The Success Principles: #1 - chapter review

I'm currently reading a book by Jack Canfield, co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul series, titled The Success Principles, which comprise 64 different lessons that Canfield has learned during the past three decades as as a highly-successful entrepreneur, instructor, best-selling author and keynote speaker.

At the same time, I'm currently participating in a few different blog writing challenges to improve my writing and traffic to this site. To achieve those goals, I'm going to write a summary review for each of the 64 Success Principles highlighted within each chapter of the book.

My intent is to provide content that's interesting and beneficial to you. Please let me know if you find this extra information helpful!

Chapter 1 - Take 100% Responsibility for Your Life


As the chapter title suggests, none of us is entitled to blissful personal relationships, a meaningful career, unlimited happiness or physical well being. Each of those attributes of life are conditional according to our individual efforts to secure or achieve them.

Canfield stresses that anyone with a successful mindset needs to accept their personal responsibility for every aspect of their existence including: income, fitness, debts, feelings, relationships - everything! Unfortunately, many of us are conditioned to blame our situation on a series of externals, which shifts responsibility away from us onto "others" whether it's parents, teachers, the media, the church, employers, the government, spouse or any number of other things.

Canfield rejects the premise of that blame game by introducing an elegant formula:

E + R = O
(Event + Response = Outcomes)

In a direct quote from the book, Canfield describes the underlying basis for this model.

The basic idea is that every outcome you experience in life (whether it is success of failure, wealth or poverty, health or illness, intimacy or estrangement, joy or frustration) is the result of how you have responded to an earlier event or events in your life.

The author encourages the reader to apply the formula to any area of their life to help change the desired outcomes. The bottom line of this chapter is that each person is in charge of their respective feelings, actions and outcomes. If you want to be more successful then it's up to you to act in ways that produce more of what you want.

Question:
Do you agree with Canfield's premise that you ultimately control your ability to succeed and levels of success?  Do you think his formula (E+R=O) is useful?