Jack Canfield

Lewis Howes:                 This is 5-Minute Friday!!

Our guest today is Jack Canfield. Now, Jack is an incredible guy, I’ve had him on before and it was an extremely successful episode, we’ll have that linked up as well. And he knows what motivates, drives and inspires people to do the impossible.

He’s a Harvard Graduate with a masters degree in psychological education, and one of the earliest champions of peak performance. He’s also the co-founder of the ‘Chicken Soup For The Soul’ book series, and author of ‘The Success Principles’.

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Jack Canfield:                  The problem with rehab is that you’ve got at AA, somewhere about, if you can believe the statistics, a 20% recovery [rate], only 20% of people who go, keep going.

Lewis Howes:                 So, 20% of people who go to AA keep going?

Jack Canfield:                  Yeah, and that number is suspect, because we don’t know how clear it is, but let’s give it to them. Rehab, 15%-30%, and that’s also suspect, because there’s no real long term determinate studies.

Lewis Howes:                 Talking about recover? 15%-30%…

Jack Canfield:                  Recover, that’s what they say. But we have 80%, 79,5% to be exact, recovery rate, after five years still sober from the first coaching program, and now, after the book, when we did the BETA test, four, five months still sober.

So, the reality is, with rehab, you go there, rehab has some challenges. There are some good rehab centres, like there’s good therapists and there’s bad therapists. But a lot of rehab centres, especially the ones in places like Malibu, they’re basically real estate investment opportunities.

“I’m going to buy this big mansion, that’s worth 6 million. In ten years it’ll be worth 12 million, and you’re going to pay my mortgage every month, because I’m charging you $30,000 for the twelve or fifteen people there.

And the staff, other than your therapists for a week – once a week for a therapist, once a week for a counsellor, you have a twelve step meeting every day, maybe a yoga class, maybe you get a massage. Now you’ve got thirteen hours left.

Lewis Howes:                 What do you do the rest of the time?

Jack Canfield:                  What do you do? And you’re sitting around, with other people who have these addictive challenges, talking. It’s like prison, where the prisoners are telling each other how to be better criminals. And so, they’re bored. And you’ve got really lovingly dedicated people, who are young, who have been through rehab, who now want to help, but they don’t have the skill sets they need.

So, one of the things we’re saying with this book, if you’re a rehab counsellor, get a copy of this book. Start doing this stuff with the people in your rehab centre if you’re an addiction counsellor. Bridgitte Lank is an addiction counsellor, she’s a psychotherapist up in San Rafael. She’s building a whole program around this book.

She said, “Oh, my gosh! This is what we need! This is what people need. They need a systematic approach.” And that’s the thing. If you don’t have a system – you know, you played football, your coach had a system. For exercise, for training, for fitness, nutrition, practice, plays, all that kind of stuff. And if your system worked, you won games and you won championships.

Lewis Howes:                 Yeah.

Jack Canfield:                  And better systems beat bad systems, right?

Lewis Howes:                 Exactly.

Jack Canfield:                  And so, this is a system. And, as we said earlier, you could apply this to over-eating, you could apply this to pretty much any addiction you wanted.

Lewis Howes:                 When we realise, “Okay, there’s an addiction that I have that I want to end, and I want to move on to something more positive in my life, and I’m sure you probably have this in here, but is there a process you think that everyone should follow in the morning, to get them ready for the day, and at night, to get them ready for the day, specifically focusing on that addiction?

Jack Canfield:                  Yeah. You want to get up in the morning, and you want to visualise going through the day not doing the addiction. There’s something we call the evening review, at the end of the day, where you close your eyes and say, “Where could I have been more on purpose and more on focus for this commitment I have?”

“Well, you know, you did that thing, you did that thing, you did that thing,” and so you’re just checking in, checking, checking in. You want to program your day, schedule your day, what are your activities going to be?

The problem is, you see, if something shows up at five o’clock, and I’m bored, with nothing to do, I’m in trouble. And there’s this thing called decision fatigue, and there is also something called compassion fatigue.

They first noticed this in prisons where they were doing parole boards. In the morning, 70% of the people who were up for parole, got parole. In the afternoon it was, like, anywhere between 10% and 30% depending on the prison.

People got tired of making decisions, they just said, “Oh, screw it, you’re not getting out.” And so, what happens is, as the day goes on your willpower wanes. Willpower is like a meter, and so, in the morning, if you’re going to add exercise into your day, do it first thing in the morning. You know, put your running shoes, you have to trip over them before you go into the bathroom, and if you have a partner…

Lewis Howes:                 Wear your workout shorts to bed.

Jack Canfield:                  To bed! There you go, there you go! And then having that accountability partner, someone else that you’re doing it with. Like, you could be my accountability partner for this. I’ll call you every day and say, “Okay, here’s what I’m going to do today. At five o’clock I’m going to do this exercise,” or, “I’m going to go do a solution in the book,” or, “I’m going to play my guitar for an hour.”

Whatever it is. We give people a hundred and one alternative activities that bring joy into your life, other than drinking, in one the chapters. So, you can pick one every day and do it, or you can pick one and stay with the same thing every day.

One of my favourite ones is listening to comedy albums. I mean, there’s so many great comedians now, go to iTunes and download a comedy album and just laugh. And laughter secretes endorphins in the brain.

Endorphins are natural opiates. You don’t need to drink if you’re laughing. And so, laughter is really important. But I can wake up in the morning and just laugh, or I can listen to a comedy thing in the morning and laugh.

The other thing is, you wan to do a gratitude exercise. One of the things we found, and we were kind of surprised by it, we knew it was important, law of attraction and all that, but one of the top things when we asked people, “What was the most important in the book?” Gratitude.

Basically, a lot of drinkers think their life sucks. But when you really start realising that half the world lives on two dollars a day, your life doesn’t suck that bad. Look at all the technology that you have in this office here, and the people who are supporting you, and the fact that someone made this table, and someone printed that book, and Steve Jobs gave you the computer you’ve got there and it works really well, and you can communicate with people in Singapore.

You can just literally go round a room for five minutes and just appreciate everything. It gets you blessed out. So that’s a really good thing to do in the morning as well. And meditation and breathing.

 

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Lewis Howes:                 Hey, guys! If you enjoyed this inspirational clip from a past episode of the show, then you’ll love the free book I’m giving away right now. It’s called The Millionaire Morning. It includes some of my best tips for starting off your day with a millionaire mindset. Get your free copy at themillionairemorning.com and just pay shipping.

Again, check it out right now, themillionairemorning.com.