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by
Tony Robbins
it’s not actual pain that drives us, but our fear that something will lead to pain. And it’s not actual pleasure that drives us, but our belief—our sense of certainty—that somehow taking a certain action will lead to pleasure. We’re not driven by the reality, but by our perception of reality. Most people focus on how to avoid pain
anything you want that’s valuable requires that you break through some short-term pain in order to gain long-term pleasure.
The key thing to remember is that we don’t move away from real pain; we move away from what we believe will lead to pain.
write down four actions that you need to take that you’ve been putting off. Maybe you need to lose some weight.
under each of these actions, write down the answer to the following questions: Why haven’t I taken action? In the past, what pain have I linked to taking this action?
write down all the pleasure you’ve had in the past by indulging in this negative pattern. For example, if you think you should lose some weight, why have you continued to eat whole pans of brownies and bulk-size bags of chips, and to guzzle twelve-packs of soda pop? You’re avoiding the pain of depriving yourself, yes, and at the same time you’re really doing this because it makes you feel good right now. It gives you pleasure! Instant pleasure! No one wants to give up these feelings! In order to create a change that will last, we need to find a new way to get the same pleasure without any
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write down what it will cost you if you don’t change now. What will happen if you don’t stop eating so much sugar and fat?
If you don’t start consistently working out each day? Be honest with yourself. What’s it going to cost you over the next two, three, four, five years? What’s it going to cost you emotionally? What’s it going to cost you in terms of your self-image? What will it cost you in your physical energy level? What will it cost you in your feelings of self-esteem? What will it cost you financially? What will it cost you in your relationships with the people you care about most? How does that make you feel? Don’t just say, “It will cost me money” or “I will be fat.” That’s not enough. You’ve got to
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The final step is to write down all the pleasure you’ll receive by taking each of these actions right now. Make a huge list that will drive you emotionally, that will really get you excited: “I’ll gain the feeling of really being in control of my life, of knowing that I’m in charge. I’ll gain a new level of self-confidence. I’ll gain physical vitality and health. I’ll be able to strengthen all my relationships. I’ll develop more willpower which I could use in every other area of my life. My life will be better in all these ways, now. Over the next two, three, four, five years. By taking this
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what we link pain to and pleasure to shapes every aspect of our lives and that we have the power to change these associations and, therefore, our actions and our destinies.
“Under all that we think, lives all we believe, like the ultimate veil of our spirits.” —ANTONIO MACHADO
It’s not the events of our lives that shape us, but our beliefs as to what those events mean.
it’s never the events of our lives, but the meaning we attach to the events—how we interpret them—that shapes who we are today and who we’ll become tomorrow.
We begin to treat our beliefs as if they’re realities, as if they are gospel. In fact, we rarely, if ever, question our long-held beliefs.
all of our actions are the result of our beliefs.
Whatever we do, it is out of our conscious or unconscious beliefs about what will lead to pleasure or away from pain.
If you want to create long-term and consistent changes in your behaviors, you must change the belie...
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Viktor Frankl as he and other Holocaust victims survived the horrors of Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Frankl noted that those special few who were able to make it through this “hell on earth” shared one thing in common: they were able to endure and transform their experience by finding an empowering meaning for their pain. They developed the belief that because they suffered and survived, they would be able to tell the story and make certain that no human being would ever suffer this way again.
our beliefs about the illness and its treatment play as significant a role, maybe an even more significant role, than the treatment itself.
Global beliefs are the giant beliefs we have about everything in our lives: beliefs about our identities, people, work, time, money, and life itself, for that matter. These giant generalizations are often phrased as is/am/are: “Life is…” “I am…” “People are …” As you can imagine, beliefs of this size and scope can shape and color every aspect of our lives.
Once accepted, our beliefs become unquestioned commands to our nervous systems, and they have the power to expand or destroy the possibilities of our present and future.
take conscious control over our beliefs.
With enough emotional intensity and repetition, our nervous systems experience something as real, even if it hasn’t occurred yet.
They’ve been able to create references where no references existed and achieve what seemed to be impossible.
Achievers rarely, if ever, see a problem as permanent, while those who fail see even the smallest problems as permanent.
All personal breakthroughs begin with a change in beliefs. So how do we change? The most effective way is to get your brain to associate massive pain to the old belief.
The way to expand our lives is to model the lives of those people who are already succeeding.
Meetings with Remarkable Men,
One of the most important global beliefs that you and I can adopt is a belief that in order to succeed and be happy, we’ve got to be constantly improving the quality of our lives, constantly growing and expanding.
Constant And Never-ending Improvement.
I can always learn, that I can always expand, that I can always grow.
at the end of each day I ask myself these questions: What have I learned today? What did I contribute or improve? What did I enjoy? If
SMALL IMPROVEMENTS ARE BELIEVABLE AND THEREFORE ACHIEVABLE!
Begin to brainstorm all the beliefs you have, both those that empower you and disempower you: little beliefs that don’t seem to matter at all and global beliefs that seem to make a big difference. Make sure you cover: • If-then beliefs like, “If I consistently give my all, then I will succeed,” or “If I’m totally passionate with this person, then they’ll leave me.” • Global beliefs, like beliefs about people—“People are basically good” or “People are a pain”—beliefs about yourself, beliefs about opportunity, beliefs about time, beliefs about scarcity and
Circle the two most disempowering beliefs.
How is this belief ridiculous or absurd? 2. Was the person I learned this belief from worth modeling in this area? 3. What will it ultimately cost me emotionally if I don’t let go of this belief? 4. What will it ultimately cost me in my relationships if I don’t let go of this belief? 5. What will it ultimately cost me physically if I don’t let go of this belief? 6. What will it ultimately cost me financially if I don’t let go of this belief? 7. What will it cost my family/loved ones if I don’t let go of this belief?
write down the replacements for the two limiting beliefs you’ve just eliminated.
If you’re not getting the results you want in your life, I suggest you ask yourself, “What would I have to believe in order to succeed here?”
“What would I have to believe in order to feel the way I do?” The miracle of this simple process is that it will uncover beliefs you aren’t even aware you have. For example, if you’re feeling depressed and ask yourself, “What would I have to believe in order to feel depressed?” you’ll probably come up with something that relates to the future, like, “Things will never get better,” or “There’s no hope.” When you hear these beliefs verbalized, you might well think, “I don’t believe that!
Human beings respond to challenge,
she gets them to hold themselves to a higher standard, she assists them in adopting new, empowering beliefs that enable them to break through their old limitations, and she backs all this up with specific skills and strategies necessary for lifelong success.
I realized that to be able to help others change, I had to be able to change myself.
I linked pleasure to learning and sharing things that could make a difference in the quality of people’s lives and lead them to appreciate and maybe even love me.
Understanding how to influence human emotion and behavior became an obsession for me. I took a speed-reading class and developed a voracious appetite for books. I read close to 700 books in just a few years, almost all of them in the areas of human development, psychology, influence, and physiological development. I wanted to know anything and everything there was to know about how we can increase the quality of our lives, and tried to immediately apply it to myself as well as share it with other people.
as soon as I learned something, I applied it immediately.
Once we effect a change, we should reinforce it immediately. Then, we have to condition our nervous systems to succeed not just once, but consistently.
Science of Neuro-Associative Conditioning™, or NAC. What is it? NAC is a step-by-step process that can condition your nervous system to associate pleasure to those things you want to continuously move toward and pain to those things you need to avoid in order to succeed consistently in your life without constant effort or willpower.
“Things do not change; we change.” —HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The first belief we must have if we’re going to create change quickly is that we can change now.
