Tony Robbins On The Habits & Skills To Take Back Control Of Your Life!

0:00You've been researching so much about mindset, about neuroscience, about the body, about nutrition, about all the different medical things that are out there. Is there something new that you do with your morning routine now that is different then? And what has really helped accelerate your productivity, your joy, your peace at this level with your morning routine? Well, I have certain fundamentals that haven't changed. You know, I think I've shared with you before, the first thing I do every single morning is I go in freezing cold water. And I've shared this with many people. It's not because I'm a masochist, but because it moves the length of your body, as you well know.

0:36And when you jump in, it never feels good to go in, but getting out, you feel incredible. But I do it for a different reason. I do it to train my brain to say, when I say now, it means now. When I say go, we go. I don't stand there because it's cold and go maybe in a minute when I'm ready. And I think I've shared with you before, I don't think I've ever had a morning I look forward to jumping in that water ever. But I always do it because I've trained my brain. This is how we work. And if you train your brain to do that every single day, then it'll do it on the more difficult and important things in life.

1:05But I also then I do my priming, I think you're familiar with, which is I do 10 minutes and I pick 10 minutes because if I said do 20 minutes or 30, I don't have time. But if you don't have 10 minutes for your life, you don't have much of a life. So I do this 10 minute process. And if people want to know it rather than walk through it right now, they can go to Tony Robbins forward slash priming. There's a video, it's free. But the essence of it is I change my body radically and I do three things to make sure that my brain is primed. And what I mean by primed is most people think their thoughts are their thoughts, Lewis.

1:37And you and I know better because you and I have read the studies, right? Priming is a psychological principle where you think thoughts and you think they're yours, but very often they're created by the environment. So one example was Harvard has done multiple studies on this. And one of the studies they did was taking people, walking up to people. They hired two actors. They walked up to 100 people. They had to do the exact same thing, men and women. and what they did is they'd walk up with a cup of coffee in their hand and they'd look at you and go here would you hold this for a second and look down and reach in their pocket to pull out their phone and most people then take the coffee there's nobody there you're not looking to give it back right and then they do what they're doing the phone they put it back in they go thank you so much and they take their coffee back and they walk away but then about 20 minutes later if you're in a mall or a school campus or whatever a person comes by with a clipboard and they give you$20 And they say, listen, I know this sounds crazy, but if you'll give me 30 seconds of your time, the$20 is yours.

2:35I need you to read two minutes of this, literally this little story, and then just answer three questions for me. Here's the interesting part. Half the people have a reaction, more than 80%, and half have a reaction, 80 % difference. And here's the question. They read the same story, but half the people are handed hot coffee. Half the people are handed iced coffee. And the question they ask is, how would you describe the main character of the story? I have to read a few paragraphs. And the people who are handed hot coffee say the person is warm and genuine. 81 % of the people, 79 to 80, 79.8, it's almost, it's a 1 % difference, you know, natural variability.

3:17Who are giving the iced coffee say the person is cold and uncaring. I could tell you 20 studies like that that would blow your mind how your brain is conditioned or primed by the environment. And think about all that's gone on with COVID over the last two years and how many people's brains live in fear. And in my new health book, I put in there just to remind people with COVID, outside being 80 years old, the number one or having four or five comorbidities, number one factor, 80 % of people die of COVID, 79.8 % are obese. That's something you can do something about. The second factor, according to the CDC, is fear.

3:55Because anxiety makes people get short of breath, they freak out, and their whole nervous system starts to go shut down. Your immune system can be shut down just by fear alone. And so this experience of life that we have, most people just don't understand that you are being primed all the time. And unless you prime yourself, you're going to be primed by the environment. most people understand that your brain right now is being conditioned and triggered whether you know it or not. If you're in any social network, it's being done continuously by algorithms. So I want to take control of my brain.

4:27So I do three quick things. One, I take three minutes of those 10 minutes after I've changed my body, and I focus on three different events in my life that I'm grateful for. I usually pick two big ones and one small one. It could be as simple as the smile on my daughter's face, the wind against my skin. But I really, I don't like, if you've ever been on a roller coaster and you remember the roller coaster over there, it's not the same as remember going over the edge like you're there. So I do it in an associated way. And it changes your biochemistry. Now, it sounds pretty, you know, positive thinky.

4:58I'm going to be grateful. But there's a value to it because the two emotions that mess up your business, your life, your relationships are anger and fear. And you can't be angry and grateful simultaneously. And you can't be fearful and grateful simultaneously. continuously so by starting my day with that and it's not some fake pump up positive thinking they're real experiences so it literally teaches your body to go in that state because otherwise the environment when right now there's a whole lot of uncertainty and fear then real fast i do this three minute process it's kind of like a blessing and then three minutes the last three minutes are called three to thrive where i focus on three things i want to accomplish but instead of thinking i want to accomplish i see feel and experience it is done i feel grateful i celebrate it and it trains your brain.

5:43So in 10 minutes, I'm done. Third thing that I'll do, I immediately send a message or a text or an audio message to somebody as a sincere compliment. And I don't go, dude, great job. Or wow, you're cool. I say, listen, I saw you on Tuesday with those kids and I saw you take that extra 20 minutes. No one else did. And I just want you to know, I saw that I thought that was incredible. So I'm always very specific. So they know it's not just some positive thinking bullshit call, it's sincerely doing it. It makes me constantly look for the good in the people I work with. Fourth thing I do is whatever I don't want to do, the most challenging part of the day.

6:20I want to go handle that problem, I want to handle that issue, because after you do that, everything has momentum. So those four are my core. Now my workouts, what I've done to be able to have more energy and vitality and strength, I just finished a book called Life Force, spent three years on it, and in there I give all the details of what to do depending upon what your goals are and what your direction is, stage of life, what you're, are you looking for more energy or more strength? Are you looking to extend the quality of your life? Are you dealing with a real disease? And you know I did Money Master the Game and I interviewed you know at the time 50 of the smartest people in the world financially, Ray Dalio, Warren Buffett, etc.

6:55This time I interviewed 167 Nobel laureates, scientists, and the greatest regenerative doctors on the face of the earth. So there's nothing in here that's my opinion. It is all science and it's stuff that you would think would happen 20 or 30 years in the future that's happening either right now or the things that are coming in the next 12 to 36 months that the FDA is currently looking at for approval. I wanted to ask you a follow-up to one thing you mentioned there, which I think a lot of people don't do, which I think you do incredibly well. I've seen you do this many times. You mentioned you reach out to someone, you'll text someone, you'll send a voice note or a video message or maybe you're calling them or just saying hi to them and telling them you're acknowledging something that they're doing well that you appreciate.

7:37I don't think that many people do this. Why is this so important for you personally? And why do you think this would help so many people get out of themselves and overcome anxiety and stress if they did this even a couple of times a week? I know you do this every day, but just a couple texts a week. Why was this so valuable for people? Well, number one, I love people. So I love to sincere. If you just call someone to make a compliment and it's not sincere, anybody can feel that. I don't do that. You know, it's like I pride myself in finding the goodness in people or the skill sets in people. And I also know that what is acknowledged tends to grow.

8:13So from the standpoint of that, I want them to feel that feeling of being appreciated. I want them to know I see what's happening behind the camera, so to speak. You know, it's like that's what matters. It's not how everybody else sees you. It's how you really are. And then it also deepens every relationship you have when you sincerely acknowledge somebody and you notice something other people don't notice. And so it deepens the connection. And to me, quality of life is a quality of two things, your emotions and your relationships. And, you know, if my emotions are terrible, my relationships are going to be terrible.

8:46But if I have great emotions and I can extend that out to help other people, then it just makes me feel more alive. So I do it for me and them. It's a virtuous cycle. Right. Yeah. And I think if someone's feeling, you know, stressed, the easiest way to overcome that is do what you said, which is focus on the things you're grateful for and get out of yourself and start acknowledging someone else. And you'll build that deeper relationship and feel better in the process. And now you've got positive momentum energy. Now you attack the most difficult thing of your day. And when you make that your habit, the most difficult thing gets smaller and smaller because you're feeling stronger and stronger, right?

9:19And then you have momentum. And so now you'll attack the next difficult thing. And it doesn't even feel difficult at that point. But the whole secret is most of us don't realize, depending on which research you buy into, somewhere between 45 and 55 % of what we do is habitual. And the great thing about habit is you don't have to think. So I don't know about you, but the first time I tried to drive a stick shift car when I was a little kid, it's like I'm supposed to do this, this, this, watch the rear view mirror and the, ah, it's too much. But once you learn it, most of driving, 99 % of it, it's habits so now your brain is free to do other things that's the value of making something habitual the weakness of making it habitual is you don't grow right the weakness of making habitual is you don't feel fully alive so it's like you've got to find that balance in your life but if you can create habits that make you do the right things for your mind your body your emotion and for others then let those take over then it becomes it's like working out you and I both are work out nuts.

10:17And it's like in the early days, it's hard to work out at this stage of my life or yours. If you didn't work out on a workout, my bet is you'd be pissed off and frustrated, right? You need to work out. It's a part of who you are now. In the beginning days is like the last thing I wanted to do. But once it's in your life, that now frees you up to use that energy for everything else that matters in your life. Yeah, absolutely. Two and a half years ago, I had the privilege of being in your island in Fiji and spending about a week with a small group group of people, Dean and a bunch of other guys and gals.

10:50We got to spend some time with you. And you had a prediction. You said winter is coming. Yes, I did. And Dean has told me that you have predicted many things over the last four decades in the economy and what's happening in the world and all these different crises. You're kind of on the front lines of access to the most brilliant people in the world. So you know what's happening before it happens. And you said to us, winter is coming. and you probably knew this two years prior to that. And you said, you don't know when exactly, but it's coming soon. And then, I don't know, four or five months later, it hit and it hit hard for a lot of people.

11:24And it's still hitting hard, like you're talking about over the last couple of years. And I don't think it's gonna slow down anytime soon. It seems like there might be some hope and then boom, another wave and then another wave of something, whatever it is. What did you learn from researching in the new book with all these different experts on how we can really take back control of our mind, our health in new ways to support us when the winter continues to hit. Because it doesn't seem like it's going away anytime soon. You're hitting on a huge note. I'd love to plant the seed with everyone listening.

11:58And that is we're about halfway through winter. But my hope is this is the year where that part starts to change. But we're still in winter, meaning so many people have been conditioned to be fearful. So many businesses have been shut down. Our children have been kept out of school for such a long period of time that there's after effects on that. And it's also you want to be a student of history. Think of it this way for a second. When did mankind really become a dominant force on Earth? When they made one distinction. I've shared this with you when we were private. I think I told you there's three skills that you want to master if you want to have an extraordinary life, no matter what decade we're in.

12:33You know, you've probably read Oxford and many other universities are doing these studies where they say half the jobs we have today will be gone by 2040, which sounds like a long time, but it's 18 years from now. And that'll go like this. And so my grandkids, my daughter, it's like, what do I want to help them with? Well, the first skill you've got to master to be great, you know, you're the school of greatness, is the ability to recognize patterns. When humanity recognized the pattern of the seasons, the whole world changed. Because we went from hunter-gatherers trying to survive from place to place where we're exposed to everything to wait a second.

13:09If we plant in the springtime, we protect in the summer, we reap in the fall, and then we hang on to some of that so we can live through the winter, that created communities for the first time, and then eventually cities and states and countries. So that changed the world. What'll change a person's life is when you realize there's also a set of seasons in your own life. And so think of it this way. 0 to 21 is springtime. Things are easy to grow in springtime. You don't have to do that much. Growing as a kid happens naturally. And some people live a protected childhood. Some of us not so much. But overall, life is supporting you.

13:49It's sending you, teaching you, sharing with you. Now when you get from 21 to 41 or 22 to 42, whatever range you want to talk about. Some people get there at 16. Some people get there at 25. You now are in the real world. And now you go test what you learned in your springtime. And it's a hot summer and you find out, holy shit, a relationship's different than I thought it was when I'm an intimate relationship committed. It's not the thing I just envisioned so easily. Or I'm not as bulletproof as I thought I was. I'm not president of the United States already and a billionaire like I said I was gonna be when I was, you know, 19.

14:22So you start to learn, test, figure out what's real. And it's an important stage of life. 42, 43 to 62, 63 is the power of your life. It's the reaping time. If you worked hard in the spring and the summer and you put yourself out there and you planted, it's a reaping time. It's a time when you really become a leader. Just everyone's different, some sooner or later, but it's a great stage to understand. And then if you're lucky, you go from 63 to 83 and maybe 83 to 103 of the oldest living humans, 119, you have an extended final season of your life where you get to be the mentor, you get to share, you get to make a difference.

15:00And maybe towards the end of your life, people look out for you again if you looked out for everybody else. That's kind of the cycle of life. But then there's a third pattern, and that's the cycle of history. The most powerful people, by the way, have used not only pattern recognition, but the second skill, pattern utilization. They see a pattern and they use it. So you'd say, how did Jeff Bezos become the richest man in the world? And the answer is simple. He studied the growth in the internet at an early stage and saw how explosive it was. It was like nothing else he could see. And he just figured any product, books, was the easy one to start with.

15:34But he got himself in and then he started to learn the real secret. The convenience is what people value more than anything else. And when he honed in on that one distinction, he not only recognized the pattern, used the pattern, the people that are real masters create their own patterns, right? You play everybody else's music, and then eventually you get good enough, you can create your own music, right? So the similar thing happens. And so what's occurred is, in humanity, is you go through, there's this seasons in nature, there's seasons in my life, and then there's seasons in history. So watch this.

16:11This is what gives me great optimism for everyone watching here. First of all, no winter's not forever, no war lives forever, nothing. Everything changes and everything ends. And that means something new occurs. You may not like it, but that's how life is. And the good news about winter is it's always followed by springtime. Historically, some winters are long, some are short, but they're always followed by springtime. What follows the night? The daytime. What a cool way to set it up if you were God or the universe, right? So imagine for a second, all of your listeners or viewers, and you think about it too.

16:44What if you're born in 1910? Now you know the seasons of a person's life. So from 1910, the next 19, 20 years of your life, you're going to be absorbing what was happening. World War I ends. The world looks like it's a great place. New technology, cars, radio. And then what happens? An explosion of abundance, the roaring 20s. And so you're a kid. You're 14, 15 years old. And you're like, I can't wait to get a car to go. But what happened when that person hit the next stage of life, 19, 20, 21 years old? As they came of age, it's 1929. And suddenly, people are jumping out of buildings, total depression, dust bowl, nobody's got jobs.

17:28It looks horrific, and it was horrific. But did they get a break? No, when they turned 29, it's 1939. So think about it. Now, World War II breaks out. You and I don't remember. we weren't there, but anybody who was alive will tell you, it looked like the whole world was going in. Hitler was sweeping across Europe, bombing London. It literally looked like the world as we know it was over. And this group of people like millennials or Z generation, a lot of people make fun of and they go there, you know, whatever, wallflowers, I forget the terms they use. And then the millennials and Z generation argue about you're old because you parked in the middle versus the side.

18:06I mean, it's, it's bullshit. The same bullshit was happening then. These people are called flappers, they were irresponsible. But here's history and one thought. Good times create weak people. Weak people create bad times. Bad times create strong people. Strong people create good times. That's the history of the world over and over and over again. And so what happened is that generation who was weak became strong because the environment demanded it. They became the heroes. And think about how different the 1930s and 40s were versus after the war 45 through 50 up until Kennedy 63. That 20-year period was what a lot of people thought was the greatest time in America.

18:59Now, certainly wasn't if you're African-American. started to become better if you were a woman. But then think about after Kennedy died and Robert Kennedy is killed and Martin Luther King is killed. Think about the 60s and the 70s, how different they were than the 80s, 90s, 2000s. So we go through these seasons. I could show them to you a thousand years of Roman history and you can see them. There's a book I highly recommend. Bill Clinton gave me this book called Generations when I was working with him 25 years ago, about a 700 page book. But the same authors, William Strauss and Neil Hall, wrote a smaller book, which might be more helpful.

19:33And it's called The Fourth Turning. I read it in 1997. And it shows you the seasons of history and how everybody enters that. Like everyone's going to have winters. Some are going to have it in their 20s. Some are going to have it in their 40s. Some are going to have it in their 60s or 80s. Some are going to have it when they're children. And then we all move through these seasons that are pretty much historic because the older person dies. Everybody loses that lesson. and then we tend to, unfortunately, have to relearn some lessons again. So I want you to know that if it looks really horrible right now, if you follow those cycles, we're about halfway through winter.

20:06And winter usually starts with a financial winter, which I was referring to. I did not predict the pandemic. But there are pandemics, as there were 80 years ago, right? But in addition to that, there's always a great war. And it could be a cyber war, it could be a war with China, but there's no question we are not done with what we're going to deal with. In fact, I'm reading right now, you know, one of the ways I stay on the cutting edge is I'm constantly studying history because, you know, people say, you know, it doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes, you know. And this is a book that anybody who really wants to know where the world's going, it's Ray Dalio's newest book, The Changing World Order.

20:42I mean, it's incredible. It's 500 years of history. So my whole thing is leaders anticipate, losers react. If you can anticipate what's coming, you can really take advantage. If you wait till it hits you, you're in trouble. So I think we're in a time where you're going to it's going to be a better year if you're willing to be better. Right. You know, winter can be a beautiful time. As you've heard me say before, you can freeze the death or you can ski and snowboard and have a great time with your family and build something. And so then when spring comes, you know, you can really take advantage.

21:12But if you look at the world, the most successful businesses started in a winter. Sixty eight percent of the Fortune 1000 were started in either a recession or a depression. I don't care if you're talking about Disney or Exxon in the Depression or Pizza Hut or FedEx in a recession or Apple in a recession. So this is your time, but you have to get your head straight and you got to get your energy strong. And that's not easy when most people have shoved in their houses and isolated and heard nothing but fear. So you got to take back control. Absolutely. One of the things in the sports arena that I learned growing up was if you stay ready, you don't have to get ready.

21:48I love that. And you, again, you've worked with, interviewed, you're friends with the top peak performers in the world and in all industries, you know them all. What are one or two practices besides the one you talked about with your morning routine from peak performers that you've studied or maybe you've implemented that keeps them prepared so they don't have to get ready, they stay ready? Well, I think, unfortunately, the real things are simple. That's why nobody does them. So if you took Ray Dalio or Warren Buffett, I mean, they're readers. I'm a constant reader, but I don't just read anything.

22:23I read something that I think can give me an edge of understanding. I mean, look at it, Louis. You and I both know most people, Jim Rohn used to say, my teacher used to say, most people major in minor things. You know, they know more about some actress's personal life than they know about their own physical body or their vitality or their energy or their emotion or their business or their career. And so what matters? A few subjects. Your body. Because your energy matters. That energy is low. Everything I just said is worthless to you. Because you're just going to go, he's talking too fast and there's a lot going on.

22:55And yeah, well, hopefully the future will be better. Because when you're low energy, you don't use your full intelligence or ability. And most of us have not moved so much because of the environment of COVID where everybody was pretty much locked down. And unless you live like I did in Florida. The point of the matter is most people, that energy has been lower. So you need energy. You need emotion. If you don't know how to master your emotion, emotions start wars. Emotion creates peace. Emotion gets you laid. Emotion gets your children. Emotion is what can make that business work or fail. And most people don't know how to direct their own emotions.

23:27What's another lesson? You got to look at your own financial world. If you don't master it, it's going to create enormous stress. Your relationships are everything, as we've already said. Your business or your career, or hopefully it's your mission. And then there's the spiritual side of life. You can take a half dozen areas and go, let me find who's genius in this area and let me go learn from them. Let me go read. Let me listen to podcasts. Let me be conscious about feeding my brain things that are going to give me not only inspiration, but insight and skill and tools. And everyone I know who is not only successful, but is able to contribute back to society, it has a hunger to constantly improve at least one area of those six areas of their life and the most happy the ones that hit multiple areas and that's why like like one of the reasons i wrote life force richest man in the graveyard is not your goal you know it's like there's an old phrase that says you know a person who's healthy has a million dreams a person who's not healthy has one you know so i wanted to give people the cutting edge in that area because it's such a critical area of all these different areas of life mastering emotions financial world relationships relationships, what do you think is the root of people lacking what they really want in all those areas?

24:43Is it the confidence? Is it the skill set? What is the root cause of holding them back from really growing in all those areas? I think it's a couple of things. One is the biggest problem people have is they think they're not supposed to have any. And problems are the fuel for growth, right? And so it's like, if you don't have any problems, you're either a liar or you might call them challenges. It feels better. I understand that. But, you know, anybody who doesn't have problems, he's either totally asleep at the wheel or they don't have much of any kind of a life. You know, no responsibility, nothing they're building.