Tony Robbins & Peter Diamandis: Your Life Will Change the Moment You Hear This Story!

Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis discuss how breakthrough thinking works: Robbins breaks down the psychology of state, story, and strategy, while Diamandis explains 10x thinking and prize-driven innovation. Robbins has fed millions through his philanthropy; both stress the power of community and daily rituals like cold plunges and breathing work.
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Well, I'm. Gosh, there's a lot of things I'm involved with. I'm very passionate about feeding people. I think you know my story. When I was 11 years old, we had no money, no food, and soft German gentleman came and fed my family. And he wasn't. He was just a delivery boy, but it changed my life because it made me believe strangers care. And my father didn't respond very well to the situation. He was very angry, and he left our family shortly thereafter. But for me, it left an indefinite mark that people really care. If strangers care about my family, I care about them. And it made me want to do something. So I promised that myself. Some I do well enough to feed other people. So at 17, I fed two families, and then four and then eight and then 100,000, and then a million. And the last seven years, we've been feeding 2 million through the foundation, and I've matched it with 2 million. So 4 million a year. So I fed 42 million people in my life. And then I started working on this book four years ago. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. But I started working on this book, and I interviewed 50 of the smartest financial people on the planet. You know, people like John Paulson hadn't done an interview in 10 years, and I got one of the first ones with him and Ray Dalio and people like that. And these are all people not from the lucky sperm club. These are people that did it on their own. They built it from scratch. No one gave them a break. And I'm getting all these insights, and I'm watching Congress pass these laws where they change the budget and they cut food stamps, and I don't call it food stamps anymore, but that's basically what it is by $8.2 billion, which basically means every person who needs food in this country who's not in the position anybody in this room's in, has to go without food one week a month for 12 months out of the year unless the private sector picks it up, which is their hope. And most of the private sector is really stressed. So I went to Feeding America, and I said, you know, what if I gave you all the profits, this book, all the money I'm getting, all the money I'll ever get, how many people could I feed? And they said, 10 million people. And I said, I'm in. And then I got more excited, and I added a bunch of money to it. So I added it to 50 million people, and then I said, I'll do matching funds to 100 million, which the cool place would go.
Awesome.
Thank you. Awesome.
So let me focus in on three things. One is the X Prize. And Tony has been extraordinarily generous as a philanthropist. And a number of you in the room here who are members of our Innovation Board, thank you. For those of you who are part of that, some of our trustees in the room here and the story there, again, I think you guys all know this is my 9 year old dream in myself was wanting to go into space and giving up on NASA being the way I was going to get to go there, and saying there's got to be some way somewhere somebody can build a spaceship that I can go on too. And organized a $10 million prize. And as my dear friend Dan Sullivan says, I didn't have the $10 million at the time, but had every faith that I would. Just took me six years to find it. And that $10 million prize launched a private spaceflight industry that Richard Branson is now commercializing a number of their teams are doing. But on the heels of that, we said this idea of asking the world, what do you want to solve? What is a problem that should be solved, that you think it's a sin that it's not solved yet. And realizing that there's so much brilliance around the world, that a kid today has more power than the President of the United States did 20 years ago in terms of the computational power, the knowledge they have, and that it used to be only the kings and queens that could solve things in the past, and now it's any of us can solve something. And what we do is we work with the top philanthropists and corporations, in some cases governments, and put up these large prizes. A million or a few million dollars, actually. Christian Cattuccini, who runs Herox a Spin out, does the smaller prizes. We were doing these $10 million, $20 million, $30 million prizes and saying, I don't care where you went to school, whatever you've done before, you solve this and you win. I'll just mention one that we did together. It was Tony Robbins, the DeVos family, and Elon Musk that funded a global Learning X Prize. 250 million kids around the world, nearly 700 million women around the world, can't read, write or do arithmetic. And we put up a prize that said if you can build an app that can take a child where there's nothing, no schools, no adults, nothing, and take that child from illiteracy to basic reading, writing and numeracy, in 18 months, you win 600 teams entered that competition, we're down to 200 delivering software. They'll be in Tanzania in about 14 months. And with that, and actually John Raymond's also one of our sponsors in that will be that winning software will be open source to the world so that every device becomes a teacher. So that's xprize really excited about that. We're really focused on mapping the ocean floors. Thank you. With my dear friend Eric Anderson in the back here, co founded Planetary Resources. And the concept here is that we think of things as scarce on Earth and certain things are the beautiful lands that we have and we shouldn't rape and pillage them, but we live in a solar system filled with resources. And the concept here of Planetary Resources is we are using the Most advanced technology, 3D printed spacecraft, AI on board sensors that have never flown in orbit before to go out to prospect near Earth asteroids which are rich in fuels, platinum group metals, construction materials. And those same spacecraft, when pointed down towards the Earth we've just discovered and we're really excited about this, can actually map and predict the yield of every acre of cropland on planet Earth and really help us feed the planet much more efficiently. So we just launched our first spacecraft. Next one goes up in the first quarter. The last one, which is sort of like, I think relevant to all of us is the idea that we can all live 30 or 40 more healthy years in our life. And to Dan's point earlier about living to 95, but not 95, living to 195, whatever it might be, we're at a moment in time where we have to realize the software that runs our body, our genome, what happens to you isn't happenstance. It isn't like, oh my God, I happen to come down with that. Your destiny is in your genes. It's also in the environment, all these kinds of things. And this is one of Tony's, one of our investors. We created a company called Human Longevity. Craig Venter, who sequenced the first human genome, and Bob Hurry and I founded it together. And it's built the world's largest genome sequencing facility on the planet. We've sequenced more human genomes than the rest of the world combined with. And not just the genome, your microbiome, a full body MRI, 2300 chemicals in your bloodstream, the most massive data set about you. We mine that data to actually help you understand what is going on. It's the most complete information data set in the world. And we've also just a few of you in the audience here, I know, are Benefiting from this in our health. Nucleus. We're now actually sequencing cancers to help, you know, what drug specifically works for you and your cancer and not just for everybody who happens to have that generic cancer. So that's a big one. I think that's something that's going to impact all of us is, you know, making 100 years old and you 60. Right. You'll get younger. That's it.
Awesome.
What are the biggest trade offs that both of you consider maybe negative in order to do what it is you do? Because you're both, I mean, incredibly driven, what I would consider insane schedules, but at the same time, you're making massive contributions to humanity. So what are the trade offs that you would consider? Like, you know, we work our asses off, we do a lot of stuff, but this is what we had to sacrifice in order to do it. If you think of it that way.
I think if you think of it as a sacrifice, then you're going to build frustration or resentment. I really don't. If you think it's a sacrifice, you shouldn't do it. I think the challenge is that most people have this illusion about life, work, balance. And I think that's, you know, if you're gonna accomplish it, People are laughing as you know it. Right? What's true is life, work, integration. So I was just in 21 countries or 7 countries, 21 days. But who's with me is my family, who's with me is my friends, And I've done well enough to have a plane and bedrooms and all that kind of cool stuff makes it. But when I didn't, we still, we huffed it together. And beginning days, it was coach and dragging ourselves around. But I thought it was great for my kids to have schooling, but I thought an education was more valuable and traveling the earth was a part of that. But, you know, we're in the middle of this crazy schedule. But it's not work. It's a mission. When it's work, it's that. I always ask people, I said, how would you describe what you do? And people always say, is it work? Is it career, or is it mission? And most people, of course, say it's work. And that's exactly what it is. It's heavy. If it's, you know, if it's your career, it gives you something more. But your mission, it doesn't wear you out. It brings energy to you. It's fulfilling. And if you can tie your mission in with the people that you love, it's pretty cool. You know, there's Some people in this room that are my friends, I see Dean here in the front row here and it's like we're all on this mission and we find time to connect and be with each other and have a blast with each other, but we're sharing about things that matter. I'm not a person to go to a party and like, you know, go in the corner and chit chat. It's like you want to talk about something deep, let's rock. You don't let me go home and be with my family, you know, let me go do something fun, some of that nature. If you can combine your mission with your family, combine your mission with some of your friends, then you're going to accomplish a million times more. But if you think it's a sacrifice, don't do it. Because then all you're doing is you're going to have resentment later on or frustration later on and you really aren't contributing because you're trading off, you're not giving. Great, great.
I think I'm a nine year old kid. Those of you who know me know I am a 9 year old child and my body pinching myself every day that I get to do the shit that I get to do it is extraordinary. I could not, would not want to be doing anything else. I mean there's hard work and it's, and it's like I push myself more anybody else. But I love it, I love it, I love it. I cannot imagine doing anything else. And that's the challenge, right? The question is a lot of people are doing something to get to something else and that's just wrong.
I agree.
And it's matter of don't do because your parents told you, because you heard on an infomercial, because whatever. Do what is your highest calling in life and love it. And so I don't work at all. I really don't work. You know, Dan has told me to get rid of it and so I get rid of it.
Well, you know, I mean this, this room is filled with some very high achievers. And obviously what I wanted to derive from you guys is just some insights, some how to some what it is you do to just give them, you know, perspective and stuff. And I carefully chose some questions and this one is you're both masters at achieving what most people consider impossible. And I mean really like what you guys do, most people consider absolutely impossible. So when something is considered quote unquote impossible, how do you reframe it so it becomes possible in your mind? And how much of that is mindset.
I think impossible is not a fact, it's an opinion. When someone tells me it's impossible, I always just look at them. Anybody around me knows that they can't do that. That's part of it. But if they didn't know me, it's your opinion. And they'll say, no, science shows. And I say, yeah, how many times has science showed something's impossible? Now science shows it's possible. Things are impossible until somebody does it. And so I find that, you know, most of your business people, you look at businesses and what does it take to make a business grow? It's not impossible make a business grow. Business has been shrinking for a long time or it's been stuck. The real problem is always the chokehold, is always the psychology and the skills of the leader. Always. And 80% of that is psychology and 20% is the mechanics. Like if you don't know how to read your financials and you're trying to fly the plane of your company, I mean, come on, you know, if all you do is go down, you look at profit loss and you see what it is and you have a beer, either way, you either celebrate or you get the rest. You know something, you know you're going to be in trouble, right? But if you have the skill sets, that's one thing. But you can get any skill set if you have the psychology. And anytime a business is not growing, it is not because it's impossible. It's because they aren't innovating. And they're not innovating because they're believing it's impossible. I mean, if we all know, what does it take to transform? Obviously help people. It takes three things to create a breakthrough in anything. In your personal life, in your business, anywhere, you need a strategy. But that's not the first place you should look. And it's the first place all of us look. Me too. It's our inherent thing. You want to lose weight? Well, how do I do it? I want to grow my business. How do I do it? It's instinctive. We've been trained to think that way. But the problem is the how to is usually not that complex. I mean, come on, 70% of America is what, 75% of America now is overweight. Is that because it's so complex? How to be fit and strong? Only the 1% know the answer as they hide it from you. You have to work your ass off to not hear what it takes. Right? And so, you know, I remember I went to this. I went to a Ted Med Center. And I watched about 12 doctors, one after another, get up and do these stories about how we could just get patients to take their medications and try to figure out the whole thing. And I was just looking and going. You're all talking about strategy and you've forgotten psychology because strategy is wonderful. I'm a strategist in my whole life figuring out strategies. As we both know, a strategy could save you a decade and business strategy could save you. It could make an interesting success and failure. But most people have strategies available or they could get them, or you could create them. But the problem is you got a story. And your story is why it isn't working. And the story is, I've tried what? Everything. If you tried everything, you'd be fit, right? If you tried everything, you'd be profitable. If you tried everything, you'd be there. But people say it, you know, I'm big boned. That's what I used to say. I'm still big boned, but I'm 38 pounds lighter than I was 25 years ago and I've never gained it back. Right when I was big boned, that was my story. All the good ones are gone. That's why I'm not in a relationship or they're gay and I'm not, or I'm gay and they are, or whatever the story is. There's always a story. And what I tell people is, you know, if you can just divorce the story of your limitation and marry the truth of your unlimited capacity, then the whole game changes. But it's hard to do that because when you're in your story, you don't even realize it. So you need a third piece for breakthrough. And that's really what my life's about, which is changing people's states. Because in a different state, we're different people, you know. Can mean people be nice? Yes or no? Yes or no? Of course they are. When they're in a nice state. Can nice people be mean? Sure, they get a mean state. So really learning to train yourself to be in an ideal state where the best of you comes out for yourself, for your family, for your mission, for your world, for your co workers. To me, that's one of the most important decisions in life to make. You ask me out of all the people I've met, all things I've seen, you know, what creates a magnificent life? You know, everybody has goals and dreams that are different. Some people want, you know, picket fence, some want to make a billion dollars. Some, you know, want to have this huge breakthrough in technology, some people want to write view of poetry. Whatever is right for people is what I want them for themselves. I don't want them to be like me or you or anybody else. I want them to have their dream. But to have it, you need two skills. You need, number one, to have the science of a chance achievement. It's a science. You have to know how to take your vision and make it real. And most of the people in this room have already figured that out, and this guy sure as hell has. And you have, and I have. So most of us know and we can all refine our skills in that area. But we know how to take what we dream about, make it real. And if you don't, you can learn from somebody who does. You know, simplest thing is get crazily hungry for something. We all know when you get so hungry, so desirous, your brain starts coming up with answers. And then it's massive action but effective execution, which is all modeling, which is, I assume, what this is about. Find the best example, compress the time, Let someone else take 20 years to figure it out. You do it in two weeks or two months or whatever the period is. We should all be standing on the shoulders of the people around us instead of reinventing the wheel. And then there's this thing called grace. You work your ass off, you're totally focused. You're trying to serve something larger than yourself, and you really are executing what works. You need a little grace. Might want to call it luck if you prefer, God, the universe. But it's there and we can all achieve. But I think the more important skill, if you ask me, is to have an extraordinary life, is the art of fulfillment. And it's an art. It's not a science. Because there's a science to making money. I don't care who you are, if you do certain things, you're gonna have too much financial stress. You do other things, you're gonna have an abundance. There's a science. There's a science to your body. Everyone here is biochemically different. Different genome, but there are certain fundamental patterns that if you and I follow them, you're going to have tons of energy going to feel good if you break them, you're going to pay the price and have low energy or disease. But fulfillment is an art. What's going to fulfill you is different than the other person next to you. You're not going to learn that from anybody else. And you got to find it. Because success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. And I Get those phone calls all the time for the multi billionaire entrepreneur or politician or business person or person just won their Academy Award and they're depressed and they can't tell anybody because they got all their goals, but they're not fulfilled because they really don't have that sense of meaning in their life. They went for something and they got it. They achieved. And if you doubt this, what I'm saying is relevant to you or us or anyone, just think about, about a year, what a month ago, we lost what I consider to be a national treasure, Robin Williams. How many of you loved Robin Williams? Look around the room. Keep your hands up.
Look.
And most of you didn't know him. Almost every. And then, where are you going in the world? People love Robin Williams, by the way, was he great at achievement? Oh, my God, that guy. He said he wanted to become a great comedian. He did that. I want to make the world laugh. He did it. I want to make my own TV show. He did it. I want to have the number one TV show. He did it. I want to make movies. He did it. I want an Academy Award for not being funny. Not his skill set, drama. And he did it. I want a beautiful family. And he did it. And then he hung himself. Make everybody happy but yourself. Not a good plan. So if I had a gift to give you, it would be maybe make a different decision. And decision is that no matter what happens in your life, you're gonna live in a beautiful state. A beautiful state. And that could be happy, that could be grateful, that could be being generous. Those are all beautiful state, aren't they? It could be curious, it could be fun, it could be playful. You're not limited to one state, but it's different than suffering and most people suffering and all suffering I've ever seen, I've traveled 100 countries, I've dealt with presidents of countries and you know, presidents of businesses, CEOs. I've dealt with people in prison, I've dealt with, you name it, average people. Suffering always comes because you're obsessed about something related to you. You can only be depressed if you're focusing on yourself. Say, no, I'm depressed because it's my kids and they're not doing well. No, you're depressed because you feel you failed your kids. It's about you. It's about how you think what you should have done or shouldn't have done or what someone did to you or didn't do to you in the past or the future, which don't even exist. So I have A simple goal. My goal is help people make a decision that says, I don't know what's going to happen. You might get a divorce, even though you don't think so. You might find a member of your family with cancer. You might have your house get burned down or have a tornado go by. And if you live in the same place, it happens every two years, and you move back, we should talk. But some people seem to do that for some reason. You can't control those things. I can't control those things. I don't want those to happen to you or anybody I love or anybody who's even a stranger to me. But they're going to happen. True, not positive things, just the truth. So if that's going to happen, I say, make a decision now that says, I'm going to live in a beautiful state and I'm going to find beauty in whatever life brings me. Because life is too short not to. I see a little buddy over here named Sean. I remember when I got a phone call from the Make a Wish Foundation. So you have a young man that's about to die, and he wants to meet you. And he came to the seminar, and then I took him out afterwards. And at the time, if he coughed too much, they said, you can't grab him. I said, I want to take him across the fire. I said, take him across the fire. So if he coughs, he breaks the rib. I said, I'll be really gentle. We're going to do this thing. And he did it. And afterwards, I sat down and I said, man, I don't have the answers. But if your body is. You're just coughing and it's going to make you break a rib, your body is so acid. I said, you should get alcohol and let me put you together with a doctor. How many years ago is that? You're 19. You're now 36. I like seeing you here. So, brother, give him a hand. He's a beautiful man. But Sean. What made me think of Sean is Sean lives in a beautiful state. He could be bitching and complaining and whining. What does he do? His whole life is not about himself. That's why he's so happy. He doesn't live in himself. He lives outside himself, serving things he loves. He still takes care of himself. And he's funny. He likes to seduce women and things. Like, I can't talk about right now, but, oh, you're married now. Okay, well, good. I'm glad of here. It's about fricking time. All right. John, good to see you grew up. Now, the bottom line is this young man over here who now is at a different stage of life. He's always been with us. I think he lived because he lived for more than himself. I'm sure he felt pain. But we only suffer when we think about what's being done to us or what people are going to think or what they should have done or hadn't done. And you can't control that stuff anyway. I mean, what. Why be pissed when people are going to do that? Are people going to be mean? Yes or no? Are people going to be unfair and unjust? Yes or no? Are people going to be beautiful and generous? Yes or no? You just never know when that's going to happen. So might as well enjoy yourself along the way. And I suggest today, if you want, if there's any gift I came by to give you, it's to tell you what you know already, but get you to make a decision about it. To actually decide. I'm going to live in a beautiful state. That doesn't mean I don't get angry or tired or, you know, suffering arises and you end it. The moment you go, I'm thinking about me. If I do this, I'll always be suffering. The human mind is always looking for what's wrong. The human brain is not designed to make you happy. It's designed to make you survive. Happiness. That's your job. And you only get it if you draw a line in the sand. That's how it's going to be. And I can tell you, the few people that do it, I know a few people that have done it. They have magnificent lives. And when you're in a beautiful state, the best ideas come in. This man lives in a beautiful state. Every time I talk to him, I love seeing Peter. Peter's just always on fire about something. But notice, you know, he's doing unbelievably well. There's nothing wrong with that. But almost everything he's doing is about more than himself. And so that's why he feels so alive. He's not suffering an ounce. He's in ecstasy. He's not lucky. He's living life a certain way. It's a beautiful way. I'm honored to have you as a friend.
Thank you, brother.
How many met this man before? And he was in a wonderful state. Let me show a show of hands. I don't think I've ever seen him, not in a wonderful state. I've seen him have some painful, challenging places, but he doesn't stay there and look at what he's able to create because of it. He is a nine year old boy who's on fire. He's on fire. To light the world on fire with what's possible, it's a beautiful thing. I honor you.
So the contribution I'll make. Thank you, Tony. And I think it was about impossible in mindset and so forth. Is the reality is there is very little that's impossible, period. It just is. And your mindset, as soon as you say something is impossible, then you shut down every possibility for solving it. And we all know this. And the challenge is that it's really hard not to be in that state because we get thrown stuff all the time. And what I want to share with you is, is an experiment, which is to say, okay, not only how do I make it, not how do I make it possible, but how do I actually go 10 times bigger? And you've heard me speak about this, you know, moonshot thinking, bold thinking, whatever the case, whatever terminology you want to give it. And most of us in our life are trying to make a 10% improvement. And we know this, this is, I'm trying to increase my revenues by 10%. I'm trying to increase my, reduce my sales by 10%. 10% more. Of the lands out there, whatever it truly is, we all have this sort of beaten into us by life and by the rest of the universe that you can make these small incremental improvements. But the fact of the matter is that there are those in the world that go 10 times bigger and every one of us can be that. And as soon as you say I want to not only solve this thing, but go 10 times bigger in my work, in the things I, and can I say this in something that you're truly passionate about, not just about earning a little bit more money. I mean, it really should be in something that you care truly about that is bigger than yourself, that is impacting the world. As soon as you try and go 10 times bigger, three magical things happen. Number one, even if you have no idea how to solve it, no idea how to get there, you'll be amazed at what you come up with. And what's interesting is our legacy, our past anchors us to where we are today. And you have to let go of that. You truly have to let go of all the stuff in your past, what you thought you'd done, all of the infrastructure that you've built to let yourself go. When Elon Musk built Tesla, the reason Tesla was such an amazingly better car is he didn't have 100 years of Detroit to hold onto. He started with a clean sheet of paper and imagine what could be. The second thing is when you try and go 10 times bigger versus 10% bigger, it's 100 times the value proposition and it's never 100 times more expensive or 100 times harder. And so you get this increased capability. And then the third thing is when you try and go, you know, 10 times bigger to solve a problem 10 times bigger, you've got to reinvent stuff. You have to actually go and figure out, okay, I have no idea how I'm going to solve that, but you're going to start to reinvent things. So when Eric and I were working on asteroid mining, we had to reinvent. We had to have so much computational power onboard the spacecraft, we had to come up with brand new sensors and hyperspectral and mid wave IR that didn't exist, had never been licensed because these spacecraft were going to be operating at 200 million miles away. And that forced us to come up with new kinds of capabilities that were not currently possible. And you'll be amazed what those capabilities that you create in your business, in your life, enable you to do. And so there's this massive benefit, this payoff, this dividend that comes from expanding your mind and not being anchored to the past. And so I think that there are very few things that are truly impossible. I think that impossible is a state of mind. And I'll say one other thing. The people in your life are part of that anchoring. So how do you anchor yourself with a new set of people? I'm looking at my dear friend Naveen Jain here with whom we've opened up XPRIZE India and are really working on solving women's and girls issues in India and providing abundant drinking water in India. I mean, so how do you surround yourself with amazing people who live in the state of anything is possible? I'm blessed at xprize, at Singularity University, at HLI and pri. I live that constantly. And so how do you do that? Where are you doing that? What is your nothing is impossible community Here? It is truly here. And so that's really critically important because once you get into that mindset, then you start freeing yourself from that other that you tell yourself and people tell you. Because we are living in a world where constant amazing miracles happen. The other thing, because I'll put my commercial into this. Stop watching the news. Stop watching the news. You could not pay me enough to have the Crisis News Network or the constantly Negative news network, whatever you call cnn pollute my mind, really. I have social networks, I have Google filters and so forth. I was just telling Arianna about this and hopefully she'll do this. I want, on the front page of Huffington Post, I said, I want a slider where I can control the percentage of positive news stories, Right? How would you like that? Instead of because right now it's.
Because.
Right now it's, it's, you know, it's 10 to 1 negative to positive. It's true. It's like, why would you possibly invest in the world and in the life and all these things if the world is falling apart? If, you know, if the crisis. New network is like showing you airplane accident. If airplane accident, airplane accident. What problem is that? The news networks never tell you there was no school shooting today at this school. Or this airplane actually flew LA to New York and actually made it and everybody survived. That's not news. And so we get this disproportionate view. And so our minds are constantly. The mindset you have when you watch the negative news is awful. Not that it's not going on. It's not that there's this amazing hardship and lives that are on the precipice of, of hunger and death around the world. But the world is getting better at an extraordinary rate and you can make a difference in it. And there is no problem. There is no problem we cannot solve. Period. End of statement.
Awesome. All right, so since both of you are two of the greatest achievers and biggest thinkers, at least that I know in the history of humanity, well, honest to God, you know what? No, in a very serious way. You know, it's funny, I can't imagine there will ever be another Tony Robbins. You are a freaking freak of nature.
That's true.
A force of nature. And I mean one of the most amazing things, like when I went to Date with Destiny, he'll ask how many of you came here, you're thinking about committing suicide. And literally, I don't know, anywhere from 6 to 12 or whatever. I don't know the amount. Stand up and you literally take that shit on. I don't know, another human being that could. I mean, it's mind boggling and you flip it. You take a person in a horrible, hopeless state and they're coming to your seminar maybe as a last ditch effort, but there's that hope and you just channel it. But then you share that with freaking thousands of people live on the spot. I mean, and that's just one of like hundreds of things that you do.
That are mind boggling. Everybody in the audience thinking there's no way, there's no way he can do this, there's no way you can solve. How can you possibly. And then boom, it's done. You do is truly a blessing to have you on the planet.
It's a blessing.
I mean, like, were you born this way? It's a stupid question, but like I'm saying it for other people like you built yourself to be. TONY ROBBINS PUBLISHER GENE SEQUEL.
I was a kid from Azusa who had no certainty who we had no food and had to be in charge because my mother was a little crazy. And I promised myself that my future family would never go through this. And so I decided I hated suffering because I experienced it and I wanted ended. So I read 700 books in the area of human development, psychology and physiology. When I was still 17, 18, 19, 20 to 21, 22 years old, I was saying I was going to read a book a day. I didn't do that. But I'm still immersed. I went to every event, I listened to everything, I got immersed. But when it comes to people, you know, I've been doing now I've been doing this for, you know, 38 years and I've been with 50 million people, so, and 100 countries, so there's nothing I haven't seen at this point. When somebody stands up, so it's beautiful. It happens different every time it comes through me. And I really believe in grace, I really believe it's there. But I prepare at a level that most people never dream of. And I also know that there's whatever human beings feel, we are not our feelings, we are not our patterns. Those are things we might identify with, but we're not that. And so when I see a pattern and it doesn't work, I don't think the person's broken. I don't think anybody's broken. I'm not here to fix people, but I am here to break up the patterns that don't work. And I've never lost a suicide. Knock on wood and you know, thousands for 38 years. And we follow up to years later, three years later, they're making a documentary right now.
So how do you both deal with or think about or even channel like extreme levels of stress, adversity, criticism, public opinion or failure? Because both of you have had things that just flat out didn't work. But you're quite, you're public figures and how do you handle it or deal with it or think about it?
I really Let go of criticism really fast. I actually, I might, you know, sort of process it in the moment to try and figure out is there something that I truly can learn from there valid. But I let go of it really fast. And so if I'm in a, you know, a fight, a personal fight or whatever, it's like, is so. Time is so precious. Time is so precious. Failure. God, I've had a wonderful series of failures. And, you know, I built a launch vehicle company that we won this huge contract and couldn't finance it and had to close it down. I built a multitude of companies. You know, luckily, you know, a third have been great, a third have been okay, and a third have been life lessons. But it's. I have to believe that what I'm doing in my heart of hearts is. Is the right thing to do. And if I'm doing the very best I can, and I believe it is something, because when I take a dollar from somebody as a donation or as an investment, I. And those of you who are in the room here who have supported me or invested in me know that it's like, it's me. It's like, you got my cell phone number. And I care. And I am so, so committed to making, you know, to delivering. I would do anything, everything I possibly can. So I need to know that for myself. And I can sleep at night if something fails, but I know I gave it everything I possibly could. And there are also those times where shit is hitting, you know, it's like nose dive. And I will stop everything else I'm doing, and I will go laser, like, on that 100%, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and I will do everything humanly possible. And it takes that a lot of times. It absolutely takes that a lot of times. So, I mean, that's for me.
Awesome. Thank you. I would say, you know, I love to light people up. Since I was a little kid, I love to light people up. And so early on, I was. Want to make everybody happy all the time. And then I, you know, I come in this package. I was 5:1, and then next thing I know, I'm 6, 7. I grew 10 inches in a year because I had a tumor in my brain and I didn't even know it. And I grew. So I'm big and so, and I'm, you know, quiet and understanding. I have a hard time expressing my true feelings. So it makes it difficult for people to understand what I'm really like. No, I'm fairly loud and intense. And what happened for Me in the beginning is I was trying to make everybody happy all the time. And then I just began to realize, now everybody wants to be happy. And gradually I began to realize opinions are a dime a dozen, but impact is all that matters to me. So, you know, when you've had the impact and you don't need anybody else to tell you, and you don't need somebody else to acknowledge you, put, put stars in your chart. When you do what's right, you know it. And no one can take that from you. They can take away anything you have, but they can't take away who you become. And you become something unique. When you find a way to grow and you find a way to give. And when you do that consistently, it creates an extraordinary life. So I'd like to say that I, you know, I don't want people to hate me or dislike me, but it wouldn't be accurate to say I don't care, but I don't care enough to change what I'm doing. What I'm doing is valuable. And I think that as far as failure is concerned, oh my God, there's so many failures. But I just don't hold it that way. And it's not a technique or being positive, just being intelligent. You know, failure is education. If you use it, I mean, if you learn something, it's not a failure. If you don't learn anything, then it's failure. But if you learn something, I mean, how many of you in this room have had something happen in your life that was horrific? You hated it, you'd never want to go through it again. You never want something you care about to go through it. But looking back on it five times, 10 years later, you say, I'm so glad I went through that because it made me so much stronger or so much smarter or made me care so much more. Who can relate? I'm curious, right? So if that's true, then, you know, why not adopt the philosophy that life is not happening to me, it's happening for me and everything's happening for me, even what I thought was failure. And now my job is to figure out where's the benefit and use it, use it for greater good. So I could probably list unlimited failures, but I would be insincere because I don't really look good as I'm this failure. And that's not because I'm positive. It's just because I work my ass up to figure out what can I learn from that, how can I use that? And I'd like to make People happy. But I've also learned in business, like, I fire customers, I don't need them. It's a privilege to do business with us because we will more than deliver times 10. And so I teach my team, and it's so rare we have to do it anymore. But, you know, you fire a customer and you say, listen, we're not going to be able to meet your needs, clearly, because there are other people out there that no matter what you do, they're going to be unhappy. Yes or no. But why are you doing business with them and taking the life energy of your organization from it? I get rid of them so fast, and then they always want back in. And I never let them back. Never. And then they become a public hanging. And other people go, well, this is how you play here. Because in the world of the Internet, we've lost any form of kindness. People say things that are the most harsh, horrific thing that people. Right. And all it is is people who feel insignificant, who would never have the guts to say something to your face. But we've created an environment where it's tolerated. And so I think reversing that is really important. You have to define your environment, your business, your world, your family. Because we all get what we tolerate. And I won't tolerate it. I'll give my soul to a stranger, but I won't tolerate somebody being abusive to any member of my team or to people in my audience or to me, certainly not to my family. And you get what you tolerate. You got to decide. And you also get what you tolerate in yourself. And I think if you can look at what you're tolerating yourself and say, I'm not going to tolerate that anymore myself, then it's easier to lead other people. If you're just telling other people you won't tolerate, they'll look at you and go, yeah, you don't tolerate, but look how you are. You don't have to be perfect, but people see how. You don't have to know who I am. You don't have to watch my lips move. You can see how my feet have moved 38 years. That's Tony Robbins, right? That's probably the best signature you can give. That's the brand that you put out there. It's the way you live.
The thing you said, the line, which I love, life is not happening to me. It's happening for me. Is that like, you know, I mean, is part of that a trick you plan yourself? Or do you truly believe everything you have? You are able to take that as is ingredients of this is all happening for me, this most horrible, most horrendous thing, from diseases to suffering. I mean, that's an important line. And I'd like to.
It's not just a line. There's a woman that I just saw that I met 15 years ago, and she just showed up at my seminar and she was suicidal because one of her daughters had gotten sick. And she brought her to the hospital and the doctor said she'd find. She brought her home and the child died and she was going to kill herself. And she had three other kids. So I really, truly had to work with her. And I remember working with her back then. I looked it up because we have all the stuff I've ever done on film. And I asked her, I said, what are your spiritual beliefs? And she said, I believe everything happens for a reason. All that stuff. I said, so you're going to abandon what you believe spiritually because life didn't turn out the way you want right now? She said, no, no, no. I said, if it's the truth, it will be the truth when it's painful, it'll be the truth when it's pleasurable. So I would lie to you to say, oh, I jump up and go, oh, this is happening for me right now. I don't do that. I think, what the hell's happening? Why? And then I catch myself and I go, there's some good in this. And my core belief, my real core belief, underneath that is everything I've ever been able to help people with is because I faced some portion of it if I, you know, I have to face a divorce. I decided I need to go through a divorce, and I didn't want to. No one tells you to pick your partner after 14 years. It was the most horrific thing in the world. But I thought, if I can figure out how to do this elegantly, intelligently, lovingly, no matter what the other party's like, then I can help anybody else. If I, you know, I've had several businesses over the decades that were, you know, near the verge of bankruptcy. I had a resort in Fiji, and there's a coup, you know, it's kind of. Kind of inconvenient, you know, and I'm losing a million dollars a month, you know, and it's like. And I didn't have a million dollars a month to be losing at that time, because I wanted to create this great place for people. But it's like in the midst of all those elements, you know, I'd come back and Say, if I can figure this out, I can help any other business. So almost all my skills have come because of some thing I had to solve in me or help someone else solve. And my view is if I can figure it out for me, I can help millions of people. And so that makes the problem inspiring as opposed to the problem being, why did it happen to me? Because we're all going to experience problems. I mean, the only thing that we all have in common is everyone here is going to experience severe pain. I don't care how rich you are, money is not going to create immunity to pain. Suffering can get immunity from, from the decision I told you about. But we're all going to have problems. We're all going to have challenges. The only difference is what the hell are you going to do with them? And if we just deal with our own problems, they get really boring. And some people need problems to have drama in their life to cover the fact they're not doing anything. But I think it's much more interesting to solve it and move on and help other people do the same. Because you've actually done done it, not because you talk about it. Yeah.
Gotcha. What I love is Robin Sharma, who we did a call with. He's in the room. He's. He has his thing, the 5am Club. A guy named Hal Elrod wrote a book of miracle morning. You do priming in the morning. I'd love to hear what you guys feel are your best rituals or what it is that that you are doing that just massively impacts you to be as effective as both of you are. If there's something simple or something that you just do that makes your life work, starting be it a morning ritual or just anything that people here could do.
Watching cartoons with my kids at 7am Count.
No, that may be accurate.
I mean, it's. For me, it's anchored in my desiring to make the impossible stuff I set out happen. Right. It's anchored in this infinity challenge. I'm never bored. These problems I've taken on with an amazing group of people are all sort of infinite and there's no getting there. So for me, they're my guiding stars. So it's like, okay, what am I going to do right now to move these game forward this day? You know, I wish I could say I was a great meditator or yoga person or so forth and that will come, but not right now. For me, it's just, it's dedication to the child inside me and what I care deeply about, which is Making this, making these succeed. And ultimately it's. It's trying to be clear about what I'm enjoying doing, right? It's surfing. The stuff I love versus this is work. I'm probably not good at this work. Who else can I find that can do it and doing the stuff that I truly love better and doing more of that. I mean, there's nothing sophisticated there. Tony, what do you got?
I think anyone who succeeds has something that they aspire to. There's a mission, there's a direction, there is a desire, and they bring it up regularly. And you do that even though you say you don't do it in a sophisticated way. Attacking the human genome and figuring out how to get meteors to feed you. What you need is a fairly large vision, somewhat sophisticated. Mine's really simple mind simples. I believe that the body is the place that drives the mind the fastest. You can go inside your head all day long trying to resolve things and make excuses or freak out. But I learned early on in my life that in order to make myself do things, I had to trigger this body to feel strength and to know that when I say something, I mean it. And so I have a simple ritual that's actually enjoyable. May not sound enjoyable. It is now, which is. I get up every morning and I'm pretty. Have multiple homes. So if I'm in those homes, one of the homes, I have a river. The rest of them, I have cold plunges, and I go into a 56 degree temperature just for about 60 seconds. I jump straight in. Or I was just in Sun Valley, the river is 38 degrees, a little bit cooler. And I took my nephew and said, you're about to learn how to start your day. And I bring all my friends, when they come, they all have to do this. But every cell, every nerve in your body explodes. And it's phenomenal for your limb system, phenomenal for your health. But it also is just a simple discipline that says I say it, it happens. I'm gonna say, I'm gonna do this. I do it, and I've done it so much, it's there and it's invigorating. And then I do, as you said, something I call priming. I don't, you know, you wake up and you're, you know, 22 hours off your normal time zone, and you've got to get up and take care of 10,000 people for three days and nights for 14 is 15 hours. You don't always wake up feeling, wow, is this the coolest thing in the world, somebody wake up and go, what universe is my body in? You know? And so I do my physical ritual, but then I also do this priming. And priming for me is just. I don't hope that I'm going to show up at my best, I create a state for it. Most of you know, probably the principle of priming, you know, you can. They've proven it in so many scientific studies. We all think we make our decisions consciously, when much of our decision making that we think is conscious is being made by contextual, environmental manipulation that we're not even thinking about. One study, they took some people and they hired actors that would go to 100 people and they'd walk up to you and they were trained to do the exact same look, same expression. And they'd say, would you hold this? They hand you a coffee cup and they reach in their pocket, grab their phone, put them back, say thank you very much. They just kind of assume the action. And they would do it the same way, same facial expression. 100 people one way, 100 people other. And what was the only difference? Cold iced coffee versus hot coffee. An hour later they come back with some people, different people, who've got little caps on. They're saying, listen, we'll give you $10 if you'll give us two minutes. If you'd read this three paragraph story and give us two question answers. And they read this little story, everyone reads the same story. And at the end they ask them, how would you describe the main character? What are they like as a person? 80% of the people that got warm coffee said they're warm, they're generous, they're lucky, loving. But warm is always one of the language patterns. 80%, like clockwork, people got the iced coffee, same story, say that they're very cold, that they had. They were using language like being obsessed or being about themselves. Selfish things of this nature. I give you dozens of examples. So what I do each morning is I do a breathing pattern. It's an explosive breathing pattern I learned in India. Breathing your breath in and exploding it out, you know, from the gut, out, out the nose. And I do that. Three sets of 10, pause. Three sets of 10, pause. Three sets of 10. So it alters my state. And I just do three things for 10 minutes because I have this deal with myself. If you don't have 10 minutes for yourself, you don't have a life. Who's with me on this? So I said, you know what? I don't need to have 20 minute, 30 minute, 40 minute meditations. I want 10 minutes. And I don't know, I need to meditate. I don't know if I'm going to meditate, to not think. I don't know too many people can do that. And I don't even know that I want to not forget, can think. So I thought what I want to do is I want to focus on the emotions that will cause me to be the better me. And the two emotions that most people are messed up by are anger and fear. And when you're grateful, you can't be angry. Try to be grateful and angry simultaneously. It'll never work. And you can't be fearful when you're grateful. So when I look at people, almost always they're reacting out of fear or they're reacting out of anger. It's some version of those two. So gratitude to me is the antidote. So I spend three minutes, just three minutes, and I think of three things I'm grateful for. Three people, three situations. But I step into it. I don't remember the roller coaster over there riding it. I put myself in the front seat going over the edge. So I feel the moment and I make sure one of the three things I'm grateful for is something really simple like the wind on my face or something beautiful like my child's smile. And the reason I do that is because I remember know interviewing some of the astronauts, Buzz Aldrin and these guys. And most of you probably know, you can imagine, you know, to be an astronaut. This man knows, I mean, to aspire to do that and then go through the thousands of people and be picked and then to actually go to the moon and stand on the moon and look back and see that picture we've all seen, that blue, green Earth. I mean, you imagine and then you come home and what happens? There's a ticker tape parade and you shake the President's hand. And now what the hell do you. You're 32. What the hell do you do for the rest of your life? And you know what? If you know the story of many of these astronauts, most of them had some major emotional challenges, right? Some abused alcohol, some drugs, and they had a real rough time because they forgot to find adventure and a smile. They thought the only way to go to the moon. So I trained myself to make sure not just the big beautiful things that are part of my life, but the little things. And so I feel that for three minutes. Then I do three minutes of a blessing, horny as it may sound. I imagine life, God, energy coming into My body, healing every muscle, every nerve in my body. Strengthening everything. Strengthen, strengthening the best of me. My passion, my love, my generosity, my creativity, my humor, my love. And then I see any problem that needs to be solved just being solved. Because otherwise I tend to think I got to do it all. And then once I feel that fully and that energy comes through me and back through me multiple times, then I do a circle of my intimate family, my kids, my wife, my friends. This little character over here is one of my list. And I just circle out, all the way out to my clients and I send that same energy to them. And I imagine, as corny as it sounds, they're being healed, they're getting what they need. Energy wise, they're having the life that they deserve and seeing it multiplied. So I do that for three minutes and the last three minutes are my three to thrive. I think of three specific outcomes that, that matter to me and I don't think about achieving them. I see feel and experience them as done and I see the impact that it has. I see people's lives touched, I see the joy. I feel it as done and I feel grateful. And it's 10 minutes, but honestly, it usually goes 15 or 20 because I'm having a damn good time. But by having a 10 minute walk, there's no excuse not to do it. And I do it every day and I don't hope I'm going to feel good. And then what happens is you're primed. You literally, you see things through a different set of filters. You make decisions with the filters and also think of it. Most people are wired for stress. They're wired for frustration. They're wired for feeling lonely. And they, you know, they got a highway to pissed off and they've got dirt roads to happiness. So I decided I'm going to wire myself for happiness. I wasn't born that way. I had, my view is I have to change the whole earth to be happy today. That's different for me. Now I can just wake up and be happy because I've wired myself in a different way neurologically. And then I show other people how to do this as well.
You guys are awesome. I really, really appreciate you both coming to this and taking it. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Thank you guys. Thank you.
Awesome.
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