Tony Robbins is much more than a TV personality. There’s depth to the guidance in this book, and I found many of the exercises fruitful.
Rating: 4 stars
First three steps:
1. Raise your standards
2. Change limiting beliefs
3. Change your strategy
Five areas of life to master for greatest impact:
1. Emotional mastery
2. Physical
3. Relationship
4. Financial
5. Time
Purpose–principles–
The way to make better decisions is to make more of them.success truly is the result of good judgement. Good judgement is the result of experience, and experience is often the result of bad judgement!
In order to succeed, you must have a long-term focus. I disagree. You can succeed with the right principles applied within a day. I don’t like the idea of hanging your hat on living for a long time. There’s got to be a way to consider yourself successful day by day. The right principles, consistently applied, May ultimately lead to a long-term achievement but if you die in the middle of it you should still be able to say you live successfully.
You know you truly made a decision when action flows from it. It becomes a cause set in motion. never leave the scene of a decision without first taking a specific action towards its realization.
Chapter 3
A man who suffers before it’s necessary suffers more than is necessary. Seneca.
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. Marcus Aurelius
Although we’d like to believe it’s our intellect that really drives us, in most cases our emotions–the sensations that we link to our thoughts–are what truly drive us.
It’s not the actual pain or pleasure of anything that drives us. It’s our fear/belief that an action will lead to pain/pleasure.
Chapter 4
Nothing in life means anything except for the meaning you give it.
Marva Collins communicated with so much congruency and love that she literally got them to believe in themselves–some of them for the first time in their young lives. The results she’s produced for decades have been extraordinary.
Marva Collins does the three things at the beginning of the book:
1. Hold yourself to a higher standard
2. Change your limiting beliefs
3. Change your strategy
Chapter 6: NAC
Step 1
First step of any change is decide what you want and what’s keeping you from that. Don’t put it in terms of what you don’t want.
Step 2
Second step is associate huge pain to not changing and pleasure to changing. Ask pain/pleasure inducing questions:
– what will it cost if I don’t change? Mentally physically etc. What’s it already costing me and loved ones?
– what will changing bring to me, loved ones? What momentum for other change could it cause?
Step 3
Step three is break the neurological pattern.
Step 4
Create a new empowering alternative that delivers the same benefits as the old behavior. Ask ppl who’ve made the change before what they do instead. External incentive is mildly effective, internal is a bit better, but replacing with a new behavior is super effective.
Step 5
Consistency in behavior change depends on conditioning (reinforcement to create neural networks).
Reinforcement is responding immediately to a behavior. If the response is delayed it loses effect. Immediacy connects the behavior to the reward in the brain.
Consider both variable and fixed schedule reinforcement.
Step 6: test it
Ecology check
1. Endure pain is associated with the old pattern.
2. Ensure pleasure is associated with the new behavior.
3. Align with your values beliefs and rules.
4. Ensure benefits of the old pattern are maintained.
5. Imagine behaving in the new way in the future.
Chapter 7
Two ways to change emotional state: physical body and focus.
Four steps to control your own mind:
1. Be able to change your state instantly
2. Be able to change in any environment
3. Habits that use physiology and focus to automate feeling good consistently
4. Enable others to do the first three
Chapter 8 questions are the answer:
The power of questions:
Change your focus by asking different questions.
The difference between people is the difference in the questions they ask.
Model your questions off ppl you respect most.
Questions change the resources available to us.
5 problem solving questions:
1. What is great about this problem?
2. What is not perfect yet?
3. What am I willing to do to make it the way I want?
4. What am I willing to stop doing to make it the way I want?
5. How can I enjoy the process while I do what it takes?
Chapter 9 the vocab of ultimate success
Chapter 10
Change your metaphors to change your life.
1. What are your metaphors for life?
Life is an opportunity. Life is a gift. Life is a roller coaster. Life is like groundhog day. Life is a critical thinking test. Life is a story. Life is a lunch buffet.
If life is an opportunity, I should live with intent.
If life is a gift, I should show gratitude to the gifter.
If life is a roller coaster, I should expect and embrace the ups and downs. I should ride with good friends.
If life is like groundhog day, I should study the patterns to show the most love I can.
If life is a critical thinking test, I should make decisions, learn from mistakes, and teach those taking the test after me.
If life is a story I should know my part. I should know the setting, the villain, and the lesson.
If life is a lunch buffet, I should learn how the various options are good or bad for me, demonstrate temperance, and recognize and enjoy the abundance I have been given.
2. What metaphors do you have for relationships or marriage?
3. What other areas in your life are key, and what metaphors do you have there?
Work is… Kids are… School is…
4. Create new empowering metaphors.
5. Decide to live with them and check after 30 days.
Chapter 11: The ten emotions of power.
4 ways ppl deal with emotions: Avoidance, denial, competition, learn and use.
6 steps to emotional mastery:
1. ID what you’re really feeling
2. Acknowledge and appreciate your emotions
3. Inspect the emotions meaning
4. Get confident
5. Rehearse how to handle it anytime
6. Get excited and take action
10 action signals
1. Discomfort: boredom, impatience, unease, distress, embarrassment mean something not right. Solution: change your state, clarify what you want, refine your actions.
2. Fear: feeling a need to prepare for something. Solution: evaluate what you must do to prepare, do it, and have faith.
3. Hurt: missed expectations. But consider if you’ve really lost something. Tell the person involved you feel hurt.
4. Anger: rule or principle has been violated. Solution is consider you may have misinterpreted. You may have wrong rules. You may need to change your behavior and tell them your rule.
5. Frustration: brain believes you could be doing better. Change your method. Get input.
6. Disappointment: you won’t get what you hoped for. What can you learn to help you succeed next time? Change your goal. Or delay. Cultivate optimism.
7. Guilt: you’ve violated one of your own high standards and must immediately figure out how to prevent it again. Acknowledge you have done so. Commit and rehearse not doing it again. Guilt has then served its purpose.
8. Inadequacy: can’t do what we think we should be able to. Is this realistic? Change perception. If realistic, it’s encouragement to improve. Find a role model.
9. Overload or overwhelm: negative impacts outside your control. Reevaluate what’s most important.
10. Loneliness: need a connection. You can connect instantly. ID what kind of connection you need. Appreciate the meaning. Act.
The 10 emotions of power.
1. Love and warmth. Listen.
2. Appreciation and gratitude. Say thanks.
3. Curiosity. Ask why and how.
4. Excitement and passion. Breathe deeply.
5. Determination. Murder unchosen alternatives.
6. Flexibility. Ask for feedback.
7. Confidence. Act on faith.
8. Cheerfulness. Spill over you’re so full.
9. Vitality. Move daily.
10. Contribution. Give well to live well.
Chapter 12: creating a compelling future
Giant goals produce giant motivation. It’s not just getting a goal that matters, but also the quality of life you experience along the way. The direction we’re heading is more important than the individual results.
Once you decide something is a priority, you give it tremendous emotional intensity, and by continually focusing on it, any resource that supports its attainment will eventually become clear.
Never leave the site of setting a goal without first taking some form of positive action toward its attainment.
Start by identifying your desires, were anything possible, in for categories:
1. Personal growth
2. Financial/career
3. You/adventure
4. Contribution
Then identify those due within one year. Then identify the most important one from each category due within one year.
Write a short paragraph about why each is so important. It must be compelling to ensure you stick with it.
Don’t leave the site of setting the goals without an action toward achieving them.
At least twice per day, rehearse them being achieved, meditating on that future in detail.
Achieving goals won’t alone make us happy long term. It’s who we become as we overcome the obstacles necessary to achieve them that provides the longest lasting fulfillment.
Write a paragraph describing the person you’ll need to become to achieve the four goals. Set daily tasks over the next ten days to get momentum. Identify roadblocks that could appear and prevent or plan now.
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18
Chapter 13
“Habit is either the best servant or the worst master.” Nathaniel Emmons
The same pattern of thinking that got us to where we are won’t get us to where else we want to go.
Like a gardener, you must acknowledge weeds when they appear, but without letting them immobilize you with fear or anger. Acknowledge them, appreciate that recognition enables their removal. Then know the garden will continue to thrive.
For the next ten days, beginning immediately, commit to taking full control of all your mental and emotional facilities by deciding right now that you will not indulge in or dwell on any unresourceful thoughts or emotions for ten consecutive days.
Part two: the master system
Chapter 14
Like physical matter that breaks into elements, human behavior does too. And some combinations are volatile, some neutralize, catalyze or paralyze.
Gretzky skated to where the puck was going. At any moment in time his ability to anticipate–to evaluate the velocity of the puck, it’s direction, the present strategies and physical momentum of the players around him– allows him to place himself in the optimum position for scoring.
Superior evaluations create Superior lives. Evaluations are our decision about what things mean and what to do about them.
5 elements of evaluation:
1-mental and emotional state
2-questions we ask
3-values hierarchy. Eg Security vs freedom. Two types: away values and toward values.
4-beliefs. Global beliefs and rules
5-reference experiences. Nurture.
Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.
a single shift in one of the five elements of the master system will powerfully affect the way you think feel and behave in multiple areas of your life simultaneously. There are certain evaluations you won’t even consider anymore certain questions you won’t even ask certain beliefs the computer won’t even accept.
Chapter 15: Life values
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was Superior to circumstances.
All decision making comes down to values clarification.
If you don’t know your true values, prepare for pain.
We have “ends” values and ” means” values. Ends, like love, are the important ones, means, like family and money, simply provide ends values, like love and security.
We adopt values from our heroes and our antiheros.
First ask what your values are, then what they need to be to fulfill your ultimate destiny.
Nothing matches the fulfillment knowing you’ve done what you truly believe it’s the right thing, though it was hard.
–said differently, it’s when you stick to a value that’s more important than another value you hold, which would lead to a different decision.
Chapter 16
Rules: if not happy, here’s why.
Rules are specific beliefs that determine when we get plain and pleasure.
as long as we structure our lives in a way we’re happiness is dependent upon something we cannot control, then we will experience pain.
Rule are a shortcut for our brain.
Most of us have created numerous ways to feel bad, and only a few ways to truly feel good. you could be winning and feel like you’re losing because the scorecard you’re using is unfair. It could be unfair to you but also your spouse and children coworkers and society.
Rules are disempowering when They depend on situations or people you can’t control, they are impossible to hit, or they only give a few ways to feel good and lots of ways to feel bad.
To change a rule you must link enough pain to it and replace it with a rule that serves you.
Don’t expect people to live by your rules if you don’t clearly communicate what they are.
Realigning rules: what does it take for you to feel
-successful
-confident
-loved
-excellent
For each ask if they are appropriate. Have you made it really hard to feel good and easy to feel bad? design your rules so that you are in control so that the outside world is not what determines whether you feel good or bad. Set it up so that it’s incredibly easy for you to feel good, and incredibly hard to feel bad.
Chapter 17: references, the fabric of life.
Man’s mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.
It is not our references, but our interpretation of them and how we organize them that determines our beliefs.
The key to more empowering beliefs is to seek experiences that expand your sense of who you are and what you’re capable of, as well as organize your references in empowering ways.
Chapter 18: identity the key to expansion
Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so.
Capability is constant, how much of it you use depends on the identity you have for yourself.
As we develop new beliefs about who we are our behavior will change to support the new identity.
One shft in identity can cause a shift of your entire master system. States, questions, values, references and beliefs follow identity.
Little by little POWs were convinced to identify with communism and strangers to donate bone marrow by priming a new identity with conversation and leading questions.
Instead of needing competence before confidence, nurture confidence first to enable persistence enabling confidence.
Part 3: seven days to shape your life
22. Financial destiny:
1. Develop the ability to create wealth
2. Maintain your wealth by spending less than you earn and investing the difference
3. Increase your wealth work compound interest by reinvesting your returns
4. Protect your wealth from lawsuits
5. Enjoy your wealth by spending on fun and tithing
23. Be impeccable: your code of conduct
Do Ben Franklin’s virtue exercise.
Create a list of values you want to exhibit daily. Put them on a calendar. Mark the days you fail and get better.
24. Master your time and your life with four skills
1. Focus on the right time frame. Of stressed about the present, focus on the future resolution. If past, focus on present, if future, on track record of success or present chunk of task.
2. Ability to distort time. Make a minute feel like an hour and an hour feel like nothing. The ability to flex your experience of time is the ability to shape your experience of life. Killing time isn’t murder it’s suicide.
3. Ability to prioritize important over urgent.
4. Stand on shoulders to compress learning. Don’t spend time learning by experience what you can read.
25. Rest and play
Part four: a lesson in destiny
The solutions to all problems are different behaviors.
All behaviors can be changed by changing beliefs, values, rules and identity.
You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.
Nadine Stair at 86:
If I had my life to live over again, I’d dare to make more mistakes next time. I’d relax. I’d limber up. I’d be sillier. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances, trips, and climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would, perhaps, have more actual troubles but fewer imaginary ones. You see I’m one of those people who was sensible and sane hour after hour, day after day.
I’ve been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, hot water bottle, raincoat, and parachute. I would travel lighter than I have.
“Someday, after we have mastered the winds, waves, the tide and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire”