Jack Canfield, The secret och bokförsäljning

Av de personer som framträder i The Secret, tycker jag att Jack Canfield verkar mest sympatisk. Det avsnitt där han beskriver hur han satte ett väldigt högt inkomstmål, följt av en bokförsäljningsidé, har alltid inspirerat mig. Hans idé blev starten för den enorma försäljningssuccén med Chicken Soup for the Soul series. En serie som idag har sålt i över hundra miljoner exemplar. Det här är Jack Canfield´s story:

"You know, The Secret was definitely a real transformation for me, because I grew up in a family where my dad was very negative, thought that rich people were people that had ripped everyone off. Thought that anyone that had money must have deceived somebody. So I grew up with a lot of beliefs about money, that if you had it it made you bad, you know, only evil people have money, and you know, money doesn't grow on trees.
That was a big one.
'Who do you think I am, Rockefeller?' That was one of his favorite phrases.
So I grew up truly believing that life was difficult, that it was hard, you had to struggle. And it was only when I met W. Clement Stone that I literally began to shift my life.
"Whatever the mind of man can conceive, it can achieve."
- W. Clement Stone
When I was working with Stone, he said, 'I want you to set a goal that's so big, that if you achieved it it would blow your mind. And you would know it's only because of what I've taught you that you would have achieved this goal.'
Well, at the time I was making about eight thousand dollars a year, and for some reason I wanted something that was really measurable. So I said, 'I want to make a hundred thousand dollars in a year.' I had no idea how I could do that. I saw no strategy, no possibility, but I just said, 'I'm going to declare that, I'm going to believe it, I'm going to act as if it's true, and release it.' And so I did that.
And one of the things he taught me, was every day to close your eyes and visualize the goals as if it's already achieved. And I had actually made a hundred thousand dollar bill that I'd put on the ceiling. So the first thing I'd see when I woke up, I'd look up and there it was, and it would remind me that this was my intention. And then I would close my eyes and visualize having this hundred thousand dollar a year lifestyle.
And interestingly enough, nothing major happened for about thirty days. You know, I didn't have any great breakthrough ideas, no-one was offering me more money. And all of a sudden I was in the shower, it was about four weeks into it, and I had a hundred thousand dollar idea. It just came right into my head. I had a book I had written, and I said, 'If I can sell four hundred thousand copies of my book at a quarter each, that'd be a hundred thousand dollars.' Now, the book was there, but I'd never had this thought.
And one of the secrets, I think, is that:
When you have inspired thought you have to trust it and you have to act on it.
Now I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know how I was going to sell four hundred thousand copies, we'd never done that. And then I saw the National Enquirer at the supermarket. I had seen that millions of times and it was just background. And all of a sudden it jumped out at me as foreground. And I thought, 'Wow, if readers knew about my book, certainly four hundred thousand people would go out and buy it.'
And about six weeks later I gave a talk at Hunter College in New York to six hundred teachers, and this lady comes up at the end and she says, 'That was a great talk, I 'd like to interview you. Let me give you my card.'
I said, 'Who do you write for?'
'I'm a freelancer, but I sell most of my stuff to the National Enquirer.'
You know, and I had this little theme from the twilight Zone went off in my head. 'Dern-ner ner ner...'
Like, whoah, this stuff's really working. So that article came out and our book sales started to take off. But the point I want to make, is that I was attracting into my life all these different events, including this person. And to make a long story short, I did not make a hundred thousand dollars that year. We made ninety-two thousand three hundred and twenty-seven dollars. But do you think we were like depressed and going, 'This doesn't work?' No, we were going, 'Whoa, this is amazing!'
And so my wife said to me, 'Wow, if it works for a hundred thousand do you think it'd work for a million?'
And I said, 'I don't know, I think so. Let's try it.'
My publisher actually wrote me a check, it was a royalty check, for our first Chicken Soup for the Soul book. He actually put a smiley face in the signature, 'cause it was the first million dollar check he'd ever written. And so I know from my own experience, because I wanted to test it, does this Secret really work? And we put it to the test. It absolutely worked.
And now I live my life from that every single day."

Hans bok Jack Canfield´s Key to living the law attraction har jag redan läst och var mycket nöjd med. Just nu är jag väldigt nyfiken på The Success Principles.