FEATURE ARTICLE
A Life-Changing
Recipe from Mark Victor Hansen
Heart at Work
Denice Christine Garcia corners Mark Victor Hansen as
he cooks up yet another recipe of hope and life-changing
possibilities.
Mark Victor Hansen
was back in Manila for the second time after his first
successful workshop in 1996 that jam-packed some 3,500
participants. On March 15, 2001, Launch Asia was witness
to the success of his two seminars entitled, Living Your
Dreams: A Healthy Helping of Chicken Soup For the Soul
and Dare to Win by Thinking Bigger than You Ever Thought
You Could.
"We hosted Mark
because of his capacity to inspire and influence people
from all walks of life," says Monette Iturralde-Hamlin,
president of TeamAsia, a marketing communications consultancy
firm who organized the said seminars,
A prolific writer,
a dynamic guru in the area of human potential, and a professional
speaker to 32 countries for over 26 years, Hansen's message
of possibility, opportunity, and action has earned him
the recognition as Outstanding Business Leader of the
Year (Northwood University), as Humanitarian of the Year
(National Conference for Community and Justice), and as
one of the Top Ten Motivational Speakers of this age where
Og Mandino, Zig Ziglar and John Rohn count.
Still, Hansen is best
known for the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, which
he co-authored with Jack Canfield, a series, which Time
magazine hails as "the publishing phenomenon of the
decade".
To date, Hansen and
his co-authors have published 38 books in the series with
more than 100 audio, video and CD-ROM titles of the same
being produced and distributed worldwide in 39 languages.
His other books include
Dare to Win, Visualizing is Realizing, Mastering the Mastermind
Principles, Living Your Dreams, The Miracle of Tithing,,
Future Diary, Mind Power Anthology, and The Power of Focus.
His best-selling book,
The Aladdin Factor suggests that you have to have your
wishes in advance if you were to meet the genie! And what
better wish is there than to have a few of his precious
minutes for an interview for Launch Asia.
Three days before the
seminars, an extremely tall (Hansen stands 6'4') and smiling
genie granted this wish, and more. One sitting with this
big man with a big heart to match was all it took to discover
the infinite opportunities awaiting to reshape the way
the Filipino soul survives through good and rough times.
LA:
Mr. Hansen, we learned that you are coming up with Chicken
Soup for the Filipino Soul with Jack Canfield. That book
would make us the first in the "nationality"
category of the Chicken Soup series
MVH:
I have so much respect and admiration for the Filipinos.
You are the friendliest in Asia. I have not yet seen anyone
as respectful, polite, hospitable, and warm as your people
are. The Philippines has got a good reading number, too
you read more books on a per capita basis than those
in America and your people have many remarkable
stories to tell. There is also a potentially huge market
of 7 million Filipinos overseas, and that's about 10 percent
of your total population. We would like to be an ambassador,
promoting the goodness of the Filipino spirit and your
tourism to your fellow-Filipinos and to the world. Overall,
our vision in coming up with the Chicken Soup series is
to change the world one story at a time.
LA:
With your own entrepreneurial success, at the same time,
you and Jack Canfield are best-selling authors that have
sold 75 million copies of the Chicken Soup series at least
in North America alone. What is the greatest lesson that
you have learned on your way to the top?
MVH:
In 1974, I went bankrupt and lost US$2 million in a day.
I went down and touched rock bottom. One day an audiotape
fell on my hand and it was by a great guy named Cavatt
Robert. It's okay to be down as long as you're looking
up. I've been in so much pain as anyone else. It's not
a question of whether it has happened to all of us. The
question is how resilient am I and how willing am I to
get back? The greatest lesson that I have learned is that
each of us can challenge ourselves to new heights of success,
prosperity, achievement, and service. The greatest person
is one who serves the most, and each and every one of
us can serve at a higher level. Seven years ago, nobody
wanted our books. Jack and I went to New York and had
33 major rejections. It broke my heart because they rejected
us. But we didn't reject ourselves. We went out and got
turned down one more time until we finally sold it. We
just kept moving forward a little bit at a time until
we sold 75 million books. Our goal is to sell a billion
books by 2020 AD. Now the lesson there is that if you
really have high goals then you'll just be going there.
It's like you're chopping an oak tree. If you hit it five
hatchets chops a day, after a long time it will tip over.
So it just takes a little bit of action towards a goal
and then you'll get it.
LA:
As a media item who frequents the television and print,
you also meet a lot of celebrities and personalities whose
own life stories could be worth mentioning to your audience.
Who among them struck you as most inspiring?
MVH: Oprah
Winfrey is my hero. I've been on her show three times.
From a poor, abused, young girl at 14, did you know that
she is now the first black woman billionaire in history?
She used to say: "I was born with no voice, no power,
no money and no influence. Now I have a big voice."
Her success formula? First, she journaled everything and
second, she reads two books in a week one of them
is an autobiography. That's why my own personal cliché
is, ‘Don't think it. Ink it.’ When you make
a goal, write it down so you can visualize it.
LA:
In your book The Aladdin Factor with Jack Canfield, you
said that anything is possible if you dare to ask, and
that anyone can be a genie. As you see it, how can the
Filipinos overcome their seemingly inherent shyness to
ask and then eventually unlock their genies from within?
MVH:
Shyness is a decision. It's a decision that's probably
made at a very young age and so what happens is that if
you decide to have more self-confidence and value yourself
from inside out, then you start to see yourself as someone
who is able to ask for the good stuff that you want. Because
as we’ve taught in The Aladdin Factor, half the
time you ask for a raise for example, you'll get it -
it's a 50-50 chance. So you don't want to not ask and
get a raise.
What happens is that
you start to see yourself, as you want to be rather than
as you are. The principle is first, you have to A-S-K
in order to G-E-T anything you want and it comes in two
(2) levels. First, you got to ask yourself: 'Am I willing
to give myself permission to be more successful, healthier,
happier?' Then, what happens with a stable government
is that you start to say 'I got hope in the present so
I got power going into the future. So I can start to accomplish
stuff that I haven't accomplished before.' It appears
to me that when you're going to have both political and
economic freedom, for sure all the rest of Asia is starting
to integrate and everybody in America wants to start working
with the Filipinos. So you'd certainly get enough connection.
There's no lack of talents because everybody's born equal.
We're all born with 18 billion brain cells and if you
have high, lofty and inspired goals, then you also get
inspired results. Your country is about to get rich again.
If you invest (your wealth) wisely and let it multiply
and exponentialize, then you become a no-limit, fully
functioning culture.
LA:
Having been to Manila twice, what recipe can you come
up with that would make the Filipinos thrive as a people
and as a country?
MVH:
The economic assumption is that you all have everything
it takes to be great. You have a great number of population,
a lot of you are pretty much educated, you have rich culture
and resources. The Philippines can even be one of the
Tiger countries in the future if only the corruption is
gone. The political system is stabilized and your president
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is doing a good job at least
that's what I'm told. Let's hope that she can. I think
that teamwork just needs to be better here. Teamwork means
Together Everyone Achieves More. You have to figure out
first: 'How am I unique and how am I strong?' The next
one is the harder part in which you ask: 'How am I weak?'
That's part of self-discovery. Knowing what's my potential
and what I need to exercise my full potential. If you
put up a team, even just two people can go out and do
incredible stuff. Eleven years ago who could figure out
how many would want our first book? Also, there's a Spiritual
line that says, "Without vision, the people perish,"
and I want to transliterate that with this: "With
vision, the people flourish."
Mark Victor
Hansen's Tetrahedron of Success
1 Know what
you really want. It all starts with thinking.
You have to be hungry enough to want that something and
turn that into a goal. All it takes is one person to make
a decision to succeed why can't that person be you?
2 Put them
in writing. Have a Future Diary to log your goals.
Classify them in spiritual, family, health, mental, social
and financial terms. Write down as much as 101 goals for
yourself and do it in as fast as 20 minutes. You'd be
surprised by what you'd find.
3 Visualize
your goals. Because what you see is what you
get, you have to visualize your goals in order to realize
them. Look at what you've written when you wake up and
before you go to sleep. Your mind actually never sleeps.
4 Put up a
team. Success is difficult without a team, because
together everyone achieves more. Believe that 1 + 1 =
11 by getting the right people to help you realize your
goals and make that commitment with you
... and Today's Biggest
Business Trends
Internet is
ubiquitous. This technology is our bridge to
the future.
Broadband demand
is insatiable. It's just beginning.
Wireless technology
is in. Expect this be everywhere, too.
The rest of
the world wants all of the above.
Culled from his two
seminars entitled, Living Your Dreams: A Healthy Helping
of Chicken Soup For the Soul and Dare to Win by Thinking
Bigger than You Ever Thought You Could, Shangri-La Hotel
Manila, March 15, 2001.
HIGHLIGHTS:
Overall, our vision
in coming up with the Chicken Soup series is to change
the world one story at a time.
If you really have
high goals then you'll just be going there. It's like
you're chopping an oak tree. If you hit it five hatchets
chops a day, after a long time it will tip over.
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