How to Rewire Your Identity & Stop Sabotaging Your Life | The Rubin Report

So let's get into some of the, some of the real, the Tony Robbins stuff.

The real Tony Robbins stuff.

Well, you've been a huge influence. You've been an influence on me, but you've been influenced on many, many, I've told you privately, many of my family members and helping my brother in law get through back pain and a whole bunch of stuff. But what do you think most people are sort of stuck on first? Like what do you find generally when people come to your shows or when they reach out to you or say hi to you at the mall? What is like the first thing that most people seem to be hung up on before they can start moving forward in life?

I think most people have had dreams and goals in their life and they've had, obviously, as all of us, have plenty of disappointments because, you know, you want to make God laugh, taller your plans. Yeah, exactly. But if the person that persists and keeps going can eventually break through you, like all the studies show that pessimists are much more accurate about their performance than optimists. Much more accurate. But optimists are much more successful because they overvalue. They think they did better than they did, so they're willing to try it again. They believe it'll happen. And that persistence is what makes things work. So I think the thing that stops people, whether it's in their relationship or whether it's their business or their career or their body, is the disappointments of the past. And so what really shows up is fear. You know, the fear of failure, the fear of success, the fear of rejection, the fear of the unknown. There's so many fears, but they all come down to two fears that everybody has. We're all afraid we're not enough in some context. Not rich enough, smart enough, young enough, old enough, wise enough, funny enough, whatever is attractive enough. Especially if we have that fear that we're not enough for someone we really want that love from. And the deepest fear is that if I'm not enough, I won't be loved. And love is the oxygen of life. I know it sounds corny, but you know, if a baby is born and you don't give them physical love, they get what's called failure to thrive syndrome. They actually physically die. Love is our evolutionary advantage. It's what makes us survive. And so I look at most people and most people have so much fear still because of so many disappointments that they're afraid to get their hopes up. Of course, if you don't get your hopes up, if you don't commit to something. If you don't give your all every time because you're afraid of failing, you're not going to follow through. So I think it's fear that stops people in any area, but also what happens is you start to form a limiting identity. And this is the thing I hope that your listeners or viewers will really consider. I believe the strongest force in anybody's personality, in the human personality, is the need to stay consistent with how you've defined yourself. We all have an identity for ourselves. So you'll hear people say something like, is there a difference between somebody who feels depressed and somebody who is clinically depressed? Well, yes. Once you have the title clinically depressed, you can go to one of those people. And do you think clinically depressed people have happy moments? You think they do?

I'm gonna guess not really. They can't be happy.

They have happy moments. But if you catch them when they go, I'm not really happy, it just looks like I'm happy. Yeah. Cause our need to meet that definition. If you don't know who you are, you can't make a decision. It's like when people talk about somebody turning in their 40s and, you know, having this midlife crisis, what there really is, it's an identity crisis. Is this really who I want to be? Is this really who I am? So if I said to you, do you ever smoke cigarettes?

Never. I've smoked, maybe cumulative, one cigarette in my entire life, every puff that I ever took.

Yeah, I was fortunate enough to have a similar pattern as you. But I'll talk to some people that smoke cigarettes and they'll say, no, I've smoked for 10 years and I stopped and I'll never smoke again. If I come to them and say, would you, you know, would you like a cigarette? They don't go, what brand is it? Right. What do they say? They go, I'm not a smoker. I'm not one of those. The way we define ourselves, what we are and what we're not, controls every thought, feeling, emotion and behavior of our life. So it works at all levels. If you. If I set a thermostat in this room at 68 degrees, and that represents your comfort zone, your identity, your comfort zone is not what you want, it's what you're used to. Right. So it could be 68 degrees is what you're used to in terms of intimacy, or 68 degrees is how much financial well being or freedom you're used to, or security. Used to might not be a lot. Might Be a little. It's not your goal. It's what you're used to. Well, once that's your comfort zone, once that's your identity. If the temperature in this room drops from 68 to 65 to 62 to 60, at some point, the heaters kick on. Because the computer says, whoa, whoa, Whoa, you're a 68°ers. You're not a 60°. This is no good. And you feel pressure. The heaters kick on and drive you back up to where you're supposed to be. And most people listening probably have had times where it got so bad, you finally said, not another day, another moment. I'm changing this now. This relationship, this thing on my body, whatever. But what most people don't realize, it happens. They have this side as well. If you're 68 degree and you start doing better than you expect, you get momentum, you start to crush it, you start to go 80 degrees, 90, 98 degrees. Suddenly the computer inside goes, what the hell are you doing? You're not a 98 degree, you're a 68 degree, right? And then the first thing happens. The heaters stop, you lose your drive. And then if that's not enough, the air conditioners kick on to help you sabotage, to get right back down to where you think you deserve to be.

So is it a constant battle, do you think, between those two things, not running too cool and not burning too hot, that even for someone like you, that's sort of a master at this, you have to play within that to some extent.

Well, you have to keep expanding your identity, otherwise you get stuck. When people say they're stuck, it's because they're only using a part of their capacity, a part of their brain. So what I like to look at is how do you expand your identity? You do things that violate your old identity that you know. That's why I do a firewalker. We took people skydiving. It's like, if I get myself to do that thing I once thought was difficult or impossible, my brain goes, then what else can I really do? That seemed to be difficult or impossible for me? I remember when I was 16 years old, just about turn 17, and I had four different fathers. And my mom was a volatile person, great human being. But when she mixed prescription drugs with alcohol, it was pretty painful and disastrous. So I remember she kicked out another one of my fathers. And then she decided one night that Christmas Eve that I was on my father's side, and so she kicked me out. My dad went back to Chicago on his Own. He didn't know. I got kicked out. And she got my 1960 Volkswagen. I did 40 bucks a week. But I was working as a janitor. So I took buses to a place in Pasadena, California, San Marino. And I would work on these two banks in the middle of the night. Still in high school, because I wasn't paid by the hours, paid by results. I could do two bangs. I get paid well, come back home, get up on three or four hours sleep and go to school. Well, I would take buses. Well, one night I finish at 2 in the morning and I go out and I'm waiting for the bus on this main avenue. And you know, it's two in the morning, there's no cars. And I'm waiting and waiting at 2:15 and 2:30. Right around 2:30, somewhere in that range, a car drives by, rolls out of his window, goes, hey, buddy, didn't you know there's a bus strike? And I'm like a bus driver. You've been working hard. I work my guts. I don't have anybody I can call. I don't have anybody can pick me up. Everything. Got stuff. And I'm about 16, 17 miles from home. So I ran. True story, Dave.

Wow.

I ran. But the way I ran was I didn't know what I was doing at the time. I read a book called the Magic of Believing by Claude M. Bristol. This old book, and it talked about how to condition your mind. And it talked about incantations, not affirmations. You go, I'm happy, I'm happy, I'm happy. And your brain goes, B.S. i'm not happy. But where you use your body, your voice, everything, until your whole nervous system believes it and experiences it. So I started doing these really simple ones. First, I was angry. I'm going to show her. It was all about anger with my mom. But you only can run in anger so long. You run out of fear.

How many miles does that?

That probably lasts a mile. And then I started going every day and every wham. Getting stronger and stronger every day and every wham. And I would do these incantations out loud while I was running. I ran 16 miles. I'd never run three miles in my life. I was beat up, as you might imagine, completely had shin splints and everything else. But I found a part of myself that I still use to this day. I found this identity that will not stop, that will find the way, that will push through. And we all have it. But it usually takes something really intense to bring it out. That's why? You know, people don't want problems. I think I always tell people the biggest problem people have is that they think they're not supposed to have any. But problems call forth in us if we don't give up. They cause us to grow. In the end, you've. You've accomplished an enormous number of things in your life. You and I both, many people have. We both have. But it's like what you get will never make you happy.

Yeah.

Who you become will make you very happy or very sad. And that's an identity. And if you can find an identity, and that's what everybody sells on a product, Nike sells. You know, you're an action person. Just do it. Those shoes have nothing to do with it. They're just selling on a feeling and linking it to their product. But when you really do that to yourself, when you really expand your identity, your life changes completely. And what used to be hard to do is easy.

How often do you fall out of that, that flow?

Do I have days where I'm frustrated or pissed off or overwhelmed? Of course. But I don't stay there. I mean, it's. I would stay there for, you know, a month before or weeks before or hours before. Now, like I have a 192nd, 182nd rule. You know, it's like I got three minutes, get my shit together and change that thing. And I've done it so often, it's like a muscle, you know, it's not like I'm so great. It's just you use a muscle over and again, it gets strong. Once it's strong, you know, you tend to use it. So it's not very often it takes. If something really knocks me off my game, I go, ah, a worthy opponent. I finally got a worthy opponent. It's been a long time since something's knocked me off my game.

But is that usually a personal thing for you or is it a professional thing for you? Like what, what sort of hits you harder?

Well, I think for everybody, personal is probably more than professional and it happens. But I'm pretty blessed in that area at this stage. I mean, if I got went back 10, 15, 20 years, it'd be different. But my wife and I have been together 25 years. I mean, I love her more than I could ever describe in words. I love her more today than I first met her. My kids, my family. I mean, that's my dear friends. I have what I call chosen family. People that are my dear, dear friends. And we know some, we have some mutual people that we really care about together. So to me, life is about relationships. The quality of relationships is extraordinary. Your relationship with whatever you believe, the universe, your creator, your relationship with yourself. Your relationship with your loved ones. Your relationship with those that you want to serve, if those are strong. It's pretty hard not to have a great quality of life.