the-success-principles-jack-canfield-1

WYLAND

World-renowned marine artist

When I was a first-year history teacher in a Chicago high school, I quickly stopped going into the
teachers’ lounge, which I soon dubbed the Ain’t It Awful Club. Worse than the haze of cigarette
smoke that constantly hung over the room was the cloud of emotional negativity. “Can you believe
what they want us to do now?” “I got that Simmons kid again this year in math. He’s a holy terror.”
“There is no way you can teach these kids. They are totally out of control.” It was a constant stream of
negative judgments, criticisms, blaming, and complaining. Not too long after, I discovered a group of
dedicated teachers that hung out in the library and ate together at two tables in the teachers’
lunchroom. They were positive and believed they could overcome and handle anything that was
thrown at them. I implemented every new idea they shared with me, as well as a few more that I
picked up from my weekend classes at the University of Chicago. As a result, I was selected by the
students as teacher of the year in only my first year of teaching.

Be Selective

I just do not hang around anybody that I don’t want to be with. Period.

For me, that’s been a blessing, and I can stay positive. I hang around people who are happy, who
are growing, who want to learn, who don’t mind saying sorry or thank you…and [are] having a

fun time.

JOHN ASSARAF

Author, The Street Kid’s Guide to Having It All

I’d like you to do a valuable exercise that my mentor W. Clement Stone did with me. Make a list of
everyone you spend time with on a regular basis—your family members, coworkers, neighbors,
friends, people in your civic organization, fellow members of your religious group, and so on.

When you’ve completed your list, go back and put a minus sign (-) next to those people who are
negative and toxic, and a plus sign (+) next to those who are positive and nurturing. As you make a
decision about each person, you might find that a pattern will begin to form. Perhaps your entire
workplace is filled with toxic personalities. Or perhaps it’s your friends who naysay everything you
do. Or maybe it’s your family members who constantly put you down and undermine your self-esteem
and self-confidence.

I want you to do the same thing that Mr. Stone told me to do. Stop spending time with those people
with a minus sign next to their name. If that is impossible (and remember, nothing is impossible; it is
always a choice), then severely decrease the amount of time you spend with them. You have to free
yourself from the negative influence of others.

Think about it. I’m sure you know people who only have to walk into the room to totally drain you
of energy. I refer to these people as psychic vampires. They literally suck the life energy right out of
you. Stop spending time with them.

Are there people in your life who are always complaining and blaming others for their
circumstances? Are there people who are always judging others, spreading negative gossip, and
talking about how bad it is? Stop spending time with them as well.

Are there people in your life who, simply by calling you on the telephone, can bring tension, stress,
and disorder to your day? Are there dream-stealers who tell you that your dreams are impossible and
try to dissuade you from believing in and pursuing your goals? Do you have friends who constantly
attempt to bring you back down to their level? If so, then it is time for some new friends!

Avoid Toxic People

Until you reach the point in your self-development where you no longer allow people to affect you
with their negativity, you need to avoid toxic people at all costs. You’re better off spending time
alone than spending time with people who will hold you back with their victim mentality and their
mediocre standards.

Make a conscious effort to surround yourself with positive, nourishing, and uplifting people—
people who believe in you, encourage you to go after your dreams, and applaud your victories.
Surround yourself with possibility thinkers, idealists, and visionaries.

Surround Yourself with Successful People

One of the clients who hired me to teach these success principles to their salespeople is one of the
leading manufacturers of optical lenses. As I mingled with the salespeople prior to the event, I asked
each person I met if he or she knew who the top five salespeople in the company were. Most
answered yes and quickly rattled off their names. That night I asked my audience of 300 people to
raise their hands if they knew the names of the top five salespeople. Almost everyone raised a hand. I
then asked them to raise their hands again if they had ever gone up to any of these five people and
asked them to share their secrets of success. Not one hand went up. Think about it! Everyone knew
who the most effective people in the company were, but because of an unfounded fear of rejection,
nobody had ever asked these sales leaders to share their secrets with them.

If you are going to be successful, you have to start hanging out with the successful people. You need
to ask them to share their success strategies with you. Then try them on and see if they fit for you.
Experiment with doing what they do, reading what they read, thinking the way they think, and so on. If
the new ways of thinking and behaving work, adopt them. If not, drop them, and keep looking and
experimenting.

Principle

26

Acknowledge Your
Positive Past

I look back on my life like a good day’s work; it is done and I am satisfied with it.

GRANDMA MOSES

American folk artist who lived 101 years

Most people in our culture remember their failures more than their successes. It’s the result of the
“leave ’em alone—zap ’em” approach to parenting, teaching, and management that is so prevalent in
our culture. When you were a young child, your parents left you alone when you were playing and
being cooperative, and then zapped you when you made too much noise, were a nuisance, or got into
trouble. You probably received a perfunctory “good job” when you got A’s but got a huge lecture
when you got C’s and D’s, or, God forbid, an F. In school, most of your teachers marked the answers
you got wrong with an X rather than marking the ones you got right with a check mark or a star. In
sports, you got yelled at when you dropped the football or the baseball. There was almost always
more emotional intensity around your errors, mistakes, and failures than there was around your
successes.

Because the brain more easily remembers events that were accompanied by strong emotions, most
people underestimate and underappreciate the number of successes they’ve had in relation to the
number of failures they’ve had. One of the ways to counteract this phenomenon is to consciously focus
on and celebrate your successes. One of the exercises I do in my corporate seminars is to have the
participants each share a success they have had in the past week. It is always amazing to see how
difficult this is for so many people. Many people don’t think they have had any successes. They can
easily tell you 10 ways they messed up in the last 7 days but have a much harder time telling you 10
victories they had.

The sad truth is that we all have many more victories than failures—it’s just that we set the bar too
high for what we call a success. A participant in the GOALS (Gaining Opportunities and Life Skills)
Program I developed to help get people off welfare in California28 actually asserted that he didn’t
have any successes. When I inquired about his accent, he told us that he had left Iran when the shah
was toppled in 1979. He had moved his whole family to Germany, where he had learned German and
become a car mechanic. More recently he had immigrated his whole family to the United States, had
learned English, and was now in a program learning to be a welder—but he didn’t think he had any
successes! When the group asked him what he thought a success was, he replied that it was owning a
home in Beverly Hills and driving a Cadillac. In his mind, anything less than that was not an
achievement. Slowly, with a little coaching, he began to see that he had many success experiences
every single week. Simple things such as getting to work on time, getting into the GOALS Program,
learning to speak English, providing for his family, and buying his daughter her first bicycle were all

successes.

The Poker Chip Theory of
Self-Esteem and Success

So why am I making such a big deal about acknowledging your past successes? The reason it is so
important is because of its impact on your self-esteem. Imagine for a moment that your self-esteem is
like a stack of poker chips. Then imagine that you and I are playing a game of poker and you have 10
chips and I have 200 chips. Who do you think is going to play more conservatively in this game of
poker? Yes, you are. If you lose two bets of 5 chips, you’re out of the game. I can lose 5 chips 40
times before I’m out of the game, so I am going to take more risks because I can afford to take the
losses. Your level of self-esteem works the same way. The more self-esteem you have, the more risks
you are willing to take.

Research has shown over and over again that the more you acknowledge your past successes, the
more confident you become in taking on and successfully accomplishing new ones. You know that
even if you fail, it won’t destroy you, because your self-esteem is high. And the more you risk, the
more you win in life. The more shots you take, the more chances you have of scoring.

Knowing that you have had successes in the past will give you the self-confidence that you can
have more successes in the future. So let’s look at some simple but powerful ways to build and
maintain a high level of confidence and self-esteem.

Begin with Nine Major Successes

Here is a simple way to begin an inventory of your major successes. (Consider also doing this
exercise with your spouse or whole family.) Start by dividing your life into three equal time periods
—for example, if you are 45 years old, your three time periods would be from birth to 15, 16 to 30,
and 31 to 45. Then list three successes you’ve had for each time period. To help you get started, I’ve
listed my own below:

First Third: Birth to Age 20

1. Elected patrol leader in the Boy Scouts
2. Caught winning touchdown pass to win city championship game
3. Admitted to Harvard University

Second Third: Age 20 to 40

1. Earned my master’s degree in education from the University of Massachusetts
2. Published my first book
3. Founded the New England Center for Personal and Organizational Development

Final Third: Age 40 to 60

1. Founded Self-Esteem Seminars
2. Chicken Soup for the Soul® hit number one on the New York Times Best-Seller List
3. Achieved goal of having spoken professionally in all 50 states

Can You List 100 Successes?

To really convince yourself that you’re a successful person who can continue to achieve great things,
complete the next step of this exercise and list 100 or more of your life successes.

My experience is that most people do fine coming up with the first 30 or so; then it becomes a little
more difficult. To come up with 100, you are going to have to list things like learning to ride a
bicycle, singing a solo at church, getting your first summer job, the first time you got a hit in Little
League, making the cheerleading squad, getting your driver’s license, writing an article for your
school newspaper, getting an A in Mr. Simon’s history class, surviving basic training, learning to
surf, winning a ribbon at the county fair, modifying your first car, getting married, having your first
child, and leading a fund-raising campaign for your child’s school. These are all things you probably
take for granted now, but they all need to be acknowledged as successes along your life’s journey.
Depending on your age, you may even need to resort to writing down “passed first grade, passed
second grade, passed third grade,” but that’s okay. The goal is simply to get to 100.

Create a Victory Log

Another powerful way to keep adding to that stack of poker chips is to keep a written record of your
successes. It can be as simple as a running list in a spiral-bound notebook or a document on your
computer, or it can be as elaborate as a leather-bound journal. By recalling and writing down your
successes each day, you log them into your long-term memory, which enhances your self-esteem and
builds your self-confidence. And later, if you need a boost of self-confidence, you can reread what
you have written.

Peter Thigpen, a former vice president at Levi Strauss & Co., kept such a victory log on his desk,
and every time he had a victory or a win, he wrote it down. And when he was about to do something
scary, such as negotiate for a multimillion-dollar bank loan or make a speech to the board of
directors, he would read his victory log to build up his self-confidence. His list included entries such
as I opened up China as a market, I got my teenage son to clean up his room, and I got the board to
approve the new expansion plan.

When most people are about to embark on some frightening task, they have a tendency to focus on
all the times they tried before and didn’t succeed, which undermines their self-confidence and feeds
their fear that they will fail again. Keeping and referring to your victory log keeps you focused on
your successes instead.

Start your own victory log as soon as possible. If you want, you can also embellish it like a
scrapbook with photos, certificates, memos, and other reminders of your success.

Display Your Success Symbols