'The real truth is there is only one person responsible for the quality of life you lead' Bestselling author Jack Canfield talks to Niamh Hooper about discovering your core genius and finding your path to success
Having sold more than 80 million books and being the owner of a plaque in his study pronouncing him The Guinness Book World Record holder for having the most books simultaneously on the New York Times bestsellers list (he had seven), Jack Canfield knows a thing or two about success.
Especially when you consider that he and co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, Mark Victor Hansen, were rejected by 144 publishers. The small Florida-based publishers HCI took the first book and expected it to sell 20,000 copies. It went on to sell eight million. The series now has 83 titles translated into 39 languages.
With his new book, The Success Principles: How to get from where you are to where you want to be, being tagged as the Success Bible, what is success to the 60-year-old, originally from Wheeling, West Virginia?
"Success is whatever anyone says it is for them. For someone it could be making $1 million, for someone else it might be running a really effective school for kids who are challenged, for someone else it might be living alone in the woods just doing their artwork and not having anyone bother them. For me personally it has to do with making a difference in the world," he says.
Brought up in a lower middle class family, Canfield spent summers in the fields weeding and growing geraniums with his florist father. Attending a school where his classmates had last names like Rockerfeller, he was exposed to money at a young age.
"I remember spending a weekend at the Rockerfeller condo on Park Avenue. It was an amazing place, amazing people. If you can imagine going into a walk-in closet and there were rotating racks of paintings - like Picassos and Renoirs - because they didn't have enough space on the walls. It was like 'Whoa - they've a museum in the walk-in closet in my guest bedroom'," he laughs at the recollection.
"It kind of raised my sights as to what was possible. I thought if they can do it, they're human beings, why can't I?"
So far, Canfield has read 3,000 books (he speed-reads a book a day) and has taken over 100 seminars. "As a friend of mine says: success leaves clues."
Some put it down to luck. Canfield isn't so sure. "There's certainly no question that there is some luck in life, but people put way too much stock on that. I think we create our luck.
"People say to me you're lucky - you met W. Clement Stone when you were 21, I didn't meet a millionaire. Well, was I lucky? I signed up for one of his workshops. I went up to him on the break and introduced myself.
So it wasn't luck - that was intention to reach out to those people who might influence my life."
In typical optimistic fashion, Canfield believes bad luck is just an opportunity to grow, to develop more qualities and skills we need to overcome obstacles. Good luck, he says, is usually the result of lots of preparation. "We make our luck and need to be prepared when the luck comes."
A seminal moment in Canfield's life was in the first week of graduate school when the students were taken on a tour of schools where they could do an internship. One was in a very wealthy suburb and had a parking lot filled with the pupils' cars, another, in Chicago's inner city, was patrolled by guards with guns and they had to go through a metal detector to gain access.
"I thought I'm needed and I could make a big difference here. It got something inside me that said: 'you're here to teach and to uplift people and make the world work for everybody'." He was 21 and his life has been dedicated to that ever since.
At 435 pages, The Success Principles is a tome for those with aspirations and no clue where to start. In contrast to the soothing balm of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, this book appeals to a different part of us - as a look at the chapter titles reveals. Decide what you want. Stay focused on your core genius. Believe you deserve it. Be a class act.
Before anything else, however, one thing is essential, says the multi-millionaire, now living in California. "The real truth is there is only one person responsible for the quality of the life you lead and that is you."
If he had to choose just one of the principles which one would it be?
"The reason I wrote 64 principles instead of writing The Secret to Life is because I really think you need to practise all 64. Many of us have part of it, we think positive or set goals but there are other parts missing and therefore it's not working."
With a bit of prodding, he chooses a triad of getting clear exactly what you want ("most people never get clear, set goals or never prioritise exactly what they want"), take action ("most people talk about doing things but don't start taking action") and persevere ("most people quit too soon").
"If we had given up after the 100th publisher and said 'well this wasn't supposed to happen, maybe the book's not that good, whatever, I wouldn't be talking to you today."
If all this sounds like a lot of hard work and leaves little room for divine intervention to play a hand, Canfield's answer is simple: "I say go inside, discover what your purpose is, get what your core genius is and listen to the inner guidance and then use all these principles to put it into action."
No problem. Except how do you discover your core genius?
"When you are doing your core genius you'll be experiencing something called joy. I think the creator puts inside of us a guidance system that is always there, that when you're experiencing joy you're on track and when you're not experiencing joy you're off purpose," he concludes.
• Jack Canfield is giving his Success Principles seminar in Dublin's Stillorgan Park Hotel tomorrow. Tickets €40. To book go to www.jsaonline.ie or call 087 979 7988.