Chicken Soup for the Soul 20th Anniversary Edition

by Jack Canfield

  “I can’t kick the soccer ball past second base.”

  “I can’t do long division with more than three numerals.”

  “I can’t get Debbie to like me.”

  Her page was half full and she showed no signs of letting up. She worked on with determination and persistence.

  I walked down the row glancing at students’ papers. Everyone was writing sentences, describing things they couldn’t do.

  “I can’t do 10 push-ups.”

  “I can’t hit one over the left-field fence.”

  “I can’t eat only one cookie.”

  By this time, the activity engaged my curiosity, so I decided to check with the teacher to see what was going on. As I approached her, I noticed that she too was busy writing. I felt it best not to interrupt.

  “I can’t get John’s mother to come in for a teacher conference.”

  “I can’t get my daughter to put gas in the car.”

  “I can’t get Alan to use words instead of fists.”

  Thwarted in my efforts to determine why students and teacher were dwelling on the negative instead of writing the more positive “I Can” statements, I returned to my seat and continued my observations. Students wrote for another 10 minutes. Most filled their page. Some started another.

  “Finish the one you’re on and don’t start a new one,” were the instructions Donna used to signal the end of the activity. Students were then instructed to fold their papers in half and bring them to the front. When students reached the teacher’s desk, they placed their “I Can’t” statements into an empty shoebox.

  When all of the student papers were collected, Donna added hers. She put the lid on the box, tucked it under her arm and headed out the door and down the hall. Students followed the teacher. I followed the students.

  Halfway down the hall the procession stopped. Donna entered the custodian’s room, rummaged around and came out with a shovel.

  Shovel in one hand, shoebox in the other, Donna marched the students out of the school to the farthest corner of the playground. There they began to dig.

  They were going to bury their “I Can’ts”! The digging took over 10 minutes because most of the fourth-graders wanted a turn. When the hole approached three-feet deep, the digging ended. The box of “I Can’ts” was placed in position at the bottom of the hole and quickly covered with dirt.

  Thirty-one 10-and 11-year-olds stood around the freshly dug gravesite. Each had at least one page full of “I Can’ts” in the shoebox, four feet under. So did their teacher.

  At this point Donna announced, “Boys and girls, please join hands and bow your heads.” The students complied. They quickly formed a circle around the grave, creating a bond with their hands. They lowered their heads and waited. Donna delivered the eulogy.

  “Friends, we gather today to honor the memory of ‘I Can’t.’ While he was with us on earth, he touched the lives of everyone, some more than others. His name, unfortunately, has been spoken in every public building — schools, city halls, state capitols and yes, even The White House.

  “We have provided ‘I Can’t’ with a final resting place and a headstone that contains his epitaph. He is survived by his brothers and sister, ‘I Can’, ‘I Will’ and ‘I’m Going to Right Away.’ They are not as well known as their famous relative and are certainly not as strong and powerful yet.

  “Perhaps some day, with your help, they will make an even bigger mark on the world.

  “May ‘I Can’t’ rest in peace and may everyone present pick up their lives and move forward in his absence. Amen.” As I listened to the eulogy I realized that these students would never forget this day. The activity was symbolic, a metaphor for life. It was a right-brain experience that would stick in the unconscious and conscious mind forever. Writing “I Can’ts,” burying them and hearing the eulogy. That was a major effort on the part of this teacher. And she wasn’t done yet. At the conclusion of the eulogy she turned the students around, marched them back into the classroom and held a wake.

  They celebrated the passing of “I Can’t” with cookies, popcorn and fruit juices. As part of the celebration, Donna cut out a large tombstone from butcher paper. She wrote the words “I Can’t” at the top and put RIP in the middle. The date was added at the bottom.

  The paper tombstone hung in Donna’s classroom for the remainder of the year. On those rare occasions when a student forgot and said, “I Can’t,” Donna simply pointed to the RIP sign. The student then remembered that “I Can’t” was dead and chose to rephrase the statement.

  I wasn’t one of Donna’s students. She was one of mine. Yet that day I learned an enduring lesson from her.

  Now, years later, whenever I hear the phrase, “I Can’t,” I see images of that fourth-grade funeral. Like the students, I remember that “I Can’t” is dead.

  ~Chick Moorman

  The 333 Story

  Change your thoughts and you change your world.

  ~Norman Vincent Peale

  I was doing a weekend seminar at the Deerhurst Lodge, north of Toronto. On Friday night a tornado swept through a town north of us called Barrie, killing several people and doing millions of dollars worth of damage. Sunday night, as I was coming home, I stopped the car when I got to Barrie. I got out on the side of the highway and looked around. It was a mess. Everywhere I looked there were smashed houses and cars turned upside down.

  That same night Bob Templeton was driving down the same highway. He stopped to look at the disaster just as I had, only his thoughts were different than my own. Bob was the vice president of Telemedia Communications, which owns a string of radio stations in Ontario and Quebec. He thought there must be something he could do for those people with the radio stations his company had.

  The following night I was doing another seminar in Toronto. Bob Templeton and Bob Johnson, another vice president from Telemedia, came in and stood in the back of the room. They shared their conviction that there had to be something they could do for the people in Barrie. After the seminar we went back to Bob’s office. He was now committed to the idea of helping the people who had been caught in the tornado.

  The following Friday he called all the executives at Telemedia

  into his office. At the top of a flip chart he wrote three 3s. He said to his executives “How would you like to raise 3 million dollars 3 days from now in just 3 hours and give the money to the people in Barrie?” There was nothing but silence in the room.

  Finally someone said, “Templeton, you’re crazy. There is no way we could do that.”

  Bob said, “Wait a minute. I didn’t ask you if we could or even if we should. I just asked you if you’d like to.”

  They all said, “Sure, we’d like to.” He then drew a large T underneath the 333. On one side he wrote, “Why we can’t.” On the other side he wrote, “How we can.”

  “I’m going to put a big X on the ‘Why we can’t side.’ We’re not going to spend any time on the ideas of why we can’t. That’s of no value. On the other side we’re going to write down every idea that we can come up with on how we can. We’re not going to leave the room until we figure it out.” There was silence again.

  Finally, someone said, “We could do a radio show across Canada.”

  Bob said, “That’s a great idea,” and wrote it down.

  Before he had it written, someone said, “You can’t do a radio show across Canada. We don’t have radio stations across Canada.” That was a pretty valid objection. They only had stations in Ontario and Quebec.

  Templeton replied, “That’s why we can. That stays.” But this was a really strong objection because radio stations are very competitive. They usually don’t work together and to get them to do so would be virtually impossible according to the standard way of thinking.

  All of a sudden someone suggested, “You could get Harvey Kirk and Lloyd Robertson, the biggest names in Canadian broadcasting, to anchor the show.” (That would be like getting Tom Brokaw and Sam Donaldson to anc
hor the show. They are anchors on national TV. They are not going to go on radio.) At that point it was absolutely amazing how fast and furious the creative ideas began to flow.

  That was on a Friday. The following Tuesday they had a radiothon. They had 50 radio stations all across the country that agreed to broadcast it. It didn’t matter who got the credit as long as the people in Barrie got the money. Harvey Kirk and Lloyd Robertson anchored the show and they succeeded in raising 3 million dollars in 3 hours within 3 business days!

  You see you can do anything if you put your focus on how to do it rather than on why you can’t.

  ~Bob Proctor

  There Are No Vans

  No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.

  ~H.E. Luccock

  I remember one Thanksgiving when our family had no money and no food, and someone came knocking on our door. A man was standing there with a huge box of food, a giant turkey and even some pans to cook it in. I couldn’t believe it. My dad demanded, “Who are you? Where are you from?”

  The stranger announced, “I’m here because a friend of yours knows you’re in need and that you wouldn’t accept direct help, so I’ve brought this for you. Have a great Thanksgiving.”

  My father said, “No, no, we can’t accept this.”

  The stranger replied “You don’t have a choice,” closed the door and left.

  Obviously that experience had a profound impact on my life. I promised myself that someday I would do well enough financially so that I could do the same thing for other people. By the time I was 18 I had created my Thanksgiving ritual. I like to do things spontaneously, so I would go out shopping and buy enough food for one or two families. Then I would dress like a delivery boy, go to the poorest neighborhood and just knock on a door. I always included a note that explained my Thanksgiving experience as a kid. The note concluded, “All that I ask in return is that you take good enough care of yourself so that someday you can do the same thing for someone else.” I have received more from this annual ritual than I have from any amount of money I’ve ever earned.

  Several years ago I was in New York City with my new wife during Thanksgiving. She was sad because we were not with our family. Normally she would be home decorating the house for Christmas, but we were stuck here in a hotel room.

  I said, “Honey, look, why don’t we decorate some lives today instead of some old trees?” When I told her what I always do on Thanksgiving, she got excited. I said, “Let’s go someplace where we can really appreciate who we are, what we are capable of and what we can really give. Let’s go to Harlem!” She and several of my business partners who were with us weren’t really enthusiastic about the idea. I urged them: “C’mon, let’s go to Harlem and feed some people in need. We won’t be the people who are giving it because that would be insulting. We’ll just be the delivery people. We’ll go buy enough food for six or seven families for 30 days. We’ve got enough. Let’s just go do it! That’s what Thanksgiving really is: Giving good thanks, not eating turkey. C’mon. Let’s go do it!”

  Because I had to do a radio interview first, I asked my partners to get us started by getting a van. When I returned from the interview, they said, “We just can’t do it. There are no vans in all of New York. The rent-a-car places are all out of vans. They’re just not available.”

  I said, “Look, the bottom line is that if we want something, we can make it happen! All we have to do is take action. There are plenty of vans here in New York City. We just don’t have one. Let’s go get one.”

  They insisted, “We’ve called everywhere. There aren’t any.”

  I said, “Look down at the street. Look down there. Do you see all those vans?”

  They said, “Yeah, we see them.”

  “Let’s go get one,” I said. First I tried walking out in front of vans as they were driving down the street. I learned something about New York drivers that day: They don’t stop; they speed up.

  Then we tried waiting by the light. We’d go over and knock on the window and the driver would roll it down, looking at us kind of leery, and I’d say “Hi. Since today is Thanksgiving, we’d like to know if you would be willing to drive us to Harlem so we can feed some people.” Every time the driver would look away quickly, furiously roll up the window and pull away without saying anything.

  Eventually we got better at asking. We’d knock on the window, they’d roll it down and we’d say, “Today is Thanksgiving. We’d like to help some underprivileged people, and we’re curious if you’d be willing to drive us to an underprivileged area that we have in mind here in New York City.” That seemed slightly more effective but still didn’t work. Then we started offering people $100 to drive us. That got us even closer, but when we told them to take us to Harlem, they said no and drove off.

  We had talked to about two dozen people who all said no. My partners were ready to give up on the project, but I said, “It’s the law of averages: somebody is going to say yes.” Sure enough, the perfect van drove up. It was perfect because it was extra big and would accommodate all of us. We went up, knocked on the window and we asked the driver, “Could you take us to a disadvantaged area? We’ll pay you 100 dollars.”

  The driver said, “You don’t have to pay me. I’d be happy to take you. In fact, I’ll take you to some of the most difficult spots in the whole city.” Then he reached over on the seat and grabbed his hat. As he put it on, I noticed that it said, “Salvation Army.” The man’s name was Captain John Rondon and he was the head of the Salvation Army in the South Bronx.

  We climbed into the van in absolute ecstasy. He said, “I’ll take you places you never even thought of going. But tell me something. Why do you people want to do this?” I told him my story and that I wanted to show gratitude for all that I had by giving something back.

  Captain Rondon took us into parts of the South Bronx that make Harlem look like Beverly Hills. When we arrived, we went into a store where we bought a lot of food and some baskets. We packed enough for seven families for 30 days. Then we went out to start feeding people. We went to buildings where there were half a dozen people living in one room: “squatters” with no electricity and no heat in the dead of winter surrounded by rats, cockroaches and the smell of urine. It was both an astonishing realization that people lived this way and a truly fulfilling experience to make even a small difference.

  You see, you can make anything happen if you commit to it and take action. Miracles like this happen every day — even in a city where “there are no vans.”

  ~Anthony Robbins

  Ask, Ask, Ask

  I’ve got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end.

  ~Larry Bird

  The greatest saleswoman in the world today doesn’t mind if you call her a girl. That’s because Markita Andrews has generated more than eighty thousand dollars selling Girl Scout cookies since she was seven years old.

  Going door to door after school, the painfully shy Markita transformed herself into a cookie-selling dynamo when she discovered, at age 13, the secret of selling.

  It starts with desire. Burning, white-hot desire.

  For Markita and her mother, who worked as a waitress in New York after her husband left them when Markita was eight years old, their dream was to travel the globe. “I’ll work hard to make enough money to send you to college,” her mother said one day. “You’ll go to college and when you graduate, you’ll make enough money to take you and me around the world. Okay?”

  So at age 13, when Markita read in her Girl Scout magazine that the Scout who sold the most cookies would win an all-expenses-paid trip for two around the world, she decided to sell all the Girl Scout cookies she could — more Girl Scout cookies than anyone in the world, ever.

  But desire alone is not enough. To make her dream come true, Markita knew she needed a plan.

  “Always wear your right outfit, your professional garb,” her aunt advised. “When you are do
ing business, dress like you are doing business. Wear your Girl Scout uniform. When you go up to people in their tenement buildings at 4:30 or 6:30 and especially on Friday night, ask for a big order. Always smile, whether they buy or not, always be nice. And don’t ask them to buy your cookies; ask them to invest.”

  Lots of other Scouts may have wanted that trip around the world. Lots of other Scouts may have had a plan. But only Markita went off in her uniform each day after school, ready to ask — and keep asking — folks to invest in her dream. “Hi. I have a dream. I’m earning a trip around the world for me and my mom by merchandising Girl Scout cookies,” she’d say at the door. “Would you like to invest in one dozen or two dozen boxes of cookies?”

  Markita sold 3,526 boxes of Girl Scout cookies that year and won her trip around the world. Since then, she has sold more than 42,000 boxes of Girl Scout cookies, spoken at sales conventions across the country, starred in a Disney movie about her adventure and has coauthored the bestseller, How to Sell More Cookies, Condos, Cadillacs, Computers... And Everything Else.

  Markita is no smarter and no more extroverted than thousands of other people, young and old, with dreams of their own. The difference is Markita has discovered the secret of selling: Ask, Ask, Ask! Many people fail before they even begin because they fail to ask for what they want. The fear of rejection leads many of us to reject ourselves and our dreams long before anyone else ever has the chance — no matter what we’re selling.

  And everyone is selling something. “You’re selling yourself every day — in school, to your boss, to new people you meet,” said Markita at 14. “My mother is a waitress: she sells the daily special. Mayors and presidents trying to get votes are selling. One of my favorite teachers was Mrs. Chapin. She made geography interesting, and that’s really selling. I see selling everywhere I look. Selling is part of the whole world.”