KEYS TO SUCCESS

Jack Canfield, co-creator of the best-selling "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series, said that some people aren't as successful as they'd like to be because they haven't decided what they want. "They are living their life by default and not by design."

Canfield is also the author of "The Success Principles: How to Get From Where to Where You Want To Be."

In an interview with a US newspaper last year, Canfield discussed some of the success principles, which include the following:

1, Take 100 percent responsibility for your life.

     This means that you should not blame others--Congress, their parents, their children, their boss, their employees- " for the parts of their lives they don't like."

     Canfield said that about 85 percent of our behavior is habit, and it takes about 100 days to change a habit or behavior. So the key, he said, is to change your behavior for a different outcome.

2. Take Action

     Canefield says that if you take action, you trigger all kinds of things that will eventually carry you to success.

3. Develop Four New Success Habits a Year

Blogger and wife Estelita on a night out in Las Vegas

     Canefield says it takes about three months to change a habit. But, he adds, you have to change one habit at a time.

     The bad habits that need to be broken include: procrastinating; not delivering on documents and promised services; arriving late for meetings and appointments; talking over other's comments instead of listening.

4. Commit to Constant and Never-Ending Improvement

     Canefield says that successful people are extremely curious and commit to learning something new everyday. "They are often voracious readers," he says. "I do something daily called the Hour of Power--20 minutes of meditation, 20 minutes of exercise, and 20 minutes of reading. If you do that basically you are going to be calmer, healthier and more aware when you interact with people."

5. Be a Class Act

     Canefield says that class acts places better than they find them. He enumerates some examples of what to strive for: Maintain dignity and grace under pressure. Counteract meanness, pettiness and vulgarity.

     
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"It is not fashionable to teach college students to develop their spiritual life. Many university educations leave students virtually undeveloped in the most meaningful part of their existence. Indeed, some seriously damage what Christian convictions students may have had."--Oral Roberts, from his address to the first class of Oral Roberts University, September 7, 1965.

"And we should consider everyday lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least a laugh."--Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra