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Jack Canfield

Author of Chicken Soup for the Soul

636+ Works 44,670 Members 310 Reviews 18 Favorited

About the Author

Jack Canfield earned his Bachelor's of Arts from Harvard and a Master's degree from the University of Massachusetts. he also has an honorary doctorate from the University of Santa Monica. Canfield has been a high school and university teacher, a workshop facilitator, a psychotherapist and a leading show more authority in the area of self esteem and personal development for approximately 30 years. Canfield is the founder and co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, which has over 36 titles, 53 million copies in print and is translated into over 32 languages. He is the founder of Self Esteem Seminars in Santa Barbara, California, which trains entrepreneurs, educators, corporate leaders and employees in how to accelerate achievement. Canfield is also the founder of the Foundation for Self Esteem which provides self esteem resources and training for social workers, welfare recipients and Human Resource professionals. Some of his clients include Virgin Records, Sony Pictures, Merrill Lynch, Caldwell Banker, Federal Express, Bergen Brunswig Pharmaceuticals and the American Alzheimers Association. In 1987, Canfield was appointed by the California Legislature to the California Task Force to Promote Self Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility. He is the co-founder of the National Association for Self Esteem, and a member of the association for Holistic Education, as well as the National Association for for Self Esteem, where he was also a past member of the Board of Trustees and the recipient of the 1993 National Leadership Award. He is also a member of the National Staff Development Council and the National Speakers Association. In 1989, Canfield was awarded the Certified Speaking Professional designation, an honor that is held by less than 5% of NSA's membership. In 1997, he was nominated by three of NSA's past presidents for the coveted CPAE designation. Canfield has appeared on such television shows as Oprah, The Today Show, 20/20, Eye to Eye, the NBC Nightly News and the BBC. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Eye on Books

Works by Jack Canfield

Chicken Soup for the Soul (1993) 2,856 copies
Chicken Soup (1997) — Editor — 2,595 copies
Chicken Soup (1998) 1,533 copies
Chicken Soup for the Kid's Soul (1998) 1,407 copies
Chicken Soup (2000) 1,025 copies
The Aladdin Factor (1995) 356 copies
Chicken Soup (2012) 337 copies
Dare to Win (1992) 145 copies
A Cup of Chicken Soup (1996) 108 copies
Life Lessons For Women (2004) 85 copies
Chicken Soup for the Ocean Lover's Soul (2003) — Editor — 73 copies
Heart At Work (1558) 66 copies
Life Lessons for Busy Moms (2007) 25 copies
Gratitude: A Daily Journal (2007) 11 copies
The Big, Bad Bully (2019) 4 copies
I Can Believe in Myself (2021) 2 copies
Es suvida, acepte el reto (2001) 2 copies
Aladinov faktor (1997) 2 copies
Whispers of Inspiration (2002) 2 copies
Take 4! Little Book Library Chicken Soup Stories (2000) — Complier — 2 copies
Pérolas de Sabedoria (2014) 1 copy
The Soul of Success (2015) 1 copy
Law of Abundance (2012) 1 copy
Das große Hühnersuppen-Lesebuch (2005) — Author — 1 copy
Das Erfolgsprinzip (2009) 1 copy
Osez gagner (1997) 1 copy
ASK,ASK,ASK 1 copy
Chicken soup (2010) 1 copy
The Success Secret (2012) 1 copy
Perlas de Sabiduria (2014) 1 copy
Atreva-se a vencer (1999) 1 copy

Associated Works

If Life Is a Game, These Are the Rules (1998) — Foreword — 426 copies
The Secret [2006 Documentary film] (2006) — Actor — 157 copies
The Best Guide to Meditation (1998) — Foreword — 104 copies
The Courageous Life (2008) — Foreword — 3 copies

Tagged

anecdotes (124) animals (110) anthology (291) business (107) cats (77) Chicken Soup (786) Chicken Soup for the Soul (206) Christian living (290) Christmas (112) conduct of life (100) Devotional (106) dogs (81) essays (121) family (92) fiction (151) inspiration (703) inspirational (1,406) Inspirational stories (94) motivation (125) motivational (102) non-fiction (1,636) own (96) parenting (108) pets (104) psychology (154) read (108) religion (78) self-help (1,062) short stories (902) spiritual life (135) spirituality (180) stories (304) success (85) teen (110) teenagers (84) teens (92) to-read (479) women (145) writing (88) young adult (142)

Common Knowledge

Birthdate
1944-08-19
Gender
male
Nationality
USA
Birthplace
Fort Worth, Texas, USA
Education
Harvard University (BA|1966)
University of Massachusetts, Amherst (M.Ed|1973)
Occupations
teacher
psychotherapist
workshop facilitator
Author
Relationships
Canfield, Oran (son)
Short biography
He is a Democrat and a Christian, and his hobbies include tennis, travel, skiing, running, billiards, reading, and guitar. In 1962, he graduated from high school at Linsly Military Institute in Wheeling, West Virginia and he received a BA in Chinese History in 1966 from Harvard University and an MEd at University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1973.[6] In 1971 he married Judith Ohlbaum, with whom he had two children. In 1978 he was named Outstanding Young Man of America by the U.S. Jaycees.[6] On September 9, 1978, he married Georgia Lee Noble, with whom he had a son. They divorced in December 1999. On July 4, 2001, Canfield married for a third time to Inga Marie Mahoney.

Members

Reviews

Lots of cheese but also a few moving stories. Great to get my head in the right place.
½
 
Flagged
BBrookes | 2 other reviews | Mar 18, 2024 |
���A fabulous book on techniques used by the world's wealthiest and most successful people on productivity, motivation, relationships, finance, and other aspects of their lives. Jack Canfield's writing style is accessible and empowering. The book is filled with anecdotes and the success stories of many people, including folks like Sylvester Stalone and Debbie Macomber. I highlighted quite a few techniques, and already started implementing some of them. I noticed a swift change in the way I think about things, and as a result, an increase in my motivation levels and my productivity. Great read. (A)… (more)
 
Flagged
Elizabeth_Cooper | 10 other reviews | Oct 27, 2023 |
I’m not going to name and shame, but I figured out what to say about CSS#2 when I compared it in my mind to another popular contemporary inspirational memoir. It was a pop Buddhism thing: religion, death, ultimate meaning. The cool kids, and the villain’s cat, dismiss this popularization of intellectual themes as a betray, you know, but for better or worse it is sometimes similar. Of course, it does touch on the difference between deadening to feeling and healthy detachment, but it remains to be said that even attempting healthy detachment is not the right answer for all people at all times. Of course, CSS#2 does mention the mystery of death—it’s nothing to scoff at—but this book also emphasizes various forms of healthy love, you know. I notice in my own case that being embarrassed by love and trying to be “an unenlightened Buddha”, as someone once put it, just ends up making me nom love until I get sick or at least a little tired, whenever love is mentioned, either by the attention-seekers or the scoffers, you know. Like a man in the desert, then all water is holy, and not just the pure, or so it seems…. So, I don’t know, I used to think that decent love was permissible and even “occasionally interesting” 🧐, but now I see it as more desirable. I never really wanted to be a scoffer, as much as an attention-seeker can grate on you in public, you know…. But now I think that giving in to embarrassment all the time is to forget something good. Dale Carnegie (I think it was) seems to me much less dated than some even later sales guys, you know, some of whom are kinda macho, kinda apologetic in their defense of joy…. But anyway, once Dale (or maybe it was Nappy Hill) said, ‘People who are blessed with a highly sexed nature—/yes, blessed/….’
Or as Toni Morrison put it, yes the dirty man loves a dirty love and kills himself, “but the love of a free man is never safe.” You don’t quite get the sense of danger from CSS, it’s true, but there is the sense that you’re endangering your reputation; and I don’t think it’s some average sitcom, you know. It’s the lessons of holy and decent love, and that’s a good thing, right.

…. Lord knows if you find good love, you shouldn’t give it up to become Professor of Knowledge, you know. They won’t really let you be professor of knowledge anyway, and they’ll just call in you for bureaucrat meetings about the correct way to eat cereal, right. —We’re going to have fun in the correct, bureaucratic way; lord knows people don’t want love, they don’t respect that. So c’mon guys, doing the drudgery of life for people you don’t even like, what’s tiresome about that? 🤪

If you find good love, don’t give it up because she’s not the clerk at Knowledge University, College of Bureaucracy, you know. 😸

…. Although they’re thematically similar in an abstract way, the death & dying stories are so much better than the famous Dying Professor memoir I read. “Ah, I never really liked people much. Maybe in the next life, there won’t Be so damn many of them.” Versus, cultivating courage, you know: finding the good.

…. And Mommy has to take care of herself, you know. Otherwise, she’s teaching the girls/the “good” kids to be victims, and the bad boys to play hard and loose because people will take it, you know.

People have a way of taking it for granted that people say that now, or even pretzel-braining a reason to argue just for the sake of arguing/shaming the plebs, or because a lot of radicals don’t want the world to change, deep down—they’re too comfy with the world of sin and judgment and hyper-masculinity, you know.

But it needed to be said, and somebody had to say it; she was right. (And people didn’t always say it like that, either!)

…. There is a value to kindness, and not just to knowledge, or even avoiding harm, as worthy as those two things are.
… (more)
 
Flagged
goosecap | 3 other reviews | Sep 8, 2023 |
Here's what I wrote in 2012 about this read: "Very good - 64 "timeless" principles to setting and achieving big goals. Next up is to use is as a guide to get more effective."
 
Flagged
MGADMJK | 10 other reviews | Sep 6, 2023 |

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Statistics

Works
636
Also by
6
Members
44,670
Popularity
#366
Rating
½ 3.7
Reviews
310
ISBNs
1,858
Languages
33
Favorited
18

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