it feels a little bit like a curse I think have driven people to have high expectations how can people who are always very hard on themselves learn to build up their self-esteem a little bit more I don't know if self-esteem is the answer you know I think um I don't think it's bad to be hard on yourself as long as you also celebrate when the victories happen but you know so many people will tell you I have poor self-esteem because when I was a kid people said this to me and that to me it's convenient
that we remember those things and not the positive things that also obviously but I think it's more important is to realize that self-esteem is earned it's only earned by you with yourself you're not going to get self-esteem because everybody Praises you you someone can tell your whole life that you're brilliant you're a genius you're beautiful you're handsome and you not believe it someone can tell you you're you know you're a piece of crap and you're never going to become anything and there's a party you can say I'll show you as many people have and then
they develop drive out of it right so it's really self-esteem comes from doing incredibly difficult things where you know you pushed yourself it's not virtue signaling it's not telling people about it it's what you know inside your soul is true and the more you do things that are incredibly difficult and especially things that are meaningful meaning they're not just about yourself the higher that esteem would be I think the most important thing for self-esteem is to find something you care about more than yourself because as long as you're in your own head the nature of
the mind is reductionism right good bad right wrong all those types of things of course life is much more many different Hues than that and so when you find something you care about whether it's your kids or whether whether it's something your job your career whether it's a mission you have it's something you want to bring to the world nonprofit it doesn't matter what it is if you find something you care about more than you you won't be thinking about yourself all the time and all your [ __ ] self-esteem [ __ ] just goes
out the window I mean it's just when I hear it it's just so Mambi pambi BS you can have crappy self-esteem and achieve a hell of a lot now the real question is what do you want and I think there's if you want an extraordinary life which my definition that is life on your terms like what's my idea it might be different than yours completely some people it's three beautiful children a white picket fence some people it's building a multi-billion Dollar business somebody else it's writing poetry right so instead of looking for somebody else it's
like okay what do you really want from your life and aligning yourself with moving forward towards what you really want and I think if you can do that in a way that also you feel serving others simultaneously there's a there's a sense of meaning in life that can't be replaced by self-esteem or praise or compliments or being nice to yourself and I don't think it's bad to be tough on yourself I'm pretty tough on myself I'll be honest with you but I also I'm much better at celebrating now and I also realize being overly tough
on yourself usually comes by making you know comparisons that don't make sense I remember um I remember I just was walking by and I saw I was walking he a picture that reminded me of something which was uh years ago I was in Atlanta Georgia I was in my early 20s like 23 24 25 and I was doing a seminar and those days there weren't 15 20,000 people it was 125 people I remember because it was the biggest seminar i' done I thought it was so exciting and I give my heart and soul and you
know going 12 13 hours a day and on the third day the rooms were so small then I'd go by and look in everybody's eyes I gave everybody a flower I just I look it back now seems silly but it was really just I wanted to make that connection I want to make sure that they had made that shift I was like so obsessive about making a true transformation happen and earlier in the day I got a phone call from a friend of mine who said the boss Bru spring he was the biggest star in
the world in those days I loved him and he's four blocks from you he's at you know the Atlanta Stadium there with the Hawks play you got just finish early and come over and and you got to take it in it was Christmas time he said it's going to be incredible I said I'd love to come but I said I just can't do that that's if I said if I finish somehow in time it all happens he's still on stage you know I'll call you and see what's going on so I finished the seminar I
don't know how long AG was almost 11 o'clock at night but you know Bruce usually does especially in Christmas like three encores and so my buddy calls me and says get your butt over here he's doing a second Encore I think he might even do three if you get here get over here see the end so I sprinted the four or five blocks to get in got in stadium couldn't find my buddy but I got up into some high seats and I'm looking down and it was back when Clarence was still there and you know
just the the drive and the energy was incredible the crowd was so engaged and he doing Christmas songs and he ends was you know Born to Run you know and I'm like I'm so into it and about 34 way through the song I got depressed I'm like what the hell and what it was was I was like [ __ ] what I'm doing doesn't matter this guy's got 15,000 people here I got 125 for three days I me I'm not making any difference at all and I was like and I and I literally was were
walking out and people born around I was pissy inside myself you know like but I was feeling so great before this but not making this comparison and of course you're never fair you're you're comparing to some else's life that has a totally different path a totally different experience we all develop in different stages and different things we all want different things but uh what was ironic though the reason I tell you the story is it was like four years later and there I am in that stadium and I'm not doing this crappy little two and
a half hour concert right I'm doing 12 hours and the crowd's going crazy and I just like I no just like you know it was humorous you know you get to look back and say you know you judge yourself too soon and I could tell you a dozen stories like that with me so I was so hard on myself but eventually you wake up and say it's good to be strong with yourself but beating yourself up just lowers your energy and when your energy gets lower you produce less right you don't have and you don't
have the same level of joy you don't have the the impact that you want to have nor do you have the excitement that you really want to have so I look at it um I look at it as something that it's worth earning your own self-esteem but it's really not the secret the secret is find something else you obsess about more than yourself and you'll have a level of energy that will compel you over the long term it's that tension that this interesting tension between balancing ambition and gratitude yes and uh you know this fear
that well if I Pat myself on the back too much right what if that stops the drive you know it's coming from this place of fear this fear of not being enough this fear of failure I'm going to continue to disprove it and I I don't want to give I don't want to let up because that's the only fuel that I know yeah well you know I'm I'm going to be 65 in a few weeks I have a little perspective on this it doesn't mean it's the right perspective but I think when I began I
began with a fuel which was like I'm going to show them you know my I was I had four fathers growing up it's pretty rough background my mom was a very intense character a huge part of who I am I owe to her because she challenged me so strongly I became a practical psychologist to deal with things really loving woman but when she mixed alcohol with prescription drugs she was very violent and I had to protect my younger brother younger sister so you know I had these experiences early on that were so painful and then
she picked my fourth father out of the house she's fairly powerful woman he went back East he was the one who I loved the most and then she chased me out of the house with a knife on Christmas Eve and I know she wasn't going to kill me but I wasn't going back in that place you know and I remember coming out in the beginning it was it was anger that drove me you know I'm just going to show you type of thing but that fuel doesn't last and then the next fuel that people tally
use is I got to succeed but there's a little fear underneath that that's driving them which is like what if I don't versus a knowing you know it's like one of my original mentors Jim ran used to have this phrase used to said you know Tony don't worry about it if you give your all every day your gifts will make room for you and it's like having a knowingness that things were are going to be fine and then there's the next level which is you start to know who you are and you're not trying to
prove it to yourself or other people and it's just you just want to help you just want to do things and so now you it's a difference between what I would call Push motivation and pull right push is UN make this happen and it takes tremendous willpower and I know you have plenty of willpower I do as well but there's a limit to willpower but there's no limit to pull pull is when there's something magnificent that you want to serve something that you're you got an obsession for to create or to do or make happen
and that doesn't it you know you don't lose that energy you don't lose those components and you're able to laugh and enjoy along the way as opposed to Oh by my God you know if I don't keep doing this and I used to believe that too it's like I got to so intense every moment um and then my wife's been a huge help in that also you know you know when I remember I met her I was like I'm a serious mofo I want to change the world I work 20 hour days on stuff I
want to laugh more some days I wish I hadn't said that to her she's so crazy but she's one of the great gifts of my life and I surround myself with so many brilliant and funny people that uh my life has uh you know the joy and the achievement I think that's a a balance a lot of people are trying to play with as well this they like to take things seriously they care about their work they're Earnest right earnestness being The Bravery to take your emotions seriously yes and this can end up sapping the
fun and the play out of life yes uh so you want to be treated like a serious person like an operator like someone that's here to actually do things and make a dent in the world but you also realize after a while that if you're doing it so tightly it creates this sort of brittle fragility around whatever you're doing and when you look back you have this series of miserable successes that you kind of gritted your teeth through and you go well okay I got the outcome that I wanted but really what's the outcome I'm
trying to achieve well it's an enjoyable emotional state yes what I'm trying to do is feel good in the moment as myself and so yeah winning achieving the thing Financial Freedom the business all of that stuff is a reliable route toward getting you that but there's a much more direct route which is to enjoy the thing so there is another tension here I think between seriousness of pursuit and joy and ease in the moment and finding the balance between those two is something I think a lot of people uh struggle with that's true it's an
art it's chemistry right and you you don't get it right in the beginning and you know it takes time and you have to have the intention to want both I I remember when I met my trainer Billy years ago one of my dearest friends and um he's he's brilliant and he said what do you really want out of your training he goes because what I find is I don't you know I don't know why you even need me go you know you no one needs to push you I got to push you back I got
to stop you from going that hard he goes I I said no I'm not looking for motivation I said I want to be specific I want to produce very precise results but I said at this point I think I've been working out like a crazy person I suppress my oxygen I do you saw what I do it's just ridiculous I have a biohacker right I have to be I got to go on stage and do 12 to 13 hours and hold 13 14 15 20,000 people's attention for 4 days right when they won't sit for
a three-hour movie somebody spent $300 million on you know it takes a level of energy I'm not just standing there talking I'm running up the side I'm doing these things so I said I I don't want to give up any of that I need that power in me to be able to produce but I said I want to have fun he says what does that look like and I said well I don't know I think you know when I was a kid I used to play rocket ball I said maybe for the aerobic instead of
just running maybe you know do something that's fun to do and he goes That's great let's do it so we called around no ret ball courts anywhere but squash do you play Squash yep yeah so you can appreciate squash is awesome and it's more strategic and have a lot better exercise than you know Rec is so I got into playing squash and it was like wow it added a whole another dimension and then that led to you know you know at this stage if I go someplace and I'm going to be kind which I want
to be you know it's not a 20- minute drive and 20 minute back it's 20 minutes you know in and out I'm sure you know pictures and you know just connecting with people and taking care of them and so man I don't have time for this so that's how this happened down here it's like I just imagine there's a racket B cut some my near us or a squash cut right squash brilant so I was like you know I came here and so we're going to build this but it's just like so I built this
whole place for fun I mean if you came here I you probably came by slide I assume I yeah my first delivery to a podcast by via slide and gravity yes correct so when we come to build this place you know the I said you know I the GU saying to me you got 25,000 square feet you've used up all the space you know where are you going to do this I said down here and he goes what do you mean down here I said below the surface he goes no no no the ocean's here
the inter coastal's here you're below the water table I said well have you ever been to scrips oceanography you know you ever been to you know you know the Atlantis Hotel he said yeah I said that's what we're going to do he's like oh it can't be done you know I said what do you mean it can't be done other people have done it he goes well you never get approved I said the mayor here we're good friends I'm sure people in community like it we'll get approved and so it leads to a place of
fun we're sitting in the place of fun you know we've got 7,000 square F feet below the surface no one knows it's here it's below the water we built like a submarine around the outside of this and so we got squash courts and my bowling alley and all the stuff my kids and my grandkids and it's the play area so I think it's also important to have environments that call out the play and environments that are convenient to pull out the play you know you can live by the ocean used to live on the hill
in delmare California and almost never went to the beach except when friends came I want to take them there when you live on a beach I'm on the beach every day you know it's there so it's like you can engineer your life to have more happiness but I think the real challenge is thinking so hardly about being taken seriously just represents your fears right it's like I think Spiritual Development when people talk about spiritual not religious development Spiritual Development is the level of comfort you can have with just being your real self and I think
um that's not an easy task because we all are trying to be something but we already are the something we're trying to be that doesn't mean you can't be better but it's like accepting and appreciating what you really are and instead of projecting you know something else takes a lot of pain out of your body takes a lot of energy out it gets a lot of fears to just disappear and I don't have an easy path for that I think it's the hero's journey you know what is it your life is ordinary and everything seems
fine and then something hits you and it's the Call to Adventure it doesn't feel like a call it feels like somebody in your family's got cancer it feels like you know Co and somebody shut down your business you know or you know some issue that's happening in your relationship with your kids but if you take the call and you go on the journey you're going to meet some new friends you're going to find some new mentors you're going to you know you're going to battle with internal things within you and external things but if you
keep going you're going to eventually slay your dragons and you come out the hero of your own life and you have something to share that isn't [ __ ] it's not something you read somewhere it's something you've lived and everybody can feel you've lived it because it's a different level of of ownership you know and then by the way as soon as you do that it happens again you know you're called on another Journey you have a new new level of challenge that you need to go on you just never ends but it's it makes
life really really beautiful one of the things that I've been hearing you talk about a lot recently that seems to tie into this is the difference in life between when you focus on things that are wrong and when you focus on things that are right and I think a lot of people have managed to achieve quite a bit of success by avoiding pitfalls you know you present them with something they can say well that's wrong and that's going to be an issue and we need to make sure that that's sorted there but as you've said
the things that you focus on seem to appear more frequently in your life and if you have if you've Justified to yourself and if you've built up this habit this uh stack of evidence that it's useful for me to focus on where potential pitfalls may be and make sure that I can avoid them but I don't want to do it in my personal life it's you don't you you've developed this pattern and that is now going to be ported over into everything so when your partner comes through the door and does something that pisses you
off the first thing that you don't think is I'm so grateful to have her she's so she's so wonderful think about all of the things it's like she [ __ ] left the makeup's out on the counter again and she didn't clean up to such and such um so just dig into that uh difference between focusing on what's right versus focusing on what's wrong when it comes to your trajectory in life I think it's important uh to realize wherever focus goes energy flows it's corny but it's true right um in fact maybe an easier way
of saying it is uh we don't experience life none of us do we experience the life we focus on so in any moment what's wrong is always available so is what's right so it's not about being positive it's about being intelligent right you know when you're in a totally negative State and you the world's going to end and there are people like believing that in the next 12 years you know the entire environment's going to collapse and they won't have a child um you know you got to look at the impact of what you're believing
and you got to look at and say you know where's my focus going there's I can always be upset about something I can always find something to be joyous or at least grateful for which leads to Joy and I think it's having the learning to discipline your disappointments you know not allow them to grow and to move on and to use whatever life is giving you but to me it's like I think there's uh three decisions that people make every moment of their life now I'm not saying they make them consciously if you make them
unconsciously you have the same patterns over and over again and usually they're not good ones right sometimes they're good but not usually um and I learned these really because I had an experience when I was 11 years old I had I was my forefather and he got fired and we had no money and no food we were always poor but I mean we wouldn't have starved we had saltine crackers and and peanut butter right but when everybody else around you is having a big Thanksgiving dinner uh it was pretty depressing and my mom and dad
were um saying things to each other that once you say them you can't take them back and I have a younger brother five years younger and a younger sister seven years younger so I felt like the parent almost I'm trying to protect them I'm only 11 years old and what changed my life is this bang on the door I go open the door and there's this guy big guy with groceries in both hands and he had a pot on the ground with an uncooked turkey and he looks at me and says is your father here
and I'm like just one moment I'm was like this to me was like Christmas right this is the greatest thing it's going to stop the fighting it's going to be incredible so I go to my father and I say you know Dad Dad there somebody at the door for you and he's yelling at my mom through the closed door that she slammed on him and and he goes you answer I said I did it's for you he goes who is it I said I don't know they said they got to talk to you right and
I have this level of excitement like little boy excitement like this is going to be the greatest thing and my dad opens the door and I'll never forget the look on his face he got angry which shocked me and he said to the man we don't accept charity for the guy even said anything he went to slam the door and the guy had leaned in slightly so it hit his shoulder and it bounced off of him which made my dad even matter and then he said uh he goes sir sir I'm just the delivery guy
you know somebody knows you're having a tough time everyone has a tough time and they just want you to have a great Thanksgiving with your family my father says we don't accept charity he goes to slam it again but I think because he leaned in his foot came in now now it hit his foot and bounced open again just like now I got fear running to my body because I know my father right and uh and my father looks at him and the guy looks at him and says something I thought my father's gonna punch
him in the face he and he didn't do it mean he was had a softness in his face and he said sir he saw me and he said don't make your family s suffer because your ego and the veins of my father's side of his neck were like this he's beat red I thought for sure he was going to punch the guy and then all of a sudden his shoulders dropped like defeated he took the groceries he slammed them on the ground slammed the door didn't even pick up a turkey and didn't say thank you
or anything and shortly after that he left our family which to me at the time was the worst experience of my life I thought and um and so I was kind of obsessed with I'm trying to figure out why why and I didn't figure it out for a couple of years I had versions of it in my head but now I use it in my life every day so I submit it to your viewers as well these are the three decisions that I think everyone makes every moment first you're doing it right now what are
you going to focus on you're going to be focusing on my story I'm telling you you can be focusing on the next question you're going to ask you can be focusing on how your stomach feels if you've not eaten there's a million things you could focus on literally but we don't experience life we experience the part of life we focus focus on and so the bottom line is I know my father and I had a different experience cuz we had different focuses that I was focused on it was food you know what a concept this
is cool he was focused on that he had not taken care of his family and I know that because you know he said it about 20 times under his breath and my mother echoed it of course um the second decision though the minute you focus on something your brain has to decide what is it mean and meaning is what creates emotion and emotion is where your life is right and so the quality of your life is the quality of your emotions if you got a billion dollars in every day you're pissed off and angry your
life's quality is called pissed off and angry if you got three beautiful children a husband or wife you love but you worry all the time your life is worry you know so his focus and then his meaning that was the worst part the meaning he gave it was that he was worthless and didn't belong here and that usually leads to the third decision which is what are you going to do and like if you think if the meaning is something happens you say this person is dissing me you know disrespecting me or is this person
challenging me or is this person coaching me or is this person loving me if you think they're dissing you you're going to have a very different emotional reaction than if you think they're coaching you or loving you and then of course that's going to change what decision you make because if you're anger you're going to make a different decision than if you're playful or generous or whatever the case may be so those three decisions control our lives but so your viewers or listeners I'd give them an opportunity to take a look at it because there's
some patterns that you can make some simple patterns and change your whole life of focus so the first one is and I'd ask you two questions for you one Chris is what do you think most people's answer to this question is and the other is what's yours if you're ready ready to play all right for it's real simple we all have a pattern of focusing on what we have and at times on What's Missing which one do you think most people spend more time focusing on what they have or what's missing what's missing what do
you focus more what's missing yes it isn't something that comes the focus on What's Missing is not something that comes with someone who is a failure it comes very much with people who are very successful and the question then becomes if you're always focused on missing how can you sustain happiness you're in a permanent place of La that's correct so scarcity is there so you'll have drive right to keep staying on the hamster wheel of achievement but you're not going to see much fulfillment not in a sustainable way it's impossible it has nothing to do
with you or me right it's just software and we got a soul we're not software but you run your software so often you start thinking your mind is you versus my mind is a tool that I'm going to use or if I don't use it it's going to use me so the majority of people do that and by the way during covid that number exploded because so many things were taken from people they were constantly focused on What's Missing and that produces nothing but pain a quick aside did you know that Tony faced a serious
case of mercury poisoning a few years ago it led to memory loss extreme fatigue and it could have been fatal if it went undiagnosed so let that be a reminder that even when you're at the top of your game your health can still sneak up on you which is why staying on top of your health requires more than just an annual physical and why I partnered with function they run lab tests twice a year that monitor over 100 biomarkers and look for early signs of thousands of diseases including mercury poisoning they even screen for 50
types of cancer at stage one which is five times more data than your annual physical best of all you receive insights from their team of expert Physicians who provide a detailed report of their observations and phone consultations for any critical findings so if you want to stop guessing about what's happening with your health if you want to get an insight to what's going on inside of your body this is the place to start getting these lab tests done would usually cost thousands but with function it is only $500 and right now you can get the
exact same blood panels that I get plus bypass their weight list by going to the link in the description below are heading to function health.com slod wisdom that's function health.com slod system second question and I think I know your answer to this one which do you tend to focus on more which do you think most people focus on more what they can control or what they can't control and then which one do you focus more on uh I think most people would probably focus on what they can't control I'm an even balance I would say
between the two I'm working quite hard to try I was going to say you strive it's part of you know your philosophy right to focus on what you can control right so that's a part of the stoicism philosophy of stoicism right so but most people you're absolutely right now in my seminars it's different because I got 15 20,000 people ask that question and the VA vast majority of them say they're focused on What's Missing but the vast majority of them say they do focus on what they can control that's why they came why would they
spend their money and time they want to take control of their business or their body or their relationship what the case may be so they have a different belief structure if you have both of those out of whack you got some real challenges most people have at least one out of whack which creates stress and then the third one in the there's many more than these but just quickly for the people at home and I'm asking them to do this for themselves if they want to where do you tend to focus more your past your
present or your future we all spend all three but where do you spend more of your time what do you think most people do where do you H I guess most people just not the present perhaps dreams for the future uh for me I would say mostly in the future as well yeah and that's where most Achievers live me Doo um I have to discipline myself not to do that because what makes you an achiever is anticipation you've learned by a long time anticipation is power as I'm listening I'm watching you you're anticipating you're processing
right dopamine's a hell of a drug yeah yes it does and it gives you a sense of control and there you know also if you don't anticipate it's like taking a playing a video game against the child now you're a different generation so you might kick the child's ass I don't know but my generation I didn't play any video games so if a child you know is your your nephew or your niece or your or your grandson granddaughter or your son or daughter and you give them a gift let's say of a playing a video
game you give him a new video game for Christmas or the birthday what's the first thing oh come play with me pops come play with me Uncle come play no no no I don't I don't do those things oh let me show you it's so easy boom boom bo boom boom boom three shots boom boom they're they're going great so some party be funny says I'll show this little bastard something here I'll go ahead and do this thing here all right fine give me this thing but you should know you're being set up when the
kid says something to you like you go first right and so you go and you go Bo boom boom boom and you're dead in four seconds right the kid goes not bad not bad for the first time right and then they take and 45 minutes later you get your second turn right now you're really pissed maybe you make it two minutes the kid goes for another 45 why does the kid win every time is it because they're smarter faster younger no it's because they' played this game before they can anticipate the first bad guys here
the second bad guys here you're in reaction they're anticipating so it has tremendous power so it's addictive when you learn to anticipate and and it's also a great skill set for business for life and so forth I always tell people you're running a business you're always running two businesses the business you're in and the business you're becoming if you only focus on the business you're in someone's going to replace you if you only focus on what you're going to become you're going to have the cash flow to be able to get to that place right
so it's a very similar situation inside of where we are so for each of us most of us who are Achievers tend to focus on the future but all the joy is in the present right you can have some anticipation the future and be exciting about you can most people stress comes from either the past or the future the majority of people spend a lot of time in the past right and the problem is you can't change it and and you can use it as a reference to Me Maybe for you I don't know I
I project you've probably come a long way in your life as my guess from love Island to you know modern wisdom that's quite a journey you tell me about I I can't believe that you did that bit of research that was the thing that you dredged up but yes yeah yeah yeah the the typical trajectory from love Island to this podcast yeah yeah difficult so there's been some growth in your psychology your spirit your soul to say the least right so the contrast of remembering where you were and who you've become is probably a beautiful
thing but if you use it that way but most people go back and they ruminate about the past or they ruminate about a future that they can't control and the present's there so the goal is ideal is fuel an ideal fuel is the combination of the two present it gives you that centered grounding and anticipation for the future they build to bounce back and forth is the ideal for people so I give you an example to wrap this up um do you know anybody who has I asked this when I have an audience you know
giant audience how many of you will say know somebody who takes anti-depressants and they're still depressed yes yes 90% of the room will raise their hand how's that possible because first of all two years ago they did meta studies on the cover of Newsweek and it said ssris do not work sugar pills work as well as ssris dancing dancing to music was effective some huge margin yeah you rather study we're still giving to everybody doesn't make any sense should be salsa classes it's just but it's just you think of the insanity of that of us
continue to do what doesn't make any sense so I think you know your question is really focus bringing it back to the focus I think if we make the right decisions the first one is what we're going to focus on and that's just a habit you change anything take that person why is that person depressed still cuz all that drug does is numb you MH and numbing doesn't deal with the issue what's the real issue you're constantly focused on What's Missing versus what you have you're focused on what you can't control and there's two worlds
right the external world the internal world we can't control the external world we can influence it we can't control it if you think you're in control you have deep illusion I went to Mexico recently you and I were talking off the air and I discovered I couldn't even fully control my bows it's not something I want to talk about but it's like all the willpower in the world doesn't mean squat no pun intended right so it's the part we can control is what's going on inside of us and that we can control what we focus
on we can control the meaning we can decide the meaning we're the meaning makers and we can decide what to do and when we to make those three decisions we're in control of our life and all the anxiety and [ __ ] tends to go away especially if we're trying to do that to serve something more than ourselves not like you're so unselfish you're not going to succeed because you can't serve something more than yourself and not benefit right so it's like it's not like you're sacrificing you know the people that play that game it's
not a sacrifice it's like philanthropy you know I hear people talk about well philanthropy well a friend of mine the other day was on an airplane and somebody was reading I just had my book you had triggered me was life force and person was really into it and he said hey what are you he's known me for 45 years and he says what do you think of that book oh it's incredible the stem cells and this you can't believe the breakthroughs and I don't know why we didn't know about this and blah blah blah what
do you think of the author oh he seems like a really good guy and he donated all the profits to feed people course he goes coursey's totally Rich so I mean I mean it's easy when you're rich right and my buddy turns to him and he said well what if I told you that I knew him since he was 17 years old 45 years ago and that I remember when he had $20 to his name and there was a guy in the street and he gave him 10 bucks and told me that the time to
give is when you don't have it and he said and I watched him build that all the way up there he taught me that if you don't give a dime out of a dollar you're not going to give a 100 million out of a billion right and it's like people look at things and they make their Focus something like oh I'm sacrificing or I'm going to do philanthropy cuz you know I'm I'm rich no you do philanthropy because it's a source of kindness and love philanthropy can be your attention philanthropy can be your time philanthropy
can be a buck five bucks philanthropy you're in line with people in Starbucks and you you know I remember doing this research I couldn't believe it if you buy five people who you don't know their coffee you get a biochemical change that has a more lasting impact than most things you could purchase for yourself and so including large purchases so it's like it's intelligent selfishness is the truth you can't possibly do good and not feel good when you want some self-esteem do something worthwhile Beyond just yourself the reflective glow of doing thing something for everybody
else is uh yeah it's an odd it it kind of makes it difficult to be selfless when you actually thinking that way like the most selfish thing you can do is to be self there is truly nothing that is particularly selfless right in that way yeah just dig in a little more for me I'm really interested in in framing in how important framing is around being a little bit more positive in our lives and um that second step I understand changing what you focus on we've spoken a lot on the podcast about mindfulness about meditation
about the mindfulness Gap about controlling where you place your attention about the reticular activating system all this sort of stuff I think the Second Step the story that you tell yourself about what you're looking at even if you've started to control I'm going to begin to focus a little bit more closely that framing the story that you tell yourself is a place an awful lot of people get stuck so what what do you rely on when it comes to that what do I rely on what do you mean by that in terms of a strategy
how is it that you try to tell yourself the best framing the best perspective the best meaning that you can well I think um you know there when you think about framing I look at framing as three three I I call Pre Framing reframing and defr framing most people are familiar with reframing reframing is you came up with a meaning and it's not so good and so now you're going to change it or you want to do it with someone else you're going to influence someone they have this negative frame and you're going to reframe
them that's a lot harder than pre-framed to make it simple um pref framing is telling somebody getting someone to focus on something knowing in advance what you're going to focus on and giving it a meaning in advance before it happens that's a lot easier than after it's happened because after it's happened you have a meaning locked in to some extent especially if it's something that's painful right so I'll give you a simplistic examp example I remember one day I went and um I lived in San Diego California and I have a helicopter and I was
flying up to LA and I love flying and that morning I got out and there had a couple cars to choose from and I chose this little Corvette I had in those days wind in my hair I'm going to have fun I drive I fly La I did this TV show and land on the roof it was so much fun I didn't have to go to the airport and flew back and I was just like in Euphoria having a blast you know it was actually Bill Maher when he used to do his program up in
LA and um and then I got in the car you know and it's getting dark and I'm driving and and sure enough oh I'm I'm I'm incorrect about thing the last minute I traded out the car that's right my wife needed the car so I traded out for uh the BMW 750 ilil why does that matter so I'm driving home the helicopter ride that's not dangerous I'm on the road you know long winding road from the airport to the main freeway area and I come to the stoplight and I'm I'm on the phone chatting as
I'm waiting and on the speaker phone and all of a sudden I see these lights are coming really fast and really fast and so then it gets so fast I was like oh my God is this guy going to break and before I could finish thinking the thought at 65 miles an hour that got hit s me from behind he fell asleep at the wheel right so I can remember everything in slow motion you know in those days they had to you know your tape deck in there and it went flying past my head in
slow motion and I mean everything changes when you're in that kind of an experience I'm sure if you've ever experienced you know what I mean and and all I remember is waking up and the fire people people extracting me out of the other side of of the the the car and they're like want to take me to the hospital I was like no I'll see my chiropract in the morning and then I woke up next morning I couldn't move it was pretty rough but the reason I tell you the story is eventually I got well
and I need to go buy another car well I never had the criteria before of safety but that car oh everybody told me that car saved your life that car literally you know if wasn't the Corvette it would have been just as well it wasn't the Corvette yeah not just as well I wouldn't be here if it was the Corvette wind in your hair but your head's on the top exactly right so why I tell you that so I go looking for a car so I thought you know this BMW that was a damn good
car but I want another sports car I'm going to get another 750 I but let me go to sports carard tol that Corvette you know I want something that's dirty and so forth so the guy took me what it was 325 eyes whatever they were call in those days I forget what it was you know stick shift and I he said yeah now he got me in the car and he said now before we go out I want to tell you I'm going to take you on this winding road It's amazing And you know this's
the ultimate driving machine he said it's not like your 750 you're 750 you don't feel the damn thing he goes when you get in this car and you shift into it he goes we drop into you'll feel the wheels catch into it and grab it he said you'll see this is the ultimate car so what's he doing he's pre- framing me cuz we're going to go through a construction area that's all beat up right so we go in the construction area and at 750 I wouldn't have felt anything right just boom smoother but it and
and it's bouncing around and even though I know what he just did my B's like yeah it is really digging in you know if he tried to tell me after I'd done that I would have that's a piece of crab car because he pre-framed me so I pre-frame myself and the way I do what I call priming you're familiar with the principle of priming right so most of us think we're having our own thoughts most of our thoughts have been primed by the environment so an example would be um they did a study at Harvard
where they took um four actors two men two women they had him rehears doing the exact same presentation and you'd be in a mall or coffee shop or something and they'd walk up to you and they had a coffee in their hand and they go could could you hold this for me for a second and then they look down they don't wait for you to say yes and 90 8% of people take the coffee and they take out their phone did something they say thank you so much and that's the whole interaction but they rehearse
the same facial expressions the same movements everybody's the same they go out and they do this one variable half the people they gave them hot coffee half the other people they gave iced coffee 15 minutes later somebody comes spy with a little little checkboard here and they go excuse me I have $20 here there's no scam here we have this really important study under a tight timeline would you give us one minute of your time for for $20 you just read these three paragraphs of the story and answer these two questions they read the story
and then the question is what's how would you describe the main character of the story how would you describe well interestingly the people that given hot coffee 81% said the person was warm and genuine the people given ice coffee said the person was cold and uncaring and it's the exact same story the exact same ratio 81 versus 80% just give you an ID all they did was 15 minutes earlier have something that framed them as you would say right so it happens all the time it happens you know if they did a study where they
took IBM and they took apple and they did a little creativity test for someone and they did two things they'd have them look at the IBM logo and then take the test or the Apple logo and then they did their commercials and a commercial for apple back in those days uh it was think differently right 22% higher score if they looked at either the Apple logo or the commercial on the exact same test no other criteria difference to give you an idea so you can you can test so many things in this area so I
get up every morning and my first discipline you know I'm not a meditator per se um I don't I don't know anybody good at not having any thoughts um but I thought I want to Prime myself that's my goal so I do a a breathing pattern like a you know Breath of Fire type of thing to change my physiology for just two minutes and then I do three things and I do it for just 10 minutes because my view is if you don't have 10 minutes for your life you don't have a life and I
want to I want to Prime myself so whatever comes into this world I have the best chance of handling it really well and I and I'm training my nervous system what's the emotion I want to train gratitude why we all know the two emotions that destroy your relationship your business your life it's fear and anger those are the two extremes you can't be grateful and fearful simultaneously you can't be angry and grateful simultaneously so what I do is I start my day I make those changes and I close my eyes or I look out at
the water and I think of three things that I'm grateful for for just a minute each but I don't think of it like over there like if you ever been on a roller coaster and I ask you what it's like some people remembered it over there now I remember it like I'm in the front seat going over the Ed because then you get the authentic biochemical changes so I'm there and I do two strong things and usually one simple thing like the wind in my hair or my daughter's smile or something of that nature so
I don't just get wired for unbelievable things but that that primes that nervous system and then the second thing I do is I take three minutes and it's kind of like a blessing or prayer for the people around me for the people I love I start close they send it out there and there's been a lot of studies I'm sure you've read that Dolly llama and others have done on compassion for strangers what it does to your brain and so I do it every day and then the last three minutes I call three to thrive
where I focus for a minute each on something I really want to make happen but I don't sit there and pray for it hope for it it's like I give thanks for it as it's done I see it as done I experience it as done I wire my reticular activating system I can speak in shorthand to you about this so now it's going to notice anything that relates to that but it has a joyous feeling to it as well and I'm done in 10 minutes and I'm ready to rock and roll so you know I
do my cold plunge and I you know I do the parts of my normal daily ritual but that one I do and then I'll have like uh 60 seconds you know of of Joy or 60 seconds of piece that I'll do in the middle of the day and I'll just think of one of those things if I want to reactivate it but that pre-framed me right in other news this episode is brought to you by nomatic now it's literally brought to you by nomatic this is my travel pack that I've got with me on the
road here in Florida and it makes the process of traveling so much more enjoyable and that is why I partnered with them no matter you've got compartments for everything your laptop your shoes your sunglasses it's so Sleek that the TSA agent might just stop you to admire it the thing is an absolute Swiss army knife it's beautifully designed it's not over engineered and it'll last you literally a lifetime that lifetime guarantee so this is the final backpack that you'll ever need to buy we really should have taken stuff out before I did this uh anyway
you can return or exchange it within 30 days for any reason so you can buy a new bag fill it with possessions for an entire month if you don't like it they'll give you your money back plus they ship internationally right now you can get 20% off everything I use and recommend from nomatic by going to the link in the description below or heading to Nom matic.com wisdom that's Nom matic.com slod wisdom but then I also have certain beliefs we all have beliefs that pre-frame you or not and one of the core beliefs I developed
over the years was just that I think everything happens for a reason I think there's a higher purpose I think it's my job to find it uh I think that life happens for us not to us but it's our job to figure it out a lot of times it feel like something's happening to me so I I give an example it's like not being fed as a child you know I've fed um well 10 years ago I decided I've been feeding people my whole life since I was 17 two people four eight I've build up
a couple million people a year my Foundation fed two million I fed two million and then I was writing this book money Master the game and I'm interviewing R Doo and Carl icon and Warren Buffett and you know all these multi-billionaires and Congress had just cut uh food stamps which they call the snap program Now by $6 billion it means every family would have to give up a week's worth of food unless people like you and I showed up so I called my team and I said how many people had fed in my lifetime and
they said 42 million and I was like wow I didn't I was thrilled it wasn't the number I knew and I said what if I did that in a year what if I had as much as I done in my whole life in a year 50 million and what if I did what if I did a 100 million year what if I did 100 million a year for 10 years and did a billion meals and I did it in eight years with partnership through feeding America and it's like when you do that when you when
you produce a result that seemed impossible then what's next gets even bigger and even more available right it just expands you're pre-framed to be able to do even more versus reframe and so so now because of the war in the Ukraine most people don't realize it's the Bread Basket for Africa so there's about 11 Nations that on the virt of famine you'll never hear about it in the news no one cares um and then you need fertilizer 50% of the world Supply World food supply comes fertilizer the WF doesn't want you to use it because
the environment but you need it and it's in Russia and it's been cut off so I talked to Dr to Governor DAV David Beasley who head of the world food program brilliant guy actually MBS put us together one day he said you two are feeding the most people I know I w't put you together and I said how big is the problem and he said Tony normally you'd be in a position where you know maybe there's you know 8 million people that are in the verge of starvation he goes this year it's 350 million and
he goes and no one's doing anything about it and I said so why don't we how many meals would we need over the next 10 years to make the transition till we get sustainability he said you need 10 years I said where would it be and said I don't know Tony maybe 50 60 70 billion meals I said let's do a 100 billion meal challenge over the next 10 years I said I did a billion I wasn't a billionaire when I started I said you you're going to get blessed by doing these things I'm sure
find 99 other people somewhere in the world to do this and when I went to do it I I was shocked because I had prefried myself this would be easy right and I went to somebody without mentioning names who's a brilliant philanthropist and a beautiful man who helped me when I did my billion meals and um and he said well Tony how much is that going to cost I said well it cost me about 100 million bucks over 10 years you know you're doing you're doing a 100 million meals a year for 10 years and
this guy's worth about20 billion doar and he said to me that's beyond my pay grade and I so I had to kind of re-evaluate but because I kept pre framing myself this is a must this is not a should it's not a reframing job um I just came up with a different plan and I'm really proud to tell you we did 30 billion meals we just announced in our first two years and we're on track this year to be at 60 billion and what seemed like an absolutely impossible task is there there is another skill
besides pre Framing and reframing Def framing defr framing is when you destroy the frame of reference so in business you know one of the things you have to know is like I believe it's it's my privilege to serve people but I also believe it's their privilege to be able to learn and it's not an ego thing it's just like it's a mutual privilege meaning I got to earn the right to be able to serve you and you got to be a reasonable person for me you want to serve you too and I made a change
in one of my events is like 20 years ago and um and one of things I did is it was a 14-day program and the world changed and so we brought it down to 10 days I think it was 12 days to 14 in those days and I had some open days with some stretches and things it was a very intensive program but um I was like I I need to make it tighter so people can commit the time and come and I figured out how I'm going to add even more value how I'm going
to make this even more useful so I did and there's this one woman who went crazy and she started attacking me and called my offices up and said I want my money back and I'm going to tell everybody else Tony Robbins is screwing us and everything else and my team was all freaked out and I said no no no no I said fire her I said what I said fire her as a customer I said you call her because it's not her first event she knows how incredible things are she wouldn't be coming to this
14-day event 12 Day event I said if she's going to say that first of all I'm happy to give her money back we have money back guarantee on everything so I give her money back and say we want to give her money back but want you to know you can never come to an event again because you're no longer one of our customers because you know better you know Tony always adds 10 times the value right long story short this lady starts fighting to stay on they my staff couldn't believe it right cuz he defamed
it you took away the frame of reference you destroyed it m right I said no no no you don't understand no I have a right to come no you don't you know I have to earn your respect I got to deliver for you you got to deliver for me too you're not you're not a customer anymore and you can't come here the lady it was in Hawaii she flew to Hawaii and demanded to see me is the program's going to start you have to let me in this program right I said if you want to
get make a public apology for what you've done I said that'd be acceptable to me I said but you knew better you just did this to get attention and I said so I'm I bought back your seat and I told you to send us any of your friends that want their seats back I said we need the seats we really did right and so that was the end of it and my it gave a lesson to everybody on my team and I tried to teach it to business owners like not everybody's your customer I'm not
the right person for everybody I doubt you're the right person for everybody we have unique Styles or approaches and and so we're not here to try to please everybody we're here to try and serve the people that are really interested in being served so pre-frame reframe and deframe as frames or references but I think preframe is the most valuable and if somebody wants to learn to do the the priming you can go to tonyrobbins.com uh priming there's no charge for it and there's a video I'll guide you through it if you want to try it
one of my friends used to work in a retail store and he observed one of his bosses do something that was kind of interesting with the def framing thing so somebody had come up and there'd been some sort of an issue I think with the way that uh one of the members of staff had given them clothes that they were trying on something something had occurred but the customer was completely at fault it was all them and they came over to the supervisor and said this is a problem and this is I need to speak
to the manager and the manager immediately one uped and said tell me exactly who did this I'm going to get them fired on the spot and this person immediately completely flipped what they were thinking and he turned to my friend afterward and he said only one person's allowed to be in the angry boat that's great I love it I love it too breaks the pattern exactly and that's all it really is Right changing the frame is breaking the pattern corre but easier to break the pattern before it starts yes much easier and then by the
way it becomes you train your nervous your neurons you're training your nervous system to think that way it's the ruthless thing about habits right the the Matthew principle of to those who have more more will be given to those who have less more will be taken yes true and uh yeah the you know you've worked with how many people have you serviced in person now do you know well I think in Live Events we've had um I think it's 15 million people total because you know I've done these big ones like you know where I
do a million people at a time now some of these events it's insane so books Live Events iners online audio courses what have you come to understand about the things that can be achieved from people in a group context that maybe can't be achieved through self-directed learning I would I think anything can be done anything can be done by self-directed learning personally I just think it's accelerates when you create an environment where maximizes so you know low energy you get I have a frame you may disagree with this massively uh you get in your head
you're dead um I I think when I say you have to have the head and heart connected right it's like why don't people transform because they're they're in their head about it they're thinking it through they think if I understand this then it'll just happen it's absurd um you know if you're good at something you've trained it into yourself you know I'm fortunate enough to own several sports teams or pieces of sports teams and I've have you know Championship drinks all these Sports you know I wanted to be an athlete so I relived it in
a different way but you know the Golden State Warriors are one of the ones I have a piece of and I've got a chance to work with them their Championship Seasons work with the players it's been totally fun but you look at somebody like Steph Curry and you see this guy you know shoot the ball from almost half court chomping on the side of his thing and he turns he doesn't even look he turns around and just waves because he knows it's in already and it's Swish and the crowd goes crazy and people look at
that and go he's he he's un he is he's unbelievable he unbelievable he's the greatest three-point shooter in history there's no one like him but what they don't pay attention to is that isn't like a little gift right he shoots 500 shots every single day never less than that seven days a week for more than 15 years the 15year professional career he's been doing it since before he was in college his dad really trained him so think of that 3500 shots a week 168,000 shots in a year 2.52 million shots in his 15year no you
know NBA career so he can make 3600 shots not even one tenth of 1% I tell people you get rewarded in public for what you practice in private your training of your nervous system to do things is what really matters most and you can't just be in your head so I believe to answer your question you know the reason I still do events is that an event provides first of all immersion you can learn a language a little bit at a time and you know you ask most people unless they live in a place where
they have to use the language and they learned another language in in high school and college they don't speak anymore they don't remember 10 words but if you wanted to learn Italian and you had the time and money I just drop you in Italy drop you in Rome and pick you up four months later there's zero question you're going to speak in Italian because you're seeing it feeling it breathing and doing it so that's why I do 12 hours a Time 4 days and people think it sounds insane but it's only insane if you're not
enjoying it and people love it even be to get dragged there because we engage all their senses not just their head and so when all your needs are being met simultaneously time flies it's like a minute can feel like an eternity when you don't like what's going on hours fly by when you're really having great experience so I believe the environment where we produce that much energy produces it now when Co happened give you a good example suddenly I'm used to doing stadiums all over the world and the first one I get is a phone
call from Gavin Newsome's office in California I'm about to do a program in San San Jose San Francisco for 14,000 people and his office calls and says we're really sorry you can put a 100 people in the stadium like we got 14,000 people that's not possible so my whole thing is okay screw that we're going to Vegas they'll never shut down Vegas 10 days outside of a Vegas after moving 14,000 people to go there they shut down Vegas so I'm like screw it we'll go to Texas own country the governor says he won't melt he's
not going to bend you know I I got a friend in Houston has a big church there 14,000 people perfect we rent the place two weeks out they shut down there I'll do it in movie theaters 1,400 movie theaters will will do this where um you know we'll put 10 people in every movie theater that was what they limited us to but they'll have a big screen they'll have great sound and they'll have some interaction we're going to make this work they shut down the movie theaters so I built the studio and I did something
I wouldn't have done anything without necessity which was like I need to reach people where they are right now cuz I don't know how long they're going to be stuck at home this goes Way Beyond business I got plenty of companies plenty of money but it's like how do I serve in this time and so it's like okay I'm gonna I'm going to do a seminar where there's no money involved because what's in the way Money travel because mostly people us fly to another country to see me that kind of thing and and even time
I want to give them immersion but not enough that it's overwhelming to them and so I I set at this program we're to do three days three and a half hours 3 hours each day kind of like going to a movie but one that changes your life and let's invite people from all over the world and the first one we had 383,000 people for instead of 15 or 20,000 people for a seminar and then the second one was 600 then next so last year was almost one and a half million people and I'm doing one
again this year and I'm super excited about it's one of the reason I want to do your podcast I want get the word out because I you have a lot of young men in your audience that are looking to create a meaningful life take things to another level and they may not know if this is worthwhile or not but they can come and they can do it from wherever they are they can do it from their office or home they can do it with a friend um there's no charge for it it's not partially free
it's totally free but the stories and examples that come out of it when people get an environment like that I give an example of just fun one because I saw him the other day there a gentleman um named Matt who never would have made it to one of my seminars why he's in bed he weighs over 700 lb he's on oxygen he can't leave the bed to even go to the bathroom he does it through tubes right doctor says he'll never be off oxygen as long as he lives but we're using zoom and so I'm
interacting with people live all over the Earth and then the one thing I asked for is I don't ask for money but I ask you to do an assignment each night and put it on Facebook and then I'm up all night watching all these because it's so compelling to see how people's lives are changing so I saw this guy so I brought him on the next day he's in the bed he's watching on the screen cuz it's free and he doesn't have to go anywhere he can do it might as well make use of it
he got so inspired he says I want to get out of this bed doctor says I can't do this I said well let's chunk it you know what are the first steps first we got to get some upper body strength and I said what do you got nearby and he had like this like thing you hang coats on so I said we're going to start with that right so he's in bed doing this little thing and I said I'll tell you what we're going to do I said you're going to sit down you look for
the timeline but I said if you can get this done in the next four months where you can get out of bed go to the bathroom make it into a car I said I'll fly you to my event we'll walk on fire together we'll have this experience he's lost now over 300 lbs 3 25 was latest number he's inspired everybody in the community that's there he drives a car now he fell in love with a lady and so I sent him my resort in Fiji so he can go celebrate and everything else he's got a
completely different life he would have never done that in a million years so it's my way of saying yes I can bring the event to you which I didn't believe before you know I didn't believe I could do that but now we'll start at 10:00 a.m. let's say in Florida here uh to do let's say a 4-day seminar that I'm going to do and we have people from 193 countries participating and we got 30,000 people instead of 10 or 15 or 20,000 and it's already midnight in at Sydney Australia and I go 13 hours so
they're going to be up from Midnight to 1: in the afternoon for 4 and we lose 3% of the people so I found that that environment can can work as well because we've learned how to you know when people go to a ball game and they get shown on the screen we know how to keep everybody so engaged but I also get to see them Chris in their home how they live you know I get to see them with their dog and with their kid I watch the sunrise and set while I'm still speaking and
what their level of focus is and where they go and I can call them and say John what are you doing right there I don't know the person's name in a live seminar right the guy jumps up you know and I have these giant screens I built this 50 foot high building with 20 foot high LED screens 67 highest resolution of the world I can see every pimple every move every everything on you so that environment is more powerful to me than just self-directed but some people are self-directed they say screw you I don't need
that [ __ ] and I do it on my own I believe that too so a book or a tape or something is there but I find it accelerates The Experience massively because it's also it's like going to you know a a game and there's a thousand people in the audience or there's you know 50,000 I mean there's emotions are contagious you know somebody yawns oh don't do that you start to yawn right you know or somebody laughs and you start to laugh so I love using that dynamic as an accelerator before we get back
to Tony let me guess you wake up in the morning you brush your teeth you get dressed then you walk out of the door congratulations you've achieved normal but what about being normal plus hydrated which is where element comes in element contains element contains a science backed electrolyte ratio of sodium pottassium and magnesium with no sugar no coloring no artificial ingredients or any other BS it plays a critical role and reducing muscle cramps and fatigue you're going to throw more at me whilst optimizing brain health regulating appetite and curbing Cravings this is why I've used
it every single morning for over three years it's why elements used by everybody from Dr Andrew hubman to Mike is retel and this orange flavor in a cold glass of water is a beautiful sweet salty orangey nectar that I've started my day with for as long as I can remember and I'm going to keep talking about it because I genuinely feel the difference when I'm hydrated versus when I'm not and you should too and they've got a money back guarantee where you don't even need to return the box so it's completely risk-free so you can
buy it and if you don't like it for any reason you just get your money back and you get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box by going to the link in the description below heading to drink element t.com slod wisdom that's drink LM nt.com slod wisdom what does your pre-event ritual look like you talk a lot about energy about energy levels and I'm fascinated by how you get yourself into the space where you can deliver I'm aware that you need to do the conditioning actually need to have the sort
of base level of fitness and stuff like that least yes but uh the priming period in the buildup to going to do one of these things can you take me through what that looks like well um couple days in advance you I'm about to do a sixday program right now for business owners small of the world um I start to I I start to J down my notes of what are some of the things I'm most passionate about beliefs I have right now that are are currently alive in me you know I have 114 companies
now it's pretty wild we do $9 billion in business I have no business background I learned just learn from brilliant people and I learn the patterns you know that make things work so I think what are the most important ones on learning experiencing now that I want to bring I review what I know fundamentally people need to know in those areas then I start reading different articles and start loading myself up with some other entrepreneurs recent thoughts and then and then I'm doing all my physical training of course which is very very intense right so
that I'm ready to go 12 hours a day 13 hours a day on stage and then the morning of I do my priming and then I have um that's the same process that we spoke about before just 10 10 minutes with a little bit of Copeland gathy stuff after yeah all that and then and then what I do is I I get up I have a little mind map of of what you know my outcomes I'm not driven like a script I have certain fundamentals that you you learn to speak and they you speak them
well and you know the impact it's going to have but they're all like deposits in the Bank of your life so that when something comes up you can pull from those but then there's all the things that happen spontaneously that make it fun so I'll lay out what I think the sequence of what I'm going to do is and then you get in the room and you feel people and that all changes but my last thing that I do is quite honestly just a prayer it's like Use Me Lord I make this physical ritual of
I shift my body pretty radically and I go into this state use me and then I get up on stage and and then I have this plan and plan goes out the window you know I often work till 2 in the morning with my team laying out what we're going to do and they all now they all know that's just entertainment but I'll use a lot of it but maybe not in that syntax because I I feel it and also that's makes it art I'd be bored out of my mind it was exactly the same
every single it's this balance between uh control and being in the moment you were saying before about one of the things that people want is this sense of control and if I can plan very effectively in advance if I know all of the different ways that this could go the different permutations and if this happens then I'm going to do that and if that happens then I'm going to do this and then never really happens that way it it doesn't at all and I think that that's it awakens your nervous system I think to prepare
like I could get up there at this point with my pinky and not prepare at all but when people ask my wife what's something about Tony that nobody understands and it's like nobody understands how intensely he prepared CU I absorb and like I read people's forms a thousand of them you know I'm crazy you know because I know I'm not going to remember their name and everything else but I'll remember the pattern and when the pattern shows up with somebody I'll know that pattern is an important pattern for multiple people in the room and I'll
address it in a different way each time but it makes it art when it's different um but you know my wife is a different approach I admire her approach I trust in God after I've done all the work she just trusts in God and gets up and does it I feel if I work my ass off now I've done my part part okay now come through me let's do this and and it tends to flow I love that reframe I've never heard anybody use it before uh I've heard someone say uh life happens to me
or I happen to life but life happens for me yes is not to me yeah is a wonderful reframe yeah really believe it but you got to dig for it it's not it's not easy it's got to be earned right like wishing for confidence without competence is just illusion you have no evidence to say that you can do this thing and uh I know maybe your wife sufficiently naturally talented uh Slash she's being she's channeling something else I'm not sure some combination of the two you mentioned before about some of the challenges from childhood it
seems to me like you have a lot of forgiving to do or overcoming to do from childhood difficult things situations that you've been through how can people learn to better let go of their past in that way I'm aware we've talked about the chip on the shoulder can be a good fuel but it's kind of toxic when used for for a longer term uh a lot of people spend their time in the past ruminating yeah what is a better way to let go of the things that you think were unfair maybe you don't get to
have closure about them maybe you don't get to have that final conversation with that Bully from school or your parent or carer or whatever that didn't treat you in the way that you wanted how would you say people should let go of the past more effectively if you want freedom if you value Freedom you can't possibly have it as long as you play the victim role and even if you were physically victimized and you know my mom I don't look at it that way she she was physically uh intense and you could call abusive I
I prefer not to use that language because that also puts in that place I never even told anybody about that experience until maybe 15 years ago I was now in New York and I was with this group of young African-American and some Hispanic kids all had single mothers all from really troubled backgrounds and I started talking to them about various things and I trying to get across that biography is not Destiny and I was giving different examples of people but I could just see them I could just mind read look at this big tall white
guy and he's wealthy and easy for him right so I told him everything things I never told to anybody and every single one of them was crying their eyes out I was crying too um but then I got them to see that like none of that none of that is makes you who you are none of that controls where you are in your life I was like I If my mom had been the mother I'd hop she'd be I would not be the man I'm proud to be so and she did many beautiful things but
you know if I was a well-fed kid would I be providing 30 billion meals for people would I work this hard to feed feed people that I'll never meet and never know and will never say thank you to me I'm not looking for it no I mean I'd love to believe I do I'm a good person you're a good person but I wouldn't have had that hunger without that so that's where that belief comes from that's like life has been happening for me I I don't know I don't know if you can relate to this
in my bed as you could and maybe your viewers are listening can it's like have you ever had something happen in your life that was horrible I mean it was painful you'd never want to go through it again in a million years you wouldn't want anybody else to go through it that you care about but after five or 10 years you look back and you say I never want to go through it again but now I see the wisdom in it it's like it's like it made me care so much more it made me so
much stronger it made something in me more I mean I'm sure you can relate that can't you yeah for sure I mean the world in which something happens to you when you were younger so for me uh School wasn't that fun quite heavily bullied quite alone quite isolated and at the time you kind of just get through it you don't really realize it's just life right that's just childhood to you the what is water to the fish question and then you grow up a little bit you kind of realize H that that probably wasn't so
good that probably wasn't so healthy and then you learn a little bit more about yourself and you start to realize well look at all of the ways that I've had to compensate for that look at all of the ways that it's held me back look at all of the beliefs that I have about myself and and God I if only if only that hadn't happened then I would be here or I would be there then you realize well the light side of all of that dark stuff is usually the stuff that I'm most proud of
myself for yes so the fact that you were maybe a little bit alone in childhood means that you're very self-sufficient when you're an adult or the fact that you didn't have anybody to support you means that you have no concern about working on your own and continuing to take a bet on yourself so on and so forth so you end up having this really strange Loop where you go from unconscious incompetence in that you've somehow been uh through something that you really hate to this sort of awareness of how it's held you back to this
awareness of How It's propelled you and then you have to get to this really difficult place which is okay so this is a thing that I kind of wish hadn't happened and yet I'm grateful that it did and it's a it's like a you know the idea of quantum superpositions it's like it's like a psychological superposition that you need to hold in your hand at the same time you can't collapse it down into one you need to hold both of these things it's like yeah that's [ __ ] like that shouldn't have happened I'm like
I really wish that that and had you have been able to see you had you at 36 have been able to see you at 12 You' have picked them up and given them a hug and said I believe in you and and you don't deserve this but it needs to happen to you if you're going to become the sort of person I don't hold them separate yep I put them together and when you put them together all you have left is the truth and the truth is it had a higher purpose it was meant to
be now I I don't believe like everything's meant to be I think situations are meant to be and then it's our job to choose how we're going to use them or be used by them right I think that's the difference but I think I don't I don't there's nothing to forgive I know there's nothing like people say this but you have so much to forgive F that forgive there's nothing to forgive I mean it's like if I get to a deeper truth a deeper spiritual truth A Soulful truth it's all like Soul contracts like so
we're all here for something more than ourselves and it's not Until you realize that that you stop the childhood thing of I need to forgive people or I need to you know maybe you want to think about what you want one of the people to you want them to forgive you for you know or you can make an apology because we all screw up we all do stupid things we all do things we're not proud of at different times the secret is do you do something about it or do you just ruminate or beat yourself
up or pretend it isn't there well that balance is really really difficult you between turning pain into motivation and recognizing that it's there so you're not denying that it's there but you're also not wallowing in it but you're also not just using it as the only pain but you're also realizing that you've had to alchemize it transcend and include it in Willian language you know there it's again it's a delicate balance and I think that this is there's a few things in life and the older that I've got the older I've got 36 um the
the more the more I've kind of realized that a lot of a lot of realizations just come along for the ride as a byproduct of getting older and we can do a lot of the things we can read the book we can go to the seminars we can attend the online events and we can expedite some of these realizations but there's some insights that are just hard one by time some some of that's true with I think you're right about that but I also think it can be accelerated by who you spend time with I've
had the great privilege of having some great mentors they're all 18 to 20 years my seniors so you know some I knew when I was you know 20 and they were 40 and now they're 80 and you know 82 83 84 and I'm going to be 65 holding on to the coattails in their we no but I mean because they giving me a a look at the pathway of life you know we're not all the Same by any stretch but there's certain fundamental things you go through I remember some of them were telling me things
you know like when you're 40 you're going to think this reveal this I was like you know read between the L you know you're full of it you know what you're talking about but there were certain things that they turned out to be really true so some of those you experience but then once you've experienced enough of them you don't have to wait to experience everything you can start to project wait a second here there's some real deeper truth here yeah and one of those I think is it's not hard i' I'd invite you to
consider you don't have to hold both the holding both is like the piece of being afraid that if I really enjoy myself I won't have the same level of Drive once you're a [ __ ] achiever you're just G to you're the drive is never going to leave you it's just a matter of now you can do it more elegantly if you choose to agreed you know yeah there's a cumbersomeness to doing it when you grip very tightly and uh yeah this ease and Grace thing uh finding more joy finding more fun uh learning to
let go that's something that I'm really really ESS by at the moment if your energy levels are a little low or if you are not performing in the gym or the bedroom the way that you would like your testosterone levels might be at fault and one of the best ways to naturally increase your testosterone is with tonat Ali and I first heard Dr Andrew human talk about the really impressive effects that tons of research was showing Until you realize that most supplements don't actually contain what they're advertising momentus makes the only NSF certified tonat Al
on the planet that means that it's so rigorously tested that even Olympic athletes can use it and that is why I partnered with them because they make the most carefully tested highest quality supplements on Earth this is a huge part of my brain body and sleep stack which makes a big impact on my cognition and my strength and my recovery and if you're still unsure momentus has got a 30-day money back guarantee so you can buy it and try it for 29 days if you don't love it those give you your money back and they
ship internationally right now you can get 20% off all of their products plus that 30-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to liv.com wisdom using the code modern wisdom a checkout that's l i v m n us.com wisdom and modern wisdom a checkout I'm interested you mentioned there about your um the amount of work that you put in reading these forms the preparation that you do for all of these different events and and you know even with the alchemy that you've done letting go of things from your
past and the way that you've turned it into a version of you that you're incredibly proud of I'm interested in how much peace you have in life whether you would say that you are the how often you're able to access peace with all of the things going on I I I was the most peaceful most happy stage of My Life by far um I look at things in terms of Seasons I remember in early 90s I interviewed I don't know if you've read the fourth turning did you read that book by chance no oh my
gosh please read it I think you'll find it really valuable I was working I was coaching uh President Clinton in those days I also coached grid I was on both sides of the aisle because I'm an independent right so I want to help both sides so I left Lally president and he had this book and um I was reading the it was a big thick book it's uh what's the other one they have it's it's basically 500 years of American history anglo-american history and um and it was written by the same guys who wrote the
fourth turning and I asked him about it and he told me a little bit about the patterns of Generations how the work go fascinating how it shapes history I go to Gingrich who's a historian and the same book is there and so I grabbed the book and then and then the fourth Turney came out a little bit after that it was of those throwaway books you know I to Discount I love those books you know because they're contrarian and I picked it up it wasn't popular and I read it and it it's a book that
basically describes that uh history has patterns and Seasons to it just like everything has Seasons so I look at it this way maybe a simple way to explain it is I I have five kids and five grandkids I have a 50-year-old daughter and I have four year about to be four-year-old daughter in a couple months so I have quite an extreme uh group and I think about my youngest daughter or my grandkids uh even for my kids but most of them are adults now and I think like the world is changing so much you know
nano technology obviously algorithms AI all the things that are coming robotics the change we're at the base of unbelievable transformation we're going to see more change in the next 5 to 10 years than in the history of humanity and that's not an exaggeration well there's going to be a huge number of jobs that are disrupted from that and listen you know 200 years ago 85% of America was a farmer you know now it's 4% and we feed the whole world because of Technology but that happened over a long period of time we're going to see
changes like self-driving cars there's several cities where they're operating right now right Ubers and so forth how long is it going to take before every truck at every taxi will be there well that means every Uber driver every Taxi Driver who's going to who's going to hire a truck driver who can work eight hours a day you got to pay for the healthcare and they complain crash sometimes and crash when you're can to have a 24-hour day that better insurance and you get to depreciate the asset I mean these jobs are going away that's 8
million jobs in America that's as many jobs as we lost in 2008 when the crash was happened so and no one's preparing for it so I'm remember talking to Obama about it it's like you know you this is coming you know he goes well Tony you know I said is anybody got got a plan are we going to educate these people this is going to social disruption right he says well we've talked about you know you know um you know the the payments what's it called Ubi um and I said yeah but the Ubi it'll
never be enough money because once they adjust to it'll be more and Ubi doesn't give anybody meaning it was a fascinating couple of studies that you probably caught that came out in the last six months about that it's really not good the outcomes are really really you could predict that well you don't have to brilliant scientist to figure that right it's like inition would have taught you that yeah but the point is they said what's being done he goes well we think it's going to take a lot longer it'll be fine I it's not so
how do you arm yourself or your kids for a world of such change you have to learn rapidly and so you need three skills you need skill number one to be able to really recognize patterns you're very good at that I'm not throwing you know stuff your way I watched a couple things you're doing and um you do your homework and you you recognize patterns you utilize them you recognize them in yourself as one Mak I respect even more and you use that to improve yourself right but when people are fearful when they have anxiety
it's almost always because they don't recognize the patterns that are happening because if you recognize the patterns things are very predictable what looks like chaos is you just because it's not been a pattern you've seen before like if you look at history as an example he's like this has never happened you know you heard people talk about we've never been this divided as a country in all this stuff it's such [ __ ] and what a civil war what's that there was a civil war yeah there was a civil war but you there's a little
sheet I brought down is it do you have that little sheet can I borrow this I just read you this because I thought it's entertaining I I showed this in an event the other day this is two placers from photograph of them or or reconstruction of them from Thomas from John Adams versus Thomas Jefferson they're running for president right so let's see how divided they were placard this placard says if you elect Thomas Jefferson murder robbery rape incest and adultery will be practiced throughout the land are you prepared to see your dwellings in Flames your
female chassid violated or your children ring on the Pike this is what Adams wrote about Jefferson it makes like Trump's Hitler sound pretty pretty kind you almost John Adams says or excuse me Jefferson says about John Adams in the placard it says JN Adams is busy importing Mistresses from Europe or trying to marry one of his sons to the daughter of King George he's a hideous hermod dial character with neither the force or firmness of a man or nor the gentleness and Sensibility of a woman these are our founding fathers right so it's like you're
so full of [ __ ] like when you say this has never happened before you you it hasn't happened in your lifetime because the cycle if you study a thousand years of Roman history which I've done 500 years of anglo-american History there's patterns that happen about every roughly 20 years and the patterns are predictable so think about this this is why you want to learn this if you can recognize patterns the fear disappears second skill use the pattern when you know what the pattern is and you use it now you have Mastery of something now
you can do better than most people in that area so you know I interview all these people the best investors in the world they're all different but I recognize the patterns that are in common and when I'm done my billionaire clients love it and the average person can learn from it because the patterns are fundamental right you you you if I want to learn the piano in the beginning I have to learn probably somebody else's patterns that have figured it out that's how I learn but if I use those patterns over and over again I'll
eventually get to I can into the third skill which pattern creation now you have an amazing life now you're not manag in your circumstances you're the creator of your life but you have to first recognize them so you're not in fear and then here's an example when did Humanity transform from a fearful place as its primary base where we were hunter gatherers right where literally you had to move from place to place and you didn't know if you're going to eat or survive what changed that to be live in a community and grow a community
a City a state a country one pattern recognition seasons the day that we figured out that if I do the right thing at the wrong time I get nothing but if I plan it this specific time in the spring and if I know I got to protect it during the hot summer I'm going to reap in the fall and if I hang on to some of that I'll make it through the next winter that changed Humanity completely one recognition and most of us don't have that recognition of the season so here's a season for you
and your audience to consider what season are you in right now cuz human life has four seasons if we want to call it that as as an oversimplification 0 to 21 is Springtime what do you know about Springtime is it hard to grow during Springtime things grow automatically in springtime if you start a business in springtime you're going to think you're the business genius no you're just in springtime everybody's optimistic things grow easily goes goes goes it's an overall theme it lasts about 17 to 20 years on average and then we exhaust that emotion it's
like even good emotions get exhausted do you ever smile so much your face hurt right so it's like you need variety so then we go into a different season we go into the summer which tests you it's hard it's more difficult and then if you make it through that time you get to reap and if you make it through that time you get to be tested again so it's always you know we get easy times and tough times why is that important well 0 to 21 is your Springtime some of us had to go work
at seven or eight years old but we're still protected if there's a War you didn't go to war right you someone fed you most of the time you someone you're primarily being being poured into education information so it's a pretty easy time then you go 21 22 to 42 that's your summer that's your testing period And I think that's the period that you're coming to the you know the end of and that testing period by the way all the all the studies show it's the most unhappy time in most people's life because you start out
feeling you're Invincible right you learned all the stuff and you're like you I don't know if I believe all this crap I was taught I'm going to go I'm going to do this myself I'm going to be president United States a multi-billionaire and have a 100 relationship simultaneously and everyone's going to be happy and you believe this [ __ ] right then by the time you're 35 you're like oh [ __ ] man one relationship I have a hard time with and oh my God I got divorced or oh my God I'm not presid and
oh you so you're not so Invincible it humbles you but it also makes you grow cuz that stage of Summer you're basically the soldier of society in fact if we go to war that's who goes to war 22 to 42 a little bit younger you get the frame and then if you're in business you're the soldier but if you're growing in those first two seasons then you're going to enter your power phase and your power phase is basically 43 to 63 and again some people get there at 36 some people get there at some of
time but you get the range and in that range it's like you can do more with your pinky and get it done then I'm sure you've experienced this in your life M too then when I work 22 hours a day not still work 22 hours a day but now I've run 114 companies not two you know and um and I can do 9 billion not 100 million you know it's just it's a different game and so and it's and it's very rewarding and it's when you really enter your power as a person if you worked
hard in the spring and the summer then you reap in the fall if you didn't You Weep in the fall right then eventually I can tell you this CU I'm there now and I never would have believed it so I want to plant the seed the possibility and my friends I'm going to say out there who are also young men I think that's mostly your audience what I can see who are driven and hungry and want to be their best selves and don't want to settle um that stage is the winter time is basically say
63 64 to 84 to 104 to 120 if you have that privilege of living that long the oldest living humans and it's a stage where it is incredibly peaceful if you've done the job in the beginning because you know who you are you're no longer trying to prove it to yourself you're no longer Hanging On To The Duality you described earlier and and you don't give a [ __ ] it's like you know it's like Aristotle said you know how do you not be criticized say nothing do nothing be nothing right and you're like f
that right you know I know who the hell I am and it's like I'd love to serve everybody it's not going to be right for everybody I'm totally fine but you're not trying to prove it all you really want to do a serve so I used to have these giant mission statements change the world all these things and I do all those things but now it's like my mission statement is how can I help you know and I get calls every day of my life somebody's got cancer or tumors or whatever because you know I've
got so much expertise in they because I've interviewed the best on Earth 150 of them or someone comes to me with a business thing or it's something a relationship and or it's an athlete and so along with what I do formally and when all do with my businesses I have all this that's happening and then I have my family and my you know you have friendships that are 40 years old 45 years old people you've done business with for 30 years if you've done it right and you love them and they love you so when
you love at that stage you love you know you love who you're with you love what you get to do you start to actually love yourself a little bit and and when to say love yourself meaning like you're kinder to yourself because it's like you're not in that game of still trying to prove it so if I could magically take that stage and bring it to someone in their 20s I would do so so what I try to do instead is paint them a picture of what the path might look like and that they being
an overachiever could anticipate the next PATH and maybe perhaps spend less time in the struggling phase if they know what's coming anticipation as opposed to reaction in that area Tony you're awesome I appreciate you man where should people go they want to keep up to date with the events that you've got coming up and yes and everything else well there's an event coming up that I do once a year I told you about when Co happened and I created this new way of doing what we do we still do Live Events obviously but once a
year I now do that for free I do it for three days so I'm doing my next one January 30th 30 1st and February 1st it's uh about 3 hours a day so like I said think of it like going to a movie for you know once a day for three days but it's your life and instead of making New Year's resolutions that no one follows through on it's really about creating a path and a plan and some of that transformation we're talking about and it's really powerful so there's no charge it's not partially free
it's free so you can go to time toise uh summit.com time to rum.com get yourself enrolled if you do it at the office you can do it with some friends or at home and it's just I'd love to be able to serve them and see what happens and if they want to know about other seminars and things we're on social media under Tony Robbins or tonyrobbins.com he yeah Tony you're great thank you so much for today M let's do this again soon I look forward to it thank you very much what's happening people thank you
very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that conversation with Tony you love my chat with the one and only Matthew mccon which is available just here hurry up come on
