The Formula For Freedom, Confidence & Happiness - Tony Robbins (4K)

It feels a little bit like a curse, I think, of 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, 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 occur, obviously. But I think it's 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. Someone can tell you 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 a piece of crap and you're never going to become anything. And there's a part of 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. As long as you're in your own head, the, 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 it's something, your job, your career, whether it's a mission you have, that's something you wanna bring to the world. Old 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 bullshit self-esteem shit just goes out the window. I mean, it's just, when I hear it, it's just so mamby-pamby 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 of that is life on your terms. Like what's my idea? It might be different than yours completely. Some people it's 3 beautiful children, the white picket fence. Some people it's building a multi-billion business, somebody else that'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, I remember I could just, was walking by and I saw, as I was walking here, a picture that reminded me of something, which was years ago I was in Atlanta, Georgia. I was in my early 20s, like 23, 24, 25, and I was doing a seminar. And in those days there weren't 15, 20,000 people. It was 125 people. I remember, 'cause it was the biggest seminar I'd done. I thought it was so exciting. And I gave my heart 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 into everybody's eyes. I gave everybody a flower. I mean, it was just— I look back now, it 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, Bruce Springsteen, he was the biggest star in the world in those days. I loved him. And he's 4 blocks from you. He's at, you know, the Atlanta Stadium there where the Hawks play. You got just finish early and come over and, and you gotta take it in. It was Christmas time. He said, it's gonna be incredible. I said, I'd love to come, but I said, I just can't do that. That's if, 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 it was, almost 11 o'clock at night. But you know, Bruce usually does, especially at Christmas, he's like 3 encores. And so my buddy calls me and says, get your butt over here. He's doing a second an encore. I think he might even do 3 if you get here. Get over here, see the end. So I sprinted the 4 or 5 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, it was just the, the drive and the energy was incredible. The crowd was so engaged and he was doing Christmas songs and the ends was, you know, Born to Run, you know, and I'm like, I'm so into it. And about 3/4 way through the song, I got depressed. I'm like, what the hell? And what it was was I was like, shit, what I'm doing doesn't matter. This guy's got 15,000 people here. I got 125 for 3 days. I mean, I'm not making any difference at all. And I was like, and I literally was, we were walking out and people were going around. I was pissy inside myself, you know, like, but I was feeling so great before this, but now I'm making this comparison. And of course you're never fair. You're comparing to somebody 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 what was ironic though, the reason I tell you this story is it was like 4 years later and there I am in that stadium and I'm not doing this crappy little 2.5-hour concert, right? I'm doing 12 hours and the crowd's going crazy. And I just like, I know, I was 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 impact that you want to have, nor do you have the excitement that you really want to have. So I look at it, 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, this interesting tension between balancing ambition and gratitude. Yes. And, 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 don't want to give, I don't let up because that's the only fuel that I know.

Yeah. Well, you know, 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 4 fathers growing up. It's a 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 kicked my fourth father out of the house. She's a 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 of 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 tend to 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 Rohn, used to have this phrase. He used to say, 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 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 wanna help. You just wanna do things. And so now you, it's the difference between what I would call push motivation and pull, right? Push is I'm gonna 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 wanna serve, something that you're, you've got an obsession for to create or to do or make happen. And that doesn't, 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 my God, you know, if I don't keep doing this. And I used to believe that too. It's like I got to be so intense every moment. And then my wife's been a huge help in that also, you know. You know, 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 because 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 my life has, you know, the joy and the achievement.

I think that's 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. 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. What I'm trying to do is feel good in the moment. 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. Exactly. 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 struggle with.

That's true. It's an art. It's chemistry, right? And you, you don't get it right to the beginning and, you know, it takes time and you have to have the intention to want both. I remember when I met my trainer Billy years ago, he's one of my dearest friends and he's brilliant. And he said, what do you really want outta your training? He goes, 'Cause what I find is I don't, you know, I don't know why you even need me.' He goes, you know, no one needs to push you. I gotta push you back. I gotta stop you from going that hard. He goes, 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. Suppress my oxygen. I do— you saw what I do. It's just ridiculous. I'm a biohacker, right? I have to be. I got to get 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 3-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 don't want to give up any of that. I need that power in me to be able to produce. But I said, I wanna have fun. And 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 racquetball. I said, maybe for the aerobic instead of just running, maybe we'd, you know, do something that's fun to do. And he goes, that's great. Let's do it. So we called around, no racquetball courts anywhere, but squash. Do you play squash? Yep. Yeah. So you can appreciate squash is awesome and it's more strategic and hell of a lot better exercise than, you know, racquetball is. So I got into playing squash and it was like, wow, it added a whole nother dimension. And then that led to, you know, You know, at this stage, if I go someplace and I'm gonna be kind, which I wanna 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. You know, it's like I just had—

I imagine there's a racquetball court somewhere near us or a squash court, right?

Squash court. Yeah. Brilliant. So it was like, you know, I came here and said, listen, we're gonna build this. But it's just like, so I, I built this whole place for fun. I mean, if you came here, I, you probably came by slide, I assume.

I, yeah, I, my first delivery to a podcast by via slide and gravity.

Yes. Great. So when we come to build this place, you know, the, I said, you know, I, the guy's 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 intercoastal's here. You're below the water table. I said, well, have you ever been to Scripps Oceanography? You know, you ever been to, you know, you know, the Atlantis Hotel? I said, yeah. I said, that's what we're going to do. He's like, oh, it can't be done. You'll see. 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 the 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 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. I used to live on the hill in Del Mar, California, almost never went to the beach except when friends came and want to take them there. When you live on the 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 that 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 wasted energy out, and 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, or it feels like, you know, COVID 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 gonna meet some new friends. You're gonna find some new mentors. You're gonna, you know, you're gonna battle with internal things within you and external things. But if you keep going, you're gonna eventually slay your dragons and you come out the hero of your own life and you have something to share that isn't bullshit. It's not something you read somewhere. It's something you've lived.

Something you want.

And everybody can feel you've lived it cuz it's a different level 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. It, you know, just never ends, but it's a, 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 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've justified to yourself and if you've built up this habit, this 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 wanna do it in my personal life. It's like, well, you don't, you, you've developed this pattern. Yes. 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. Like, she's so, she's so wonderful. Think about all of the things. It's like, she fucking left the makeup's out on the counter again and she didn't clean up to such and such. So just dig into that 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 to realize wherever focus goes, energy flows. It's corny, but it's true, right? In fact, maybe an easier way of saying it is 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're— 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. You know, you gotta look at the impact of what you're believing and you gotta look at and say, you know, where's my focus going? There's, I can always be upset about something. I could always find something to be joyous or at least grateful for, which leads to joy. And I think it's having that learning to discipline your disappointments, you know, not allow them to grow and to move on and to use whatever life has given you. But to me, it's like, I think there's. 3 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. And I learned these really because I had an experience when I was 11 years old. I had, I was with my fourth father 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 peanut butter, right? But when everybody else around you is having a big Thanksgiving dinner, it was pretty depressing. And my mom and dad were saying things to each other that once you say them, you can't take them back. And I have a younger brother, 5 years younger, and a younger sister, 7 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 just 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's somebody at the door for you. And he's yelling at my mom through the closed door that she slammed on him. 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 had 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, before 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 madder. And then he said, 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 thing. 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. It's just like, now I got fear running through my body cuz 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 was 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 suffer because your ego. And the veins on my father's side of his neck were like this. He's beet 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 the 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 trying to figure out 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. And so I submit it to your viewers as well. These are the 3 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're focusing on the next question you're going to ask. You're going to be focusing on how you're 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 on. And so the bottom line is, I know my father and I had a different experience because we had different focuses that I was focused on 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 does 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 and every day you're pissed off and angry, your life's quality is called pissed off and angry. If you got 3 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, if 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 angry, you're going to make a different decision than if you're playful or generous or whatever the case may be. So those 3 decisions control our lives. But so your viewers or listeners, I 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, 2 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 to play. All right. 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 on? 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 lack.

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 gonna use, or if I don't use it, it's gonna 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.

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That's functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. 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?

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 gonna say you strive, it's part of your philosophy, right? To focus on what you can control. Right? So that's 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 15,000, 20,000 people ask that question. And the 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, or the case may be. So they have a different belief structure. If you have both 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, and there's many more than these, but just quickie 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, 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?

Hmm. I guess most people just not the present, perhaps dreams for the future. For me, I would say mostly in the future as well.

Yeah. And that's where most achievers live. Me too. 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 nephew or your niece or your grandson, granddaughter, or your son or daughter, and you give 'em a gift, let's say of a Playing a video game, you give them a new video game for Christmas or their birthday. What's the first thing they do? Oh, look, 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, boom, boom, boom. 3 shots. Boom, boom. They're, they're going great. So some part of you finally 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. And so you go and you go boom, boom, boom, and you're dead in 4 seconds, right? The kid goes, not bad. Not bad for the first time, right? And then they take the 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 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 in the future and be excited about it. You can— most people's 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 you can use it as a reference. To me, maybe for you, I don't know, I might project, you've probably come a long way in your life is my guess. From Love Island to Modern Wisdom. That's quite a journey. I'll tell you, tell me about that.

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 typical trajectory from Love Island to this podcast.

Yeah, yeah. Difficult. So there's been some growth in your psychology and your spirit and 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. Ideal fuel is a combination of the two. Present that gives you that centered grounding and anticipation for the future. The ability to bounce back and forth is the ideal for people. So I'll give you an example to wrap this up. Do you know anybody who has, I ask this when I have an audience, you know, giant audience, how many of you will say know somebody who takes antidepressants and they're still depressed? Yes. Yes. 90% of the room will raise their hand. How's that possible? Because first of all, 2 years ago they did the meta studies on the COVID of Newsweek and it said SSRIs do not work.

Sugar pills work as well as SSRIs. Dancing, dancing to music was more effective by some huge margin.

Yeah. You, you read the study. Yeah. We're still giving 'em 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 focused, getting 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? Because all that drug does is numb you. 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 a deep delusion. I went to Mexico recently. You and I were talking off the air and I discovered I couldn't even fully control my bowels. It's not something I wanna 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 make those 3 decisions, we're in control of our life and all the anxiety and bullshit 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 saw my book. Yeah, it triggered me. It was Life Force. And person was really into it and he said, hey, what do 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. And of course he goes, of course he's totally rich. So I mean, I mean, it's easy when you're rich, right? And my buddy turns to him and he says, 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, there's a guy in the street and he gave him $10 and told me that the time to give is when you don't have it. And he said, and I've 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 $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 because You know, 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, 5 bucks. Philanthropy can be 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 5 people who you don't know their coffee, you get a biochemical change that has a lot more lasting impact than most things you could purchase for yourself, including large purchases. So it's like it's intelligent selfishness is the truth. You can't possibly do good and not feel good. I mean, you want some self-esteem, do something worthwhile beyond just yourself.

The reflective glow of doing something for everybody else is— yeah, it's an odd— it kind of makes it difficult to be selfless when you actually think in that way. Like, the most selfish thing you can do is to be selfless. There is truly nothing that is particularly selfless. That's right. In that way. Yeah, just dig in a little more for me. I mean, 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 that an awful lot of people get stuck. So 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, yeah, you know, there, when you think about framing, I look at framing as 3, I call pre-framing, reframing, and de-framing. Most people are familiar with the 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 and they have this negative frame and you're going to reframe them. That's a lot harder than pre-framing. Pre-framing is, well, I'll tell you a sample story, make it simple. Pre-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 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 I had a couple cars to choose from, and I chose this little Corvette I had in those days. Wind in my hair, I'm gonna have fun. I drive, I fly to 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 going to 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 incorrect about things. The last minute I traded out that car. That's right, my wife needed the car, so I traded out for, uh, the BMW 750iL. 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, you know, on the speakerphone. And all of a sudden I see these lights are coming really fast and really fast. And so then they get so fast, I was like, oh my God, is this guy gonna brake? And before I could finish thinking the thought, at 65 miles an hour, the guy hits 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 all I remember is waking up and the fire people extracting me out of the other side of the car. And they're like, you want to take me to the hospital? And I was like, no, I'll see my chiropractor in the morning. And then I woke up next morning, I couldn't move. It was pretty rough. But the reason I tell you this story is eventually I got well and I needed to go buy another car. Well, I never had the criteria before of safety, but that car, oh, well, everybody told me that car saved your life.

That car, Literally, if it 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 tarmac.

Exactly right. So why did 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 750iL, but let me get a sports car to replace that Corvette. You know, I want something that's dirty and so forth. So the guy took me, whatever it was, 325is, whatever they were called in those days. I forget what it was, you know, stick shift. And he said, you know, he got me in the car and he said, now before we go out, I want to tell you, I'm going to I said, take you on this winding road. It's amazing. And you know, this is the ultimate driving machine. He said, it's not like your 750iL. Your 750iL, 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 it, 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 because we're going to go through a construction area that's all beat up, right? So we're going to the construction area and then 750, I wouldn't have felt anything, right? Just boom, smoother. But it was, and it's bouncing I'm messing around. And even though I know what he just did, my brain's like, oh yeah, it is really digging in. Right? You know, if he had tried to tell me after I'd done that, I would've thought, that's a piece of crap car because he pre-framed me. So I pre-frame myself and the way I do it, 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, they did a study at Harvard where they took took 4 actors, 2 men, 2 women. They had them rehearse doing the exact same presentation. And you'd be in a mall or a coffee shop or something, and they'd walk up to you and they had a coffee in their hand and they go, could you hold this for me for a second? And then they look down. They don't wait for you to say yes. And 98% of people take the coffee and they take out their phone, do 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 by 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. We're under a tight timeline. Would you give us one minute of your time for, for $20? You just read these 3 paragraphs of the story and answer these 2 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 them? Well, interestingly, the people that are given hot coffee, 81% said the person was warm and genuine. The people given iced coffee said the person was cold and uncaring. And it's the exact same story, the exact same ratios, 81% versus 80%. Just give you an idea. 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 the 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. I don't, I don't know anybody good at not having any thoughts. But I thought I want to prime myself. That's my goal. So I do a breathing pattern like a, you know, breath of fire type of thing to change my physiology for just 2 minutes, and then I do 3 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 prime myself so whatever comes into this world, I have the best chance of handling it really well. And I'm training my nervous system. What's the emotion I want to train? Gratitude. Why? We all know the 2 emotions that destroy your relationship, your business, your life, it's fear and anger. Those are 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've ever been on a roller coaster and I ask you what it's like, some people remembered it over there. No, I remember it like I'm in the front seat going over the edge because then you get the authentic chemical 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 3 minutes and it's kind of like a blessing or a prayer for the people around me, for the people I love. I start close, I send it out there. And there's been a lot of studies, I'm sure you've read, that Dalai Lama 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 3 minutes I call 3 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 peace 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.

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That's nomadic.com/modernwisdom. 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. I think that life happens for us, not to us, but it's our job to figure it out. A lot of times it feels like something's happening to me. So I'll give you an example. It's like not being fed as a child, you know, I've fed, well, 10 years ago, I decided— I'd been feeding people my whole life since I was 17. 2 people, 4, 8. I built up a couple million people a year. My foundation fed 2 million. I fed 2 million. And then I was writing this book, Money Master the Game, and I'm interviewing Ray Dalio and Carl Icahn and Warren Buffett and, you know, all these multi-billionaires. And Congress had just cut 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 have 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've done in my whole life in a year, 50 million? And what if I did, what if I did 100 million a year? What if I did 100 million a year for 10 years and did a billion meals? And I did it in 8 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 Ukraine, most people don't realize it's the breadbasket for Africa. So there's about 11 nations that are on the verge of famine. You'll never hear about it in the news. No one cares. And then you need fertilizer. 50% of the world's supply, world food supply comes from fertilizer. The WF doesn't want you to use it because of the environment, but you need it and it's in Russia and it's been cut off. So I talked to Dr., to Governor David Beasley, who's the head of the World Food Program. Brilliant guy, actually. And MBS put us together one day. He said, you two are feeding the most people I know. I wanna 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 on 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, what would it be? 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 gonna get blessed by doing these things. I'm sure I can find 99 other people somewhere in the world to do this. And when I went to do it, I, I was shocked cuz I had pre-framed myself this to be easy, right? And I went to somebody without mentioning names who's a brilliant philanthropist and a beautiful man who's helped me when I did my billion meals. And, and he said, well, Tony, how much is that gonna cost? I said, well, it cost me about $100 million over 10 years. You know, you're doing a, you're doing 100 million meals a year for 10 years. And this guy's worth about $20 billion. And he said to me, that's beyond my pay grade. And so I had to kind of reevaluate. But because I kept pre-framing myself, this is a must, this is not a should, it's not a reframing job. 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 2 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. Deframing. Deframing 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 my privilege to serve people, but I also believe it's their privilege to be able to learn. That'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 to want to serve you too. And I made a change in one of my events, it was like 20 years ago, And, and one thing 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 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. I'm going to make this even more useful. So I did. And there's 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 a money-back guarantee on everything. So I give her money back and say, we want to give you 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 there. My staff couldn't believe it, right? Because he deframed her. You took away the frame of reference. You destroyed it, right? I said, no, no, no, you don't understand. She goes, 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 going to start? You have to let me in this program, right? I said, if you want to get up, 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 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 my lesson to everybody on my team. And I try to teach it to business owners. Like, not everybody's your customer. I'm not the right person for everybody. I don't, 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 preframe, reframe, and deframe as frames of 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/priming. There's no charge for it and there's a video.

I'll guide you through it if you wanna 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 deframing thing. So somebody had come up and there'd been some sort of an issue, I think with the way that one of the members of staff had given them clothes that they were trying on. Something had occurred, but the customer was completely at fault. It was all them. And they came over to the supervisor and they said, this is a problem and this is, I need to speak to the manager. And the manager immediately one-upped and said, tell me exactly who did this. I'm gonna 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. Yeah. And that's all it really is, right? Changing the frame is breaking the pattern. Correct. 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, the Matthew principle of to those who have more, more will be given. To those who have less, more will be taken. That's true. And, uh, yet 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, I think it's 15 million people total. 'Cause 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, in-person, 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, I would— I think anything can be done, anything can be done by self-directed learning. Personally, I just think it accelerates when you create an environment where it 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 I want to say you have to have the head and heart connected, right? It's like, why don't people transform? Because 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. 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 have, you know, championships in all these sports. You know, I want 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, jumping 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 there's swish and the crowd goes crazy. And people look at that and go, he's unbelievable. He is, he's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. He's the greatest 3-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, 7 days a week for more than 15 years. His 15-year professional career, he's been doing it since before he was in college. His dad really trained him. So think about 3,500 shots a week, 168,000 shots in a year, 2.52 million shots in his 15-year, you know, NBA career. So he could make 3,600 shots, not even 1/10 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 high school and college, they don't speak it 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 4 months later. There is zero question you're going to be speaking 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. You can be able 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 COVID 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 Newsom's office in California. I'm about to do a program in San Jose, San Francisco for 14,000 people. And his office calls and says, we're really sorry, you can put 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 Vegas, after moving 14,000 people to go there, they shut down Vegas. So I'm like, screw it, we're going to Texas, their own country. The governor says he won't melt, he's not going to bend. You know, I got a friend in Houston that 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. We'll, we'll 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 without necessity, which was like, I need to reach people where they are right now because 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 going to, I'm going to do a seminar where there's no money involved because what's in the way? Money, travel, because most of the people you fly to another country to see me and that kind of thing. And, and even time, I wanna give them immersion, but not enough that it's overwhelming to them. And so I, I set up this program. We're gonna do 3 days, 3.5 hours, 3 hours each day, kinda 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 600,000. And then the next, so last year was almost 1.5 million people. And I'm doing one again this year and I'm super excited about it. It's one of the reasons I wanted to do your podcast. I want to get the word out because I know 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. There's no charge for it. It's not partially free. It's totally free. But the stories and the examples that come out of it when people get an environment like that, I'll give you an example of just fun one, 'cause I saw him the other day. It's a gentleman named Matt who never would've made it to one of my seminars. Why? He's in bed. He weighs over 700 pounds. He's on oxygen. He can't leave the bed, 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 the one thing I ask for is I don't ask for money, but I ask you to do an assignment each night and put it on Facebook. Book. 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 because 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 gonna do. I said, you're gonna sit down, you look for the timeline. But I said, if you can get this done in the next 4 months where you can get outta 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 pounds. 325 was the 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 could go celebrate and everything else. Himself. 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 AM, let's say, in Florida here to do, let's say, a 4-day seminar that I'm going to do. And we got 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 Sydney, Australia, and I go 13 hours. So they're going to be up from midnight to one in the afternoon for 4 days, and we lose 3% of the people. So I found that that environment can work as well because we've learned how to, you know, when people go to a ballgame 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, 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, 0.67, highest resolution in the world. I could 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 shit. 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 game and there's 1,000 people in the audience or there's, you know, 50,000. I mean, 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.

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Well, a couple days in advance, you know, I'm about to do a 6-day program right now for business owners from all over the world. I start to, I start to jot down my notes of what are some of the things that I'm most passionate about, beliefs I have right now that 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 learned from brilliant people and I learned the patterns, you know, that make things work. So I think what are the most important ones I'm 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—

That's the same process that we spoke about before, just 10 minutes with a little bit of Copeland, Jay Spathy stuff after.

Yeah, all that. And then what I do is I get up, I have a little mind map of what, you know, my outcomes. I'm not driven like a script. I have certain fundamentals that you learn to speak and you speak them well and you know the impact it's gonna 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 gonna 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 made 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 then I have this plan and the plan goes out the window. I often work till 2 in the morning with my team laying out what we're gonna 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 cuz I feel it. And also that's makes it art.

I'd be bored outta my mind if it was exactly the same every single time. 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 that never really happens that way. It doesn't at all.

And I think that that's what 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 prepares because 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. But, you know, my wife is a different approach. I admire her approach. I trust in God. 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, 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, to me. Yeah, is a wonderful reframe.

Yeah, I really believe it, but you got to dig for it.

It's not, it's not easy. It's going to be end, right? Wishing for confidence without competence is just delusion. You have no evidence to say that you can do this thing. And I don't know, maybe your wife's sufficiently naturally talented, slash she's channeling something else. 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 a longer term. 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 their 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 intense and you could call it abusive. 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'm 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 them everything, things I never told anybody. And every single one of them was crying their eyes out. I was crying too. To. 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, if my mom had been the mother I'd hope 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 few 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 just, I don't know. I don't know if you can relate to this. My bet is you could. Maybe your viewers or listeners can. It's like, have you ever had something happen in your life that was horrible? I mean, it was painful. Awful. 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 5 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. I'm glad. 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 to that, can't you?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, the world in which something happens to you when you're 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 and you kind of realize, huh, 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 God, if only that hadn't happened, and then I would be here or I would be there. And 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. 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 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 like a, you know, the idea of quantum superpositions. It's like a psychological superposition that you need to hold in your head at the same time. You can't slaps it down into one. You need to hold both of these things. It's like, yeah, that's fucked. 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'd have picked them up and given them a hug and said, I believe in you and you don't deserve this, but it needs to happen to you if you're going to become the sort of person you are.

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. Bruce, it was meant to be. Now, 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. There's nothing to forgive. I mean, it's like if I get to a deeper truth, a deeper spiritual truth, a soulful truth, with. 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 Wilberian language. You know, this, 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 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 books, 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 won by time.

Some 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 senior. So, you know, some I knew when I was, you know, 20 and they were 40, and now they're 80, and then, you know, 82, 83, 84, and I'm going to be 65.

Holding on to the coattails in their way.

I'm— no, but I mean, because they giving me 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 would tell me things, you know, like, when you're 40, you're going to think this or feel this. I was like, you know, read between the lines. Shut up. You know, you're full of it. You know what you're talking about. But there were certain things that 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'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 fucking achiever you're just gonna—

you're—

the drive is never gonna 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 cumbersome-ness to doing it when you grip very tightly. And, uh, yeah, this ease and grace thing, uh, finding more joy, finding more fun, learning to let go, that's something I'm really, really obsessed 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. One of the best ways to naturally increase your testosterone neuron is with Tongkat Ali. And I first heard Dr. Andrew Huberman 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. Momentous makes the only NSF-certified Tongkat Ali on the planet. And 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, Momentous 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, they'll just 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 livemomentous.com/modernwisdom and using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's livemomentous.com/modernwisdom. And modern wisdom. Them. A checkout. I'm interested, you mentioned there about the amount of work that you put in reading these forms, the preparation that you do for all of these different events. And 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, 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 Gingrich. I was on both sides of the aisle cuz I'm an independent, right? So I wanna help both sides. So I left literally the president and he had this book and I was reading the, it was a big thick book. It's, what's the other one they have? It's basically 500 years of American history, Anglo-American history. And it was written by the same guys that wrote The Fourth Turning. And I asked him about it and he told me a little bit about the patterns of generations and how they work. It was fascinating how it shapes history. I go to Gingrich, who was a historian, and the same book is there. And so I grabbed the book and then And then The Fourth Turning came out a little bit after that. It was one of those throwaway books, you know, at a discount. And 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's a book that basically describes that 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 have 5 kids and 5 grandkids. I have a 50-year-old daughter and a 4-year-old, about to be 4-year-old daughter in a couple So I have quite an extreme group. And I think about my youngest daughter or my grandkids, and even for my kids, but most of them are adults now. And I think like the world is changing so much, you know, nanotechnology, 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna take before every truck and every taxi will be there? Well, that means every Uber driver, every taxi driver, who's gonna hire a truck driver who can work 8 hours a day 8 hours a day. You got to pay for the healthcare and they complain and crash sometimes and crash. Well, you're gonna 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 happening. So, and no one's preparing for it. So I remember talking to Obama about it. It's like, you know, you know, this is coming, you know, he goes, well, Tony, you know, I said, is anybody got a plan? Are we gonna educate these people? This is gonna be social disruption, right? He says, well, we've talked about, you know, you know, you know, the payments, what's it called, UBI. And I said, yeah, but the UBI, it'll never be enough money 'cause once they adjust to it, it'll be more. And UBI doesn't give anybody meaning.

Like— There's a fascinating couple of studies that you probably caught that came out in the last 6 months about that. It's really not good. No, no, it's not good. The outcomes are really, really negative.

Well, you could predict that. You don't have to be a brilliant scientist to figure that, right?

Just like, how about—

human intuition would have taught you that. Yeah. But the point is, I said, what's being done? He goes, well, we think it's going to take a lot longer. It'll be fine. I mean, 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 3 skills. You need skill number 1, 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. There's one thing 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, it's like this has never happened. You know, you hear people talk about we've never been this divided as a country and all this stuff.

It's such bullshit.

And what is the Civil War?

What's that? There was a civil war.

Yeah, there was a civil war, but there's a little sheet I brought down. Is it, do you have that little sheet? Can I borrow this? I'll just read you this because I thought it's entertaining. I showed this in an event the other day. This is two placards from a photograph of them 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 chastity violated, or your children writhing on the pike? This is what Adams wrote about Jefferson. It makes like Trump's Hitler sound pretty, pretty kind, you know. Most— John Adams says— or excuse me, Jefferson says about John Adams in the placard, it says John Adams is busy importing mistresses from Europe or trying to marry one of his sons to the daughter of King George. George. He's a hideous hermaphroditic character with neither the force or firmness of a man nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman. These are our founding fathers, right? So it's like, you're so full of shit. Like, when you say this has never happened before, you— it hasn't happened in your lifetime because the cycle— if you study 1,000 years of Roman history, which I've done, 500 years of Anglo-American history, there's patterns that happen about every roughly 20 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 where I can do the third skill, which is pattern creation. Now you have an amazing life. Now you're not managing 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. 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 able to 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 plant at 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 right now. Because human life has 4 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. Did 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 7 or 8 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 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 this stuff and you're like, you know, I don't know if I believe all this crap I was taught. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna do this myself. I'm gonna be president of the United States, a multi-billionaire, and have 100 relationships simultaneously and everyone's gonna be happy. And you believe this shit, right? Then by the time you're 35, you're like, oh shit, man, one relationship I'm a hard time with. And oh my God, I got divorced. Or oh my God, Oh my God, I'm not present. And oh yeah, so you're not so invincible. It humbles you, but it also makes you grow because 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 other time, but you get the range. And in that range, it's like you can do more with your pinky and get it done than— I'm sure you've experienced this in your lifeline too— then when I work 22 hours a day. Now I still work 22 hours a day, but now I run 114 companies, not 2, 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 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 because 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 wintertime 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 you don't give a shit. 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 gonna be right for everybody. I'm totally fine. But you're not trying to prove it. All you really want to do is 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 there because I've interviewed the best on earth, 150 of them. Or someone comes to me with a business thing or something, a relationship, and, or it's an athlete. And so along with what I do for