Part three – Interview with Jack Canfield for the documentary Beyond Belief
How can people get aligned with their creativity, passions and purpose?
Jack Canfield
There are many ways to get aligned with source energy. I think the main one for me is to just pay attention to my body. Am I in a state of joy? Am I in a state of gratitude? Am I in a state of appreciation? Love?
When I am in those states, my body is relaxed and I find that I find that I am always getting internal guidance if you will. The feelings are telling me I’m on course, and I’m also getting downloads, thoughts, impulses, intuitions, spiritual guidance. Divine obsessions will emerge like the Chicken Soup for the Soul books for us. We just had to do it and it just came into my consciousness. Now I meditate. I believe meditation is a way of calming the mind so you can create a stillness inside so can listen.
I think for some people, meditation might be walking by the ocean. For someone else, it might be painting. For someone else it might be listening to Bach or listening to some new age music. For someone else, it might be petting their cat. There are many ways to get into a more receptive, quiet state.
It is so important to be connected to source. It is kind of like, I use this metaphor, if you use an iron, if it is not plugged into the wall, then it doesn’t work. Your hairdryer doesn’t work when it is not connected to juice, to electricity to its source, if you will.
So we need everyday to connect back into the source of our energy. The source of our inner guidance. I have a very strong intuition which tells me in my body if I’m connected or not. Goose Bumps will stand up on the back of my neck.
When I was meditating asking for a title for Chicken Soup for the Soul for three days I was meditating for an hour a day simply asking ‘I need a title for this book’ and on the third day this hand came out and wrote ‘Chicken Soup’ on a green chalk board that was in front of my mind and I remember thinking ‘what does Chicken Soup have to do with this book?’
And this voice said, ‘when you were sick as a child, your grandmother gave you Chicken Soup.’ I thought ‘well that’s true, but this is not a book about sick people’ and the voice said ‘well people’s spirits are sick. They are living in resignation. They are living in fear. They have given up and this was during the time of the first Gulf War and there was a recession going on around ’93 somewhere in there and the nation was in a kind of malaise. So I heard ‘Chicken Soup for the Spirit’ and then I thought ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul.’
Then I got goose bumps. And I remember telling my wife and she got goose bumps and I called up Mark Victor Hansen, my co-author and he got goose bumps. As I often tell the story, I went to New York and told 24 publishers and none of them got goosebumps but we knew we were on target because these goose bumps, or sometimes we call them ‘God bumps’ are telling us that we are connected that this is a divinely inspired idea and that we should move forward with it.”
Jim Holzknecht: From your experience, what are some of the most important factors in determining whether or not someone will reach a goal or desired outcome?
Jack Canfield
You know all kinds of things happen around us externally but it is not what happens to us, it is how we respond to them or what we do in response to those events that determine our outcomes. There is only three things you can do in response, three kinds of responses you have any control over:
- Your thoughts
- Your images
- And what you do
And when we say ‘what you do’ we are talking about what you do and what you say out loud. So we need to learn to control our thinking.
Fear comes from having a ‘Fantasized Experiences Appearing Real.’ I imagine something in the future that hasn’t happened yet and then I respond to it as if it is real and that creates my fear.
We know here’s a world let’s say there is a recession going on some people are pulling back, getting more freaked out, getting more controlling, holding onto their money, which creates a deeper recession when we don’t circulate money.
Other people are saying ‘wow, housing prices are down. This is a time to really jump in and buy stock. It is the lowest price ever and they are amassing wealth. So it’s the same event but totally different behaviors and totally different things that people are saying about it.
I was giving a talk recently to a group of Remax real estate agents in up state New York and there was one guy who was doing 400% better than everybody and this was in the middle of the mortgage meltdown and I went to him and I said ‘tell me when you talk to yourself about what is going on, what do you say to yourself because everyone else is going ‘oh it’s tight. We may not get as many sales. We are going to have to cut back.’ And he said, ‘you know what I say to myself is it doesn’t matter what is happening in the economy, I always do well.’
Just that different self talk created a different vibrational energy around him and he was more charismatic as a result of it, more positive and attracting more people to do business with him.”
Jack Canfield is one of the transformational leaders featured in the groundbreaking documentary Beyond Belief – produced by Jim Holzknecht and Becky Hays
