Canfield Jack - The success principles workbook: an action plan for getting from where you are to where you want to be

Contents

Contents

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The most difficult part of any endeavor is taking the first step, making the first decision.

ROBYN DAVIDSON

Award-Winning Australian Author

What does it take to become a success at anything you want in life? What do the worlds top achievers do to excel in their careers, finances, philanthropic endeavors, relationships, and more? Is there something special about themqualities that other people simply dont have? Or is there a secret formula that we can all follow to help us succeed?

There is.

And for the past 40 years, Ive made it my lifes work to research, understandthen teachthese secret principles of success.

Of course, like most people, I was not brought up with any kind of self-help or human-potential concepts. I grew up in Wheeling, West Virginia; my mother was an alcoholic and my father was a workaholic. As a kid, I took summer jobs to make ends meet. And later, while I was fortunate enough to go to college on a scholarship, I paid for my books, clothes, and dates by serving breakfast in the campus dining hall. The money I earned never went very far. In fact, by the end of the month, I was so broke, youd find me eating my famous 21 dinnersa 10 can of tomato paste and garlic salt over an 11 bag of spaghetti noodles.

All that, however, was about to change.

After graduation, I was teaching high school history in inner-city Chicago when a chance job offer from insurance multimillionaire and personal-growth pioneer W. Clement Stone fostered a brand-new career for me: working for his foundation and teaching others the fundamental principles of success he had identified and written about in his bestselling books.

I immersed myself in this fascinating work. Not only did I vow to make it my own lifelong pursuit to study what works, I applied these principles to my own life, eventually started my own training company, and started teaching others these principles, too. Its a career path Ive followed for more than 40 years.

Along the way, I discovered theres a series of principles by which successful people live. They dont always start with lots of money or high-level connections or other privileged circumstances, but they do take action on goals that matter. They plan and they focus and they persevere. They become constant learners. They keep score on the critical drivers of their success. They believe in themselves. They have a positive money consciousness. And they surround themselves with successful people.

These are the fundamentals by which Ive lived my life, and they were the principles I was enthusiastically teaching in the late 1980s when repeated requests from audience members inspired me to collect the stories I told from stage into a book called Chicken Soup for the Soul. When 144 publishers turned me down for the book, I again applied these principles and persevered until one publisher finally said yes.

Today, 26 years laterwith 230 Chicken Soup titles in the series and more than 550 million books in printthese ground rules are still serving me in my career, relationships, pursuits, and life. My second book series, The Success Principles, is the compendium of these proven fundamentals of success. Its now in 36 languages and has readers in 112 countries.

But what about you? What can you do to achieve all that you want... and more?

As a follow-up, companion guide to The Success Principles, this workbook is designed to help you get from where you are to where you want to be. Whether youve read the original Success Principles book or not, youre in the right place. This Workbook is designed with both readers in mind.

If youre already familiar with the success principles, this Workbook will help you put them into daily practice. And if youre new to personal-growth work, each chapter will give you the essential information you need to learn, understand, and put into action the individual principles you discover.

ALL THAT YOU WANT TO BE, DO, AND HAVE IS POSSIBLE BY COMPLETING THE CHAPTERS IN THIS BOOK

Throughout this book are 17 chapters detailing the most important principles I teach. These are the basics that will help you take control of your outcomesand take the right actions toward achieving the life of your dreams.

Well start with , the fundamental principle you must follow: Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life.

One of the most pervasive myths today is that were entitled to a great lifethat somehow, somewhere, someone (certainly not us) is responsible for filling our lives with continual happiness, exciting career options, nurturing family time, and blissful personal relationships simply because we exist. But the real truthand the one lesson this entire workbook is based onis that theres only one person responsible for the quality of the life you live.

That person is you.

When you realize that younot your circumstances, not other peopleare responsible for your success (or lack of it), your life will dramatically shift. When you accept that your actions (or your failure to act), your thoughts, your beliefs, the words you say to yourself, and the pictures you hold in your mind have tremendous sway over your results, then you will have taken the most important step of all toward a life of freedom, abundance and fulfillment. will teach you that you always have a choice about what you think and how you act. You have a choice in how you respond to lifes events. Once you realize that, youll have regained your powerthe power to create the life you truly want.

Other chapters will follow to help you decide what you want, set and achieve goals, ask for what you want, clean up your incompletes, build a support network of smart people... and much more.

And within each chapter, youll find a number of tools to help you apply what you learn. Ill even help you create a new habit around each principle, so you can sustainably implement it day after day. Its these kind of combined actions that will steadily bring you success.

So, what can you look forward to as you shortly turn the page and start your journey?

Discovering More About You Exercises & Worksheets

Within each chapter, exercises of different kinds will help you get into action applying The Success Principles to your life. The first of these is called Discovering More About You. For example, in , youll learn to surround yourself with successful people. Author Jim Rohn once said, You are the average of the five adults you spend the most time with.

Not only is that a powerful condemnation of the toxic and limiting people in your life, its also a compelling wake-up call to surround yourself with solution-oriented, possibility thinkers. Thats what top achievers do. They cultivate relationships with a core group of people who can help them on their path to success.

To help you apply this principle to your life, I provide an exercise and worksheet called Your Current and Future Groups that asks you to list the people you spend time withthen evaluate whether theyre a benefit or an obstacle to your growth, progress, and success. The worksheet called Your Ideal Mentors asks you to create a list of at least 10 people with specific skillseither by name or description of their job titlefrom whom you could learn the most. I often ask my national sales audiences how many attendees know the name of the top salesperson in their company. After virtually everyone raises their hand, I ask, How many of you have approached that person to ask their strategies for success? And how many of you have asked that person to mentor you?