Enterprise Issues
With Siaka Momoh
Who does not like success? Everybody does. We all love celebrating successful people.
Success is value-loaded. It comes with earnings; it comes with financial muscle which enables the successful person solve a myriad of problems. Successful people make a long list, an inexhaustible list – the sportsperson, successful entrepreneurs, consultants, politicians, farmers, technocrats, etc.
What does it take to succeed? What success principles are available? How do I become one? How can you become a successful person? Enterprise Issues dug into the archives and brings you this piece.
Jack Canfield is the author of The Success Principles, first published in 2005 but now in first Collins paperback edition, published 2007. He calls it a book of timeless principles used by successful men and women throughout history. He says he has studied these success principles for over 30 years and has applied them to “my own life” For him, the phenomenal level of success he now enjoys, is the result of applying these principles day in and day out since he began to learn them in 1968.
Jack Canfield is success exemplified. His success includes being author and editor of over 60 best-selling books with over 80 million copies in print in 39 languages around the world, holding a Guinness Book world record for having seven books on May 24, 1998, New York best-seller list, earning a multimillion-dollar net income every year for over 10 years, living in a beautiful California estate, appearing in every major talk show in America (from Oprah to Good Morning America), having a weekly newspaper column read by millions every week, commanding speaking fees of $25,000 a talk, speaking to Fortune 500 companies all over the world, being the recipient of numerous professional and civic awards, having an outrageous relationship with his amazing wife and wonderful children, and having achieved a state of wellness, balance, happiness, and inner peace.
Canfield gets to socialise with CEOs of Fortune 500 companies; movie, television, and recording stars; celebrated authors and the world’s finest spiritual teachers and leaders. He has spoken to members of Congress, professional athletes; corporate managers and sales super stars, in all the best resort and retreat centres of the world.
And he had a humble beginning. He grew up in Wheeling, West Virginia where his father worked in a florist’s shop, where he made $8000 a year. His mother was an alcoholic, his father a workaholic. Jack Canfield worked during the summers to make ends meet (as a lifeguard at a pool and at the same florist’s shop as his father). He went to college on a scholarship and held a job serving breakfast in one of the dorms to pay schools for books, clothes and dates. Nobody handed him anything on a platter of gold.
He started his career as a history teacher after graduate school in an all-black school in Chicago. Thereafter, he met his mentor, W. Clement Stone, a self-made multimillionaire who hired him to work in his foundation, where he trained him in the fundamental success principles that he still operates from today. He has now gone ahead to teach these same principles to others. He has read literally thousands of books (one every two days), attended hundreds of seminars, and listened to thousands of hours of audio programmes to uncover the universal principles for creating success and happiness. He then applied the principles to his own life. The ones that worked he taught in his speeches, seminars, and workshops to well over one million people in all 50 U.S. states and in 20 countries around the world.
Canfield holds these principles have not only worked for him but have also helped hundreds of thousands of his students achieve breakthrough success in their careers, greater wealth in their finances, greater aliveness and joy in their relationships, and greater happiness and fulfilment in their lives. His students have started successful businesses, become self-made millionaires, achieved athletic stardom, received lucrative recording contracts, starred in movie and television roles, won political offices, etc.
Let us look at the principles in brief: Principle 1 – Take 100 per cent responsibility for your life; Principle 2 – Be clear why you are here; Principle 3 – Decide what you want; Principle 4; Believe it’s possible; Principle 5 – Believe in yourself; Principle 6 – Become an inverse paranoid. There are 64 in all. We will make an effort to list more and discuss some in future.