Jack Canfield - Life Lessons for Loving the Way You Live: 7 Essential Ingredients for Finding Balance and Serenity

Jack Canfield

Mark Victor Hansen

Jennifer Read Hawthorne

Backlist, LLC, a unit of

Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing, LLC

Cos Cob, CT

www.chickensoup.com

With gratitude we dedicate this book to all the teachers who have given us the knowledge and wisdom to love the way we live.

Loving the way we live is the closest thing to happiness weve found. The word happiness has taken on such a superficial meaning in our culture that its often used to mean anything that brings you pleasure. But we have found that true happiness is a quality that emerges and matures in the process of human development. It is closely aligned with equanimitythe ability to maintain your balance in the face of even the most trying circumstances.

This book is about how to experience balance and serenity despite lifes circumstances. Like many of you, we have been married and divorced. We balance families and careers. Weve survived teenagers in the houseand are wiser for the lessons theyve taught us. Weve been rich and poor. Weve been scared and confident. We love what we dobut didnt always. And weve learned that the greatest contribution we can offer to the world is to live honestly, with integrity, and to be at peace ourselves.

How do we do that? By realizing that we have no control over the circumstances of life, only our attitude toward them. Victor Frankl, who survived a concentration camp by finding the good in everyoneincluding his captorsdescribed what we are talking about this way: Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms: to choose ones attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose ones own way.

This book is a collection of some of the most important life lessons weve learned to help us adjust our attitudes, find greater balance, and experience the serenity that comes from doing and being our bestno matter what the outcome. In this book youll find the following sections:

Finding the Place Where You Belong is about feeling at home with yourself in the world. Place in this context is not so much about finding your right geography, but finding your right work and expression for your creative gifts. The life lessons in this chapter are about feeling natural, comfortable, and inspired.

Filling Your Own Cup is about ending the search for things outside ourselves to make us feel happy and whole. Its about tending to our bodies, minds, and spirits, so that we can bring wholeness to our relationships and everything we doand taking responsibility for ourselves, rather than expecting someone else to be responsible for us.

Becoming Fearless addresses how to garner courage in times of fear. This chapter includes stories of survival and new perspectives. Helen Keller may have been right when she said about fear, The only way out is through. But these life lessons offer tools to help us face worries, problems, and concerns, things like self-trust, heart, surrender, and presence.

The life lessons in Holding Hands, Building Bridges offer insights into some of the simplest, yet most significant, ways we can make a differencein our homes, at work, in the world. From the smallest to the grandest gesture, the experiences shared here illustrate the potential for influence that each of us has.

To Thine Own Self Be True takes a close look at what it really means to be honest. Most of us think of ourselves as honest people, and yet, so often we subjugate our voices and our own needs to those of others. This chapter offers new ways of examining our lives and the chance to discover where our outer lives line up with our inner values and where they dont.

The major theme of Getting Beyond Right and Wrong is gaining freedom through acceptance and the release of judgments. Its about the world as our mirror and how every person, situation, and event that enters our lives is an opportunity for self-discovery.

Finally, we are so touched by the blessings in our own lives that we have devoted a chapter to Faith, Grace, and Miracles. The life lessons here direct us to gratitude and wonder, an important part of loving the way we live.

The philosopher Seneca said, As long as you live, keep learning how to live. Thats what this book is about. Each life lesson is followed by a story that expresses the essence of the lesson. (Please note that whenever a life lesson is written in first person, it is Jennifers telling of her own personal experiences.) Following each story is a section where you may choose to Pause and Reflect, considering how the life lesson applies to your own life and, in some cases, doing something to integrate the lesson into your life more deeply.

While it is doubtful that anyone is happy all the time, the ability to accept lifes ups and downs provides a platform for ongoing inner balance and serenity. It is our deepest hope that reading this book will inspire you and help you re-perceive your own life in positive ways. For we wholeheartedly agree with the words of Dr. Joyce Brothers, who said, When you come right down to it, the secret of having it all is loving it all.

Jennifer Read Hawthorne

The universe is holding its breath...Waiting for you to take your place.

Jean Houston

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.

Now put the foundations under them.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

A vision is something that has been seen. It may be a fantasy you had at a young age that you never let go, or a passion that emerged in a time of crisis. It might be born when you find yourself at a crossroads, no longer willing to do things the same old way. It may arise out of need, as an answer to a problem, or a deep soul desire felt within. And it may seem impracticaleven impossible.

But remember what the Queen said when Alice in Wonderland noted that one cant believe in impossible things: I dare say you havent had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes Ive believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

It seems to be a quirk of nature that visions can take on a life of their own and find the support they need to come to fruition, once youre clear. If you just trust your vision, the means of fulfilling it seem to gather round in support.

A great example is internationally known hair stylist and product developer Jon English. Jons impossible vision came in his early teens, as he was growing up in a rough area of London. His family was so poor that his father always cut his hair for him. Until the day, that is, when at thirteen, Jon put his foot down and ran away from his father as he tried to catch him. His dad finally gave up, tossed him some money, and told him to go to the village for a haircut.

Jon did, and his first professional cut at the barber shop changed him forever. As he walked home, he couldnt stop looking at himself in the glass of the shop windows, unable to believe it was really him. He was acutely aware of how his new look made him feel. And in an instant, a vision of giving that feeling to others arose in him. He got a job at a local beauty salon sweeping up hair after clients cuts, and the rest, as they say, is history.