Unshakeable: Your Financial Freedom Playbook

by Anthony Robbins

“It was obvious that everybody was suicidal,” Howard told me. “In general, that’s a good time to buy.”

invest for the long term; to trade less; to lower your investment fees and transaction costs; to be more open to views that differ from your own; to reduce risk by diversifying globally; and to control the fears that could otherwise derail you during bear markets.

Every day, think as you wake up, “Today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it.” —THE DALAI LAMA

When people dream of becoming rich, they’re not fantasizing about owning millions of pieces of paper with pictures of dead people on them! What we really want are the emotions we associate with money: for example, the sense of freedom, security, or comfort we believe money will give us, or the joy that comes from sharing our wealth. In other words, it’s the feelings we’re after, not the money itself.

But real wealth is about so much more than money. Real wealth is emotional, psychological, and spiritual. If you’re financially free, but you’re still suffering emotionally, then what kind of victory is that?

The First Step to Achieving Anything You Want Is Focus. Remember: wherever your focus goes, your energy flows. When you put your entire focus on something that really matters to you, when you can’t stop thinking about it every day, this intense focus unleashes a burning desire that can help you obtain what might otherwise be out of reach.

The Second Step Is to Go Beyond Hunger, Drive, and Desire, and to Consistently Take Massive Action. A lot of people dream big but never get started! To succeed, you need to take massive action. But you also need to find the most effective execution strategy, which means changing your approach until you find what works best. You can speed up this process exponentially by modeling people who’ve already been successful,

You Must Keep Growing. Everything in life either grows or dies. That goes for relationships, businesses, or anything else. If you don’t keep growing, you’ll become frustrated and miserable, no matter how many millions you have in the bank. In fact, I can tell you the secret to happiness in one word: progress.

You Have to Give. If you don’t give, there’s only so much you can feel inside, and you’ll never feel fully alive. As Winston Churchill said, “You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.” Whenever I ask people about the most fulfilling aspects of their lives, they always talk about sharing with others.

The true nature of human beings isn’t selfish. We’re driven by our desire to contribute. If we stop feeling that deep sense of contributi...

But in the end, he made everyone happy except himself. This reminds me of the safety instructions they announce whenever you get on an airplane: “In the event of an emergency, please put on your oxygen mask before assisting others.” It sounds callous and selfish when you first hear it, but it actually makes sense: unless you help yourself first, how can you hope to help others?

The trouble is, the human brain isn’t designed to make us happy and fulfilled. It’s designed to make us survive. This two-million-year-old organ is always looking for what’s wrong, for whatever can hurt us, so that we can either fight it or take flight from it. If you and I leave this ancient survival software to run the show, what chance do we have of enjoying life? An undirected mind operates naturally in survival mode, constantly identifying and magnifying these potential threats to our well-being. The result: a life filled with stress and anxiety.

When it rains on our parade, when we don’t get what we want or expect, we’re so quick to give up our happiness and sink into a state of suffering.

Suffering trigger is “Loss.” When you focus on loss, you become convinced that a particular problem has caused or will cause you to lose something you value.

Suffering trigger is “Less.” When you focus on the idea that you have less or will have less, you will suffer.

Suffering trigger is “Never.” When you focus on the idea or become consumed by a belief that you’ll never have something you value—such as love, joy, respect, wealth, opportunity—you’re doomed to suffer, you’ll never be happy, you’ll never become the person you want to be.

Whatever we focus on, we feel—regardless of what actually happened.

once you’re aware of these patterns of focus, you can systematically change them, thereby freeing yourself from these habits of suffering. It all starts with the realization that this involves a conscious choice. Either you master your mind or it masters you. The secret of living an extraordinary life is to take control of the mind, since this alone will determine whether you live in a suffering state or a beautiful state.

Our lives are shaped not by our conditions, but by our decisions.

what’s the biggest decision you can make in your life right now?

Are you committed to being happy, no matter what happens to you?

will you commit to enjoying life not only when everything goes your way but also when everything goes against you, when injustice happens, when someone screws you over, when you lose something or someone you love, or when nobody seems to understand or appreciate you? Unless we make this definitive decision to stop suffering and live in a beautiful state, our survival minds will create suffering whenever our desires, expectations, or preferences are not met. What a waste of so much of our lives!

You have to own this decision, do whatever it takes to make it happen, and cut off any possibility of turning back.

You have to decide that you’re 100% responsible for your state of mind and for your experience of this life.

“I’m done with suffering. I’m going to live every day to the fullest and find juice in every moment, including the ones I don’t like, BECAUSE LIFE IS JUST TOO SHORT TO SUFFER.”

The first tool is what I call “the 90-second rule.” Whenever I start to suffer, I give myself 90 seconds to stop it so that I can return to living in a beautiful state.

As soon as I feel the tension rising in my body, I catch myself. And the way that I catch myself is really simple: I gently breathe and slow things down. I step out of the situation and start to distance myself from all those stressful thoughts that my brain is generating.

you don’t have to believe these thoughts or identify with them. You can step back and say to yourself, “Wow, look at that crazy thought go by! There goes that crazy mind again!” Why is this helpful? Because the problem isn’t the existence of our negative, destructive, and limiting thoughts—everyone has those! What hurts us is the habit of believing those thoughts.

Once I’ve detached myself from these unwanted thoughts, I start to focus my mind on finding something to appreciate.

there’s always something to appreciate.

“What’s wrong is always available . . . but so i...

It doesn’t matter what you appreciate. What matters is that by shifting your focus to appreciation, you slow down your survival mechanism. Love, joy, and giving, will all trigger the same positive transformation. This shift in your focus creates space for your spirit to enter the game, so you don’t get stuck inside your head. If you keep doing this with real consistency, you actually rewire your nervous system, training your mind to find the good in every situation, so your experience of life is one of thankfulness and joy.

you know what’s miraculous? Before you know it, you feel free. You let go and start to laugh at things that used to drive you nuts.

What you’ll also find is that you’re much more present for other people when you’re not caught up in your own thoughts of loss, less, and never. When you’re in a beautiful state, you can give so much more to everyone you love.

And you know what? There’s power in happiness. There’s a happiness advantage in life. Happiness is an advantage in your relationships, your business, your health, and in everything you touch.

Living in a beautiful state no matter what is the ultimate freedom and the ultimate gift that you can give to those you love. It’s the experience of absolute abundan...

The simple goal of this meditation is to change your emotional state by filling you with a sense of gratitude, and to use that emotion to solve whatever challenge has been causing you to suffer. Why gratitude? Because you can’t be grateful and angry at the same time. You can’t be grateful and fearful at the same time.

think of three experiences in your life for which you feel incredibly grateful—and you’re going to step into those three experiences one at a time. They could be big or small. They could date back to your childhood, or they could be from this week or even today.

Fill yourself up with gratitude because when you’re grateful, there is no sadness, there is no hurt, there is no anger.

It’s so simple and yet so profound: appreciation, enjoyment, and love are nothing less than the antidotes to suffering. It’s all about shifting your focus away from the illusion of loss, less, or never, and engaging your gratitude, appreciation, and love for what you already have in your life!

When you meet people like this, you never forget them because they possess such an outstanding ability to live in appreciation, awe, and gratitude.

Life Insurance. If you have insurance on your cell phone but not on your life, we need to talk. I’m not kidding. Life insurance is a crucial aspect to protecting your wealth and family. I have seen devastating situations where people with substantial means didn’t have life insurance (or enough of it), and the family members quickly ran out of money when the income disappeared and the expenses piled up.

term insurance can be helpful if you want to safeguard your family in case something happens to you before you have secured financial freedom.

Variable Life Insurance. This is a kind of permanent life insurance, except the cash value is reinvested in a number of “subaccounts” that are similar to mutual funds. Watch out for these! These quasi “investment” vehicles are bogged down with fees, huge commissions, and actively managed funds. They also have high surrender charges if you want to get out. The only exception is a tool for the ultra-affluent called private placement life insurance (PPLI, or sometimes referred to as rich-man’s Roth), where there is no commission paid, no surrender charges, and few limitations on the investments within.

Disability Insurance. What do you think is your greatest asset? Many people think of their home or possibly their retirement account. For most, though, it’s your ability to earn. Your goals for financial security and freedom are often dependent on your ability to keep the paychecks rolling in so that you can sock away enough to compound into a substantial nest egg. A disability could seriously derail all that you have set up. Employers typically offer both short-term and long-term disability coverage for their employees,

Homeowner’s Insurance. Our homes are one of our biggest assets, and thus it makes sense to make sure that we are protected from certain things beyond our control, such as a fire, tornado, earthquake, or flood. Homeowner’s insurance protects you by covering the costs of damage to your home, within the limits of your policy. (This is key. Often we don’t fully understand the limits and conditions of these policies and then find ourselves stuck with bills we never expected to pay.)