The Soul of Generosity | Tony Robbins EP 548

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11In the book, I was really excited to hear you talk about, you say the secret to wealth is gratitude. Somewhere in the book it says that. And I think maybe it was someone else you were referencing. Yes, it came from Sir John Templeton. And every day I practice gratitude. When I wake up and every night I always try to say to my girlfriend or someone I'm talking to before I go to sleep, three things I'm most grateful for. That's great. Now why, so I was pleased to see that. I was like, I'm on the right track if I'm living with gratitude. But why is that the secret to wealth? Well, Sir John Templeton is probably one of the greatest investors in history.

0:40People don't know his name. He started out with nothing. He wasn't Sir. He wasn't from another country. He came from the U.S. And he decided that he wanted to understand wealth. And so he saved$10 ,000, a huge amount of money in those days. And when Hitler invaded Poland, he developed a belief. His belief was you make your money in times of maximum pessimism. Like if you were around in 2008, 2009, you remember what it was like, right? You could have bought the Sands in Las Vegas. You could have bought their stock for$2.28. Today, it's$67. It's a 3 ,000 % return. It's not bad. You could have bought Citibank for less than a buck.

1:15And so what he did was, and everybody thought the world was going to end, he took$10 ,000. He bought every stock on New York Stock Exchange that was$1 or less, including companies everybody thought were going bankrupt. But when things are bad, people think it's going to be bad forever. When things are good, they think it's going to be good forever. And they're always wrong. Life's cyclical. So there's a season for everything. So once we got through World War II and went a few years later, guess what? Those same stocks made him a billionaire. So when I asked him, I said, what's the secret to wealth?

1:40His response when he touched me goes, you know it, you teach it. I said, what's that? He said, gratitude. I said, why do you say that? He said, because if you got a billion dollars and every day you live pissed off and frustrated, the quality of your life is called pissed off and frustrated. But if you have nothing, but you're euphorically grateful for whatever you have, you're the richest person that you're going to know. He said, so it doesn't matter how much money you got if you don't have gratitude. So I do the same thing, by the way. I have a process I call priming where I get up every morning.

2:05I do mine in the morning. I do this radical change to my body, kind of alter my state. And then I do 10 minutes. I never miss. And my first three and a half minutes is what I'm really grateful for. And I make myself think of at least one of those three that's something really simplistic. Instead of something giant. You know, the wind on my face. The look in one of my kids' eyes. You know, something of that nature. And then I do three minutes of strength and healing. And I do three minutes of when I'm going to create my world. And I do that for a minimum of 10 minutes every day. Because I believe you have to condition it.

2:30You know, just hope that stuff shows up. You set your intention each morning. Every day. Yeah. Very cool. So what are you most grateful for recently in your life? So many things. Well, one is my daughter is 40 years old and she's a grandchild forever. And she's going to bring me a grandson. She's kind of cool. Congratulations. Thank you very much. That's cool. But also it's Thanksgiving. So for me, it's a very emotional time because my family was fed when I was 11. We had no food at Thanksgiving and it touched me so deeply. And I decided I was going to get back. So when I was 17, I fed. two families, and then four, and then eight, and then I didn't tell me I was doing it, and then I got my friends to do it, and my company's crew, and I've fed 42 million people now over 37 years.

3:10Last summer, most people didn't even notice. Congress cut food stamps. They don't call it food stamps anymore, but I lived on them, so I know what they are, food stamps, but my family lived on them. But they cut it by 8.7 billion, which means you eliminate 2 million people from the rolls overnight, and they still need to eat. So I support all these non-profit organizations, and Feeding America is the largest in the country, and so I thought I'm going to call attention so if I donated all the profits to this book in advance how many people could I feed because I normally feed 2 million through my foundation and I match it so I feed 4 million a year and they said you could feed 10 million people I was like wow I'm in and then as the years gone by I got more and more inspired and so now I'm going to feed 50 million people personally not just from the book I'm writing a larger check on top of it but also I'm working with Feeding America to get matching funds to feed 100 million people incredible so to go from my family not being able to eat to feeding 100 million people is a pretty amazing sense of gratitude and a sense of grace and I've done my part but there's been grace in that as well.

4:06Now I think I also read in the book I don't know if you said this or someone else said this but the key to living is giving. Yes I had a moment like when my whole life changed it was kind of twofold I had I was I was really young like yourself back then right working my tail off trying to build a business I mean big goals you know you don't always succeed to start with right you know it was hard and I remember I I was so frustrated because I was working 18-hour days and nothing was working and I was broke and I felt embarrassed, you know, I should be doing better than this. And so I was driving home from Orange County on the 57th freeway in San Gabriel Valley out near a place in Pomona, California.

4:41It probably doesn't matter if it's, but I remember it so vividly because it was almost midnight. And I was at this breaking point. And then I was like, why am I not, you know, doing better? And then I just pulled over the road and I used to keep these journals. I still have them, written journals. And I wrote in big lines, you know, the secret to living is giving. And I started to cry. And I realized I am so focused on what am I not getting? I'm not focusing on what I'm giving. So for six months, man, it turned me around. That's the day I became a wealthy man. Because I didn't have any money, but scarcity left my body.

5:09And I have plenty of ups and downs since that time, various times in my life. But I never went back to that, oh my God, how's it going to happen? It's like breathing. Do you stop and say, God, is there going to be the air before you take a breath? You know it's going to be there. You don't run your life by that aspect. And so that to me is what it's about. is showing people, if you won't give a dime out of a dollar, don't b****** yourself. You'll never give a million out of 10 million or 10 million out of 100 million. It's just not going to happen. But if you can do that now, you don't ever get beyond scarcity.

5:38You start behind it. You make a decision to get beyond it.

5:46Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation. and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description that will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

6:40Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the daily motivation show.