This YouTube interview features Randall Kaplan conversing with Tony Robbins. Robbins offers formative life advice (e.g., serve others to find long-term happiness) and recounts traumatic childhood experiences—born in North Hollywood, raised in Azusa, with parental details including his father Boris and mother Nikki, who allegedly abused him. The segment frames how those early hardships shaped his drive and philosophy.
Questions this video answers
North Hollywood.
Azusa.
Father: Boris; Mother: Nikki.
If you give yourself one piece of advice to your 21 year old self, what would it be?
If you keep giving your all, your gifts will make room for you. The only solution to long term happiness is to get outside yourself. The human mind will always find something to be concerned about, pissed off about, worried about. But when you're serving, you're not there. Find something you care about more than yourself, because that's what's going to be the secret to your growth and your aliveness. Whether it's your family, it's your friends, it's your company, it's a nonprofit thing to you, it's a mission for you. And if you've got that kind of drive, you're going to keep growing. And if you keep growing, you have plenty to give. And if you keep giving, you're going to have a meaningful life.
Tony, thanks for being here. Welcome to a search of excellence.
Great to meet you.
What an honor.
Thanks, Cindy.
So let's start with our parents. Born in North Hollywood, raised in Azusa. And your dad, Boris, underground parking attendant. Mom, Nikki, drug addict. Used to beat the shit out of you, poured dishwasher detergent down your throat until you threw up and chased you out of the house with a knife. Tell us what that was like as a kid growing up and the dichotomy of that, of you saying that she was a great mom.
Well, the dichotomy is she really is a good human being, but when people get altered chemically, they become somebody else. And I wouldn't have called her a drug addict, but she drank alcohol pretty excessively. And when she mixed it with like Valium and other things, she got very violent. And I have a younger brother, five years younger, younger sister, seven years younger. And so I had to kind of be the mom and dad a little bit. It made me grow up very early. But a lot of the best qualities of my life came from my mom to give me a fair picture. Otherwise people just generalize. She was very loving person. She cared for her friends very deeply. So when she was sober, it was a very different experience. And that's why personally, you know, I never drank. I don't have any judgment people would do, but I just never wanted Altar because I was in a family where multiple people did that. My natural father also drank as well. But, you know, he had a interesting life. You know, he was a parking attendant. As you said, he's underground all day long. It was before he had machines and he'd sit there all day long and make change with people and never move for 40 something years. And so my mom kind of despised that. So I think she instilled that in me. I don't want to be that way. I need to become more successful. But I think the truth is, as I look back on it, if my mom had been the mother I wanted to be, I truly wouldn't be the man I'm proud to be. Because she made me a practical psychologist, I had to learn her moods and her emotions, how to manage and how to shift it so we could manage those times without becoming violent or difficult at the same time. Just to put it in balance, she pushed me to do things I never would have done on my own and built a lot of my muscle.
