When you shift a person’s life, you shift it by changing the pattern of focus, the pattern of meaning and the pattern of action.
When I recently met author, strategist and coach Tony Robbins backstage at a taping of Oprah Winfrey’s ground-breaking series Lifeclass, the first thing I was struck by was his sheer size. He is a somewhat startling six-feet-seven, yet he comes across like a loving, gentle giant, and when he talks to you he gives you his full magnetic attention. He is known for being an exuberantly charming, inspiring, energetic and articulate speaker and is also a huggably nice, caring person and a generous humanitarian. The New York Times calls Tony Robbins “the high priest of human potential.” In the course of his impressive career, he has advised a diversity of luminaries including Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Mother Teresa and three U.S. presidents, and CEOs, Olympic athletes and individuals all over the world regularly consult with him for his guidance. Countless more people have been transformed by his extensive selection of books, tapes and his exhilarating seminars. Robbins has gone through his own personal evolutions throughout his life, including a metamorphosis triggered by a brain tumor back in 1994 when he says, “I lost all sense of certainty in my life, whether I was going to live or die” which sparked an awakening which deepened, enriched and spiritually-infused his work and perspective. This candid, in-depth interview offers insight into Anthony Robbins’ heart and soul.
Tony Robbins and Marianne Schnall
Marianne Schnall: I think a lot of people at times see themselves as a passive recipient of whatever life brings, rather than realizing that they are in control of their own destiny. What would you say to wake people up to their own power, their own sense of control over their lives?
Tony Robbins: Well, I think you have to acknowledge, everyone has to acknowledge that we aren’t in control. We have influence. We’re not in control of the external world. It doesn’t matter. The idea that we’re puppets or that we’re victims, comes from the fact that people look around and they focus on the fact that there’s so much they can’t control. But if you look at anyone who has great well-being, anyone who has a sense of impact, anyone who leads, whether it be a mom leading a family or a person leading a business – the thing that makes them different than everyone else is they understand there are two worlds. The external world which I can influence and the internal world which I do control. And that internal world is where you have to master yourself. And I think that whatever your story is, whatever your core belief system is, you’re going to find a way to support it.
If I said to you right now — I’ll do this in a seminar, I’ll say, look around the room right now and I’m going to give you a quick test and I want you to notice everything that’s brown. Every single thing that’s brown. Look behind you. Look around you. Try it right now wherever you are.
MS: Okay.
TR: Okay, close your eyes. And now tell me everything that’s green. [laughs] And so what happens is I dare say you saw more brown. Now open your eyes and look for green. More green than when you were looking before, because you get what you look for — right? So my whole approach is to get people out of your story. If your story is that ‘life’s a bitch and then you die,’ that’s how your story shows up. If your story is — the one I encourage people to go consider is: what if life was not happening to you, but was happening for you. If that was your approach, then you look at everything in life and say everything is happening for a reason and a purpose and it serves me, but it’s my job to figure out how to get it to serve me. Most human beings have had experiences in their past that they hated, that were horrific, that they never want to go through again and they probably wouldn’t want any friend or someone they cared about to go through, and yet when you look back on it five years later, ten years later, at some point you say thank God that happened, because of that I have this tremendous drive, or I have this compassion because I suffered, or other people are not going to suffer because I did and I’m going to make sure it doesn’t occur. So everything happens for a reason and a purpose and it serves us, it gives us a different approach, and then the focus becomes, what can I control, what can I take and shape in my life and then you don’t end up finding yourself in that place.
But, really, I think all people’s lives are controlled by three decisions. You look at people’s lives — it’s not their conditions, it’s their decisions. So everybody has a choice and every moment in your life you’re making three decisions. You’re making it while you’re listening to me right now. First one is ‘What are you going to focus on?’ You’re going to focus on what somebody is saying, what it means to you, you’re focusing on how much longer am I going to have to listen to this crap [laughs], you’re focusing on what you’re going to eat — you know, whatever it is, but whatever you focus on you’re going to feel. Now some people have a patterned focus and they focus on what they can’t control and some people focus on what they can. That one pattern alone can shift somebody from being depressed and feeling empowered. Some people’s pattern, for example, is focused on the past. Some patterns the focus almost always goes to the future. Some to the present. There’s no right or wrong, but whatever your pattern of focus is, it starts to control your whole life because it’s the first filter of everything. If your focus is on what you don’t have versus what you do have, it’s not hard to figure out what your life is going to be like. We don’t have to go any further than that and we can determine what your life is going to be like. You’re going to be miserable.
On the other hand, as soon as you focus on something, the second decision your brain has to make — and most people, by the way, make these decisions unconsciously — which is why their life is unconscious. They let their unconscious just do it, rather than taking control. So the second one is you focus on something your brain has to immediately decide, ‘What does this mean?’ Is this person dissing me? Are they harassing me? Are they challenging me? Are they teasing me? Just one word change and you’re going to go into a radically different emotional state, respond to that person in a very different way. Is this the end or is this the beginning? If you think it’s the end of a relationship, you’re going to treat the person very differently than if you think it’s the beginning of the relationship. So that shift, shifts how you feel. And that’s the third decision: what am I going to do? So as soon as I have a meaning, I have an emotion. If the emotion is anger, the choices I am going to pull from and what I’m going to do are going to be very different, than if the emotion is overwhelm than if the emotion is gratitude, than if the emotion is excitement. So our entire lives are controlled by that. Is God punishing me? Is God challenging me? Has this got nothing to do with God, is it just my lazy ass? [laughs] So I am always looking at those three decisions with people — what do we tend to focus on, what do these things really mean to them, which is their story, their set of beliefs, their rules, and thirdly, ‘What do they do?’ which is their role models for action depending on what state they’re in. And when you shift a person’s life, you shift it by changing the pattern of focus, the pattern of meaning and the pattern of action.
MS: I think part of the problem is as you said, most of us are living our lives on autopilot, unconsciously. Even for myself I find it takes a lot of effort, because we’re not brought up to watch our thoughts, to even be aware of what we’re thinking, because we don’t really know how to pay attention to our inner world. What advice would you have on that? I was reading something of yours where you were talking about a mental diet — it is easier said than done, in terms of remaining aware and mindful of your thoughts and catching yourself when you’re in a negative thought pattern.
TR: You’re so right because I always tell people that one of the rarest of all human commodities is self awareness. Not self consciousness — self consciousness, you’re constantly evaluating yourself and judging yourself. But self awareness, which means becoming aware of the part of you that is patterned. You remember at that little group when I was doing the warm up with you, I had people pulling hands apart and bringing them together, let’s figure out what thumb it was and change thumbs. And everybody’s face looks weird when you change thumbs — it’s so unconscious. So becoming aware of your patterns is the first step. And that’s basically what I have people do, I have them become aware. Because once you wake up, you might go to sleep for awhile, but you’ll never be asleep again because your brain knows to look for it. It’s like — I don’t know if you’ve ever bought an outfit or a car or something and all of a sudden you see that outfit or car everywhere. It’s a part of your brain that’s called the reticular activating system, the RAS, and it tells your brain what to notice. Once you set a goal, once you become aware of something, it becomes part of your consciousness.
So that’s what I try to do, I try to wake people up. But as you said, when you do something as simple as a seven day mental diet, and you say here’s what we’re going to do for seven days: I’m going to become aware of my patterns — not from the standpoint of trying to be a positive person, but to understand that if I go into negative states on a regular basis — when you’re in negative state you don’t treat people better, you treat them worse. When you’re in a negative state, you don’t optimize your ability at work or your creativity or your business or your sport or whatever it is you’re involved with, or as a parent. You just don’t. And you sure as hell don’t enjoy your life.
So as a thought process or a discipline in mental strength and mental happiness and a sense of empowerment, I say to people, take seven days and all I want you to do is very simple. Seven straight days where you catch yourself with anything you’re saying that is derogatory, negative, about the future or about yourself or about another human being. So all you’ve got to do is very simple. You catch yourself and you just go erase. Catch yourself and say erase — but you’ve got to go seven straight days where you don’t have to say erase. Well, for most people, this is a month long process [laughs], because they have no idea how much negativity they state about the future, or they state about themselves, or they state about other people. And you make them right write it down and you’ll start to see a pattern. You write it down, you erase, no more, right? And you keep a little journal doing this and again, most people they’ll start going and they might even get through half a day, a quarter of a day and all of a sudden they’ll have this regurgitation of shit that comes out of their head. And that little discipline will remind you, it will just make you so aware of how many unconscious thoughts you have each day. And then it’s not about beating yourself up, it’s about saying, ‘Wow. This isn’t me. This is the automatic part of my brain that undisciplined it will just throw out trash.’ You know, weeds grow automatically. You don’t have to plant weeds. I look at people’s lives and you see what’s not working in their lives and it usually comes from an undisciplined mind.
MS: There are so many different things we are educated about, yet this is something that is completely not taught to us as children — to be aware of our thoughts and how that affects us. I only learned about this myself, later in life, through the practice of meditation and still, sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night and my brain starts going off on the things I have to do or I’m worrying about, I have to literally tell my brain to stop and focus on my breathing. It is a constant training and retraining, and I notice the difference in myself when I do have time to meditate and when I don’t. How do you personally stay centered and balanced? What tools do you use or recommend?
TR: Let me answer that two ways. Number one — I’ll tell you tools second — but let me tell you the number one piece. Whenever you have something that’s a mission that’s larger than yourself, whether it be your children, whether it be a business, whether it be a non-profit focus — I don’t care what it is. Something that is your life’s passion, that is more than just you, you will find that you’re not going to have a whole lot of time inside your consciousness for negativity. I believe that life supports what supports more of life. In other words, motivation does matter. If you’re just trying to take care of yourself, you’re part of life and I believe life steps in and gives you a certain level of insight. If you’re trying to serve something larger then yourself — your family — you know when I suddenly had four kids overnight and I was 25 years old and I had a 17-year-old, an 11-year-old, a five-year-old and one on the way, I grew more than any other time in my life, no matter what else I was doing, because I had to have insights to support this family all of a sudden. It grew me geometrically. If you’re trying to take care of a whole community, you have to have a different level of insight, because your motivation is to truly serve something much larger than yourself and then those things come true. If you’re trying to serve humanity, I think you need even greater insight.
So I think number one is if you get outside yourself, you’re going to find yourself having a lot less of these limiting thoughts because your purpose is to serve something. As long as we’re within ourselves, we have challenges. Because that’s just the nature of the human mind. That’s why meditating is a wonderful experience, but why it’s so difficult for people. What’s actually to me a more powerful meditation — and I still meditate as well — is that sense of service where everything else disappears. You’re not worried about your thoughts. You’re not fighting and trying not to think of anything else. You’re moving towards something. Living life on a purpose is the greatest gift you can find for yourself. But how do you do it on a day to day basis? You ask better questions. Questions control focus. So if I say to you, tell me Marianne, what’s something in your life right now that you’re really proud of? When you look back on your life in the last few years or over your whole life, what’s something that stands out for you that you could be really proud of, that you do feel proud about. I read your biography, so you’ve got plenty.
MS: My kids, my websites, my interviews and writings. The work that I do to help and inspire others.
TR: Out of that grouping of things, think of one in particular that you really feel proud of.
MS: I guess my kids.
TR: Yes. Can you think of something in particular you’re proud of about your kids?
MS: That they seem to be in touch with their authentic selves, which is something I don’t remember being so in touch with at their age.
TR: Wow. So something that you didn’t have in your life, you’re able to give them. That’s probably part of your drive of why you did. But when you feel proud about them, just as I ask you the question, and you start to focus on what I’m asking, obviously you shift your focus to what you’re proud of. If I ask you what you’re excited about and I get you to really take a few moments and think about it, you’re going to start to feel that. In your own life — I have what I call my kind of morning questions or solution questions. If suddenly all hell is breaking loose, the first question I ask is ‘What’s great about this?’ If my brain first answers, ‘nothing’ [laughs], what I do is I force myself to just say, what’s great about this? Okay — what’s great about this is at least now we know. What’s great about this is I’m having to be aware of this so I can go attack it now. What’s great about this is I’m going to get an insight out of this, I’m going to solve this and once I solve this, it will help so many other people. So what’s great about this? My next question is what’s not perfect yet? And the question presupposes there’s perfection in this. And the brain’s kind of an interesting thing. Whatever you ask it, it will give you an answer. If you go, how come I can never lose weight? There’s a presupposition to that question that you can never lose weight and so your brain operates that way and goes well, because you’re a pig [laughs]. If you go, what’s not perfect yet? Our brain will go what’s not perfect yet is, we’ve got to deal with this challenge because somebody was unconscious and it’s not solved yet, right? And I go, what am I willing to do to make this work? What am I willing to do right now to move this forward and make this work?
So I go from ‘Holy shit, this huge problem’ to ‘What’s great about it? What’s not perfect yet?’ so it acknowledges the challenge — and what am I willing to do to really transform this? And my last question is how can I transform it and enjoy it? And again, I’ve asked these questions so often that what happens to my brain is it just kicks in gear, so I want to do more than just to accomplish it, I want to find a way to enjoy what I’m going to do, which usually means finding some higher purpose or something about it that says, you know what? Rather than this just being a pain in the butt, this is going to lead you to something quite magical.
So I use questions. Questions change focus. And if you develop some simple questions to ask yourself — you know, one of my primary questions in life — everybody has a question they ask more often than anything else unconsciously, I do a whole seminar where you dig it in and find out what yours is. But my number one question in life is ‘How can I make it better?’ Think about it — my whole life has been shaped by that. All the skill sets that I have, all the things I’m able to do in this world, the things you saw on the show, the things you saw in the live event that we did there — they’ve all come out of me basically saying how can I make this better? How can I make myself better? How can I make this process better? It’s an obsessive question for me. And ask and you shall receive. So questions are the answer. But you want higher quality questions, and that’s what will direct your focus.
MS: So that’s another aspect of all this that doesn’t come naturally to us, taking the time to contemplate these types of questions, since our society is so focused instead on all these meaningless, materialistic goals, and doesn’t encourage us to do this type of inner reflection. There are so many necessary shifts in perspective that aren’t supported by our society so it is a lot of relearning and working against a different tide.
TR: Well, the tide I think is cultural, more than anything else. We live in a culture that is about me. We live in a culture that expects instantaneous gratification for everything, and the web has only enhanced that in many ways. It empowers in many ways, but it also makes people believe ‘I should have everything right now.’ And the missing element in our culture today and the reason why — you know, in 2006 we had the highest levels of unhappiness ever measured in North America and it was at the peak of the financial — before the crisis — peak of our last 30 years of financial well-being for the United States. And I believe the reason is because people expected more and more with less and less effort. There was no sense of mastery. There’s no sense of ‘I’m responsible in life for something.’
What makes people feel alive is to have a life of meaning, not to be happy. Happiness is wonderful. It comes and it goes. Pleasure comes and goes. Pleasure is in the body. Happiness is in the mind. But in the spirit, that experience of meaning is what’s the richest experience for human beings and meaning sometimes comes from very tough situations that you push through and that’s because you only push through because there’s a motive larger than yourself, so what are you responsible to life for? What are you here to give? What are you here to share? What are you made for? What’s your sense of purpose? These are the things that change a person’s life much more quickly than trying to solve their own individual problems. It’s not to say you can’t be practical — I teach the practical side of things. But very quickly, people go to an event like mine — they’ll find that they came because they want to make more money, or they want to lose weight, or they want to transform their relationship, or they want to turn their kid around, or whatever the case may be — take their career to the next level. I deliver on that, but I’m a Trojan Horse. Once I get you there and I deliver on it, now you’re enthralled and now I lead you to a place where you remember who you are and what you’re here for.
MS: One important message I see conveyed in your work is that some of the most powerful transformations can come from going through a really difficult time or a time of crisis. We’re taught to fear those events in our lives, but they can be these unbelievable opportunities and gifts, if you’re open to it that way. The trick is remaining open, rather than shutting down, which is usually our instinct.
TR: You’re absolutely right. I always tell people there’s nothing greater than a crisis to create a breakthrough. Because that’s when we breakthrough usually — most people don’t proactively breakthrough — they breakthrough because they have to. They breakthrough because it’s a ‘must’ to change now, not a ‘should’ to change now. And the beauty of crisis is it doesn’t feel beautiful, is it melts us down. And when you’re melted down you can recast your life in a new way. But when you stay in the same form, you just keep doing what you’re doing. People have so much momentum in the way they are — they have so much inertia, would probably be a better description — in this is how things are, the sameness, the certainty of what I know, that very often it takes a crisis to break that inertia and get somebody to all the way push through. So that crisis is almost always an opportunity. It’s corny and it’s used a million times, but the whole Chinese symbol about crisis and opportunity. You know, danger and opportunity at the same time — it’s exactly what it is. But the most powerful thing about a crisis is, it moves you to do something that you wouldn’t have done before. Because you have to. You know the current situation is not working, so you’re going to have to do something else. And I think crisis is almost always a gift. If you look at people’s lives and ask them what have been some of the greatest breakthroughs of your life, and then ask them what preceded it, virtually always it was a crisis of some sort. And all a crisis is, is nothing is working, you’re not being rewarded, you’re getting pain for the very things maybe at one time you were rewarded for.
MS: I know that you’re a father. What advice would you give to parents, and people who care for children, like teachers, on raising happier, more resilient, more empowered kids?
TR: I would say you have to first go first. You can’t raise a happy, more resilient kid if you’re not a happy, more resilient adult. We teach people how we are, we don’t teach them by what we say, we teach them by the way we live. So I look at this and say, breakthroughs in life always come from those three things. I think I may have mentioned at your event there, which is you’ve got to first be able to create — people think about get the right strategy, I don’t know how to do something — but the reason you don’t know how to do it, is you’ve got a belief system, a story if you would, that’s limiting you. You know, ‘I’m out of control, it’s too much, I don’t have enough time, I’ve tried everything’ — there’s some story that’s keeping you from getting the very strategies to make you most effective. And a way to get out of those lousy stories, the number one skill set, is to really learn to change your state. It is the one thing that none of us are taught. We’re taught alright — but we’re taught by two million commercials we should have instantaneous release from pain, and the way we should do it is reach for something. Drink something, eat something, ingest something that is going to suddenly change it all. The problem, of course, is when you take away the pain, you take away the drive to change. And so we have a huge portion of our society that’s medicated — some medicated by prescription drugs, some medicated by food, some medicated by alcohol, but it’s a massive medication process. And so learning to change your state and being able to demonstrate that with your kids in an instant — what I teach, which is a radical change is the way you use your physical body. Learning how to do that on a dime, over and over again and developing that as a habit, will teach your kids the most important thing of all, which is to be resourceful.
We’re all going to face extreme stress in our lives, there’s no one who is going to escape that. That’s the one thing, rich or poor, I don’t care who you are, you’re going to lose. You’re going to go through some pain. You’re going to lose your home or you’re going to lose your job or you’re going to lose your savings or you’re going to lose a dear friend or you’re going to lose a child or you’re going to have somebody come to you and say as I’ve had, ‘You have a tumor in your brain’ — and those days, those moments, and those things happen and how you respond is going to determine the quality of your life. It’s not how things go when it’s well, it’s the ability to change that state, get resourceful, find an empowering meaning and find a solution to move forward, that’s what makes people successful, so you’ve got to do that first. You’ve got to say this is a skill set, a set of skills I need to get within my own life. I need to become the master of my own mind, the master of my emotions. I need to get emotionally fit and strong and the only way you’re going to do that is by going to a gym. You’re not going to do it, frankly — you know reading a book is a nice thing, but like people say, ‘Why do you do seminars?” Well, you could read a book on swimming or you can go swimming with somebody who is an expert swimmer who’ll throw you in the deep end and make sure you don’t die, but also make sure you get totally immersed and you know what you’re doing, so you can go do it on your own. That’s really the ideal environment for people. A book or an audio type of thing is probably the next best thing.
MS: When you look out at humanity, right now, at the world, what do you think is at the root of the serious problems the world is facing, when you diagnose the human species at the moment?
TR: That’s a pretty large question. [laughs]
MS: Sorry, I’m known for those. [laughs]
TR: I think of human beings as having — you know I had an experience when I was diagnosed with a tumor, and I found myself having these really crazy aberrant behaviors. You know, I fought the idea of it. I went through all these different elements, long story short, I had an experience where I realized I had lost all sense of certainty in my life, whether I was going to live or die and I began to realize that for most of my life I had worked early on in my life as a kid to pound certainty inside myself, because I didn’t have any. I had no role models in my house. There was nobody that was happy or successful, in any way. Happy, meaning, you know my mom was married four times. We were always broke. There were times there was no food, literally. The reason I feed people today, over two million people every year, is because my family was fed when I was 11-years-old by some strangers on Thanksgiving. I just never forgot it and decided someday I would do the same for other people, so it was a great gift to my life. With none of that available to me, I pounded certainty into myself. I literally conditioned myself to be certain, to have that confidence, that strength, and it was something I did by controlling my mind. I would do what I call incantations. An affirmation you might go, ‘I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy’ and your brain goes ‘bullshit’ — but an incantation is something that you state with such intensity over and over again and you engage your entire body where I would literally go out at 17 years old on these slow jog runs for an hour and a half doing these incantations. You know, ‘I now command my subconscious mind to direct me in helping as many people as possible, by giving me the strength, the humor, the brevity, whatever it takes to show these people, to get these people to change their life now’ — and do it over and over again. Or ‘God’s wealth is circulating in my life, it’s what flows to me, an avalanche of abundance. All my needs, desires and goals are met instantaneously, by infinite intelligence — where I’m one with God and God is everything.’ I’d do that for an hour. And I’d shout at the top of my lungs while I’m jogging and I would literally condition myself to be there.
So now, here I am 31 years old, I’m the most successful I’d ever dreamed of being and I’ve got a tumor. What the hell — all of a sudden I’m not functioning anymore. What I lost was my certainty. And that triggered me — I was literally going to work with this man who was a Saudi Arabian sheik, who was paying me a million dollars to come coach him and I’m thinking to myself, this guy … You know I never think like — I’m always compassionate — I don’t ever think like ‘this guy’s an idiot.’ And I’m thinking ‘this guy’s an idiot’ [laughs]. He’s got no reason not to feel good about his life and I was getting all whipped up and I was in the shower and in the shower, I came up with probably the seminal piece of my work, which is that all human beings are driven by six needs, is the answer to your question. People have a need for certainty — and that need for certainty is in every human being, certainty that you can avoid pain, certainty that you can at least be comfortable. It’s a survival instinct, right? But at the same time everyone goes after certainty in different ways. Some people get certainty by working harder and saying I’m going to master something. Some people get certainty by lowering their expectations, going ‘it will never work. Everybody’s screwing me anyway. The world is against me. I’m a victim.’ And they lose their dreams, but they get their needs. The needs are not like goals. They’re not like belief systems that are built into you. So if you can get certainty by eating — you’re stressed out, you go eat a bunch of your favorite food, you overwhelm your bloodstream, and all of a sudden you start breathing again. You could do it that way. You could do it by smoking a cigarette. There’s a million ways to get certainty. The only question is, are the ways you’re doing it, are they empowering, neutral or dis-empowering? If it works for the moment and it doesn’t hurt anybody, it’s kind of neutral. If it works long term, obviously for yourself and others, it’s empowering. If it just works for the moment, just gives you a little hit, but it has a downside long term, you know drugs, food, alcohol, that’s extreme. All those things — how does it cost you? Well here’s the weird thing — if you get totally certain — if every moment in your life, Marianne, you knew what was going to happen, when it was going to happen, how it was going to happen, how would you feel?
MS: Bored.
TR: Bored out of your mind. So God, in her infinite wisdom — gave us a second need: variety, uncertainty. We all want uncertainty. Variety is the spice of life. We all want surprises. Do you like surprises?
MS: I can’t help remember what Oprah said during the Lifeclass taping — depends on the type of surprise.
TR: As long as it’s a type of surprise we want, right? The ones we don’t want are a problem, but we need them to feel alive, so we need variety. Now here’s the interesting thing. People will go into a relationship, if it’s a brand new relationship, it’s so exciting because it’s something brand new, it’s variety, it’s different. And you’re so excited by the feelings. And what most people try to do because they don’t want to lose that, they try to control it to make it certain. And if they make it so certain then you become bored in the relationship. It’s a delicate balance. It’s not a teeter totter where you and I get across on a seesaw or teeter totter and we go okay, here’s the goal, we’re going to balance it. Alright, now once you and I balance it, how long before one of us is going to start jerking that thing around just to feel alive. That’s what people do with their lives.
So the third need is significance: the need to feel unique, special, important or needed. Everybody has those needs, including the people that say I don’t need to be special. If thou dost protest too much, it’s still a part of them. So significance can be achieved by being the toughest person, the smartest person, the sweetest person, the most generous person. You can do it by the way you dress. You can do it by having a big problem, bigger than anybody else’s. I’m sure you’ve seen people that argue about ‘Oh, you think you’ve got it bad, let me tell you what my problem is.’ [laughs] They’re arguing over significance. So you can get it in a way that’s empowering, mutual or dis-empowering, once again. Violence is the fastest way — and this is a long answer, but you’re asking me a big question and I’m giving you the context. Violence is the fastest way to get significance without education, without background, without any money. If I feel completely insignificant and you walked through the hood and I come up to you and put a gun to your head, just how significant am I on a zero to ten scale in your life right now? I’m 100, right?
And here’s the other thing that I’ve learned. There’s six needs. The only difference between human beings is two things. One, which of these six needs are the top two for you? Because while we have all the same needs, we don’t value them equally. So some people are more certainty driven. In fact, if you mess with anything, they freak out. Control freaks. Where you’re late for anything they go nuts. Or you change anything they go nuts. If certainty is at the top of your list, you have a very different life then if variety is at the top of your list. That person is going to go sky diving, they’re going to do everything that they possibly can, they’ve got completely different direction for their lives.
So the top two shape you, so interestingly enough, if significance is the most important thing to you in your life, you’re going to behave very differently with what the fourth need is, love. Connection and love. Most people settle for connection, because love’s too scary. They don’t want to lose that feeling, that super high is too crushing so they settle for the comfort of connection. And again, you can get connection in lots of ways. You can get it by a friendship. You can get it by a dog. You can get it by a child. You can get it by being attached to a cause. You can get it by having huge problems and sharing those problems with other people, going ‘I have that problem too’ and you both get to connect. Those are the most common ones to do these things. But here’s what I found — any time an action you take, any time a thought pattern you have, any time you have an emotion that meets at least three of these needs, it becomes an addiction. Take an example of putting a gun to your head. Why do we have in the world so much violence? I put a gun to your head — here I am feeling totally insignificant — instantly I’m significant at a zero to ten at a ten plus. How certain am I that you’re going to respond to me if I put a gun to your head?
MS: Right.
TR: And by the way, every time we do it, there’s going to be some variety. And in a sick way, we’re connected. ‘I live in a place where I feel America’s dominating the world and destroying my family,’ I go fly a plane into a building — guess what, it might take you ten years to build that building, but I could blow it up in two hours. Didn’t take a whole lot, $400,000 for the whole operation, changed the world as we know it. So it wasn’t a lot of money — it was just somebody feeling like I could be significant. And by the way, those people went in and they died flying those planes into there believing that if I do this, I’ll be more significant. I will go up and be with Allah and I’ll be greeted and my family will be honored, because I’ll be a martyr. It’s huge. People will die for significance. People will die for love.
More often than not, men bio-chemically are driven for significance and women more by connection, but in the world we live in today, you can find just as many women driven for significance as there are men and vice versa. So the reason I tell you this, because this relates to everything you see. So these first four needs, everybody finds a way to meet. I don’t care who they are. You might get certainty by lowering your expectations. You might get variety by eating. You might get significance by tearing other people down or reading magazines that tear other people down and you can feel superior to those people. Or by sharing your problems so that you can connect with people. You can do it in negative ways, neutral or positive.
The final two needs are the spiritual needs. They’re not religious, they’re spiritual, they’re what lifts your spirit. And that is, number five is, you’ve gotta grow. If you don’t grow, you’re not going to be fulfilled. Most people meet their needs basically, even if they have to lie to themselves for those first four needs, but very few people are fulfilled because they aren’t growing. Growth is what life is. The one word that makes happiness happen for people is progress. I don’t care where you are in your life, if you’re making progress with your family, if you’re making progress with your body, if you’re making progress with your kids, if you’re making progress in your energy or your health, you’re going to feel better about your life. And so progress is a symbol of growth. Everything in the universe grows or dies. And the last one is contribution. What makes us feel alive is to have something that has greater meaning. Life is not about me, it’s about we. So it’s a long answer to your question — so now where are the challenges in the world? The challenges in the world come from, as we develop, as individuals and societies, we start out extremely egocentric. All babies are egocentric. Meaning, they care about whose needs?
MS: Their own.
TR: Their own, that’s it. So we only grow because in the beginning it’s okay for babies to do that. In fact if you’re a mother or a father, you’re filled with oxytocin when you have a child. It makes you love the baby, even though they look like a lizard [laughs], it doesn’t matter. You’ll think it’s the beautiful thing in the world. But there’s a day that oxytocin wears off, and that’s the day that fear enters our body, because you start realizing, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to do something, gotta be something, gotta somehow be a certain way’, in order to be loved, in order to survive, even. So inside of all of us we have these patterns where we eventually become at least ethnocentric. We care about our group, our mom, our dad, our family, our religion, our white people, our African American people, our Chinese, our whatever. Right? And not everybody evolves beyond that. And some people, eventually, evolve beyond that until they’re more human-centric or even spirit-centric where they care about everything. The more you consciously care that way your life changes. When you look around the world, consciousness is delivered by which needs you value. If your value is certainty, you’re in survival mode. If you’re in variety, you’re in the fun mode, which is just me. If you’re in significance, then you’re going to be in a mode of trying to achieve something or being an achiever of something. If you’re in love mode, it’s going to be spirit and connection. You’re going to care about a larger group of people. If you’re into growth and contribution, it’s a different level. So there are elevations.
So if you look around the world and I can tell you right now that the majority of the planet is focused on certainty and significance. And those two absolutely guarantee unhappiness. Because if you’re driven by significance, it doesn’t matter what you achieve, it’s never enough. It doesn’t matter how many people you conquer, it doesn’t matter how much money you make, it doesn’t matter — because there’s always a comparison to something else and as a result, those people can never be fulfilled. It’s the number one thing in our society, is significance. I was just in India and if you go to India and you ask — and I’ve done studies there, of junior high and high school students, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ — the number one answer is a software engineer, but what’s more interesting is why. And they say ‘Because I want to do well and be successful so I can take care of my family’. If you ask, instead, in the United States today — USA Today I believe was the one did the poll — ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ to junior high and high school students in the United States, what do you think their answer is?
MS: I don’t know.
TR: To be famous. The number one answer — which today you can do by being infamous, right? You just create a video online of doing something crazy. So our world is hugely driven by significance. The other one is certainty. If you are driven by certainty you can’t grow. If you are driven by certainty if somebody messes with you, you can get very intense, even violent, depending upon the person’s personality. So I look around the world and say, the challenges these days, almost all challenges these days, virtually all, are human challenges. Humans created the problems, so humans can solve them, but only by a higher level of consciousness. You know, it’s the whole thing, you can’t solve the problem at the same level of consciousness that created the problem. And the evolution happens as people learn to value higher needs in their life, as what guides them. So think about it this way: 9/11 there were people who ran in that building, firemen, who knew there was no way on earth they’re going to come back out of that building. They were going to literally give their life to save strangers. Now what makes a human being do that? The answer is significance. Significance and contribution are elements that would get them to go do that. But here’s the difference, the guys that flew the plane that killed everybody were also driven by significance. The difference is I said two things. What do we value most and also, we have a different set of maps or beliefs of how to meet that need. So one person’s belief to be significant is to kill “the enemy”. The other person’s way of being significant is to die for a stranger. So that belief system about how to meet your needs, that’s the structure.
So you asked me a pretty giant question so I know it’s a long answer, but here’s how I look at it: I look at society and I look at people and I say… I’m not Mr. Motivator. Somebody wrote Mr. Motivator. I think you get a better sense — I believe in energy. I believe in passion. I believe in teaching people in an environment where it’s like being at an NBA Championship Game. But on the other hand, my view is I’m the ‘why’ guy. I don’t need to motivate you. What I need you to discover is what is your motivation. So if you say, ‘I’m unmotivated’ — you’re not unmotivated, you’re highly motivated to eat, right? [laughs] So my job is to uncover that process. So I look around and I say: what is the driving force inside of somebody? What’s really making this thing work? What needs are they trying to meet? And then if I can show them a better way to meet those needs, suddenly they see the whole world differently.
MS: Lately I feel hopeful, I see so many signs that there’s this mass awakening happening, like human consciousness is evolving right before our eyes. That’s how I like to see the world, rather than the focus on all of the problems, the light that is emerging, all these people waking up.
TR: That’s right. Waking up is the whole key. But what’s waking everybody up right now? It’s crisis. Think about it, that’s why there’s all the seasons. Winter serves. Because things die in winter and things are cleaned out so that there’s room for the new springtime. I think we’re not yet quite to springtime, each of us individually can enter springtime, but as a culture, we’re right now still in winter and there’s enough crisis there which some people are already pushed over the edge and others people aren’t and I can promise you, over the next ten years you’re going to see a lot more crisis and you’re going to see a lot more breakthroughs and on the other side of it, we’ll enter a new springtime.
MS: I run a women’s website and non-profit organization Feminist.com, and I’ve heard you talk a lot about masculine and feminine energy, which I believe is in both men and women. In fact, we have a new initiative “Men & Women as Allies”, which is not just about men and women working together towards gender equality, but also looking at how destructive gender stereotypes impact men as negatively as they do women. What is your sense of that? In addition to everything else it seems that people are up against, they may not be aware of the influence of constricting gender roles. That’s why I think it is so great when I watch episodes of Breakthrough and I see men openly crying and expressing emotion and vulnerability. I think that’s a whole other issue — this idea that we all have masculine and feminine qualities in each of us and we need to value them both to be whole.
TR: I think you’re absolutely right. I think both parts of yourself have to be… We only feel alive when we’re whole. And to think that you’re one or the other is a joke. Culturally, though, what has happened, is we overvalue one, not based on our real wiring. In other words, both masculine and feminine are in everyone, and my experience, and I’ve dealt with four million people in live seminars in a hundred countries — and I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that somewhere in the range of 90% of the people are wired similar to their sexuality, meaning there is a driving force inside you that you’re born with that is the stronger of the two. So you use both as a whole, but equally challenging is, the culture tends to reward the opposite. Most men under stress become more feminine — meaning feminine in its natural state is the thing I was talking to Oprah about. I think you were there when I was talking about the affirming, right?
MS: Yes.
TR: So women have this beautiful capacity that men don’t seem to have, when they’re masculine men, at least, of affirming. Guys just don’t do that when their masculine males, it’s quite the opposite. Masculine energy grows by challenge. That energy tends to grow. The reason I bring it up, though, is, a woman can do anything a man can do today and then some. She can even have a child without a man, so there’s not a question about where the equality is. But what you have to look at is beyond equality. I think in my experience, because again I’ve dealt with so many magnificent achiever women who will blow away any guy, but I can tell you that if their core is feminine, if they don’t honor that feminine, because the culture for so many years, it was so out of balance, the culture encourages women to be masculine and encourages men to be feminine. It’s actually a reversal of where we were at one time. My experience is for fulfillment — I’m not talking about balance, for fulfillment, you’ve got to be able to know what your core is and be able to return and nurture that part of yourself. Because if a mom is a single mom and she’s out there and she’s playing both roles in life, she has developed her masculine very strongly. In fact, she’s probably had to develop more of her masculine then maybe is her nature and as a result though, women should get to turn that off since she’s responsible all the time for everything and everyone, it’s a difficult situation. So a big part of my focus with people is to say, let’s figure out what your core is. And you’ll know, because you know what really, truly fulfills you outside your cultural conditioning and get people to feel that and make sure that there’s a segment of that in their life that is nurtured deliberately and consciously.
MS: How would you describe your life philosophy or your sense of spirituality? I’m sorry to keep asking you such big questions.
TR: I like big questions. To me spirituality is just love, period. When you’re in a state of love, you do what’s right. When you’re really in love, it’s not about you. When you’re really in love, it’s about giving, serving, delivering to others and that’s when we feel most alive. We feel most small, we feel most challenged when we’re only focusing on ourselves. Because even when you fulfill yourself, meaning you get what you think you want, you still find yourself in a position where it’s never enough. You only feel it for so long. It’s like what you get will never make you happy. Who you become, will make you very happy or very sad. And so it’s that becoming that makes us feel alive. That becoming is it.
I look at it this way — I try to break it down in practical terms, so that people can think about life and say, here’s what I’m about. I’m about having people experience the most extraordinary quality of life that they possibly could imagine. Now what’s an extraordinary quality of life for you, might be different, Marianne, then for your friends or even for your daughters or for me or anyone else. Everyone has a different model of what that looks like, so I’m not here to tell people what an extraordinary life looks like. I just know that it’s one where you’re truly fulfilled and honor that extraordinary life on your terms. Some people have built giant companies, for some people it’s having a beautiful garden, some people it’s learning to sing a beautiful song, write a poem — it’s different for everybody.
But I personally believe that there are two master lessons in life, is how I practically break it down. There’s the science of achievement and there’s the art of fulfillment. If you’re going to have an extraordinary life, both skills must be mastered. Now the science of achievement is in fact, the science. If you want to lose weight, be healthy, have fitness, if you want to make more money, if you want to achieve something, there are rules to achievement, there are rules of finance, there’s rules of the body. We’re all unique and individual biochemically, but there are certain rules that if you violate them, you’re going to have disease in the body. If you’re aligned with them, you’re going to have an abundance of energy and vitality and health. Same thing financially. I don’t care what your color, your background, your age is, your gender — if you do certain things, you’re going to have too much month at the end of the money, if there are certain principles you violate. If you do other things, you’re going to have an abundance of economics. So there are very clear rules. There’s a science to achievement. I spent probably the first 10 to 15 years of my life, primarily focused on finding all those best strategies and that’s how I built my original reputation and I’ve turned things around, helped people achieve, make things go.
But along the way, when I got my tumor, I kind of uncovered that there was another part of life that I wasn’t fully masterful of and that is the art of fulfillment. I call it an art, because everybody’s idea of art is as unique as a human being. It’s like you go to an art show and some people look at this big blue dot and go, ‘That’s the most amazing thing’ and somebody else says, ‘Are you kidding me? That’s insane.’ [laughs] Everyone has a different thing. In fact, you want to know what God loves, what the universe loves, go to the forest. There’s total diversity in the forest. Everywhere you look is diversity. So what I look at is: what’s going to make you feel fulfilled and that’s totally unique to you, Marianne, then it is to your children, then it is to me, even for the people we love.
But I do know that there are some principles, not laws, but some fundamental principles and that is for you to feel fulfilled you’ve got to grow and you’ve got to give. You’ve got to feel like there’s progress, something, somewhere in your life, for you to feel good and you’ve got to feel like your life is more than just about yourself, when those two things are there. So I look at life and say: these are the two parts of life — the ability to take the invisible and make it visible. Take thoughts and turn them into actions, turn them into results, turn your dreams into reality. That’s really the science of achievement. The ability to enjoy and be fulfilled and to have meaning and all that, that’s really the art of fulfillment.
MS: The question I always like to end with, because I believe in visualizing, is what would be your wish or prayer for the children of the future?
TR: I think my prayer would be for them to own their true value in life, but to know that that value they’re born with and yet it’s magnified by what they give. If you could install one value into all human beings, it would be the need that’s already there called contribution, but getting them to go there first, instead of certainty, and that’s not an easy thing, because it means you have to face fears. But I think getting people outside themselves.
I had a great Mom. She was crazy as hell. She beat the shit out of me. I went through an incredibly violent childhood. But she loved the shit out of me too. She was a mixed up lady. She was beat when she was a kid, so when she felt out of control that’s what happened. But she also took me when I was four years old, maybe five years old, on my birthday I got some balloons and she would say to me, ‘Do you want these balloons here or do you want to give them to these people?’ She’d bring me to this old folks’ home, and I’d hand these balloons to these old folks and they just lit up like a Christmas tree. It was like I had enough experiences like that, that I got hooked on contribution at an earlier stage, earlier than even my certainty being met. I got hooked on higher value structure and it has shaped my life in every way, shape and form.
My kids, I took them all out when my boy was four or five, I’ll never forget, we went to a place in Oceanside, California, this park and we go to this park and we’ve got these baskets of food and we’re looking for homeless people and we find this guy lying on the floor in the bathroom, just covered in a bunch of rags and he’s sleeping and I said to my son, ‘Give him this big basket.’ It was so big he could barely carry it and I said, ‘Why don’t you give this to this man?’ and he starts to go in and he puts the basket down and all of a sudden, bam, this guy wakes up and he grabs my son’s arm. And my son screams and I jump ten feet, right, and before anything could happen, he pulls my son’s hand close to his face and he kisses his hand. My son’s 26 now, my youngest, and he still remembers that today. He still contributes. He still driven and the thing I’m most proud of him in his life, is he’s a contributor in everything he does. Those things, those value systems, change the quality of a human being’s life, but they change the quality of a community, they change the quality of the world. I think getting hooked on contribution is the way outside of yourself, outside of your pain and into a life that’s meaningful.
MS: You have such a beautiful spirit and it has been a real pleasure to speak to you and help spread your inspiring messages and wisdom.
TR: You’re so kind. Thank you very much. I love people and I love seeing impact. I’m as driven today as I was when I started this stuff at 17. I’m even more driven today. So it never gets old for me and I love seeing what you saw. I love to see people wake up and feel that aliveness again. That’s what I live for.