Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny!

by Tony Robbins

OUR QUESTIONS DETERMINE OUR THOUGHTS

if we want to change the quality of our lives, we should change our habitual questions. These questions direct our focus, and therefore how we think and how we feel.

the entire Socratic method (a way of teaching that dates back to the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates) is based upon the teacher doing nothing but asking questions, directing the students’ focus, and getting them to come up with their own answers.

the main difference between the people who seemed to be successful—in any area!—and those who weren’t was that successful people asked better questions, and as a result, they got better answers.

Quality questions create a quality life.

the difference between people is the difference in the questions they ask consistently.

they focus on things that make them feel overloaded and overwhelmed.

So what’s the quickest way to change focus? Simply by asking a new question. When people are depressed, it is more than likely due to asking themselves disempowering questions on a regular basis, questions like: “What’s the use?

Remember, ask and you shall receive. If you ask a terrible question, you’ll get a terrible answer. Your mental computer is ever ready to serve you, and whatever question you give it, it will surely come up with an answer. So if you ask, “Why can’t I ever succeed?,” it will tell you—even if it has to make something up! It might come up with an answer like, “Because you’re stupid,” or “Because you don’t deserve to do well anyway.”

control his focus by asking the right questions.

answers and solutions. Questions determine everything you do in life, from your abilities to your relationships to your income.

The questions you ask will determine where you focus, how you think, how you feel, and what you do.

whatever you look for you’ll find. So with

they fail to consciously ask empowering questions of themselves.

They ask questions like “What would make me feel most full?” and “What is the sweetest, richest food I can get away with?” This leads them to select foods filled with fat and sugar—a guarantee of more unhappiness. What if instead they asked questions like “What would really nourish me?,” “What’s something light that I can eat that would give me energy?,” or “Will this cleanse or clog me?” Better yet, they could ask, “If I eat this, what will I have to give up in order to still achieve my goals? What’s the ultimate price I’ll pay if I don’t stop this indulgence now?” By asking questions like this, they’ll associate pain to overeating, and their behavior will change immediately. To change your life for the better, you must change your habitual questions.

1. Questions immediately change what we’re focusing on and therefore how we feel.

You and I can change how we feel in an instant, just by changing our focus.

“What’s really great in my life right now?”

By failing to consciously control the habitual questions we ask, we severely limit our emotional range and thus our ability to utilize the resources at hand.

“If I don’t change this, what is the ultimate price? What will this cost me in the long run?” and “How will my whole life be transformed if I did this right now?”;

What are you truly happy about in your life right now? What’s really great in your life today? What are you truly grateful for? Take a moment to think about the answers and notice how good it feels to know that you have legitimate reasons for you to feel great now.

2. Questions change what we delete. Human beings are marvelous “deletion creatures.” You and I have so many millions of things going on around us that we can focus on right now, from the blood flowing through our ears to the wind that may be brushing against our arms.

If you’re feeling really sad, there is only one reason: it’s because you’re deleting all the reasons you could be feeling good. And if you’re feeling good, it’s because you’re deleting all the bad things you could be focusing on.

Questions are the laser of human consciousness. They concentrate our focus and determine what we feel and do.

Stop for a moment and as you look around the room, ask yourself a question: “What in this room is brown?” Look around and see it: brown, brown, brown.

Now, look down at this page. Blocking off your peripheral vision, think of everything that’s… green. If you’re in a room you know very well, you can probably do this easily, but if you’re in a strange room, chances are that you’ll remember a lot more brown than green. So now look around and notice what’s green: green, green, green. Do you see more green this time? Again, if you’re in an unfamil...

“How can I learn from this problem so that this neve...

if you ask yourself a question like “Why do I always sabotage myself?” after something ends disappointingly, you set yourself up for more of the same and set in motion a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why? Because, as we’ve already said, your brain will obediently come up with an answer for anything you ask of it. You’ll take for granted that you’ve sabotaged things because you’re focusing on why you do it, not on whether you do it.

3. Questions change the resources available to us.

I asked a better question: “How can I turn this around?”

Then I asked an even more inspirational question: “How can I turn my company around, take it to the next level and cause it to have even more impact than it ever has in the past?” I knew that if I asked a better question,

At any moment, the questions that we ask ourselves can shape our perception of who we are, what we’re capable of, and what we’re willing to do to achieve our dreams.

Learning to consciously control the questions you ask will take you further to achieving your ultimate destiny than almost anything I know.

life is just a Jeopardy! game; all the answers are there—all you have to do is come up with the right questions to win.

develop a pattern of consistent questions that empower you.

THE PROBLEM-SOLVING QUESTIONS 1. What is great about this problem? 2. What is not perfect yet? 3. What am I willing to do to make it the way I want it? 4. What am I willing to no longer do in order to make it the way I want it? 5. How can I enjoy the process while I do what is necessary to make it the way I want it?

What if every day you consciously started asking a pattern of questions that would put you in the right frame of mind and that caused you to remember how grateful, happy, and excited you are? What kind of day do you think you’d have, with those positive emotional states as your filter? Obviously it would affect how you feel about virtually everything. Realizing this, I decided I needed a “success ritual,” and I created a series of questions that I ask myself every morning. The wonderful thing about asking yourself questions in the morning is that you can do it in the shower,

1. What am I happy about in my life now? What about that makes me happy? How does that make me feel? 2. What am I excited about in my life now? What about that makes me excited? How does that make me feel? 3. What am I proud about in my life now? What about that makes me proud? How does that make me feel? 4. What am I grateful about in my life now? What about that makes me grateful? How does that make me feel? 5. What am I enjoying most in my life right now? What about that do I enjoy? How does that make me feel? 6. What am I committed to in my life right now? What about that makes me committed? How does that make me feel? 7. Who do I love? Who loves me? What about that makes me loving? How does that make me feel? In the evening, sometimes I ask the Morning Questions, and sometimes I ask an additional three questions. Here they are: THE EVENING POWER QUESTIONS 1. What have I given today? In what ways have I been a giver today? 2. What did I learn today? 3. How has today added to the quality of my life or how can I use today as an investment in my future?

“What’s great about this?” and “How can I use this?”

If there was one action that you could take immediately to instantly change the quality of your emotions and feelings each and every day of your life, would you want to know about it?

if you develop a habit of saying you “hate” things—you “hate” your hair; you “hate” your job; you “hate” having to do something—do you think this raises the intensity of your negative emotional states more than if you were to use a phrase like “I prefer something else”?

words do indeed create a biochemical effect.

certain people tend to be frustrated all of the time,

THE WORDS YOU CONSISTENTLY SELECT WILL SHAPE YOUR DESTINY

“I’m beginning to get a smidge cranky.”

make a joke of our disempowering feelings before they ever reach the point of our being upset—we’ve “killed the monster while it’s little.”

“Well, that’s rather inconvenient.”

Tiny shifts like these change the emotional direction and therefore the quality of our lives.

described how depressed he was, or how depressing things were, at least a dozen times in a twenty-minute period.

For the next ten days, promise me you won’t use the word ‘depressed’ even once. If you begin to use it, immediately replace it with a more empowering word. Instead of ‘depressed,’ say, ‘I’m feeling a little bit down.’ Say, ‘I’m getting better,’ or ‘I’m turning things around.’” He agreed to commit to this as