I grew up in Beijing, curled up on the couch with my mom, crying over a little paperback called Chicken Soup for the Soul.

She bought those books for me from tiny Chinese bookstores because she could tell I needed something bigger than my everyday life. I must have read the first one around sixty times. We read them together, page by page, often in tears. Those stories made the world feel wider and kinder. They made me believe that an ordinary girl from Beijing could have an extraordinary life.

Fast forward to today: I’m moderating a leadership session with Jack Canfield himself. No translation. No ocean between us. Just a Zoom room full of women leaders, and the man whose stories shaped my teenage brain, talking directly to us about success, responsibility, and how to keep going when things don’t go your way.

This post is my reflection on that session — what landed deeply for me, and what I think is especially useful for leaders today, in a world of AI, uncertainty, and constant change.

The success system that works “everywhere except for slides”

Jack started with a laugh. His slides refused to cooperate, and after several attempts at screen share, he just let them go.

Instead of panicking, he modeled his own principle in real time: it’s not what happens, it’s how you respond.

What he shared is a system he has tested across fifty countries, with companies that doubled their income and people who completely changed their results. He kept coming back to this idea:

The principles always work — if you work the principles.

And they’re not just for organizations. They work for our personal lives, our families, and those quiet “what am I doing with my life?” moments too.

1. E + R = O: 100% responsibility for your life

Jack’s first principle: take 100% responsibility for your results. Not 90 percent. Not 99 percent. One hundred.

He asks people to write down:

E + R = O
Event + Response = Outcome

Everything you’re experiencing now is the result of how you responded to something earlier.

The pandemic? Event.
AI disrupting industries? Event.
A recession or interest rate spike? Event.
A bad boss or difficult colleague? Also an event.

We don’t control the event. We have total control over our response.

Jack challenged us to notice where we’re still doing these three things:

Blaming
Complaining
Making excuses

He even has fish bowls at his seminars to “fine” people who blame or complain. Not because he’s mean, but because blaming and complaining literally do not change the outcome. They are responses that lead nowhere.

As he joked:

You can make excuses, or you can make a million dollars. You can’t make both.

For me? This felt uncomfortably true. I can hear my own “The algorithm is bad” or “People are too busy to watch long videos” comments. Those are responses too.

2. AI, pandemics, recessions: just “events”

Jack shared how, during the pandemic, he and his peers in the training industry called each other and asked:

“What are you going to do?”

Instead of freezing, they worked together to move out of fear and into creativity. One example: a Bacardi leadership event that was supposed to be in person in Bermuda. When travel shut down, they moved it to Zoom and opened it up to thousands more employees and their families worldwide.

It became not the “new normal,” but the new better.

He put AI in the same category. Some of his artist friends have already lost projects to AI. Others in marketing see clients moving to AI-generated assets.

Jack’s frame is simple and powerful:

AI is an event.
The economy is an event.
The job market is an event.

We can’t stop those waves, but we can learn to surf. As someone who works in tech and content, this really resonates. Feisworld has leaned into AI as a co-creator, not a competitor — from transcripts to outlines to draft designs. Jack’s formula gives a language for that choice.

3. Focus on what you want, not what you hate

Another phrase Jack came back to: focus on what you want, not what you don’t want.

He compared this with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. King didn’t call his speech “I Have a Complaint.” He talked about a dream, a vivid picture of a better future.

Jack asked us to notice how often our language is oriented toward problems:

“We need to reduce turnover.”
“We need to be less behind.”
“We can’t afford to lose market share.”

Instead, he encouraged us to flip those into clear, measurable positive statements:

“We will increase staff retention to 90 percent by [date].”
“We will grow revenue to [specific number] by [date].”

It sounds simple, but if you’ve ever tried rewriting your goals this way, you know it forces clarity and courage.

4. Mindset is more important than skill

Jack shared multiple studies that compared competence (skills, experience) with attitude (mindset, beliefs). The punchline: attitude wins by a huge margin.

He quoted Sarah Blakely, founder of Spanx, who says mindset is the single most important thing you have as a human. As an entrepreneur, you work on it daily.

He also referenced Oprah’s line:

You don’t become what you want. You become what you believe.

From there, Jack went into “quantum physics meets leadership”:

Every thought carries a measurable vibration.
Teams feel the “vibe” of leadership, whether or not it’s spoken.
A shared intention across a group creates a kind of force field.

The wild part: his example of pizza shop staff. A teenager wiping tables knew the franchise’s main goal (increase income by 20 percent) and how his role contributed (clean tables quickly to increase turnover). That is mindset plus alignment in action.

As a small creator working with many collaborators and clients, I’m holding onto this question now:

Does everyone around me actually know what we’re trying to create, and how their work feeds it?

5. Dream bigger than feels safe

One of my favorite parts was Jack’s invitation to set what he calls a “breakthrough goal” — something that would create a quantum leap in your life or business, not just a small improvement.

He quoted General Wesley Clark:

It doesn’t take any more effort to dream a big dream than a small one.

Big dreams don’t require more facial muscles or more calories. They require more courage.

Jack encouraged us to ask:

“If we’re sitting here one year from now, and I’m saying ‘That was an amazing year’ — what would have made it amazing?”

That becomes your breakthrough goal. It must be:

Specific and measurable
Time-bound
Just beyond your current belief, so you have to grow into it

He reminded us that when he and Mark Victor Hansen set the goal of positively impacting a billion lives with Chicken Soup for the Soul, they didn’t know how. They committed first, then grew their beliefs, skills, and partnerships to meet it.

6. Write it down, share it, and get an accountability partner

Jack referenced research that divides people into five groups: from those who simply think about their goals to those who:

Write them down
Make action plans
Share them with someone
Report progress regularly to an accountability partner

The more public and structured the commitment, the higher the success rate. The top group had around three quarters of people taking consistent action.

His recommendation is very practical:

Choose an accountability partner at a similar level to you.
Every weekday, each of you lists your top five actions for the day.
The next day, you report back — what you did, what you didn’t, and what support you need.

It’s not about shaming, it’s about not letting your most important moves slide quietly for weeks.

If you’ve followed Feisworld for a while, you know how much I love systems like this. They’re simple, human, and don’t require fancy software.

7. Believe it’s possible: affirmations and visualization

Jack is a big believer in affirmations and visualization — not as magic tricks, but as mental training.

He suggested creating affirmations that start with:

“I am so happy and grateful now that I…”

And then stating your goal in the present tense, as if it’s already true. He puts these on cards and repeats them several times a day.

Then he layers on visualization:

See what you’d see when the goal is done (the numbers on the dashboard, the email congrats, the new office, or the zero in your debt column).
Hear what you’d hear (applause, a client’s voice, your family’s reaction).
Feel what you’d feel (relief, pride, quiet joy).

He also connected this back to teams: when many people visualize the same outcome, the “force field” around that intention grows exponentially.

For creators and leaders navigating AI and constant change, this isn’t fluff. This is how you keep your brain pointed toward possibility instead of catastrophe.

8. Ask, act, and don’t fear rejection

Jack’s stories about rejection are legendary, and he shared a few again:

The founder of Starbucks being turned down by more than 200 banks and investors
J.K. Rowling and her rejections before Harry Potter
Chicken Soup for the Soul being rejected by 144 publishers over 16 months

The turning point came when Jack asked a different question:

“What would have to happen for you to say yes?”

One publisher said they’d need to know they could sell 20,000 copies. So Jack and Mark went out and collected 20,000 written promises from audience members who said they’d buy the book. They brought that stack back. The publisher said yes.

From that, Jack gave us a little mantra:

SW
Some will.
Some won’t.
So what.
Someone’s waiting.

As someone who sends a lot of pitches and proposals to brands, institutions, and partners, this is a mindset I’m happy to borrow.

9. The 1–10 question that can change your work and relationships

One of Jack’s most practical tools is a feedback question he uses with his wife, his clients, and his teams:

“On a scale from 1 to 10, how would you rate [X]?”

Then: “What would it take to make it a 10?”

You can use this for almost anything:

The experience of working at your company
The quality of service you provide
Your communication as a leader
Your relationship with your partner

Jack asks his wife every Sunday:

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate our relationship this week?”

Sometimes he gets a four. Sometimes higher. The important part is the follow-up: asking what would make it a 10, and then actually listening.

He pointed out that if you don’t ask, you’re usually the only one who doesn’t know the real answer. Everyone else has heard the complaints — friends, relatives, nail salon staff, grocery store clerks. That line made the whole room laugh and wince.

10. Making space for women and caregivers in leadership

Someone in the chat asked Jack how he makes space for women in leadership, especially those navigating caregiving and careers.

His answer was simple and concrete:

His team is almost entirely women.
They work remotely from places that fit their lives.
The company offers generous maternity leave and flexibility.
Babies and breastfeeding on Zoom are welcome, not a problem.

It wasn’t framed as “special policy,” just normal. The way he said it made it feel not like a heroic act, but a baseline. Which, honestly, is exactly how it should be.

Re: “Babies and breastfeeding on Zoom are welcome, not a problem.” — I have witnessed some incredible webinars hosted by Mettle Health, cofounded by BJ Miller MD and Sonya Dolan. When one of their counselors had a baby, she was able to feed the baby on Zoom while also moderating for an incredible successful webinar. I found the moment to be so tender and human. That made me love the company Mettle Health even more, and continue to recommend it as a resource for friends and family.

Coming full circle: Chicken Soup in China to Zoom in 2025

At the end of our session, I thanked Jack and told him what his work meant to me: a girl in Beijing, reading his stories with her parents, believing that kindness and courage could reshape a life.

Now I’m in the U.S., hosting conversations for women leaders, building a media company dedicated to tech, creativity, and human stories. The world is noisy with AI, economic uncertainty, and disruption. Yet the principles he shared are steady and uncomplicated:

Take full responsibility.
Choose your response.
Dream bigger than feels safe.
Write it down.
Believe it’s possible.
Ask for what you want.
Listen to feedback.
Keep learning.

For me, it was more than a keynote. It felt like a quiet, powerful “you’re on the right track” from one of my earliest teachers.

If you grew up with Chicken Soup for the Soul, or you’re just discovering Jack Canfield now, I’d love to know:

What’s your breakthrough goal for the next year?
And what’s one tiny action you can take today to move toward it?

The Day I Interviewed Jack Canfield (After Reading Chicken Soup 60 Times)