How to Take Control of Your Mind And Overcome Depression

You look at people today, there's quiet quitting and loud quitting. Stanford did a really cool study, one on depression, which if you want, I can share with you. It's really interesting. But the one they just did, they just finished one-year study on working with people that they put into my program for a 6-day program. And what concerned them is in our world today, since COVID there's been a giant change. They measure in companies your level of engagement. The companies that have the largest engagement have the largest level of net profitability or EBITDA. Second level is disengaged, and the third level is actively disengaged. Disengaged is like, you know, what they call quiet quitting. How do I do the least amount of work and keep my job? Loud quitting is people that work there and they're trying to destroy the company because they're angry and pissed off. The biggest change during COVID in the last 4 years, the 4 years of COVID was biggest drop in history of people engaged and the biggest growth in actively disengaged trying to create harm and anger. And so they don't know what to do. Most companies don't know what to do. People don't want to come to work and then they don't go to work. They feel isolated, you know, back and forth. I know some jobs you can do easily at home, engineer software, things like that, but not all. If you're in something collaborative, it probably takes some connection. But what's interesting is they're the most unhappy they've ever been because again, you're not being called to do anything. The more you try to self-soothe and just take care of yourself, your world gets smaller and smaller. It's like, how do you build a muscle? You don't build a muscle by hanging out. If you don't use it, you lose it. But if you make a demand on this muscle, it's gonna grow and you're gonna have strength. And so one of the reasons that we wanna have a life where you have something that you want to care for or serve more than yourself is it calls you. It doesn't take much to fill your basic needs as a human being, right? So I mentioned the Stanford study. Well, the first Stanford study was done during COVID They came to me and they said, gosh, we've had two of our professors, or one was a professor and one was somebody on their team, who were clinically depressed. They came to this program for 6 days with you and they have no symptoms of depression and are taking their drugs. This is amazing. Do you have any data? I said, well, yeah, I've got millions of people. They go, no, no scientific data. I go, no, but if you want to do a study, I'd be open to it. And they said, we'd love to study depression because right now during COVID when people locked down, you remember, suicides went crazy, drug overdoses went crazy, and depression went crazy. I said, let's do it. I said, but tell me what the standard is. Like, what do the meta studies tell you about depression? Like how many people get well and so forth? They said the meta studies, when you look at multiple studies, 60% of people treated with drugs and/or therapy make no improvement.

It's horrible.

40% improve. The average improvement is 50%. They're half as depressed. Now, don't get me wrong, some people get better, but it's a very small number. So I said, well, you could almost get that with, you know, a placebo. And the guy said, yeah, you almost could. And I said, well, I think we can beat that. What's the best study you've ever done? And they said it was done at Johns Hopkins. I think it was 5 years ago now. And he said they gave people psilocybin magic mushrooms for a month with cognitive therapy for a month. I said, well, you should have got some kind of change, right? They said it's the most powerful change that they ever measured in science. 54% of people 6 weeks later, no symptoms of depression whatsoever. Pretty unbelievable compared to anything else we've done. SSRIs don't work. It was on the COVID of Newsweek a year ago, but we still sell them, right? And so I said, wow, that's impressive. I said, I don't know, I think we can do better than that based on what I've seen, but well, you go test it. So they set up the same study, same contrast group, everything else, and no drugs, no month, just this one seminar called Date with Destiny I do, and it was done for 6 days. And people can watch it, by the way, if they go on Netflix, they can see Tony Robbins: I'm Not Your Guru. That's the title of it. There's a documentary that shows you like in an hour and 45 minutes what I do in 6 days. It's really inspiring. But at the end of it, the results were so dramatic, they're afraid to get canceled. So they Sent out blind study numbers to 3 other organizations, it was all confirmed. At the end of 6 weeks, 100% of the people, this was in the Journal of Psychiatry last year, 100% of the people, no symptoms whatsoever. Even better, 17% of the people had suicidal ideation, meaning they're constantly thinking about suicide. None of it. They followed up 11 months later, they're gonna do 12, but people are coming back home from COVID and so it was great, they had great statistics on the general population as well. 11 months later, 72% decrease in negative emotions, 52% increase in positive emotions, no depression 11 months later. How do you get that kind of lasting change out of a few days? But they also found something really interesting, and then they started measuring my audience. And that was the greatest athletes and teams in the world, the Tampa Bay Lightning they measured as well. When they get in a really rough spot, they have this thing they call championship biochemistry. Tom Brady's down by 10 points, it's the 4th quarter, and he comes back to win. In less than 2 minutes. How the hell does he do that? His testosterone surges, so he has this huge drive, and at that level, your memory goes through the roof. But normally what gets in the way is cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone. His testosterone surges and his cortisol drops through the floor, so he's just so focused, he's so present. Doesn't guarantee he's gonna win, but he's gonna maximize his capabilities. I do that every time I go on stage. They followed me for 3 years, but here's what was really cool. I started doing digital seminars too. They first did it with the live ones. COVID, I had people all over the world. They sent people into 13 different countries, measured people in real time, and it looks like music. I go into these states biochemically and the audience follows me and they get to this state. That's how we, like, have people do the firewalk or the wood breaking. They get to the state where they can push the fear aside and they can push through because they have strong testosterone and low cortisol. So that biochemistry is why it's retained. If I asked you where you were on 9/11, almost every person, even from other countries, tells you where they were, what they saw, the moment they saw it. I'll ask you where you were in 8/11 because information without emotion is barely retained. Information with a lot of emotion is massively retained. So I create states. Your son is an example of that, where people are in these peak states of mind biochemically, and that's why they retain it and produce the result.

I will tell you that I think that I was so impressed by the way— I mean, you use every sense. Every sense to put people in the, in state.

Yeah.

And it's got movement, sound, music, right?

Everything. Engagement.

And, you know, oh, he's a guru. No, no, he's not. You're not, you're not doing any of that.

That's right.

And you say it on stage. First of all, I'm not your guru, but you also say, look, this is what we're doing to your body. And you're showing it. Right, right, right. But you're showing how it all works.

And by the way, your son, like, he could have just watched that, but he participated fully. He got himself some of those states. He starts to realize who he really is.

No.

And he's still got a lot of learning and stuff to go in his life, but he has a totally different foundation to look at life through.

Yeah.

Because his biochemistry has changed. It wasn't with drugs.

Right.

And of course, it's not about the firewalk. It's about whatever stops you in life. That's the fire. Yeah, right. It's like this thing that normally stops you is fear, and you learn how to snap out of it and do it anyway. You know, I used to use skydiving in the beginning, but it got hard to get 10,000 people in the middle of the sky over New York City in the middle of the night, you know? So I had to find other metaphors. And when people are at home, I can't have them all starting fires around the world in, you know, 500 countries. So we do wood breaking. We show them something normally in karate you take a year to learn, and they do it in a few minutes. But we use it as a metaphor of breaking through what's stopping you. And then it becomes more physical instead of just intellectual.

Yeah, it wasn't— what was so great is she did it for a different reason, I did it for a different reason. And it was— What's your worst fear that's going to stop you?

Yeah.

And, and hot coals, you know, it's not my worst fear, but that stops you. And once you walk across them, it just changes.

Yeah. Because your brain goes, if I can get myself through this thing, right, that I once thought was impossible or at least difficult. Correct. What else do I think is impossible or difficult that I can also crush with just a few changes in strategy?

Yeah.

That's the value of it. That's why I use it as a metaphor. But as you know, that happens the first night of the 4-day program and people think that's going to be the peak. Week, and, you know, no, it's a whole different level than they ever dreamed of. You know, it's fun to do.

Um, all right, we, we didn't have a chance to talk about— you got a new book out on investing. Jeez. Uh, you've got a seminar you're doing for free.

Yes, I'd love to mention that.

Yeah, go ahead.

So every year since COVID when, you know, I was doing my seminars in their stadiums, and then Governor, you know, from California, who is an interesting guy, different, different belief structures, but I know Gavin well. His team calls up and says, oh, by the way, your stadium of, you know, 12,500 people, you know, 15,000 maybe, you only put 100 people in it. Like, what? You know, so it's like, and then he shut down all California. So my thing was, screw it, we're going to Vegas. They'll never shut down Vegas, right? So I get all 12,500 people, by the time it was 13,000 people to go, they're going to fly to Vegas. And one week out, they shut down Vegas. So I was like, we're going to Texas, right? You know, you live in Texas. Yeah. Governor there, he's tough. Yeah, he says he's not going to do this. And I know a friend there has a church, 14,000 people. We'll use this church. This will be great. We move everybody to Texas. 2 weeks out, they shut down Texas. So then I go, movie theaters. At least we can do like 1,300 movie theaters. We'll put— because they only put 10 people in, 10 people each, but they'll have a big screen to have this great sound and music. It'll still be there. We'll deliver for them. They don't even have to travel. This will be really easy, right? They shut down the movie theaters. So after all of that I basically said, I've got to build a studio and I've got to find a way to engage people at home, no matter what the hour is, engage them. And I honestly didn't even know if I could do it, but I felt like I had to. And the first thing I did was I said, first, people need us right now. They're trapped at home. I said, I'm going to do a seminar that requires no money, no travel, no anything, and we got to make a difference for people. And it was unbelievable.