Title: The Success Principles
” How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be”
Author: Jack Canfield
Date: December 1, 2024
A dear friend and fellow inmate of mine bought me this book as he recommended it as one the best self help books he had ever read. I’m thankful he did! The author is a co author of the world famous series ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul” and all their related books, having sold over 200 million copies.
The book itself has 67 chapters broken into sections such as
– The fundamentals of Success
– Create Successful Relationships
– Success and Money
– several more
I found the chapters easy to read, some with fresh insight and some information or things I already knew. Have a pen and paper handy as there are plenty of exercises if you really want to get the full benefit of the book. As an example, I’ve summarized Chapter 3, “Decide What you Want” for your ease to read it’s highlights and benefit from the next steps it outlines.
I highly recommend this book, and hopefully you will see why below. He has a lot of YouTube content if you’d rather watch as he uses this book in all his seminars(not that I’ve seen any:))
* The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of this life is this:
” DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT” – Ben Stein Actor/Author
* Decide what you want to:
– be
– do
– have
-accomplish
-experience
– Don’t live someone else’s dream or NO dream
* Make an ” I WANT” list of 30 things per topic
– spend 10-15 minutes on each
– do with a friend or spouse as an option
– to be, to do,to have, to accomplish,to experience
* Make a “I LOVE TO DO” list of 20 things
* From these lists, clarify your vision for your life- include”
– work or career – health/fitness
– finances – relationships
– recreation/free time – personal goals
– contribution to larger community/society
* Vision exercise to help define your Vision
1. Financial Area- what is your ideal monthly income/cashflow? what does your next home look like? Where?
2. Visualize ideal job/career-
3. Focus on free time- what are you doing with it? New Hobbies? Vacations?
4. vision of your health and body- free of pain? exercise enough/ eat healthy? No red dye #3:)?
5.Ideal vision of relationships with family/friends- spouse? what do your friendships feel like? loving, supportive or damaging?
6. Personal Goals- more school? need counseling? learn new instrument? write a book?
7. community- volunteer where? give back how?
* Once you have your vision, lock in by:
– goal setting
– affirmation and visualization(prayer works as well)
– move forward pursuing!
These are just highlight examples(Book has much more), but the point is to write your vision and goals down, and review them every day/week. Canfield recommends sharing with your spouse and close friends who would be positive and supportive. Bottom-line, each time you share your vision it becomes clearer and feels more real and attainable. Most importantly you strengthen your own subconscious belief that you can achieve it!
I chose to share this section as an example of the books importance and approach, as I realize how busy everyone is “living and doing life”. And days roll into months in a heart beat. Taking the time to be intentional about “What you Want” during this rat race is so important, yet ironically so hard to find the time for!
This book is definitely helpful while in prison, and for preparing for release, as well as post release. Some sections more relevant for each phase, but well worth having for the complete journey! BJ
