The Most Surprising Thing I Learned From Mike Tyson

I got the call when Mike Tyson bit off Oliver's ear and I had to turn him around. And I remember going to see him and I was shocked because he goes, oh, Tony Robbins, I'm a fan of yours. He has that funny little voice, you know, that was interesting. And he goes, are you here for my wife? I said, no, they invited me to come see you, you know. And what I was blown away by— people ask me like, who's— who you've been— I met everybody on Earth you can imagine. Who have you been the most shocked by? It was him. You know why? He's one of the most well-read people you ever meet. You never believe it. He surprised me. He's read every religious book, the Quran. I mean, everything he's read. And when he was he would be telling me all this philosophical stuff. And my mind was blown. It's coming out of Mike Tyson. And when he was in jail, I talked to the warden. He said he literally took over the jail, but he got all the different groups that were fighting each other to unify. He goes, "Those people out there hate each other. We can't hate each other." So he's telling me all the story about love and what really mankind should be and what it's about. And then all of a sudden he shifts and he goes, "There are other moments though. If there was a button and I could push it, kill every person on earth." I was like, "I'd do it right now." And I'm like, "Oh my God." So Mike's crazy. 'cause I'm a good friend, but I don't think there's much that surprises me only because I know people are gonna do what they're gonna do. And I know they're gonna do things to meet their needs. And so if significance is the most important thing, some people will destroy others to feel significant. You know, there's two ways to be significant. Build the tallest building in town, don't take a break, don't take a lunch, keep doing it, take lots of risks, or blow up everybody else's building. And unfortunately in humanity, you can get significance faster with less intelligence and less capital by destroying things than creating things. So that's why there's always been some form in humanity's history of that type of behavior. But hopefully we get a consciousness change. But there's nothing that would shock me, I don't think, at this point, only because this will be 48 years traveling the planet. That's why I was curious, because you've helped so many people and you've spoken so much and you've seen so many human conditions. And it sounds like in a weird way, we're a lot simpler than we think we are while also being complex. That's a good description. We're both. But the human brain is not infinitely complex, and, or should I say, the human mind is not infinitely complex. It's extremely complex. But what I've spent my life doing is taking the complex and making it simple enough that we can actually use it. Because I always tell people, complexity is the enemy of execution in a business or in your life. The more complex you make, the less likely it's gonna get executed, especially if you have a business or have multiple people.