the-success-principles-jack-canfield-1

When no one called him back, John concluded they weren’t going to rent the space soon, so he took
a leap.

“I called a locksmith to come out and open up the place,” John said. “I thought the worst thing they
would do was charge me rent.”

He quickly transformed the space into a lecture hall and within days was holding free talks there on
a nightly basis. Because the space was located right next to a movie theater, he added a loudspeaker
so moviegoers could hear his lectures as they walked to their cars. Hundreds began attending classes
and eventually became patients.

John’s practice grew rapidly. Yet nearly 6 months went by before the property manager came to
investigate.

“You’ve got a lot of courage,” the manager said. “You remind me of me.” In fact, he was so
impressed with John’s daring, he even gave John 6 months’ free rent! “Anybody that has the courage
to do what you did deserves it,” he told him. The manager later invited John down to his office,
where he offered him a quarter of a million dollars a year to come work for him. John turned it down
because he had other plans, but it was a huge validation of his courage to act.

Taking a leap helped John build a thriving practice, which he later sold to begin consulting full
time with other chiropractors.

“Taking that leap opened up a doorway for me,” John said. “If I’d held back…if I had been
cautious…I wouldn’t have made the breakthrough that gave me the life I live today.”

Oh, What the Heck—Just Go for It!

Do you want to be safe and good, or do you want to take a chance and be great?

JIMMY JOHNSON

Coach who led the Dallas Cowboys football team to two consecutive Super Bowl championships in
1992 and 1993

When Richard Paul Evans wrote his first book, The Christmas Box, it was simply a gift of love to his
two young daughters. Later, he made photocopies for family and friends, and word spread quickly
about this heartwarming tale. Spurred on by this positive reaction, Rick sought a publisher for the
book. When there were no takers, Rick decided to publish it himself.

To promote the book, he took a booth at a regional American Booksellers Association conference,
where, among other activities, celebrity authors were signing books at one end of the exhibit hall.
Rick noticed these celebrity authors were the only ones getting attention from the press. He also
noticed that when the next group of celebrities arrived for their scheduled time, one author had failed
to arrive.

With his fear being crowded out by his courage and commitment to his dream, Rick decided to take
a leap. He picked up two boxes of books, walked toward the empty chair, sat down, and began to
sign.

Seeing him at the table, a woman from the show approached him to ask him to leave. Undaunted,
Evans looked up and before she could speak said, “Sorry I’m late.” The stunned woman just looked at
him and asked, “Can I get you something to drink?” The next year, Evans was the premier author at
the show as his book climbed to number 1 on the New York Times Best-Seller List. Since then, The

Christmas Box has sold more than 8 million copies in 18 languages and has been made into an Emmy
Award–winning CBS television movie. The book, which had been previously rejected by several
major publishing houses, was eventually purchased by Simon & Schuster for a record $4.2 million.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

RAY BRADBURY

Author of more than 500 literary works

Be Willing to Put It All on the Line for Your Dream

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY

Former attorney general and U.S. senator

In January of 1981, real estate investor Robert Allen took a challenge—putting it all on the line—that
would make or break his new career as an author and seminar leader. He was looking for ways to
promote his new book Nothing Down: How to Buy Real Estate with Little or No Money Down.
Frustrated with the ad his publisher’s public relations department had created, Bob found himself
spouting off the top of his head what he felt needed to be said in the ad. “We need to demonstrate that
someone can buy property with nothing down.”

His publisher responded, “What do you mean?”
Bob said, “I don’t know. You could take me to a city, take away my wallet and give me a hundred
bucks, and I’d buy a property.”
“How long would it take you?”
“I don’t know, maybe a week, maybe three or four days—seventy-two hours.”
“Can you do that?”
Bob found himself looking at the abyss, realizing he’d never done that before and not knowing for
sure if he could do it now. His head was saying no and his heart was saying yes.
Bob went with his heart and said, “Yeah, I probably can do that.”
“Well, if you can do that, that’s the title of the ad we’re going to run: ‘So then he said he’d take
away my wallet, give me a hundred-dollar bill, and send me out to buy a piece of real estate using
none of my own money.’ ”
Bob said, “Okay, let it rip,” and they ran the ad, which was very successful. Within a few months
after being released, the book was number one on the Time magazine best seller list and it ended up
being on the New York Times Best-Seller List for 46 weeks.
Later that year Bob got a call from a reporter at the Los Angeles Times who said, “We don’t think
you can do what you say you can do.”
Bob replied, “Well, I’d be glad to be challenged,” and then quipped, “How about a date sometime
in 2050?” But the Times was serious—serious about taking Bob down. The reporter said, “I am going
to take you down. We don’t like your ad. We think you’re a fraud, and you’re going down.” Scared,
but determined he had to take the challenge, Bob set it up for 4 weeks later.
On January 12, 1981, the reporter from the Times met him at the Marriott Hotel just east of Los
Angeles International Airport. Bob hadn’t slept much the night before. In fact, he hadn’t slept much for
the entire month before. He lay awake at night wondering if he could really pull it off in such a short

time. Taking the challenge had felt like the right thing to do, but he still didn’t know if he could do it.
Together they boarded a plane and flew to San Francisco, and Bob hit the ground running. He

immediately went to a real estate office and started writing no-money-down offers, and they promptly
escorted them out of the office, which Bob recalls “was not a good way to start.”

Bob started thinking, Uh-oh, I’m in deep trouble now. I’m going to lose it all. It’s gone. I’m not
going to be able to pull this off. What was I thinking? Was he scared? “Oh yeah, I was terrified.”
But he just made call after call after call and finally, toward the end of the first day, he started running
into some success and found a property that somebody was willing to sell him. By the next morning,
he had a signed offer.

So it had been just a little over 24 hours and he had bought his first property. Then Bob said,
“We’re not done yet. You gave me 72 hours. I’ve scheduled my life for this for the next 3 days. Let’s
see how many we can do.” At this point, the reporter became his cheerleader. After all, the reporter
had already lost the challenge, and the bigger he lost, the better the story.

Before, he was saying, “I’m going to take you down.” Now it was, “Hey, Bob, go for it, boy. If
you’re going to beat me, beat me bad.” And Bob did. He bought seven properties worth $700,000 in
57 hours and gave the reporter $20 back out of the $100 he had started with.

The subsequent article, which was syndicated by the Los Angeles Times and picked up by dozens
of newspapers across the country, launched Bob’s career. He had risked it all, and he had won big
time! His book Nothing Down went on to sell over a million copies and became the eleventh best-
selling hardcover book of the 1980s.19

The Challenge

If you want to achieve a high goal, you’re going to have to take some chances.

ALBERTO SALAZAR

Winner of three consecutive New York City Marathons in 1980, 1981, and 1982, and now a
spokesperson for Nike

Robert Allen’s life seems to have been built on leaping into the void to prove that his methods can
and do work—for everyone, no matter their status—to produce wealth and abundance in their lives.
Even after his stunning success of buying seven houses in 72 hours with no money down in San
Francisco, the press still hounded him with, “Well, sure, you can do it, but the average person
couldn’t do it.” Bob’s message was that anybody could buy property with no money down, but the
press kept countering with “Well, you’re not just anybody.”

Bob told me, “I became so infuriated with the press that I said, ‘You can send me to any
unemployment line’—and I remember stuff just coming out of my mouth, not knowing where it was
coming from—‘let me select someone who’s broke, out of work, and discouraged, and in two days
time I’ll teach him the secrets of wealth. And in ninety days he’ll be back on his feet with five
thousand dollars cash in the bank, and he’ll never set foot in an unemployment line again.’ ”

Bob went to St. Louis, asked the ex-mayor to oversee the project, went to the unemployment office,
and handed out 1,200 flyers offering to teach people how to become financially independent.
Expecting the room to be filled to the rafters, he had the room set up for 300 chairs, but only 50
people showed up—and half those people left at the first break as soon as they heard how much work

was going to be involved. After an extensive interview process, only three couples remained. He
worked with those three couples. Though all of them did deals in the first 90 days, technically only
one of them made the $5,000 cash in the 3-month period. All of them did more deals that year and
changed their lives in a variety of different ways. The couple that made the $5,000 cash in the first 90
days also went on to make over $100,000 in the next 12 months. Once again, by taking a huge risk, by
leaping into the void, Bob had proved his point and finally made the press back off.

He went on to write a book about the experience called The Challenge.20 While it was his least
successful book, selling only 65,000 copies, it became his most profitable because it was the first
book he ever put his name, address, and phone numbers in. Over 4,000 of the people who read that
book called Bob’s office and eventually paid $5,000 to attend Bob’s ongoing training program.
That’s $20 million—not bad for being willing to pay the price of putting his butt on the line one more
time.

The secret to my success is that I bit off more than I could chew and chewed as fast as I could.

PAUL HOGAN

Actor who portrayed Crocodile Dundee

High Intention…Low Attachment

If you want to remain calm and peaceful as you go through life, you have to have high intention and
low attachment. You do everything you can to create your desired outcomes, and then you let it go.
Sometimes you don’t get the intended result by the date that you want. That is life. You just keep
moving in the direction of your goal until you get there. Sometimes the universe has other plans, and
often they are better than the ones you had in mind. That is why I recommend adding the phrase “this
or something better” to the end of your affirmations.

When I was vacationing with my family on a cruise in Tahiti two summers ago, my son Christopher
and my stepson Travis, both 12 at the time, and I set out on a guided bicycle tour around the island of
Bora-Bora with some other members from our cruise ship. My intention for the day was a bonding
experience with my two sons. The wind was blowing really hard that day and the trip was a difficult
one. At one point, Stevie Eller, who was struggling along with her 11-year-old grandson, took a nasty
fall and badly cut her leg. Because there were only a few others in the back of the pack with us, we
stayed behind to help her. There were no homes or stores and virtually no traffic on the far side of the
island, meaning that there was no way to call for help, so after attempting some crude first aid, we
decided to all push on together. Bored with the slow pace, my boys took off ahead, and I spent the
next several hours pedaling and walking next to my new friend until we eventually reached a hotel
where she called for a taxi and I rejoined my sons, who had stopped for a swim, for the rest of the
trip around the island. That night Stevie and her husband, Karl, asked us to join their family for
dinner.

It turned out that they were on the nominating committee for the 2004 International Achievement
Summit sponsored by the Academy of Achievement, whose mission was to “inspire youth with new
dreams of achievement in a world of boundless opportunity” by bringing together over 200 university
and graduate student delegates from around the world to interact with contemporary leaders who have
achieved the difficult or impossible in service to their fellow humans. After our time together, they