Jack Canfield often talks about the importance of taking 100% responsibility for your actions and your results. In fact, it’s his most important Success Principle. You may be familiar with the principle, but are you really practicing it?

Ask yourself the following questions:

- Have you ever blamed someone for something that has happened to you?
- Do you tend to complain a lot about situations that come up in your life?
- Do you ignore the yellow alerts?
- What different actions can you take in order to create a different result?
- The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to get different results. You have to change how you respond to the events in your life if you want to achieve different outcomes.

We are all responsible for our own actions. You have the power to create whatever you want in your life, you just have to take action. Rather than blame others for your situation, empower yourself to make a change. You always have a choice; choose to make a significant change in your life by how you handle those unexpected things or opportunities that happen in your life.

by: Jack Canfield

Giving thanks should be more than an occasional exercise. We already know that appreciation is one of the highest emotional states you can be in. So why limit this fulfilling experience to just a few times a year?!

Today’s article walks you through five different ways you can implement a daily ritual of gratitude, appreciation and thanks … creating a year-round rampage of gratitude!

Be Thankful for Your Blessings:
5 Ways to Practice a Daily Appreciation Ritual

The practice of giving thanks is commemorated today in America as a national holiday. But if you want to live an abundant life, appreciation shouldn’t be confined to a solitary day. It should be incorporated into your daily living.

Appreciation is one of the highest emotional states you can be in. It is the state of abundance. The Law of Attraction states that like attracts like. If you are grateful for what you have already received, you will attract more for which you can be grateful.

Many people find that it requires great diligence to cultivate an attitude of appreciation. We are culturally conditioned to focus on what we don’t have, rather than appreciating what we’ve already received.

“There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.”
- Mother Teresa, Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

Appreciate the Smallest Blessings

Activate your gratitude by acknowledging the gifts most people take for granted.

If you have food in your refrigerator, clothes in your closet and a roof over your head, you are better off than 75 percent of the world’s population.

If you eat three meals a day, you are far better off than the 1 billion people on the planet who eat once a day at most. Celebrate these simple blessings.

Do you have a phone? Be grateful – millions don’t. How about a car that allows you to travel to work or to explore the country? Is your family healthy? Do you have a computer and Internet access to stay in touch with the world, get access to education, and perform work for which you are paid? Do you have clean water to drink?

These daily conveniences are gifts that most people in the world do not enjoy.

Daily Appreciation Habits

Here are five easy ways to make appreciation part of your daily routine:

1. Take 7 minutes each morning to write down all you appreciate in life. Starting your day this way primes you to be receptive and grateful for everything your day will bring.
2. Appreciate at least 3 people every day. Most people enjoy receiving verbal appreciation. But written notes are also nice because they can be saved and re-read. (For ideas on expressing appreciation, grab your copy of The Success Principles and review principle 53; Practice Uncommon Appreciation.)
3. Play the Appreciation Game. As the saying goes, “Every cloud has a silver lining.” Look for the good in all situations. When my wife was in a car accident a few years ago, she could have chosen to berate herself or question her judgment. Instead, she focused on her gratitude for suffering only minor injuries and for the help she received from other drivers.
4. Carry a physical token of gratitude in your pocket, such as a stone, crystal or some other small item. As you reach into your pocket throughout the day and feel the token, use it as a reminder to stop, breathe and take a moment to fully experience the emotion of gratitude.
5. Appreciate yourself. We all need acknowledgement, but the most important acknowledgement is what we give ourselves. In addition to celebrating your big successes, acknowledge your small daily successes too.

It may not feel natural at first to focus on appreciating what you already have. But by faithfully practicing the Daily Appreciation Habits outlined in this article, you’ll begin to change your conditioning.

Giving thanks should be more than an occasional exercise once year. Let it become a daily discipline that allows you to attract more of what you want from life. I invite you to experiment with this discipline over the next 30 days and watch your blessings multiply!

Jack Canfield, America’s #1 Success Coach, is founder of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul© and a leading authority on Peak Performance and Life Success. If you’re ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com

Here is some great info I got from the Jack Canfield Coaching Team…  Let me know what you think.

It’s that time of year when most of us make a conscious effort to acknowledge what we are grateful for in our lives. Some even have a family tradition of asking each person at the holiday table to share what blessings they feel they’ve received. Regardless of the trials or difficulties we may have faced or are currently facing, we walk away from the exercise humbled, but feeling indebted for what the universe has brought into our lives.

How would your life change if you made this more than a once-a-year event? What if you made the time to express your gratitude and show appreciation for what is going on in your daily life?

Jack teaches that expressing gratitude is one of the ways to activate the Law of Attraction in your life. A key element in creating and attracting what you want is to focus your thoughts and attention to the great things that are already in your life. By doing so, you open yourself up to receive all the goodness the universe has in store for you.

Keeping a written daily account of the abundance in your life, in addition to mentally recognizing your good fortune is important. Jack teaches the importance of keeping a Gratitude Journal, something to help you log your personal expressions of gratitude. Journaling your gratitude will help raise your awareness of all the beauty and joy that surrounds you each day that you may have otherwise taken for granted.

You are an accumulation of your habits. From how you get out of bed, how you shower, how you dress, how you walk, sit, and talk, how you respond to the world, how you act in front of others, and how you think; you’re living out your habits.

Habits are necessary. They free up your mind so you can concentrate on how to survive day to day. You don’t have to think about how to drive your car so you can be on the lookout for danger while you are driving. You don’t have to think about how to walk so you can concentrate on where you’re going.

Unfortunately, habits can also keep you locked in self-destructive patterns, which will limit your success. To become successful, you will need to drop bad habits and develop new ones that are in line with the life you want to live.

People don’t suddenly appear in the life they want to live… their habits determine their outcome!

What are the habits you have that are keeping you from achieving your goals?

Really be honest with yourself here… Are you always running late? Do you return phone calls within 24 hours? Do you get enough sleep? Do you follow through on your promises? Do you plan out your day?

Imagine what your life would be like if all your habits were their productive counterparts!

What would your life be like if you ate healthy meals, exercised and got enough sleep?

What if you saved your money, stopped using credit cards and paid cash for everything?

What if you stopped procrastinating, overcame your fears, and began networking with people in your field?

Would your life be different? I bet it would!

So, my suggested action step for you is to write down some productive habits you could adopt and visualize in your life, step two is to ‘act as if’ you were living these new habits right now!

I’d like to help you get moving toward creating more successful habits, so I’d recommend you develop four of your new success habits each year, one for each quarter.

Once you pick the new habit you’re ready to adopt, next you’ll want to create a method that will support your new habit.

Here are some ideas… You could write it down on a card that you keep with you and read several times a day. You could make it a part of your daily visualization. You could also enlist the help of an accountability partner who has habits to change, or work with a personal coach who can keep you on track.

It’s important to make a 100% commitment to your new habit, so be specific about the steps that you’re willing to take in order to drop an old habit and adopt a new one. Don’t be vague about how you will change your habits. Spell it out for yourself so you can recognize situations that motivate you to act out your new habit.

Just developing four new habits a year will dramatically shift your life to be more in line with your vision. And the more in line it becomes, the easier the other habits are to replace because your perspective is shifting and you can see more clearly how your old habits aren’t serving you anymore.

Make the decision. Make the commitment. Then watch your new, positive life unfold!

Jack Canfield, America’s #1 Success Coach, is founder of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul© and a leading authority on Peak Performance and Life Success. If you’re ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com

Utilizing The Law of Attraction
by Jack Canfield

The law of attraction states that you will attract into your life–whether wanted or unwanted–whatever you give your energy, focus, and attention to.

You are constantly giving off vibrations of energy when you think and feel. These vibrations can be picked up and received by other people. That’s why people say, “he has good vibes,” or “he gives off bad vibes.” You are constantly giving off vibrations — literally!

If you’re feeling excited, enthusiastic, passionate, happy, joyful, loving, appreciative, abundant, prosperous, relaxed and peaceful, you are giving off positive vibrations.

On the other hand, if you’re feeling bored, anxious, worried, confused, sad, lonely, hurt, angry, resentful, guilty, disappointed, frustrated, overwhelmed, stressed out, or depressed, then you are giving off negative vibrations.

The law of attraction states that the universe responds to whatever you are offering — by giving you more of whatever you are vibrating. It doesn’t care whether it is good for you or not; it simply responds to your vibration.

If you saw the film The Secret, you saw this explained in great detail…

The problem is that most of the time, you are not aware of what vibration you are offering. You are simply responding to things outside of you–current events, the news, how people treat you, the stock market, how much money you are making, how your children are doing in school, whether or not your favorite sports team wins–and then having a feeling that is either positive or negative.

When you are simply responding unconsciously to what happens around you, you tend to stay “stuck” in your current condition. This is why most people’s lives never seem to change very much. They get stuck in a repeating cycle of recreating the same reality over and over by the vibration they are sending out.

It works like this… First you observe what you currently have and are currently receiving in your life. You call this your “reality.” You respond to what you observe with a feeling, positive or negative, which then gives off that vibration to the universe. The law of attraction then responds to this vibration and brings you more of what you were vibrating. This keeps the cycle going over and over, until you choose to change it through the exertion of your will. You are a victim of your lack of awareness of the law of attraction.

The Process of Intentional Creation

It is possible to get out of this vicious cycle and create what you want instead of continually recreating what you already have. It is a simple, three-step process that you can begin immediately.

If you’ve been implementing the action steps I coach you through in The KEY to Living the Law of Attraction, you have already begun this process.

Step 1: Identify what you truly desire & eliminate the negative

It is important to focus on what you want rather than what you don’t want. You must state it in the positive and filter out the words don’t, not and no. Remember, your mind works in pictures and if you say I don’t want to be mad, you are creating the picture and thus the vibration of being mad. You must create the opposite of what you don’t want.

Step 2: Raise your vibration level

Your job in stage two is to create a vibrational match for that which you say you want to have. How would you be feeling if you already had those things–the perfect job, the perfect relationship, the amount of money that you want to have?

Your job is to identify what makes you feel good and do more of it, then learn not to tolerate your negative feelings.

Affirmations are an important component in raising your vibrational level to what it is you want. Remember, the law of attraction does not respond to the words you use or the thoughts you think. It simply responds to how you feel about what you say and how you feel about what you think.

For information on how to create even more effective affirmations, review chapter 10 in The Key to Living the Law of Attraction, where you’ll find my guidelines for creating effective visualizations.

Step 3. Release it and allow it.

In this third step, you simply release your affirmation, your vibration, and your feelings to the universe to take care of your “request” or “order” as I call it. But you have to abstain from any doubts. If you doubt you can have it in any way, then you are not allowing it. You are pushing it away and you end up with contradictory messages to the universe.

It is only when the contradictory thoughts, talk, and images are removed that your desired results will manifest. The faster you remove your resistance, the faster your dreams can be realized.

Jack Canfield, America’s #1 Success Coach, is founder of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul© and a leading authority on Peak Performance and Life Success. If you’re ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com

I just read this article from one of my favorite success coaches, Jack Canfield and was amazed at how spot on this is with my life right now.  If you have been working hard to accomplish something but it just doesn’t seem like you are making any progress or success is just taking to long then you must read this article!

When Success is Slow, What Can You Do?
by Jack Canfield

Pop Quiz: Can success be sped up? Is there an antidote to slow outcomes despite arduous planning and actions taken? What’s the secret for seeing huge results right now?!

I get versions of these questions frequently from people who feel frustrated at sluggish progress in their success journey – despite all the know-how and principles they rigorously employ.

Let’s get one thing straight…

When we admire someone’s success, or even our own, we often focus on the end result and not so much on the effort (and time) that it took to get there. This can cultivate unrealistic expectations, especially the idea that overnight success can happen through careful strategy and an execution of sound advice.

The truth be told, success typically follows a series of little events and achievements that can seem to take an eternity, that include a few disappointments along the way, and that challenge everything about you to the core – your stamina, courage, integrity, and even your willingness to keep going.

If you focus on what’s not working, guess what: You’re likely coming from a place of aggravation as your mind wraps around all that is wrong.

You may even have negative thoughts like “I’m not good enough,” “It will never work,” or “Something must be wrong with me.”

What this mentally does is engender more of these counter-productive feelings. And given what we know about the Law of Attraction, you attract what you are feeling. So negative experiences, people, and results will beget more negative experience, people, and results. There’s not much success in that.

The key, then, is to focus on what IS working. To do so, I recommend two simple practices: journaling and meditation.

Maintaining a journal (I call it an Evidence Log, Results Journal, or Gratitude Journal) is a great way to steer your attention to the positive and continually renew your vision for yourself.

Start each day with reflections on what you are grateful for in your life (list them out!) and end each day with notes on what went right (again, write them down), however small they may seem.

Spend time each day in quiet contemplation, prayer or meditation.

Meditation can be powerful tool for arriving at solutions to problems and shifting your attitude so you can attract success sooner rather than later. The magic of meditation is its ability to essentially shut down the outer layer of your judgmental, highly-critical brain and allow your unconscious mind to take over. This is where you enter a deeper state of inner peace and joy, tapping into a higher level of creativity that will help usher in the results you want. (Don’t know how to meditate? Lots of books and materials are available to guide you this practice. It’s easier than you think. )

Let’s say you’re doing ALL these things, but you still aren’t happy with your results…

I’ll ask you then, are you taking real ACTION?

You may be taking the actions you are used to taking. But if you keep doing what you’ve already done, then you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten. It’s a matter of practicing some new behaviors. Shake things up a bit and see if you can take new actions or modify existing ones.

Remember the Rule of 5.

Every day do five specific things that take you toward your goal. Change up the five actions regularly and be open to feedback so you know when you’re off course.

Lastly, I want to remind you about patience.

It’s natural to underestimate how long a certain goal can take, especially a profound one. When I set a goal to become a millionaire the year was 1983. How long did it take? Eleven years. It took time for Chicken Soup for the Soul to hit the bestseller lists. You could say our tenure on the New York Times list was more than a decade in the making. That’s a lot of patience for someone who initially wanted overnight success.

So, yes, patience is a virtue. But keep at it, and in no time, you’ll be only one week, or one day away from your ultimate success.

Remember… be grateful, reflect on what IS working and continue to take ACTION!

Jack Canfield, America’s #1 Success Coach, is founder of the billion-dollar book brand Chicken Soup for the Soul© and a leading authority on Peak Performance and Life Success. If you’re ready to jump-start your life, make more money, and have more fun and joy in all that you do, get your FREE success tips from Jack Canfield now at: www.FreeSuccessStrategies.com