Unleashing the Power Within was truly an amazing experience. It was 4 days of seminars. The seminar lasted around 12-13 hours per day and was definitely intense. The amount of people in the audience was 14,000 people.
I had some great tickets and therefore sat very close to the stage. I got to see Tony Robbins and all of the other speakers up close.
The following are a series of notes/insights that I’ve collected on my notepad throughout the seminar. Each note will have an explanation that will explore the insight in further detail.
Managing Your State Is Extremely Important!
If you’ve studied Tony Robbins, then you’ll know that one of the bigger aspects of his teachings is learning how to manage your state! Your ability to perform at a high level and be resourceful is in many ways dependent on your state. If you’re not in the right state of mind, chances are that you won’t make optimal decisions. Decisions determine your destiny!
The 3 Pillars of State
There are 3 aspects that contribute to your state. These factors are:
#1 Physiology
#2 Focus
#3 Language
Physiology is how you use your body. By changing your physiology, you will definitely change your state. Your physiology includes your breath, posture, and movement. This is the quickest way to change your state. If you sit at a computer desk all day long, then chances are that your state isn’t anywhere near it’s peakt. It’s hard to feel good when you’re barely moving. Your posture is probably bad and your breathing is probably shallow. Try feeling bad when you’re doing a sprint or hiking through the woods…
Focus is your pattern of focus. What’re you currently focusing on? Whatever you focus on is what you’ll feel, regardless of whether it’s true or not.
Also, it’s your choice what to focus on. You can focus on what’s missing and what’s wrong with your life or you can focus on what’s available and what’s great with your life.
You control your focus with questions. Therefore, learn how to ask yourself the right types of questions. Ex: What am I grateful for? What is wrong with me? It’s your choice and your focus definitely determines your state. This is a bit hard in the beginning because you’ve conditioned your focus to be negative for so long, but don’t despair. You just need to recondition your pattern of focus so that you automatically focus on an empowering meaning.
Your pattern of language is the third and final component of state. So be mindful of the words you use. As soon as you judge an experience with words, you change the meaning of the experience.
Words contain a meaning that you have been conditioned to associate the word with. Before you label an experience, the experience is just a series of sensations. The moment you label the experience (i.e – this experience is bad, I’m frustrated, I’m humiliated, etc) you change that experience.
Once again, before you labeled it, the experience was just a series of sensations. You’re in charge of labeling that experience so label it to your advantage. Therefore, control the inner talk that you use to label experiences. Imagine instead of saying: “I’m furious!” – you said “This peeves me a little bit”. Which one do you think will create pain within you? If you say “This peeves me a little bit”, you won’t be nearly as angry because you’ve just labeled the experience with a pretty ridiculous/funny sounding word!
Notes on the Fire Walk
At the end of the 1st day’s seminar, around 1 am, everyone set out to do the fire walk. Tony prepped all of us by having us visualize the process of walking through the hot burning coals without getting burned. He then made all of us put ourselves into an amazingly high state.
The whole experience was meant to be a type of metaphor for winning the war on fear. It was pretty easy and I did it without getting burned. It wasn’t an insane experience but one that is a great metaphor for getting through fear. Fear is just like those hot coals, if you get into state and move forward with a clear outcome, there isn’t much on this planet that can stop you.
Learning Actively: The Myth Of Passive Education
Most of us went to schools where we pretty much sat around for 8 hours a day passively absorbing boring information. There’s a reason that school was not enjoyable for the most part. There’s a reason that school didn’t really teach us much about life, other than how to be obedient little followers that know how to pay attention to schedules I.E the bell rings, your time is up and it’s time for the next class. School really just conditioned us to be passive followers of an authoritative regime, but the purpose of this article isn’t meant to go deep into that.
True learning is embodying knowledge at a deep level…at the level of your nervous system. If you are like most people, you will passively absorb the information that you are reading right now.
The chances of you taking action on this information and embodying it deeply are pretty slim. If you want to actually benefit from this knowledge, I suggest practicing something you learned here…experiment with it. The point is to do something about it so you can experience the teachings. Otherwise, this will only be another worthless thought in your head.
This is to be seriously considered.
Being Cool Is Living Life On Your Own Terms
Being cool is NOT being a follower. Being cool is being a leader. If you think you’re cool because you’re following all the latest trends and thinking the same way as everyone else, then you’re wrong. The only reason you think you’re cool is because “the herd” accepts and approves of your behavior.
Truly being cool is finding what you stand for as a man and standing for that. Being cool is finding out what’s right and developing a personal ethos and sticking to it. It’s doing what you feel is right. Being this way isn’t easy, but it’s worth it.
You Aren’t Failing Because You Lack Resources: You Lack RESOURCEFULNESS
Don’t make excuses as to why you’re failing in life. You are 100% responsible for your condition. Ask yourself, what can I do to make this situation better? Is complaining truly going to make this situation better?
This comes back to being able to manage your state.
If you didn’t succeed at something, it’s not because of the government, the competition, the weather or any other bullshit excuse. It’s because of your own lack of resourcefulness.
Truly successful people work with reality, they don’t resist it. This means that whatever like throws at you, you don’t sit there and complain. You find what you can do to make it better.
When your physiology, focus and language patterns are all on point and you’re connected with your vision and purpose…you can’t help but be resourceful and take decisive/effective action. Your success doesn’t depend on resources but rather on your ability to be resourceful.
Commit To Living In A Beautiful State
Tony said that, if you aren’t in a beautiful state, then you’re suffering. Everything else isn’t worth it. Life is too short to not be in a beautiful state at all times. How do you stay in a beautiful state at all times? Simple. Condition yourself to be in that state. Constantly be manipulating the 3 Molders of Meaning AKA physiology, focus and language.
Will you occasionally get frustrated or angry or sad? Of course! The only difference is that by committing to living in a beautiful state, you’ll snap out of it way quicker!
Most people live in a state of anxiety, fear, anger, and worry. Those are the emotions that most people have conditioned themselves to stay in at all times. By committing to living in a beautiful state, you will be swift at returning to that state no matter what happens in your life.
People Check Their Phone 130x A Day
I just thought it was worth mentioning that people check their phones 130x times day on average. The more you check your phone, the less fulfilled you’ll be.
Our brains aren’t wired to be in this constant state of compulsive phone checking. on Our brains are wired to connect with one another. Those friends you have on Facebook and the friends who you’re constantly texting aren’t really your friends, but rather virtual reminders that you have friends. Seek to establish more in-person connections with people and when you’re with them, do yourself and them a favor: PLEASE don’t check your phone.
What Used to Be A Miracle Is Now An Expectation: Trade Your Expectations For Appreciation And Your Life Will Change
You probably don’t remember the times when hot water was a luxury. How about having a fridge to hold all of your foods and keep them fresh. It wasn’t long ago when many of the conveniences that we all have now were all just luxuries. Even 15 years ago, the idea that you would have little computer in your pocket at all times was insane and most people wouldn’t have believed it. Now we have access to an unprecedented amount of information at the click of a button.
The point is that these things are now all expectations. When was the last time you got mad because the internet was a bit slow? Or that the store didn’t have your favorite food?
Now, we take all of these things for granted and expect them to be provided for us as a normal way of life. Tony invites us to constantly remind ourselves to appreciate all of the miracles around us. Being in awe of the miracles around us will surely help keep us in an amazing state!
Learn How to Associate Pain & Pleasure To Different Things Strategically
The secret to creating lasting change is to associate massive unbearable pain to unwanted behaviors and massive immediate pleasure to wanted behaviors. You can literally condition yourself to do this through many different processes.
One of the exercises Tony had us all do was to take a limiting belief that we all have and then practice putting our finger in our nose and saying the limiting belief like this. Ex: “My bullshit belief is that I will never have a fulfilling relationship with someone I’m totally attracted to”. He had us say the limiting belief in a really stupid voice tone. He had us then say the empowering belief in a strong and powerful tone. “Thats bullshit! I am worthy of an amazing relationship with someone who totally turns me on! Yes! Yes! Yes!”.
Basically the point of that exercise was to condition ourselves to associate pain and ridicule to our limiting beliefs and associate massive certainty and power to the beliefs that we need to achieve our visions.
This is extremely powerful and applicable! Next time, I find myself thinking a limiting belief, I’ll go somewhere, put my finger in my nose and say the limiting belief in a ridiculous tone! Then I’ll say the true and strong belief in an empowering one and thus the conditioning continues.
Tony Jumps Into Cold Water Everyday
I thought this was a cool idea. Tony jumps into freezing cold water every single day. He doesn’t necessarily like doing this, but he does it so that he conditions his nervous system to take action on the decisions that he sets for himself.
In other words, if you train your nervous system to jump into cold water even though it’s definitely not a very comfortable exercise, then you’re training your nervous system to take action on the decisions your conscious mind has set! Most people are completely ruled by their minds. Your mind works for you, not the other way around!
2 Surprise Guest Speakers
There were two pretty awesome surprise guest speakers: Wim Hof and Dave Asprey. Both have amazing content out there that is truly empowering. Wim Hof explained the benefits of cold exposure and breathing and Dave Asprey spoke about the different ways in which we can optimize our environment for optimal performance. I’m not gonna go too deep into what they were talking about, but the gist of their message was human body optimization.
In summary, the experience was definitely worth it. It was a great refreshed on a lot of the material I was already learning from Tony Robbins. Plus, I got to see the man right in front of me. The guy is incredible. He spoke for 12 hours straight…I don’t recall seeing him take a break once!
Best,
Maximillion Giamarco
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