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

Metadata

• Title: Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial
• Author: Tony Robbins
• Book URL: https://amazon.com/dp/B001EM101Q?tag=malvaonlin-20
• Open in Kindle: kindle://book/?action=open&asin=B001EM101Q
• Last Updated on: Saturday, September 14, 2019

Highlights & Notes

“Deep within man dwell those slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action.” —ORISON SWETT MARDEN

“A consistent man believes in destiny, a capricious man in chance.” —BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards. When people ask me what really changed my life eight years ago, I tell them that absolutely the most important thing was changing what I demanded of myself. I wrote down all the things I would no longer accept in my life, all the things I would no longer tolerate, and all the things that I aspired to becoming.

Our beliefs are like unquestioned commands, telling us how things are, what’s possible and what’s impossible, what we can and can not do. They shape every action, every thought, and every feeling that we experience. As a result, changing our belief systems is central to making any real and lasting change in our lives. We must develop a sense of certainty that we can and will meet the new standards before we actually do.

Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year—and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!

“Man is born to live and not to prepare to live.” —BORIS PASTERNAK

“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?”

our destiny. 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.

“Man is not the creature of circumstances; circumstances are the creatures of men.” —BENJAMIN DISRAELI

More than anything else, I believe it’s our decisions, not the conditions of our lives, that determine our destiny.

Not only do you have to decide what results you are committed to, but also the kind of person that you’re committed to becoming.

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.

If you truly decide to, you can do almost anything.

“Nothing can resist the human will that will stake even its existence on its stated purpose.” —BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Decisions act as the source of both problems and incredible joys and opportunities. This is the power that sparks the process of turning the invisible into the visible. True decisions are the catalyst for turning our dreams into reality.

“Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth—that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too.” —JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Making a true decision means committing to achieving a result, and then cutting yourself off from any other possibility.

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.

“It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.” —ANTHONY ROBBINS

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.

“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.” —HENRY DAVID THOREAU

This system is comprised of five components: 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. The synergistic relationship of these five elements exerts a force that’s responsible for prompting you to or stopping you from taking action, causing you to anticipate or worry about the future, making you feel loved or rejected, and dictating your level of success and happiness. It determines why you do what you do and why you don’t do some things that you know you need to do.

We don’t have to allow the programming of our past to control our present and future.

“I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” —THOMAS EDISON

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!

“We will either find a way, or make one.” —HANNIBAL

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. No individual or organization that has become successful has done so with short-term focus.

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. Failing to do this can cause not only massive financial or societal pain, but sometimes even the ultimate personal pain.

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” —HELEN KELLER

Know that it’s your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny.

Remember that a truly committed decision is the force that changes your life. It’s a power available to you in any moment if you just decide to use it.

“Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion.” —SIR THOMAS BROWNE

“A 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.

“The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you’re in control of your life. If you don’t life controls you.” —ANTHONY ROBBINS

The most important lesson we learn in life is what creates pain for us and what creates pleasure. This lesson is different for each of us and, therefore, so are our behaviors.

WHAT YOU LINK PAIN TO AND WHAT YOU LINK PLEASURE TO SHAPES YOUR DESTINY

Would drinking beer really make me like Dad? No, but we frequently create false associations in our nervous systems (neuro-associations) as to what will create pain or pleasure in our lives.

We don’t believe what we hear; rather, we are certain that our perceptions are accurate—and

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,

“If 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

We are the only beings on the planet who lead such rich internal lives that it’s not the events that matter most to us, but rather, it’s how we interpret those events that will determine how we think about ourselves and how we will act in the future.

But if we fail to direct our own associations to pain and pleasure, we’re living no better than animals or machines, continually reacting to our environment, allowing whatever comes up next to determine the direction and quality of our lives.

what you link pain and pleasure to will shape your destiny.

“Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.” —LORD CHESTERFIELD

Though we’d like to deny it, the fact remains that what drives our behavior is instinctive reaction to pain and pleasure, not intellectual calculation.

Although we’d like to believe it’s our intellect that really drives us, in most cases our emotions—the sensations that we link to our thoughts—are what truly drive us.

Ultimately, in order for a change to last, we must link pain to our old behavior and pleasure to our new behavior, and condition it until it’s consistent. Remember, we will all do more to avoid pain than we will to gain pleasure.

to them that they’re in control of their lives. The truth is that we can learn to condition our minds, bodies, and emotions to link pain or pleasure to whatever we choose. By changing what we link pain and pleasure to, we will instantly change our behaviors.

any time we’re in an intense emotional state, when we’re feeling strong sensations of pain or pleasure, anything unique that occurs consistently will become neurologically linked. Therefore, in the future, whenever that unique thing happens again, the emotional state will return.

If we want to take control of our lives, we must learn to “advertise” in our own minds—and we can do this in a moment. How? Simply by linking pain to the behaviors we want to stop at such a high level of emotional intensity that we won’t even consider those behaviors any longer.

So what’s the first step in creating a change? The first step is simply becoming aware of the power that pain and pleasure exert over every decision, and therefore every action, that we take. The art of being aware is understanding that these linkages—between ideas, words, images, sounds, and sensations of pain and pleasure—are happening constantly.

“I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.” —MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Remember, too, that 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 and gain pleasure in the short term, and thereby create long-term pain for themselves.

Remember, anything you want that’s valuable requires that you break through some short-term pain in order to gain long-term pleasure.

“Nature has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure… they govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it.” —JEREMY BENTHAM

It’s because they know changing will lead to the unknown, and most people believe that the unknown will be much more painful than what they’re already experiencing.

If we want to have an intimate relationship, then we have to overcome our fears of rejection and vulnerability. If we’re planning to go into business, we must be willing to overcome our fear of losing security to make that happen. In fact, most of the things that are valuable in our lives require us to go against the basic conditioning of our nervous systems. We must manage our fears by overriding this preconditioned set of responses and, in many cases, we must transform that fear into power. Many times, the fear that we are allowing to control us never becomes reality anyway.

We must make sure that we live our lives in the present and respond to things that are real, not to our fears of what once was or what might someday be. 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.

“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.

What are our beliefs designed for? They’re the guiding force to tell us what will lead to pain and what will lead to pleasure. Whenever something happens in your life, your brain asks two questions: 1) Will this mean pain or pleasure? 2) What must I do now to avoid pain and/or gain pleasure? The answers to these two questions are based on our beliefs, and our beliefs are driven by our generalizations about what we’ve learned could lead to pain and pleasure. These generalizations guide all of our actions and thus the direction and quality of our lives.

most of our beliefs are generalizations about our past, based on our interpretations of painful and pleasurable experiences. The challenge is threefold: 1) most of us do not consciously decide what we’re going to believe; 2) often our beliefs are based on misinterpretation of past experiences; and 3) once we adopt a belief, we forget it’s merely an interpretation.

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 beliefs that are holding you back.

“Drugs are not always necessary, [but] belief in recovery always is.” —NORMAN COUSINS

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.

Most people treat a belief as if it’s a thing, when really all it is is a feeling of certainty about something.

With enough emotional intensity and repetition, our nervous systems experience something as real, even if it hasn’t occurred yet.

“The belief that becomes truth for me… is that which allows me the best use of my strength, the best means of putting my virtues into action.” —ANDRÉ GIDE

If you’re going to make an error in life, err on the side of overestimating your capabilities (obviously, as long as it doesn’t jeopardize your life).

The reason success eludes most people is that they have insufficient references of succeeding in the past. But an optimist operates with beliefs such as, “The past doesn’t equal the future.”

If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible.

“Only in men’s imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art, as of life.” —JOSEPH CONRAD

how we deal with adversity and challenges will shape our lives more than almost anything else.

Achievers rarely, if ever, see a problem as permanent, while those who fail see even the smallest problems as permanent.

Remember, as long as you believe something, your brain operates on automatic pilot, filtering any input from the environment and searching for references to validate your belief, regardless of what it is.

“It is the mind that maketh good of ill, that maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.” —EDMUND SPENSER

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. You must feel deep in your gut that not only has this belief cost you pain in the past, but it’s costing you in the present and, ultimately, can only bring you pain in the future. Then you must associate tremendous pleasure to the idea of adopting a new, empowering belief.

The only reason we have a belief about something is that we’ve linked massive pain to not believing it or massive pleasure to keeping it alive.

New experiences trigger change only if they cause us to question our beliefs. Remember, whenever we believe something, we no longer question it in any way.

Trusting experts blindly is not well-advised. Don’t blindly accept everything I say, either! Consider things in the context of your own life; does it make sense for you?

The way to expand our lives is to model the lives of those people who are already succeeding.

“We are what we think. All that we are arises With our thoughts. With our thoughts, We make our world.” —THE BUDDHA

As the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer stated, all truth goes through three steps. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident.

Sometimes we treat the symptoms of a problem while we nurture the cause.

The beliefs that we hold in business and in life control all of our decisions, and therefore our future.

The only true security in life comes from knowing that every single day you are improving yourself in some way,

Remember, the key to success is developing a sense of certainty—the kind of belief that allows you to expand as a person and take the necessary action to make your life and the lives of those around you even greater.

“As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” —PROVERBS 23:7

• 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 abundance.

Knock those legs of certainty out from under your disempowering beliefs by asking yourself some of the following questions: 1. 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?

Changing what something means will change the decisions you make. Remember, nothing in life has any meaning except the meaning you give it. So make sure that you consciously choose the meanings that are most in alignment with the destiny you’ve chosen for yourself.

Leaders are those individuals who live by empowering beliefs and teach others to tap their full capabilities by shifting the beliefs that have been limiting them.

“Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye…” —CORINTHIANS 15:51

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.

The second belief that you and I must have if we’re going to create long-term change is that we’re responsible for our own change, not anyone else.

1. First, we must believe, “Something must change”

2. Second, we must not only believe that things must change, but we must believe, “I must change it.”

3. Third, we have to believe, “I can change it.”

nothing changes until we change the sensations we link to an experience in our nervous system,

Each time we experience a significant amount of pain or pleasure, our brains search for the cause and record it in our nervous systems to enable us to make better decisions about what to do in the future.

“To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.” —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

“It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well” —RENE DESCARTES

When you give your brain mixed messages, you’re going to get mixed results.

“The beginning of a habit is like an invisible thread, but every time we repeat the act we strengthen the strand, add to it another filament, until it becomes a great cable and binds us irrevocably, thought and act.” —ORISON SWETT MARDEN

If you and I want to change our behavior, there is only one effective way to do it: we must link unbearable and immediate sensations of pain to our old behavior, and incredible and immediate sensations of pleasure to a new one.

Decide What You Really Want and What’s Preventing You From Having It Now.

The first step to creating any change is deciding what you do want so that you have something to move toward. The more specific you can be about what you want, the more clarity you will have, and the more power you will command to achieve what you want more rapidly.

Get Leverage: Associate Massive Pain to Not Changing Now and Massive Pleasure to the Experience of Changing Now!

But change is usually not a question of capability; it’s almost always a question of motivation.

The only way we’re going to make a change now is if we create a sense of urgency that’s so intense that we’re compelled to follow through.

One of the things that turns virtually anyone around is reaching a pain threshold. This means experiencing pain at such an intense level that you know you must change now—a point at which your brain says, “I’ve had it; I can’t spend another day, not another moment, living or feeling this way.”

If you’ve tried many times to make a change and you’ve failed to do so, this simply means that the level of pain for failing to change is not intense enough. You have not reached threshold, the ultimate leverage.

Nietzsche, he who has a strong enough why can bear almost any how.

I’ve found that 20 percent of any change is knowing how; but 80 percent is knowing why. If we gather a set of strong enough reasons to change, we can change in a minute something we’ve failed to change for years.

“Give me a lever long enough And a prop strong enough. I can single-handedly move the world.” —ARCHIMEDES

The greatest leverage you can create for yourself is the pain that comes from inside, not outside. Knowing that you have failed to live up to your own standards for your life is the ultimate pain. If we fail to act in accordance with our own view of ourselves, if our behaviors are inconsistent with our standards—with the identity we hold for ourselves—then the chasm between our actions and who we are drives us to make a change.

One of the strongest forces in the human personality is the drive to preserve the integrity of our own identity.

If you want to help somebody, you won’t access this kind of leverage by making them wrong or pointing out that they’re inconsistent, but rather by asking them questions that cause them to realize for themselves their inconsistencies. This is a much more powerful lever than attacking someone. If you try to exert only external pressure, they’ll push against it, but internal pressure is next to impossible to resist.

So why would someone not change when they feel and know that they should? They associate more pain to making the change than to not changing. To change someone, including ourselves, we must simply reverse this so that not changing is incredibly painful (painful beyond our threshold of tolerance), and the idea of changing is attractive and pleasurable! To get true leverage, ask yourself pain-inducing questions: “What will this cost me if I don’t change?” Most of us are too busy estimating the price of change. But what’s the price of not changing? “Ultimately what will I miss out on in my life if I don’t make the shift? What is it already costing me mentally, emotionally, physically, financially, spiritually?” Make the pain of not changing feel so real to you, so intense, so immediate that you can’t put off taking that action any longer.

The second step is to use pleasure-associating questions to help you link those positive sensations to the idea of changing. “If I do change, how will that make me feel about myself? What kind of momentum could I create if I change this in my life? What other things could I accomplish if I really made this change today? How will my family and friends feel? How much happier will I be now?”

Sometimes people want to create a change because a behavior or emotional pattern creates pain for them. But they may also derive benefit from the very thing they’re trying to change. If a person becomes injured, for example, and then suddenly everyone waits on them hand and foot, giving them a great deal of attention, they may find that their injuries don’t heal quite as quickly. While they want to be over the pain, unconsciously they want more of the pleasure of knowing that people care.

One of the best ways to interrupt someone’s pattern is to do things they don’t expect, things that are radically different from what they’ve experienced before. Think of some of the ways you can interrupt your own patterns. Take a moment to think up some of the most enjoyable and disruptive ways you can interrupt a pattern of being frustrated, worried, or overwhelmed.

Think of a situation that makes you feel sad, frustrated, or angry. Now do the first two steps of NAC, which we’ve already covered. If you feel bad now about the situation, how do you want to be able to feel? Why do you want to feel that way? What’s been preventing you from feeling that way is the sensations you’ve linked to this situation. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could feel good about it? Now get some leverage on yourself. If you don’t change how you feel about this situation, how will you continue to feel? Pretty lousy, I’ll bet! Do you want to pay that price and continually carry around these negative sensations or upsets you have toward this person or situation? If you were to change now, wouldn’t you feel better?

Why does it work? Because all of our feelings are based on the images we focus on in our minds and the sounds and sensations we link to those specific images. As we change the images and sounds, we change how we feel. Conditioning this again and again makes it difficult to get back into the old pattern.

the failure by most people to find an alternative way of getting out of pain and into the feelings of pleasure is the major reason most people’s attempts at change are only temporary.

Remember, your brain can’t tell the difference between something you vividly imagine and something you actually experience.

“There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach. It can turn bad morals to good; it can destroy bad principles and recreate good ones; it can lift men to angelship.” —MARK TWAIN

“Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided.” —JOHN LOCKE

However, if there are occasional surprises—like recognition, bonuses, promotions, and other perks—then they will put forth the extra effort, in hopes and anticipation that they’ll be rewarded and acknowledged. Remember, these surprises must not be predictable, or they become ineffective and taken for granted—this expectation will drive the behavior. Vary your rewards, and you’ll see greater results in making change within yourself or anyone you’re managing.

Conditioning is critical. This is how we produce consistent results. Once again, remember that any pattern of emotional behavior that is reinforced or rewarded on a consistent basis will become conditioned and automatic. Any pattern that we fail to reinforce will eventually dissipate.

THE ECOLOGY CHECK 1. Make certain pain is fully associated with the old pattern. When you think of your old behavior or feelings, do you picture and feel things that are painful now instead of pleasurable? 2. Make certain pleasure is fully associated with the new pattern. When you think of your new behavior or feelings, do you picture and feel things that are pleasurable now instead of painful? 3. Align with your values, beliefs, and rules. Is the new behavior or feeling consistent with the values, beliefs, and rules in your life? (We will discuss these in later chapters.) 4. Make sure the benefits of the old pattern have been maintained. Will the new behavior or feeling still allow you to get benefits and feelings of pleasure that you used to get from the old pattern? 5. Future pace—Imagine yourself behaving in this new way in the future. Imagine the thing that would have triggered you to adopt the old pattern. Feel certain that you can use your new pattern instead of the old one.

Utilize both variable and fixed schedules of reinforcement to make sure that your new, empowering pattern lasts.

“All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.” —RAINER MARIA RILKE

Ask yourself what you truly want in life. Do you want a loving marriage, the respect of your children? Do you want plenty of money, fast cars, a thriving business, a house on the hill? Do you want to travel the world, visit exotic ports of call, see historical landmarks firsthand? Do you want to be idolized by millions as a rock musician or as a celebrity with your star on Hollywood Boulevard? Do you want to leave your mark for posterity as the inventor of a time travel machine? Do you want to work with Mother Teresa to save the world, or take a proactive role in making a measurable impact environmentally?

“Why do I want these things?” Don’t you want fine cars, for example, because you really desire the feelings of accomplishment and prestige you think they would bring? Why do you want a great family life? Is it because you think it will give you feelings of love, intimacy, connection, or warmth? Do you want to save the world because of the feelings of contribution and making a difference you believe this will give you? In short, then, isn’t it true that what you really want is simply to change the way you feel? What it all comes down to is the fact that you want these things or results because you see them as a means to achieving certain feelings, emotions, or states that you desire.

But first we must learn how to take control of them consciously instead of living in reaction. Most of our emotional responses are learned responses to the environment. We’ve deliberately modeled some of them, and stumbled across others.

Without a doubt, everything you and I do, we do to avoid pain or gain pleasure, but we can instantly change what we believe will lead to pain or pleasure by redirecting our focus and changing our mental-emotional-physiological states.

A state can be defined as the sum of millions of neurological processes happening within us—the sum total of our experience at any moment in time. Most of our states happen without any conscious direction on our part. We see something, and we respond to it by going into a state. It may be a resourceful and useful state, or an unresourceful and limiting state, but there’s not much that most of us do to control it.

The difference between acting badly or brilliantly is not based on your ability, but on the state of your mind and/or body in any given moment.

The state that you’re in at any given moment determines your perceptions of reality and thus your decisions and behavior. In other words, your behavior is not the result of your ability, but of the state that you’re in at this moment. To change your ability, change your state. To open up the multitude of resources that lie within you, put yourself in a state of resourcefulness and active expectancy—and watch miracles happen!

There are two primary ways, then, to change your emotional state: by changing the way you use your physical body, or by changing your focus.

“We know too much and feel too little. At least we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.” —BERTRAND RUSSELL

You and I have the capacity to make changes like this at any time.

The key to success, then, is to create patterns of movement that create confidence, a sense of strength, flexibility, a sense of personal power, and fun.

To paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, each of us sees in others what we carry in our own hearts.

A mind out of control will play tricks on you. Directed, it’s your greatest friend.

“Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” —MATTHEW 7:7

“As the fletcher whittles and makes straight his arrows, so the master directs his straying thoughts.” —THE BUDDHA

You’ve got to be in a determined state in order to succeed.

“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.” —ALDOUS HUXLEY

All that you really want in life is to change how you feel. Again, all your emotions are nothing but biochemical storms in your brain, and you are in control of them at any moment in time.

“Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm.” —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Sit down right now and write down a list of things that you currently do to change how you feel. As long as you’re making a list, why not add some new things you may not have tried before that could positively change your state as well?

If you link pain to the destructive habits and more and more pleasure to these new empowering ones, you’ll find that most of them are accessible most of the time.

“He who asks questions cannot avoid the answers.” —CAMEROON PROVERB

But before he could get the answer, make the decisions, and take those actions, he had to ask himself the right questions.

“It’s not the events that shape my life that determine how I feel and act, but, rather, it’s the way I interpret and evaluate my life experiences. The meaning I attach to an event will determine the decisions I make, the actions I take, and therefore my ultimate destiny.

I began to realize that thinking itself is nothing but the process of asking and answering questions.

Quality questions create a quality life.

Questions set off a processional effect that has an impact beyond our imagination. Questioning our limitations is what tears down the walls in life—in business, in relationships, between countries. I believe all human progress is preceded by new questions.

“Some men see things as they are, and say, ‘Why?’ I dream of things that never were, and say, ‘Why not?’” —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

“Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.” —E. E. CUMMINGS

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

Remember, it’s not only the questions you ask, but the questions you fail to ask, that shape your destiny.

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.” —ALBERT EINSTEIN

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

Presuppositions program us to accept things that may or may not be true, and they can be used on us by others, or even, subconsciously, by ourselves.

You and I have that same power at our disposal every moment of the day. 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.

Often our resources are limited only by the questions we ask ourselves.

The only thing that limits your questions is your belief about what’s possible.

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?

“He that cannot ask cannot live.” —OLD PROVERB

THE MORNING POWER QUESTIONS Our life experience is based on what we focus on. The following questions are designed to cause you to experience more happiness, excitement, pride, gratitude, joy, commitment, and love every day of your life. Remember, quality questions create a quality life. Come up with two or three answers to all of these questions and feel fully associated. If you have difficulty discovering an answer simply add the word “could.” Example: “What could I be most happy about in my life now?” 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? Repeat the Morning Questions (optional).

“A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words… the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.” —MARK TWAIN

Words can not only create emotions, they create actions. And from our actions flow the results of our lives.

This is the essence of Transformational Vocabulary: the words that we attach to our experience become our experience.

“Words form the thread on which we string our experiences.” —ALDOUS HUXLEY

If we want to change our lives and shape our destiny, we need to consciously select the words we’re going to use, and we need to constantly strive to expand our level of choice.

“Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men.” —CONFUCIUS

if you don’t have a way of representing something, you can’t experience it.

“The German people is no warlike nation. It is a soldierly one, which means it does not want a war but does not fear it It loves peace but it also loves its honor and freedom.” —ADOLF HITLER

We’ve got to be precise in the words we use because they carry meaning not only to ourselves about our own experience, but also to others.

“The metaphor is perhaps one of man’s most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.” —JOSÉ ORTEGA Y GASSET

Whenever we explain or communicate a concept by likening it to something else, we are using a metaphor.

Metaphors are symbols and, as such, they can create emotional intensity even more quickly and completely than the traditional words we use. Metaphors can transform us instantly.

“Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.” —OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR.

changing one global metaphor can instantly transform the way you look at your entire life.

sometimes it’s useful and important to get ourselves to feel negative emotions with strong intensity.

With all the power that metaphors wield over our lives, the scary part is that most of us have never consciously selected the metaphors with which we represent things to ourselves. Where did you get your metaphors? You probably picked them up from people around you, from your parents, teachers, co-workers, and friends. I’ll bet you didn’t think about their impact, or maybe you didn’t even think about them at all, and then they just became a habit.

“All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.” —HENRY DAVID THOREAU

What is a coach? To me, a coach is a person who is your friend, someone who really cares about you. A coach is committed to helping you be the best that you can be. A coach will challenge you, not let you off the hook. Coaches have knowledge and experience because they’ve been there before. They aren’t any better than the people they are coaching (this took away my need to have to be perfect for the people I was “teaching”). In fact, the people they coach may have natural abilities superior to their own. But because coaches have concentrated their power in a particular area for years, they can teach you one or two distinctions that can immediately transform your performance in a matter of moments.

“An iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” —WINSTON CHURCHILL

1. What is life? Write down the metaphors you’ve already chosen: “Life is like …” what?

2. Make a list of all the metaphors that you link to relationships or marriage.

3. Pick another area of your life that impacts you most—whether it’s your business, your parents, your children, your ability to learn—and discover your metaphors for this area. Write these metaphors down and study their impact.

4. Create new, more empowering metaphors for each of these areas. Decide that from now on you’re going to think of life as four or five new things to start with, at least. Life is not a war. Life is not a test. Life is a game, life is a dance, life is sacred, life is a gift, life is a picnic—whatever creates the most positive emotional intensity for you. 5. Finally, decide that you are going to live with these new, empowering metaphors for the next thirty days.

Take control of your metaphors now and create a new world for yourself: a world of possibility, of richness, of wonder, and of joy.

“There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.” —CARL JUNG

If the message your emotions are trying to deliver is ignored, the emotions simply increase their amperage; they intensify until you finally pay attention.

The only way to effectively use your emotions is to understand that they all serve you. You must learn from your emotions and use them to create the results you want for a greater quality of life. The emotions you once thought of as negative are merely a call to action.

To get to this point, then, you must change your global beliefs about what emotions are. They are not predators, substitutes for logic, or products of other people’s whims. They are Action Signals trying to guide you to the promise of a greater quality of life.

Realize that the emotions you are feeling at this very moment are a gift, a guideline, a support system, a call to action. If you suppress your emotions and try to drive them out of your life, or if you magnify them and allow them to take over everything, then you’re squandering one of life’s most precious resources. So what is the source of emotions? You are the source of all your emotions; you are the one who creates them.

you can feel any way you choose at any moment in time.

You don’t need any special reason to feel good—you can just decide to feel good right now, simply because you’re alive, simply because you want to.

Cultivate the feeling of appreciation for all emotions, and like a child that needs attention, you’ll find your emotions “calming down” almost immediately.

Getting curious helps you master your emotion, solve the challenge, and prevent the same problem from occurring in the future.

Here are four questions to ask yourself to become curious about your emotions: What do I really want to feel? What would I have to believe in order to feel the way I’ve been feeling? What am I willing to do to create a solution and handle this right now? What can I learn from this?

The message of frustration is an exciting signal. It means that your brain believes you could be doing better than you currently are. Frustration is very different from disappointment, which is the feeling that there’s something you want in your life but you’ll never get it. By contrast, frustration is a very positive sign. It means that the solution to your problem is within range, but what you’re currently doing isn’t working, and you need to change your approach in order to achieve your goal.

If you go out today and plant a seed, you can’t go back tomorrow and expect to see a tree.

That is not the message of guilt. It’s there to make sure you either avoid behaviors out of your certainty that they’ll lead to guilt, or, if you’ve already violated your standard, it’s there to induce enough pain within you to get yourself to recommit to a higher standard once again.

Absolutely commit yourself to making sure this behavior will never happen again in the future. Rehearse in your mind how, if you could live it again, you could deal with the same situation you feel guilty about in a way that is consistent with your own highest personal standards.

If your feeling is justified, the message of inadequacy is that you need to find a way to do something better than you’ve done it before.

Whenever you feel inadequate, appreciate the encouragement to improve.

The message of being overwhelmed is that you need to reevaluate what’s most important to you in this situation.

“We must cultivate our garden.” —VOLTAIRE

“If you could only love enough, you could be the most powerful person in the world.” —EMMET FOX

“Determination is the wake-up call to the human will.” —ANTHONY ROBBINS

playing the martyr won’t give you a true sense of contribution.

cultivate global beliefs that help minimize your experience of the negative emotions.

Every feeling that you have—good or bad—is based on your interpretation of what things mean. Whenever you start to feel bad, ask yourself this question: “What else could this mean?” It’s the first step toward taking control of your emotions.

“Nothing happens unless first a dream.” —CARL SANDBURG

“We are what and where we are because we have first imagined it.” —DONALD CURTIS

Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible—the foundation for all success in life.

All goal setting must be immediately followed by both the development of a plan, and massive and consistent action toward its fulfillment.

do you have a list of clearly defined goals for the results you will absolutely produce in your life mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and financially?

There is power in the pressure of dissatisfaction, in the tension of temporary discomfort. This is the kind of pain you want in your life, the kind of pain that you immediately transform into positive new actions.

It’s not just getting a goal that matters, but the quality of life you experience along the way.

Sometimes we need to trust that our disappointments may truly be opportunities in disguise.

I believe that life is constantly testing us for our level of commitment, and life’s greatest rewards are reserved for those who demonstrate a never-ending commitment to act until they achieve.

“Climb high; Climb far. Your goal the sky; Your aim the star.” —INSCRIPTION AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE

What would you like to learn? What are some skills you want to master in your lifetime? What are some character traits you’d like to develop? Who do you want your friends to be? Who do you want to be? What could you do for your physical well-being? Get a massage every week? Every day? Create the body of your dreams? Join a gym—and actually use it? Hire a vegetarian chef? Complete the Iron Man Triathlon in Honolulu? Would you like to conquer your fear of flying? Or of public speaking? Or of swimming? What would you want to learn? To speak French? Study the Dead Sea Scrolls? Dance and/or sing? Study with violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman? Who else would you like to study with? Would you like to take in a foreign exchange student?

“There is nothing like dream to create the future. Utopia today, flesh and blood tomorrow.” —VICTOR HUGO

at least twice a day, you must rehearse and emotionally enjoy the experience of achieving each one of your most valued goals.

Achieving goals by themselves will never make us happy in the long term; it’s who you become, as you overcome the obstacles necessary to achieve your goals, that can give you the deepest and most long-lasting sense of fulfillment.

“What kind of person will I have to become in order to achieve all that I want?”

write a paragraph describing all the character traits, skills, abilities, attitudes, and beliefs that you would need to develop in order to achieve all of the goals you’ve written down previously.

never leave the site of setting a goal without first taking some form of positive action toward its attainment.

Remember, you need to experience the feeling of achieving your top one-year goals in each of the four categories at least once a day.

compelling future is the food on which our souls thrive—we all need a continued sense of emotional and spiritual growth.

“Where there is no vision, the people perish —PROVERBS, 29:18

“Habit is either the best of servants or the worst of masters.” —NATHANIEL EMMONS

For the next ten days, beginning immediately, commit to taking full control of all your mental and emotional faculties by deciding right now that you will not indulge in or dwell on any unresourceful thoughts or emotions for ten consecutive days.

Remember, our goal is not to ignore the problems of life, but to put ourselves in better mental and emotional states where we can not only come up with solutions, but act upon them.

In life, never spend more than 10 percent of your time on the problem, and spend at least 90 percent of your time on the solution. Most important, don’t sweat the small stuff… and remember, it’s all small stuff!

“We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.” —JOHN DRYDEN

“Elementary, my dear Watson —WITH APOLOGIES TO SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

We all have a system or procedure that we go through in order to determine what things mean to us and what we need to do about them in virtually any situation in life.

If someone is doing better than we are in any area of life, it’s simply because they have a better way of evaluating what things mean and what they should do about it. We must never forget that the impact of our evaluations goes far beyond hockey or finances. How you evaluate what you’re going to eat each night may determine the length and quality of your life. Poor evaluations of how to raise your kids can create the potential for lifelong pain. Failure to understand someone else’s evaluation procedures can destroy a beautiful and loving relationship.

1. The first element that affects all of your evaluations is the mental and emotional state you’re in while you’re making an evaluation.

“Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.” —GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

If you and I want to change anything in our lives, it’s invariably one of two things: either how we’re feeling or our behaviors. Certainly we can learn how to change our emotions or feelings within a context.

“I am the source of all my emotions. Nothing and no one can change how I feel except me. If I find myself in reaction to anything, I can change it in a moment.”

“Take away the cause, and the effect ceases.” —MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

“Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance.” —BRUCE BARTON

“A man’s character is his guardian divinity.” —HERACLITUS

Values guide our every decision and, therefore, our destiny. Those who know their values and live by them become the leaders of our society.

We must remember that all decision making comes down to values clarification.

When you know what’s most important to you, making a decision is quite simple. Most people, though, are unclear about what’s most important in their lives, and thus decision making becomes a form of internal torture. This is not true for those who’ve clearly defined the highest principles of their lives.

“Every time a value is born, existence takes on a new meaning; every time one dies, some part of that meaning passes away.” —JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH

We need to realize that the direction of our lives is controlled by the magnetic pull of our values. They are the force in front of us, consistently leading us to make decisions that create the direction and ultimate destination of our lives.

get clear about what is most important in our lives and decide that we will live by these values, no matter what happens. This consistency must occur regardless of whether the environment rewards us for living by our standards or not. We must live by our principles even when it “rains on our parade,” even if no one gives us the support we need. The only way for us to have long-term happiness is to live by our highest ideals, to consistently act in accordance with what we believe our life is truly about.

This is the biggest tragedy in most people’s lives: many people know what they want to have, but have no idea of who they want to be. Getting “things” simply will not fulfill you. Only living and doing what you believe is “the right thing” will give you that sense of inner strength that we all deserve.

Anytime you have difficulty making an important decision, you can be sure that it’s the result of being unclear about your values.

What I suggest is that we teach our children our philosophy of life by being strong role models, by knowing our own values and living by them.

I call these pleasurable states that we value most moving-toward values because these are the emotional states we’ll do the most to attain. What are some of the feelings that are most important for you to experience in your life on a consistent basis?

“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” —JOHN WOODEN

The relative levels of pain we associate with certain emotions will affect all of our decisions.

People will do more to avoid pain than they will to gain pleasure.

Step One is to gain awareness of what your current values are so you understand why you do what you do. What are the emotional states you are moving toward, and what are the states you are moving away from? By reviewing your lists side by side, you’ll be able to have an understanding of the force that’s creating your present and future. Step Two: You can then make conscious decisions about what values you want to live by in order to shape the quality of life and destiny you truly desire and deserve.

All you have to do to discover your values is answer one simple question: “What’s most important to me in life?” Brainstorm the answer to this question. Is it peace of mind? Impact? Love?

But I had to keep reminding myself that we are not our values. We are much more than our values.

“What do my values need to be in order to create my ultimate destiny, in order to be the best person I could possibly be, in order to have the largest impact in my lifetime?”

“What values should I eliminate from my list in order to achieve my ultimate destiny?”

“What benefit do I get by having this value in this position on my hierarchy?”

“What could having passion at the top of my list cost me?”

“In what order do my values need to be to achieve my ultimate destiny?”

They generally fear that they’ll lose their power or drive if they feel happy first. I’m here to tell you that what happened in my life is that instead of achieving to be happy, I began to happily achieve, and the difference in the quality of my life is so profound that it is beyond verbal description.

“Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and the inward man be at one.” —SOCRATES

Step 1. Find out what your current values are, and rank them in order of importance.

Ask yourself a new question: “What do my values need to be in order to achieve the destiny I desire and deserve?” Brainstorm out a list. Put them in order. See which values you might get rid of and which values you might add in order to create the quality of life you truly want.

In it, I asked you what type of person you’d have to be in order to achieve all that you want. In order to be that person, what would your values need to be? What values would you need to add or eliminate?

“I touch the future; I teach.” —ANONYMOUS

“We are what we repeatedly do.” —ARISTOTLE

Nothing in life can match the fulfillment of knowing you’ve done what you truly believe is the right thing.

“Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you.” —HENRY WARD BEECHER

their rules: their beliefs about what had to happen in order for them to feel good about this experience.

don’t even see them as miracles anymore. For most of us, our rules for what’s valuable dictate that we covet things that are scarce, instead of appreciating the miracles that abound.

I call these specific beliefs that determine when we get pain and when we get pleasure rules.

The truth is that nothing has to happen in order for you to feel good.

as long as we structure our lives in a way where our happiness is dependent upon something we cannot control, then we will experience pain.

To adopt this rule is to raise your standards. It means you’ll hold yourself to a higher standard of enjoying yourself despite the conditions of the moment. It means you’ve committed to being intelligent enough, flexible enough, and creative enough to direct your focus and evaluations in a way that allows you to experience the true richness of life—maybe that’s the ultimate rule.

whether or not you feel like you’re achieving your values is totally dependent upon your rules—your beliefs about what has to happen for you to feel successful or happy or experiencing love. You can decide to make happiness a priority, but if your rule for happiness is that everything must go just as you planned, I guarantee you’re not going to experience this value on a consistent basis. Life is a variable event, so our rules must be organized in ways that allow us to adapt, grow, and enjoy. It’s critical for us to understand these unconscious beliefs that control when we give ourselves pain and when we give ourselves pleasure.

what will determine our emotions and behaviors is our beliefs about what is good and what is bad, what we should do and what we must do. These precise standards and criteria are what I’ve labeled rules.

Our personal rules are the ultimate judge and jury. They determine whether or not a certain value is met, whether we’ll feel good or bad, whether we’ll give ourselves pain or pleasure.

Are the rules that guide your life today still appropriate for who you’ve become? Or have you clung to rules that helped you in the past, but hurt you in the present? Have you clung to any inappropriate rules from your childhood?

“Any fool can make a rule—And every fool will mind it” —HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Most of us have created numerous ways to feel bad, and only a few ways to truly feel good.

you could be winning and feel like you’re losing because the scorecard you’re using is unfair.

We certainly want to use the power of goals, the allure of a compelling future, to pull ourselves forward, but we must make sure that at the bottom of it all we have rules to allow us to be happy anytime we want.

How do we know if a rule empowers or disempowers us? There are three primary criteria: 1. It’s a disempowering rule if it’s impossible to meet. If your criteria are so complex or varied or intense that you can’t ever win the game of life, clearly you have a disempowering rule. 2. A rule is disempowering if something that you can’t control determines whether your rule has been met or not. For example, if other people have to respond to you in a certain way, or if the environment has to be a certain way, you clearly have a disempowering rule. A classic example of this is the people waiting to view the eclipse who couldn’t be happy unless the weather—something they couldn’t control—acted according to their specific expectations. 3. A rule is disempowering if it gives you only a few ways to feel good and lots of ways to feel bad.

All we have to do to make our lives work is set up a system of evaluating that includes rules that are achievable, that make it easy to feel good and hard to feel bad, that constantly pull us in the direction we want to go.

When people are feeling good all the time, they tend to treat others better, and they tend to maximize their potential as human beings.

So what’s our goal? Once we design our values, we must decide what evidence we need to have before we give ourselves pleasure. We need to design rules that will move us in the direction of our values, that will clearly be achievable, using criteria we can control personally so that we’re ringing the bell instead of waiting for the outside world to do it.

create a set of rules for your moving-toward values that makes it easy to feel good, and a set of rules for your moving-away-from values that makes it hard to feel bad. Ideally, create a menu of possibilities with lots of ways to feel good.

At the base of every emotional upset you’ve ever had with another human being is a rules upset. Somebody did something, or failed to do something, that violated one of your beliefs about what they must or should do.

So if you ever feel angry or upset with someone, remember, it’s your rules that are upsetting you, not their behavior.

The best way to deal with this is to remember that your rules are not based on reality. They’re purely arbitrary. Just because you’ve used them and feel strongly about them doesn’t mean they’re the best rules or the right rules. Rules should be designed to empower our relationships, not destroy them. Any time a rule gets in the way, the question we need to ask ourselves is, “What’s more important? My relationship or my rules?”

link enough pain to any rule that doesn’t serve you, and replace it with a rule that does.

Don’t expect people to live by your rules if you don’t clearly communicate what they are. And don’t expect people to live by your rules if you’re not willing to compromise and live by some of theirs.

High self-esteem comes from feeling like you have control over events, not that events have control over you.

Remember, we all need some structure. Some people have no clear rules for when they’re successful. Rules can provide the contextual environment for us to create added value. Rules can motivate us to follow through; they can cause us to grow and expand. Your goal is simply to create a balance between your “must” rules and your “should” rules and to utilize both types of rules in the appropriate context.

Right now, begin to take control of your rules by writing down your answers to the following questions. Make your answers as thorough as possible. 1. What does it take for you to feel successful? 2. What does it take for you to feel loved—by your kids, by your spouse, by your parents, and by whoever else is important to you? 3. What does it take for you to feel confident? 4. What does it take for you to feel you are excellent in any area of your life?

design your rules so that you’re in control, so that the outside world is not what determines whether you feel good or bad. Set it up so that it’s incredibly easy for you to feel good, and incredibly hard to feel bad.

the most empowering rule is to enjoy yourself no matter what happens.

We know the importance of state, the way questions direct our focus and evaluations, and the power of values and rules to shape our lives.

“Man’s mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.” —OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

If we want to understand why people do what they do, a review of the most significant and impactful reference experiences of their lives certainly gives us clues. References—the fifth element of a person’s Master System—really provide the essence, or the building blocks, for our beliefs, rules, and values.

The larger the number and greater the quality of our references, the greater our potential level of choices. A larger number and greater quality of references enables us to more effectively evaluate what things mean and what we can do.

emotional state we’re in will radically impact which files—i.e., which memories, emotions, feelings, sensations that we’ve stored—are available to us. When we’re in a fearful state, only the references we’ve associated with those fearful sensations in the past seem to come to mind, and we find ourselves caught up in a loop (“fear” leading to “reference of fear” leading to “multiplied fear”).

Once again, it’s not our references, but our interpretations of them, the way we organize them—that clearly determine our beliefs. Which references play the largest role in our life’s experiences? It all depends on what we get reinforced for.

References are all the experiences of your life that you’ve recorded within your nervous system—everything you’ve ever seen, heard, touched, tasted, or smelled—stored away inside the giant file cabinet of your brain. Some references are picked up consciously, others unconsciously. Some result from experiences you’ve had yourself; others consist of information you’ve heard from others, and all your references, like all human experience, become somewhat distorted, deleted, and generalized as you record them within your nervous system. In fact, you also have references for things that have never happened—anything you’ve ever imagined in your mind is also stored in your brain as a memory.

a belief is nothing but a feeling of certainty about what something means. If you believe you are intelligent, it’s because you have activated certain references to support that feeling of certainty. Maybe you’ve had the experience of successfully tackling mental challenges, such as acing a test or running a business well. All of these reference experiences act as “table legs” to support the idea, or “table-top,” that you are intelligent.

We have enough references within us to back up any idea we want: that we’re confident or that we’re weak, that we care or that we’re selfish. The key is to expand the references that are available within your life. Consciously seek out experiences that expand your sense of who you are and what you’re capable of, as well as organize your references in empowering ways.

“The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet” —LORD CHESTERFIELD

How do you use your references? Do you consciously interpret them in ways that empower you, in ways that support the achievement of your goals?

The way we use our references will determine how we feel, because whether something is good or bad is all based on what you’re comparing it to.

Sometimes we lose perspective that good and bad are merely based upon our references.

“We lift ourselves by our thought, we climb upon our vision of ourselves.” —ORISON SWETT MARDEN

Imagination unleashed provides us a sense of certainty and vision that goes far beyond the limitations of the past.

Remember, don’t drive into the past using your rear-view mirror as a guide. You want to learn from your past, not live in it—focus on the things that empower you.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” —ALBERT EINSTEIN

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” —ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

Limited references create a limited life. If you want to expand your life, you must expand your references by pursuing ideas and experiences that wouldn’t be a part of your life if you didn’t consciously seek them out. Remember, rarely does a good idea interrupt you; you must actively seek it. Empowering ideas and experiences must be pursued.

“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.” —WALT WHITMAN

In assisting our children to expand and grow, we need to guide them into experiences that will provide positive references for their future—references that will help them know they’re capable of dealing with virtually anything.

The most powerful way to have a great understanding of life and people, to give ourselves the greatest level of choice, is to expose ourselves to as many different types of references as possible.

Remember, any limits that you have in your life are probably just the result of limited references. Expand your references, and you’ll immediately expand your life.

“The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.” —ARTHUR C. CLARKE

Take a moment now and write down five of the most powerful experiences that have shaped who you’ve become as a person. Give not only a description of the experience, but how that experience impacted you. If you write down anything that seems to have impacted you negatively, immediately come up with another interpretation of that event, no matter what it takes. This may require some faith; it may require a new perspective you never would have considered before. Remember, everything in life happens for a reason and a purpose, and it serves us. Sometimes it takes years or decades for us to find value. But there is value in all human experience.

“In order to really succeed at the highest level, to achieve what I really want for my life, what are some references I need?”

When are you going to do something unusual and new?

Remember, it’s the moments of our lives that shape us. It’s up to us to pursue and create the moments that will lift us and not limit us.

So now, get off the bench and step into the game of life. Let your imagination run wild with the possibilities of all those things you could explore and experience—and begin immediately. What new experience could you pursue today that would expand your life? What kind of person will you become? Take action and enjoy exploring the possibilities.

“Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so.” —CHARLES DE GAULLE

What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.

What exactly is identity? It is simply the beliefs that we use to define our own individuality, what makes us unique—good, bad, or indifferent—from other individuals. And our sense of certainty about who we are creates the boundaries and limits within which we live.

The kind of person other people perceive you to be controls their responses to you.

What’s worse is that, after making a positive change, we often allow others in our environment who have not changed their image of us to anchor our own emotions and beliefs back into our old behaviors and identities.

“The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.” —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

We all will act consistently with our views of who we truly are, whether that view is accurate or not. The reason is that one of the strongest forces in the human organism is the need for consistency.

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

we all have a need for a sense of certainty. Most people have tremendous fear of the unknown. Uncertainty implies the potential of having pain strike us, and we’d rather deal with the pain we already know about than deal with the pain of the unknown.

As we develop new beliefs about who we are, our behavior will change to support the new identity.

We all must maintain the integrity of our convictions of who we are, even when they are destructive and disempowering.

one shift in identity can cause a shift of your entire Master System.

Shifting, changing, or expanding identity can produce the most profound and rapid improvements in the quality of your life.

In other words, we look at what we do to determine who we are.

There is no more potent leverage in shaping human behavior than identity.

“Isn’t my identity limited by my experience?” No, it’s limited by your interpretation of your experience. Your identity is nothing but the decisions you’ve made about who you are, what you’ve decided to fuse yourself with. You become the labels you’ve given yourself. The way you define your identity defines your life.

“When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters—one represents danger, and the other represents opportunit.” —JOHN F. KENNEDY

“His supreme agony was the disappearance of certainty, and he felt himself uprooted… Oh! what a frightful thing! The man projectile, no longer knowing his road, and recoiling!” —VICTOR HUGO, LES MISÉRABLES

the benefit to knowing who you are is the ability to instantaneously shape all of your behaviors.

“I think, therefore I am.” —RENÉ DESCARTES

1. If you were to look in the dictionary under your name, what would it say?

2. If you were to create an ID card that would represent who you truly are, what would be on it—and what would you leave off?

whatever you call your identity is simply what you’ve decided to identify with, and that in a moment you could change it all. You have the power within you right now. In fact, after looking at how identities evolve, you’ll have an opportunity to expand your identity, and therefore your entire life.

1. Make a list right now of all the elements of your identity you want to have.

2. If you’d truly like to expand your identity and your life, then, right now, consciously decide who you want to be. Get excited, be like a kid again, and describe in detail who you’ve decided you are today. Take a moment now to write down your expanded list.

3. Now develop a plan of action you could take that would cause you to know that you’re truly living consistently with your new identity.

4. The final step is to commit to your new identity by broadcasting it to everyone around you.

while most people have to establish competence before they feel confident, I decide to feel confident, and that provides the sense of certainty to persist until I am competent.

You and I need to expand our view of who we are. We need to make certain that the labels we put upon ourselves are not limits but enhancements, that we add to all that’s already good within us—for whatever you and I begin to identify with, we will become. This is the power of belief.

“If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” —THOMAS A. EDISON

believe that it’s equally important for us to remember that while we’re alive, we’re not our bodies. Neither are we our past, nor our behaviors in the moment.

“Each of us inevitable; Each of us limitless—each of us with his or her right upon the earth; Each of us allow d the eternal purports of the earth; Each of us here as divinely as any is here.” —WALT WHITMAN

If we decide to think, feel, and act as the kind of person we want to be, we will become that person. We won’t just be behaving “like” that person; we will be that person.

Forget your past. Who are you now? Who have you decided you really are now? Don’t think about who you have been. Who are you now? Who have you decided to become? Make this decision consciously. Make it carefully. Make it powerfully.

A change in your habitual questions alone will change your focus and change your life. Making shifts in your values hierarchies will immediately change the direction of your life. Cultivating powerful, resourceful states in your physiology will change the way you think and the way you feel. This alone could change your identity. So could changing some of your global beliefs. Pursuing additional references will provide the raw materials for assembling a new experience of who you are. And certainly, deciding to expand your identity could transform virtually everything.

The arsenal of skills you have for changing your emotional states includes: physiology focus questions submodalities Transformational Vocabulary metaphors Neuro-Associative Conditioning beliefs compelling future values rules references identity

“Seeing’s believing, but feeling’s the truth.” —THOMAS FULLER, M.D.

Fitness is “the physical ability to perform athletic activity.” Health, however, is defined as “the state where all the systems of the body—nervous, muscular, skeletal, circulatory, digestive, lymphatic, hormonal, etc.—are working in an optimal way

anyone can achieve endurance and vitality by consciously deciding to condition their body’s chemistry.

“We are not limited by our old age; we are liberated by it” —STU MITTLEMAN

“The human body is the best picture of the human soul.” —LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN

today: 1. If you don’t know the values and rules of the people with whom you share a relationship, you should prepare for pain.

Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something: they’re trying to find someone who’s going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take.

Each day, reassociate to what you love about this person you’re in a relationship with. Reinforce your feelings of connection and renew your feelings of intimacy and attraction by consistently asking the question, “How did I get so lucky to have you in my life?”

“In a full heart there is room for everything, and in an empty heart there is room for nothing.” —ANTONIO PORCHIA

1. Take the time today to talk with your significant other and find out what’s most important to each of you in your relationship. What are your highest values in a relationship together, and what has to happen for you to feel like those values are being fulfilled?

2. Decide that it’s more important for you to be in love than to be right.

3. Develop a pattern interrupt that you both agree to use when things become most heated.

If you exclusively depend upon someone else, no matter how competent they are, you’ll always have them to blame for what occurs. But if you take responsibility for understanding your finances, you can begin to direct your own destiny.

ability to take something that has very little value and convert it into something of significantly greater value.

1. The first key is the ability to earn more income than ever before, the ability to create wealth.

The true purpose of any corporation is to create products and services that increase the quality of life for all the customers they serve.

The key to increasing your income with your company is remembering that you can’t just increase the quality of what you’re doing by 50 percent and expect a 50 percent increase in income. A company must profit. The question to ask yourself is, “How can I increase the value of what I do by ten to fifteen times?” If you do this, in most cases you’ll have no trouble increasing your income.

Adding value is not just creating products; it’s finding a way to make sure that more people experience an increase in the quality of life.

But more importantly, there’s a core belief that most people have: they should get something for nothing. Most people, for example, expect their income to grow each and every year, whether they’ve increased their contribution to their company or not.

Raises should be tied to increased value, and we can easily increase our value as long as we educate ourselves and expand our repertoire of skills. Any company that continually gives people raises without its employees finding ways to add more value is a company that’s going deeper in the hole and will eventually find itself economically troubled or destroyed. If you’re asking for a raise, you’ve got to find a way to add at least ten times more value than what you’re asking for in return.

There is no better investment that companies can make than in the education and development of their own people.

“Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.” —AYN RAND

True contribution makes life richer, so don’t limit yourself to adding value strictly for personal gain.

spend less than you earn, and invest the difference.

The only possible way to build wealth is to pick a specific percentage of your income that you will invest each year up front.

you must spend less than you earn, invest the difference, and reinvest your returns for compounded growth.

The most important thing you’ll ever do in your financial life is to decide to truly understand the various types of investments and what their potential risks and returns are.

The beauty of tithing is that by giving away a portion of what you earn, you are teaching your brain that you have more than enough. You’ll be beyond scarcity, and that belief system alone will change your life.

True wealth is an emotion: it’s a sense of absolute abundance.

“Charity and personal force are the only investments.” —WALT WHITMAN

“What states would I be in if I were my highest and best? What states will I commit to being every single day, no matter what? Regardless of the environment, regardless of whatever challenges break loose around me, I will be these states at least once every day!”

“Go put your creed into your deed.” —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

OPTIMISTS’ CLUB CREED Promise yourself… To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. To talk health, happiness, prosperity to every person you meet. To make all your friends feel that there is something of value in them. To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true. To think only the best, to work only for the best, and to expect the best. To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile. To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit presence of trouble.

JOHN WOODEN’S SEVEN-POINT CREED: “MAKING THE MOST OF ONESELF” 1. Be true to yourself. 2. Make each day your masterpiece. 3. Help others. 4. Drink deeply from good books. 5. Make friendship a fine art. 6. Build a shelter against a rainy day. 7. Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day.

“You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.” —OLIVER GOLDSMITH

So often we forget that time is a mental construct, that it is completely relative, and that our experience of time is almost exclusively the result of our mental focus.

The ability to flex your experience of time is the ability to shape your experience of life.

Have you ever worked your tail off, completed every single thing on your “to do” list, but at the end of the day still felt unfulfilled? That’s because you did everything that was urgent and demanded your attention in the moment, but you didn’t do what was important

“We have time enough if we will but use it aright” —JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

1. Throughout this day, begin to explore changing time frames. Whenever you’re feeling the pressures of the present, stop and think about the future in ways that are empowering.

3. Write a “to do” list that prioritizes according to importance instead of urgency. Instead of writing down zillions of things to do and feeling like a failure at the end of the day, focus on what’s most important for you to accomplish. If you do this, I can promise you that you’ll feel a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment few experience.

“The great man is he that does not lose his child’s-heart.” —MENCIUS

“A mighty flame followeth a tiny spark.” —DANTE

“Every man is an impossibility until he is born.” —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

Nothing could be more crippling to a person’s ability to take action than learned helplessness; it is the primary obstacle that prevents us from changing our lives or taking action to help other people change theirs.

you have the power right now to control how you think, how you feel, and what you do.

We fail to recognize that it is the small decisions you and I make every day that create our destinies. Remember that all decisions are followed by consequences.

By trying to avoid pain in the short term, we often end up making decisions that create pain in the long term, and when we arrive further down the river we tell ourselves that the problems are permanent and unchangeable, that they come with the territory.

Whatever results we’re experiencing in our lives are the accumulation of a host of small decisions we’ve made as individuals, as a family, as a community, as a society, and as a species. The success or failure of our lives is usually not the result of one cataclysmic event or earthshaking decision, although sometimes it may look that way. Rather, success or failure is determined by the decisions we make and the actions we take every day.

every single one of these problems was caused or set in motion by human behavior. Therefore, the solution to every one of these problems is to change our behavior.

the one thing we have absolute control over is our internal world—we decide what things mean and what to do about them—and as a result of our decisions, we take actions that impact our external environment.

With our actions, we communicate our most deeply held values and beliefs,

The only limit to your impact is your imagination and commitment.

The capacity to do the right thing, to dare to take a stand and make a difference, is within you now. The question is: When the moment arrives, will you remember you’re a hero and selflessly respond in support of those in need?

“It was involuntary; they sank my boat” —JOHN F. KENNEDY, when asked how he’d become a hero

surmounting difficulty is the crucible that forms character.

A hero is a person who courageously contributes under even the most trying circumstances; a hero is an individual who acts unselfishly and who demands more from himself or herself than others would expect; a hero is a man or woman who defies adversity by doing what he or she believes is right in spite of fear.

Perfection is not heroism; humanity is.

The way to break free of learned helplessness is to adopt the belief that, as an individual, you can make a difference, and that in fact all great reform movements have been carried out by committed individuals.

“While there is a lower class I am in it; while there is a criminal element I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” —EUGENE VICTOR DEBS

Remember, all behaviors can be changed by changing beliefs, values, rules, and identity.

Most important, we must teach our children the consequences of their actions. We must make them aware of the impact they have on an individual or local level and, by extension, their collective impact on the global level. Don’t let them ever fall into the trap of thinking that their actions don’t make a difference—if there’s anything I’ve tried to convey in this book, it’s that even small decisions and small actions, consistently made, have far-reaching consequences.

If you want to play the game and win, you’ve got to play “full out.” You’ve got to be willing to feel stupid, and you’ve got to be willing to try things that might not work—and if they don’t work, be willing to change your approach.

“You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.” —JOHN WOODEN

contribution is not an obligation; it’s an opportunity to give something back.

“Only those who have learned the power of sincere and selfless contribution experience life’s deepest joy: true fulfillment” —ANTHONY ROBBINS

“Verily, great grace may go with a little gift; and precious are all things that come from friends.” —THEOCRITUS

“Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.” —MICHAEL LANDON

“Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tide and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.” —TEILHARD DE CHARDIN