, every two weeks by phone today, be zoom or Skype or whatever, everyone gets 10 minutes to talk about what they’re doing, what they’re working on.

[27:46] Jack Canfield: And then every group brainstorm solutions and, and ideas and supports each other and introduces people to each other and so forth. So all of a sudden, you know, then I’m starting to make a million a year, my best year, I’ve made 6. 3 million a year, you know, so I start hanging out with different people. So the law of attraction basically says, if you close your eyes and you visualize what you want, and you affirm it, I am so happy and grateful, I am now experiencing, then you define it as a present tense.

[28:15] Jack Canfield: And then infuse it with feelings, we call it emotionalizing it. Some people call it nevelizing it, because there was this guy named Neville who taught this stuff esoterically for years. The emotions are critical. If you just think it without the feeling, it’s like getting in your car with no gas, you can have your GPS on, you know, where you’re going, you push on the accelerator and nothing happens because there’s no fuel and the fuel is your emotions.

[28:35] Jack Canfield: You got to feel strongly.

[28:37] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Man, I hope the listeners are really getting this. I mean, this is the stuff. I mean, you know, I didn’t know that I was using this when I was visualizing and affirming when I was competing, but this, this was the stuff, you know, there’s so much of an overlap between this and sports psychology and performance psychology.

[28:53] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: So really, really wrap your head around this. So Jack, I got a question for you. Well, I’ll look back at my life, right? So what about the person who visualizes? It’s not working or maybe not working yet. So for me, you know, I had set a goal, like quit my job by the time I’m 40. Well, 40 came and went, didn’t make it 41 came and went, didn’t make it 42 came and went, didn’t make it 43.

[29:12] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Boom. I finally did it. So for the person who is experiencing failure, they feel like they’re doing this stuff the right way, but they’re failing. Can you help us wrap our head around, around that? Like, how do we deal with failure

[29:24] Jack Canfield: along the way? Sure. Two things are usually true. Number one, there’s something in psychology called the.

[29:32] Jack Canfield: Reversal. And, uh, the way to find out is you, you can muscle test it. So muscle testing is I would do this on stage. Let’s say you were that person. I bring you up on stage. I’d have you put your arm out. I would push down on ask you to resist being a wrestler. You’d be very strong. I’m sure. And then I would get your base strength.

[29:49] Jack Canfield: Then I would have you say, I totally and unconditionally love myself, just the way I am. And then I pushed down on your arm again. If your arm went weak, That means you’re psychologically reversed. If your arm stayed strong, which it should when you affirm a positive thing about yourself, then you’re not.

[30:03] Jack Canfield: One out of a hundred people statistically, scientifically researched in universities are psychologically reversed. Often, not always, it comes from childhood physical abuse or sexual abuse or just, you know, it could be emotional abuse that happened, psychological, whatever. So we can un reverse ourself just by tapping with your dominant hand on your non dominant hand 35 times.

[30:24] Jack Canfield: I don’t know why that works, but it does. And what happens then we would muscle test you again. Your arm, have you say that your arm would be strong now? How long does it last? Everyone always asks that. And the answer is as long as it does. So for some people, it could be an hour. Some people could be all day.

[30:38] Jack Canfield: I doubt that it usually lasts. Forever. So if you’re one of those people, just do that every time before you sit down to do your visualization, before you do affirmations, before you read a self help book, before you listen to a TED talk, before you listen to your podcast, whatever. Now, if you’re not sure what you are, and you don’t want to muscle test you, you cannot take yourself out of normal and put yourself in reversal.

[30:58] Jack Canfield: Only come out of reversal and back into normal. So basically, if you just did this, just as, you know, as a precaution every time you’re about to do something positive. This originally was discovered when clients would be coming into a therapist and they would say, you know, I’ve tried everything. I’ve been to every therapist in town.

[31:14] Jack Canfield: I’ve done acupuncture, NLP, blah, blah, blah. Nothing’s worked. We’d say, let me muscle test you. Boom. They were reversed. That’s why it wasn’t working because positive input was going in and having a negative impact. Now, that’s one thing. But the other thing is. Big on for most people is unconscious, limiting beliefs.

[31:31] Jack Canfield: So you may have wanted this goal. You may have worked hard for this goal. Your willpower is working in that goal. But some part of you had a belief that was stopping you from making that decision. Either it was afraid that something bad was going to happen if you quit your job, or it was like, you know.

[31:49] Jack Canfield: Who knows what it was. I’m not inside your head. You were there. You’re exactly right. You nailed it. Okay. So whatever happens is it’s usually between the ages of three and eight. Some decision was made, you know, for me, I’ll give you an example in my life. I had clutter everywhere. I mean, it looked like a warehouse in my office.

[32:05] Jack Canfield: It was a disaster. And I, one day decided to do this session with this guy. And he took me through a belief change exercise where we went back and we discovered my childhood decision. And what it was, was I was under the porch of my grandmother’s house with my dog. My mom and dad had just got divorced. My mom was in with my grandma with the three kids.

[32:26] Jack Canfield: So we’re living in the attic and the dog is my transitional object, you know, about parenting. So your kid takes the teddy bear on the plane. Cause it’s, it gives them safety when they’re on this scary place. So my dog is my transitional object. I’m hugging my dog. My dog bites the neighbor kid. They’re going to put my dog to sleep.

[32:42] Jack Canfield: They’re coming to get my dog. I’m under the porch hiding with my dog. And I hear my dad going, Jack, when you come out, wherever you are, you’re in deep trouble, you know, and I’m sitting there holding on to my dog. I love my dog. You know, they’re going to kill my dog. And so they finally find me, you know, and I get in trouble.

[32:57] Jack Canfield: I get spanked and all that kind of stuff. But what I decided was. I have to learn how to protect the things I love, the people I love. And that got translated into the underdogs of life. So where did I teach? All black inner city high school poor. My job was to save everybody who was, you know, not already, you know, doing well.

[33:17] Jack Canfield: And so if you send me an email and I didn’t get to it, I was clearing out emails from 10 years earlier that I had printed out that maybe someday I would answer. And it would just pile up and pile up and pile up. People like you, like you write a book, you say, Oh, I know Jack, maybe Jack will write the forward.

[33:31] Jack Canfield: So I had like 500 books piled up, but I never responded to, maybe I’ll read it someday and give him a testimonial quote. And what I realized is that I can’t take care of everybody, not my job. And my job is to do what makes me come alive. I teach that your job is to do what makes you come alive. Don’t ask what the world needs.

[33:49] Jack Canfield: Ask what makes you come alive? Cause the liveness is your feedback system that you’re on course. You know, Abraham talks about that. The joy is your feedback system. We all have a feedback system. If you’re doing things that bring you joy, like you’re doing now, as opposed to your old job, you’re on course.

[34:05] Jack Canfield: And if all of a sudden, like the chicken soup, one day I woke up and it wasn’t fun anymore. You know, here I am editing all these stories. And it got to the point where I’m thinking like, God, not one more one day, a guy climbs Mount Everest. I’m bored with this. You know, it was

[34:21] Jack Canfield: like, I said, okay, it’s time to do something else. So. Imagine you’re getting on a plane, Jim, and the pilot gets on. You’re up in first class. You see the pilot, he comes on, he goes into the cockpit. The pilot is six years old. He’s about three feet tall. He’s six years old. He’s got three stripes on his sleeve and he’s gonna, I’m going to fly the 747.

[34:40] Jack Canfield: How do you feel? It’s like, what? I don’t know. He can’t possibly have logged 2000 hours. I don’t think so. And yet we have a six year old piloting our life or a three year old or an eight year old, you know, many, many decisions we made. I’m not good enough. So I’m going to try to impress everyone by being more than I am.

[34:58] Jack Canfield: I won’t be authentic or it’s not okay to ask for what I want because I asked my mom and my mom said, you selfish little and you know, you shouldn’t be asking people for things. You always make everyone uncomfortable. Can’t you just accept what you have? You know, people here. That’s like that all the time.

[35:10] Jack Canfield: Right? Then we decide it’s not okay to ask. It’s not okay to make noise. It’s not okay to be sexy. It’s not okay to have needs. It’s not okay to want things. It’s not okay to, you know, play. It’s not okay to stand up and talk in front of a group because I tried that in second grade and I forgot my lines and everybody laughed.

[35:27] Jack Canfield: I’m never doing that again. And then we forgot we made the decision. And now you’re in church and they say, you know, could you read the homily next weekend? And you’re going, uh, no, I don’t think so. You know, so you’re stuck. And so we got to get unstuck. And that’s called belief work. And there’s a lot of people that do it.

[35:43] Jack Canfield: I do it. And I would just say to your listeners, if you go to jack canfield. com. And you just get in my mailing list. I do two calls a year where I take people through a half hour belief change experience. I usually have about a thousand people on the call from all over the world. And I just do it as a service to the public.

[36:00] Jack Canfield: So just jack canfield. com get on my list. And then when that happens, you’ll be notified. And I would also say, if you want to get a free gift, when you go there, just go jack canfield. com forward slash the word transformation, and you get a 10 day. Download of a three minute video of me teaching one of these principles.

[36:18] Jack Canfield: And we talked about visualization. I do that with 10 different principles over 10 days. And so that’s free to you as well, but beliefs. That’s why, that’s why it’s the limiting beliefs. We don’t know we have them, but they, we just, we get stuck.

[36:30] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Absolutely. So for the listeners, make sure you grab those two links, Jack can full.

[36:33] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: com and Jack can full. com slash. Transformation. And we’ll have those in the action plan. Just go to JimHarshawJr.com/action. You can get all the links. We’ll have all the Jack social media, et cetera, but we’re not done here. I got another question for you, Jack. You have had so much success in your life.

[36:49] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Can you tell us about a time when you failed? Was there a moment when you. Felt that failure, that self doubt that comes with failure because we look at you from the outside looking in and we go, man, things are just easy for him. Things were easier for him. Like, woe is me because you know, I’ve got all these things holding me back and I’ve got these failures and if I try that, I could fail.

[37:09] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Can you share a time when you failed?

[37:11] Jack Canfield: Well, let me just contextualize this by saying one of the reasons that people don’t take steps to do the thing they want to do to achieve their goals is called self doubt and shame. And it usually comes from, I tried something in the past and it didn’t work. I don’t know if I want to put myself through that again and have that experience again.

[37:29] Jack Canfield: Because in life, what we do, we avoid feeling uncomfortable. And so if we’ve had uncomfortable feelings, like literally I had to throw away a bunch of ties recently, cause I’m just not wearing them anymore. I’ve saved a few, but it was really hard because I had to make, I had to confront that I made a bad buying decision.

[37:46] Jack Canfield: You know, one of the problems people have when they’re decluttering is they can’t admit, I never should have bought that shirt in the first place, as long as I keep it, I don’t have to confront that. You know, it’s a, well, maybe someday I’ll wear it. So for me, my self doubt. Doesn’t come after a failure. It comes before I try the thing, you know, can I do it?

[38:04] Jack Canfield: Am I enough? Do I know enough? And that’s where I learned eventually the only way to get through anything is to just feel the fear and do it anyway. And now we have tools like EFT tapping. We have other things like that, where we can get rid of fear much quicker. You know, it used to be, I just had to go jump out of a plane or do Tony Robbins firewalk or whatever it was to realize, well.

[38:26] Jack Canfield: That fear is stupid. You know, I could walk on coals, which I did, and it was a great experience. So for me, I don’t think about failure the way most people do, Jim, I realize they’re just for me, learning experiences, they’re just delays and results. And so I always say when I was a kid, I fell down a lot when I was learning to walk.

[38:46] Jack Canfield: And I never felt like I failed. My parents didn’t say you get 122 tries and then it’s over. We’re not going to teach you anymore. You know, they didn’t do that. They just kept doing it until I could walk and I’d look at it the same way. So do I have things that didn’t work out the way I wanted them to?

[39:01] Jack Canfield: Absolutely. Do I have expectations that didn’t get fulfilled? For sure. Did I have learning experiences? Yeah. So we, in that context, let me tell you about a couple. So two majors. One lasted five years, one lasted 20 years, and so two divorces. And there was a little embarrassment of that at first. You know, here I am teaching success and now I’ve got two marriages.

[39:20] Jack Canfield: It didn’t work. That doesn’t quite work with the brand image. But the reality was I was not happy anymore. It wasn’t working. She wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy. And so I got divorced. I’ve been married 21 years and we’re ecstatically happy. So it was good that I did that. But I learned from it. You know, I worked too hard.

[39:37] Jack Canfield: I didn’t spend enough time being home. I was on the road too much. You know, this. Create a distance. And so I, whenever I have a lack of success, let’s call it. I didn’t get what I wanted. I asked myself, okay, how did I create that? What did I do to make that happen? Cause I believe we create everything that happens to us or we allow it.

[39:54] Jack Canfield: So, well, I wasn’t home. I didn’t listen enough. I didn’t know the five love languages yet. You know, my wife’s love language is quality time. And I was on the road all the time when I was never going to work, you know, so next time I’m going to spend more time at home, which I do. And then. We did a workshop once and I think five people showed up.

[40:12] Jack Canfield: We spent an entire two weeks promoting it. It was a evening workshop and turned out it was Tuesday before Thanksgiving, which in retrospect is highly stupid, but we didn’t know it at a time that everyone’s going to be on the road. Going to their house, you know, see grandma, whatever. So we never did that again.

[40:30] Jack Canfield: That was a learning experience. Two books we did that didn’t work out chicken soup for the country soul. Nobody really knew what it was. It was a country music. Was it people who love in the country? And the guy we did the book with wasn’t that. Cool of a guy. He kind of alienated everyone in Nashville because he was a real macho kind of power seeking celebrity whore kind of guy.

[40:49] Jack Canfield: He just wanted to get close to people and use the book for that. People could perceive that. So we made a bad decision to have a coauthor working with us, helping us gather stories. Then we did chicken soup for the single soul. And nobody knew who it was for. Was it for people who wanted to be single? Was it for people who were divorced?

[41:05] Jack Canfield: Was it for people who couldn’t find anyone to marry? Was it for people who were widowed? So that was like a, just a brand issue. And we learned from that. Don’t mix. More than one topic in a one book. So all the books we’ve done that were really successful were niche, women’s soul, mother’s soul, baseball fans, soul, et cetera, but then you work a whole year on a book and it doesn’t sell.

[41:28] Jack Canfield: It’s not fun, but then, you know, we examined it and said, okay, why not got some feedback? So I always see, I see failure as feedback rather than as something. Bad happened, but just like, what can I learn from this? How can I apply it? And let’s move on. And what I tell myself, and I would tell your listeners is you’ve always done everything that you’ve ever done that you consider a failure.

[41:51] Jack Canfield: You did the best you could with the knowledge, skills, awareness, and tools you had at the time. And if you have more awareness, more knowledge, more skills, or more tools, you would have done better. But you couldn’t, you know, it’s like berating yourself for not being a high school student when you’re in fifth grade.

[42:06] Jack Canfield: You just know, you didn’t know enough, you know? And so the same thing is I didn’t know enough in my first marriage to make it work. I didn’t know. Now I do. I can teach a marriage course. And the same thing is true with that. So anyway. Those would be some of the barriers. And basically for me, it’s called, okay, sit back, learn from it.

[42:25] Jack Canfield: Know that we’re going to grow, you know, the whole fixed mindset growth mindset work that of Carol Dweck, the idea that, you know, when I fail, it’s not because I’m incompetent, not because I’m not able, but because I didn’t learn what I needed to learn. And if I Put my attention on learning it. I can be successful next time.

[42:42] Jack Canfield: So I always come from that position. A lot of people don’t hold that. You know, if I didn’t succeed, they go, must be something wrong with me. I’m not meant to be wealthy. I’m not meant to be married. I’m not meant to be a CEO of a company. Yeah. I’m not meant to be a salesperson, whatever. And that’s, that’s a mistake you can learn.

[42:57] Jack Canfield: Anything, if you’re committed to it.

[42:59] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Yeah. Those were the struggles that I had to overcome to become, you know, the wrestler that I eventually became and to finally build this business that I love so much. And, and so I want to just pull back the curtain on this show. That’s what we always do. And Jack, I appreciate you sharing those instances that were, you know, failures, feedback, failures, information.

[43:17] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: And for the listeners, like this is one of the most successful people in the personal development industry, you know, household name, like. He’s a real person. He’s a real human being. So look at your struggle. Look at your challenges. Look at your setbacks. Look at your failures and understand like this is normal.

[43:30] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: This is information for you. You’re stronger, smarter, wiser because of your failures, because of those setbacks and believe in yourself, take that next step. Jack, absolutely incredible interview. I very much appreciate you making time to come on the show. I have all your links and books and social media links, et cetera.

[43:49] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: In the action plan for listeners, go to JimHarshawJr.com/action. Anything you’re working on right now, Jack, or anything, uh, resources, other resources you want to point the listeners to before we wrap up. Well,

[44:00] Jack Canfield: just to remind people that it’s a book called the success principles, how to get from where you are to where you want to be.

[44:04] Jack Canfield: We also have a success for those workbook. Now that I came out last year, it has 17 of the principles and it works you through them. Like it’s like having a coach in a book that will walk you through actually how to apply those principles in your life. The other thing we’re working on right now, I’m training trainers to teach this work.

[44:19] Jack Canfield: If you are someone who wants to empower people and inspire them to live their highest vision, uh, that’s what we’re about. We’ve now trained, uh, Close to 4, 000 people in 117 countries. We have both live and online training. So you can do either one and get certified as a trainer. Our goal is to have a million trainers by 2030.

[44:37] Jack Canfield: So that if each trainer trains a thousand people a year, which is only, you know, a hundred workshops of 10 people or 10 workshops of a hundred or whatever you want to do and online, you can do infinite numbers. Now, what happens is if everyone does that for eight years, that’ll reach 8 billion people, which would be the projected population of the planet by 2030.

[44:54] Jack Canfield: So do I think big? Yeah. If you want to be part of that vision, we actually have t shirts that we give out when people join us called I’m one in a million. That’s my big thing right now. And we also have a coaching program starting in a couple of weeks where people can, if they go to our website, you can look for momentum mastermind group.

[45:10] Jack Canfield: It’s really, it’s going to be incredible.

[45:13] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Excellent. For listeners take action. Don’t let this just be another podcast episode that you listen to and move on with your life. Take action, Jack. Thank you. Thanks for listening. If you want to apply these principles into your life, let’s talk. You can see the limited spaces that are open on my calendar at JimHarshawJr.com/apply where you can sign up for a free one time coaching call directly. And don’t forget to grab your action plan. Just go to JimHarshawJr.com/action. And lastly, iTunes tends to suggest podcasts with more ratings and reviews more often, you would totally make my day. If you give me a rating in review, those go a long way in helping me grow the podcast audience.

[45:57] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Just open up your podcast app if you have an iPhone, do a search for success through failure, select it, and then scroll the whole way to the bottom where you can leave the podcast a rating and a review. Now, I hope this isn’t just another podcast episode for you. I hope you take action on what you learned here today.

[46:14] Jim Harshaw, Jr.: Good luck and thanks for listening.

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