How to Change Your Life at Any Age | Jack Canfield

hi there i'm jack canfield co-creator of the chicken soup for the soul series and author of the success principles how to get from where you are to where you want to be and i'm glad you clicked the play button on this video because i have an important message to share with you today and it's this no matter who you are or where you're at you can change your life for the better starting right now today it doesn't matter how old you are doesn't matter what mistakes you've made or what setbacks you've experienced you can take

action right this very minute to start changing your life for the better and put yourself on the path to living your highest vision and creating a life that truly makes you happy and the first action you can take is to make the commitment right now to watch this video through to the end it'll only take about five minutes or so and what you're about to learn could change your life forever [Music] okay so you've made the commitment to watch through the end right okay good now here's what i'm going to share with you today it's

nothing less than the number one secret to getting anything you want in life you want to know what it is here you go if you want to be successful you have to take 100 responsibility for everything you experience in your life now this includes the level of your achievements the results you produce or don't produce the quality of your relationships the state of your health and your physical fitness your income your debts your feelings everything and all of it is a direct result of your thoughts and your actions now that might be hard to believe

at first but it is absolutely true and until you get it you're never going to be as happy and as successful as you could be now most of us have been conditioned to blame someone or something outside of ourselves for the parts of our life that aren't working and that we don't like we blame our parents we blame the government the economy our boss our friends our co-workers we blame our clients our spouse we can blame the weather we blame our lack of money even our astrological chart anything at all that we can pin the

blame on to justify why we haven't achieved what we want in life now we never want to look at where the real problem is and that is ourselves so the truth is if you want to create the life of your dreams then you are going to have to take 100 responsibility for everything that happens in your life now that means giving up all your excuses all of your victim stories all of the reasons why you can't and why you haven't up until now all of your blaming of outside circumstances and all of you are complaining

about them you have to give up all of these things forever now this doesn't mean denying that those outside circumstances exist or that bad things in life have happened to you through no fault of your own if someone hurt you as a child of course that doesn't mean you were asking for it and if the pandemic forced you to lose your job or shut down your business it doesn't necessarily mean your actions are to blame for that either events happen that are beyond your control that's the nature of life you can't change that but what

you can control is how you respond to those events now there's a powerful success formula i share with my students that i believe everyone should know in fact it's so important i believe it should be taught in schools from kindergarten all the way up to post-graduate school and that formula is this e plus r equals o in other words the events that occur plus your response to that event equals the outcome that you get and the one part of that equation that you can control is your response how you respond to the events that you

encounter determines the outcomes you get and this is literally the ultimate secret to success in life if you want to get better results you have to change the way you're responding to whatever is happening in your life and the good news is this that's something you can start doing today right this very minute you can choose to respond differently to things no matter how old you are how young you are what your life looks like you can make the choice to do something different you have that power and the truth is you've always had it

you have the power to change your thoughts which includes your beliefs your attitudes and the stories you tell yourself you can change your behavior you can show up in the world in a new and different way so you can get the results that you want in life now it may be true that for whatever reason perhaps ignorance a lack of awareness fear maybe needing to be right the need to feel safe but up until now maybe you've chosen not to exercise that power but it doesn't really matter why the past is the past you can't

change it but what you can change and what you can do is from this point on is choose because i can't stress this enough it is a choice to begin acting as if you're 100 responsible for everything you're experiencing so if something doesn't turn out as planned from this point forward instead of shaking your face at the universe and saying why did this happen to me you now ask yourself how did i create that result what were my thoughts that created this what were my beliefs what did i say or not say that i should

have said what did i do or not do that created this outcome and then ask yourself what do i need to do differently next time to get the result i want and i guarantee that if you start thinking and acting as if you're 100 responsible for what you're experiencing in your life you will become responsible for your life and that will give you a new level of control over your circumstances that you would not believe and suddenly you'll find that the people and events in your life no longer have the power to control you what

they say and do will no longer affect you because you will understand that you are the captain of your own destiny that you can steer your life in any direction you want now to help with this i'd like to give you a set of questions you can regularly ask yourself that will help you do just that and i'll take you through a quick exercise with these questions now but i also encourage you to write these questions down and take time later today or tomorrow maybe go through them again a little more depth you'll have time

to deeply contemplate the answers now one of my trainers does this for herself as a monthly exercise so first i'd like you to think of a difficult or troubling experience that's happening in your life right now it could be a relationship you're struggling with it could be a physical problem you're having or maybe a problem at work or any area of your life so take a few moments to think of one right now [Music] okay i'm going to assume you have one now if you don't you can always stop the video think of one start

it again but here's the deal before you go on let me demonstrate how this process works with the situation from my own life so the first question is what is a difficult or troubling situation in my life well i feel overwhelmed with too many emails in my inbox more than 2 000 right now and too many unfinished items on my to-do list now the next question is how am i directly or indirectly creating this situation or am i allowing it to happen you know and the truth is whenever i buy anything online i forget to

use this email address i set up just for orders and i end up with my normal email address i end up getting marketing mails from them in the future in my main inbox and i don't take the time to unsubscribe from them and just delete them because i'm in a hurry i don't ask my assistant to help with the cleanup so that's what i'm doing to keep it going now the next question is what am i pretending not to know and what i pretend is it's not going to ever get better if i don't take

massive action to clean this up now what's the payoff i get for keeping it like it is well i think i'm saving time by not doing it just rushing through my emails that somehow i'm going to go back and read a lot of newsletters and things that are in the queue that have piled up sometimes are a month or two old also i get to be the nice guy and avoid the discomfort i might feel asking my assistant to help take on such a huge unfun task when she has so many other things that are

important for her to do now the next question is what would i rather be experiencing well i'd rather be experiencing a lack of overwhelm feeling i have everything under control have less stress more peace more space in my life now what actions will i take to create that well i'm going to ask my assistant to work with me for up to 30 minutes a day to clean this up and go through a merciless unsubscribed campaign and finally when will i take that action now make sure for me i'm going to do that right now because

she's actually over here uh in the room with me as we're filming this so she's heard me say this but i want you to make a time to commit to taking that action bef so you do that before the deadline's hit so today i'm going to say by 5 pm i'll ask veronica to do this work with me okay now i'm going to walk you through it and i'm going to pause after each question so think about what's happening with the situation and ask yourself the question how am i directly or indirectly creating this situation

or am i allowing it to happen [Music] good then the next question is what am i pretending not to know [Music] my great the next question is what what's the payoff i get for keeping it like it is and realize there's always some payoff some thing we're avoiding some discomfort some other you know thing that's happening so just look deeply what's the payoff for keeping it like it is what's the pr [Music] [Music] okay the next question is what would i rather be experiencing which is pretty much the opposite of whatever the difficult or troubling

experiences what would i rather be experiencing answer that to yourself [Music] the next question is what action or actions will i take to create that experience of what i'd rather be experiencing [Music] [Music] and finally by when will i take that action make sure you give yourself a clear deadline and commit to taking that action before that deadline hits so write down when will you take that action by [Music] okay so one of the things that's really valuable is if you commit to someone else by when you'll take that action making that public declaration put

your butt on the line as it were that helps you get there now here's the deal you've just learned about 100 responsibility and what it's going to take to change your life for the better and i've given you a tool that you can use to do that so you look at the problem and then you figure out how that you're going to you know how you're causing or contributing that problem then you figure out what you've got to do differently to get different results then you commit to taking that action and that's something you can

start to do right now today no matter how old or young you are where whatever you are in your life doesn't matter this is your now new tool all right well that's it for today and thanks for watching really appreciate you tuning in and now what i'd love for you to do is to share the action you'll commit to taking to make your life better in the comments below i love being inspired by your courage and your commitment to improvement and if you found this video helpful make sure you like it share it with a

friend who may need it and be subscribed to this channel for more videos like this one if you'd like some additional tools and videos on how to change your life for the better be sure to check out the resource page on my website at jackcanfield.com you're going to find a lot of great stuff there and again thanks for watching and have a great rest of your day