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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Tony Robbins
Started reading
August 12, 2023
You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.
Virtually everything we do is to change the way we feel—yet most of us have little or no training in how to do this quickly and effectively.
We’ll be reviewing some of the fundamentals, since repetition is the mother of skill. Therefore, I hope this will be a book you’ll read again and again, a book you’ll come back to and utilize as a tool to trigger yourself to find the answers that already lie inside you.
More importantly, maybe we should be asking ourselves, “How am I going to live the next ten years of my life? How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I’m committed to? What am I going to stand for from now on? What’s important to me right now, and what will be important to me in the long term? What actions can I take today that will shape my ultimate destiny?”
You see, ten years from now, you will surely arrive. The question is: Where? Who will you have become? How will you live? What will you contribute? Now is the time to design the next ten years of your life—not once they’re over. We must seize the moment.
The difference in the results that people produce comes down to what they’ve done differently from others in the same situations. Different actions produce different results. Why? Because any action is a cause set in motion, and its effect builds on past effects to move us in a definite direction.
In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.
I believe that it’s in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. The decisions that you’re making right now, every day, will shape how you feel today as well as who you’re going to become in the nineties and beyond.
My whole life changed in just one day—the day I determined not just what I’d like to have in my life or what I wanted to become, but when I decided who and what I was committed to having and being in my life. That’s a simple distinction, but a critical one.
Is there a difference between being interested in something, and being committed to it? You bet there is!
If you don’t set a baseline standard for what you’ll accept in your life, you’ll find it’s easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that’s far below what you deserve.
Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision.
True decisions are the catalyst for turning our dreams into reality. The most exciting thing about this force, this power, is that you already possess it. The explosive impetus of decision is not something reserved for a select few with the right credentials or money or family background. It’s available to the common laborer as well as the king.
I call “The Ultimate Success Formula,” which is an elementary process for getting you where you want to go: 1) Decide what you want, 2) Take action, 3) Notice what’s working or not, and 4) Change your approach until you achieve what you
all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth—that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too.”
Making a true decision means committing to achieving a result, and then cutting yourself off from any other possibility.
The way to make better decisions is to make more of them. Then make sure you learn from each one, including those that don’t seem to work out in the short term: they will provide valuable distinctions to make better evaluations and therefore decisions in the future.
Remember that repetition is the mother of skill.
To me, profound knowledge is any simple distinction, strategy, belief, skill, or tool that, the minute we understand it, we can apply it to make immediate increases in the quality of our lives.
The three decisions that control your destiny are: 1. Your decisions about what to focus on. 2. Your decisions about what things mean to you. 3. Your decisions about what to do to create the results you desire.
You see, it’s not what’s happening to you now or what has happened in your past that determines who you become. Rather, it’s your decisions about what to focus on, what things mean to you, and what you’re going to do about them that will determine your ultimate destiny.
Know that if anyone is enjoying greater success than you in any area, they’re making these three decisions differently fro...
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It’s likely that whatever challenges you have in your life currently could have been avoided by some better decisions upstream.
Although you may never have even thought about it, your brain has already constructed an internal system for making decisions. This system acts like an invisible force, directing all of your thoughts, actions, and feelings, both good and bad, every moment that you live. It controls how you evaluate everything in your life, and it’s largely driven by your subconscious mind. The scary thing is that most people never consciously set this system up. Instead, it’s been installed through the years by sources as diverse as parents, peers, teachers, television, advertisers, and the culture at large.
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1) your core beliefs and unconscious rules, 2) your life values, 3) your references, 4) the habitual questions that you ask yourself, and 5) the emotional states you experience in each moment.
“I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”
I have determined that no matter what decisions I make, I’ll be flexible, look at the consequences, learn from them, and use those lessons to make better decisions in the future. Remember: Success truly is the result of good judgment. Good judgment is the result of experience, and experience is often the result of bad judgment! Those seemingly bad or painful experiences are sometimes the most important.
The key is that when you do run aground, instead of beating yourself up for being such a “failure,” remember that there are no failures in life. There are only results. If you didn’t get the results you wanted, learn from this experience so that you have references about how to make better decisions in the future.
One of the most important decisions you can make to ensure your long-term happiness is to decide to use whatever life gives you in the moment. The truth of the matter is that there’s nothing you can’t accomplish if: 1) You clearly decide what it is that you’re absolutely committed to achieving, 2) You are willing to take massive action, 3) You notice what’s working or not, and 4) You continue to change your approach until you achieve what you want, using whatever life gives you along the way.
Success and failure are not overnight experiences. It’s all the small decisions along the way that cause people to fail. It’s failure to follow up. It’s failure to take action. It’s failure to persist. It’s failure to manage our mental and emotional states. It’s failure to control what we focus on. Conversely, success is the result of making small decisions: deciding to hold yourself to a higher standard, deciding to contribute, deciding to feed your mind rather than allowing the environment to control you—these small decisions create the life experience we call success.
Deciding to commit yourself to long-term results, rather than short-term fixes, is as important as any decision you’ll make in your lifetime.
Billy Joel was able to pull himself out of his depression by directing the three decisions that we all control each moment of our lives: what to focus on, what things mean, and what to do in spite of the challenges that may appear to limit us.
A critical rule I’ve made for myself is never to leave the scene of a decision without first taking a specific action toward its realization.
Make decisions often. The more decisions you make, the better you’re going to become at making
Learn from your decisions. There’s no way around it. At times, you’re going to screw up, no matter what you do. And when the inevitable happens, instead of beating yourself into the ground, learn something.
Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach. Once you’ve decided who you want to be as a person, for example, don’t get stuck on the means to achieving it. It’s the end you’re after. Too often, in deciding what they want for their lives, people pick the best way they know at the time—they make a map—but then don’t stay open to alternate routes. Don’t become rigid in your approach. Cultivate the art of flexibility.
Enjoy making decisions. You must know that in any moment a decision you make can change the course of your life forever: the very next person you stand behind in line or sit next to on an airplane, the very next phone call you make or receive, the very next movie you see or book you read or page you turn could be the one single thing that causes the floodgates to open, and all of the things that you’ve been waiting for to fall into place.
If you really want your life to be passionate, you need to live with this ...
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is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
Know that it’s your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny.
I want you to remember that, in the final analysis, everything you’ve read in this book is worthless… every other book you’ve read or tape you’ve heard or seminar you’ve attended is worthless… unless you decide to use it.
Prove to yourself that you’ve decided now. Make one or two decisions that you’ve been putting off: one easy decision and one that’s a bit more difficult. Show yourself what you can do. Right now, stop. Make at least one clear-cut decision that you’ve been putting off—take the first action toward fulfilling it—and stick to it!
Everything you and I do, we do either out of our need to avoid pain or our desire to gain pleasure.
they keep trying to change their behavior, which is the effect, instead of dealing with the cause behind it.
man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.” —SENECA
For most people, the fear of loss is much greater than the desire for gain.
Why is it that people can experience pain yet fail to change? They haven’t experienced enough pain yet; they haven’t hit what I call emotional threshold.
What are some of the experiences of pain and pleasure that have shaped your life? Whether you’ve linked pain or pleasure to drugs, for example, certainly has affected your destiny. So have the emotions you’ve learned to associate to cigarettes or alcohol, relationships, or even the concepts of giving or trusting.
if we link massive pain to any behavior or emotional pattern, we will avoid indulging in it at all costs. We can use this understanding to harness the force of pain and pleasure to change virtually anything in our lives,
you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” —MARCUS AURELIUS
