Daily Motivations - Change Your Focus. Change Your Life

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

In this powerful motivational compilation, Tony Robbins explains why your focus determines your emotions, why making a decision can completely change the direction of your life, how to stop living as a victim of your circumstances, and why fulfilment matters just as much as achievement.Your past does not have to become your future.Instagram- Daily_motivationsorgFacebook- @daily_motivationsorgSupport us PayPal

If you want freedom, if you value freedom, you can't possibly have it as long as you play the victim rule. We don't experience life. None of us do. We experience the life we focus on. So in any moment, what's wrong is always available. So is what's right. So it's not about being positive. It's about being intelligent, right? You know, when you're in a totally negative state and the world's going to end and there are people like believing that in the next 12 years, you know, the entire environment's going to collapse and they won't have a child. You know, you've got to look at the impact of what you're believing. And you gotta look at and say, you know, where's my focus going? I can always be upset about something. I can always find something to be joyous or at least grateful for, which leads to joy.

And I think it's having that, learning to discipline your disappointments. And then the thing that changed my whole life, a single event was a knock on the door on Thanksgiving. We had no money, no food. When I say no food, we had crackers and peanut butter, but not a Thanksgiving dinner, right? And my dad has been, mom are screaming each other through a door, and my dad had lost his job. And I got the knock of the door, and I go open the door, and there's this tall guy standing there with two bags of groceries,

one on each hand, and at his feet, he had an uncooked frozen turkey in a pan, you know? And he said, is your father here? And I was like, just one moment, you know? And I was like, it was Christmas morning, and so I go to my dad, and I go, hey, dad, there's someone at the door for you. And he goes, who is it? And I said, I don't know, it's for you. He goes, well, you answer.

I said, all I did, it's for you. So he goes. over there and I'm waiting like with such excitement from open the door and he saw this man and he was not happy. He looked at this man before the guy said he had a word and he said we don't take charity and he went and slammed the door on the guy but the man had leaned in because of the groceries and it hit his shoulder and it bounced off which made my dad even matter and they said sir sir he said somebody knows you having a tough time everyone has tough times they want you to have this food for your family for Thanksgiving because I'm just the delivery guy and my father said we don't take

and he pushed the door again. But this time, because of the guy leaning, his foot now stepped in. It hit his foot and bounced off. And then now my dad's getting more fired up. And I'm standing and looking at this whole thing, and it's like a car crash happening. And the guy said something to my dad.

I thought my dad was going to punch him in the face. He didn't see it meanly. He said, sir, he saw me. He said, don't make your family suffer because of your ego. And I can still see it like yesterday. And my dad's veins on both sides of his neck neck were just pumping and he's red as can be. And then he just dropped his shoulders. He took the groceries. He slammed it on the table and he slammed the door. And he never said, thank you.

These are the three decisions that I think everyone makes every moment. First, you're doing it right now. What are you going to focus on? You're going to be focusing on my story I'm telling you. You can be focusing on the next question you're going to ask. You can be focusing on how your stomach feels if you've not eaten. There's a million things you could focus on, literally. But we don't experience life. We experience the part of life we focus on. And so the bottom line is I know my father and I had a different experience because we had different focuses that. I was focused on what a concept. This is cool.

He was focused on that he had not taken care of his family. And I know that because, you know, he said it about 20 times under his breath. And my mother echoed it, of course. The second decision, though, the minute you focus on something, your brain has to decide what does it mean? And meaning is what creates emotion. And emotion is where your life is, right? And so the quality of your life is the quality of your emotions. If you got a billion dollars and every day you're pissed off and angry, your life's quality

is called pissed off and angry. If you got three beautiful children, a husband or wife you love, but you worry all the time, your life is worry, you know. So his focus and then his meaning, that was the worst part, the meaning he gave it was that he was worthless and didn't belong here. And that usually leads to the third decision, which is what are you going to do? Anything you can imagine, we're all going to go through extreme stress in our life. But how do you use stress or distress use you?

And so my whole thing is help people show them how to use stress. Because I don't care how good a person you are. I don't care how spiritual or religious you are. I don't care how smart you are, how rich you think you are. Every human being is going to go through extreme stress multiple times in their life. And the real question is, what are you're going to do with it? And the first thing is if you're going through hell, keep going. But if you keep going, you discover number one how strong you really are.

Because if you don't give up, you'll discover who you are. This thing that you find out is who your real friends are, because when things aren't so great, you get to see who those are. And then third, it almost gives you like an inoculation to future stress. But everyone gets called on the journey. Most people try to resist it. But that journey, that's what the call is. It's a call to grow. So I'm big on change your story, change your life.

And I'm big on understanding the narrative of where you are in the story of your life. Because if you understand where you are, it gives context, it gives meaning. And it doesn't make you feel overwhelmed. I said, look where I am right now. Because I wouldn't assemble the story that my past equals my future. The past only equals your future if you live there. If you're using a rearview mirror to guide yourself, you're going to crash. So what you've been through is horrific.

What you've been through is unjust. I'm on your side. But if you hang on to it, you have no future. And you have no one to blame but yourself. So I could have been messed up for life. But I didn't. But when you have no reference and all you just go online, you talk to other people, making everybody else toxic.

like this and they didn't do that, then you get to have this shit life just like those other people. Why are they online so much? Because they don't have a life. Right? Don't be one of those. Free yourself from the chains of your past. But if your parents, if the people around you said all the things you thought they should have, if they had just not been toxic, if they'd encouraged you, you wouldn't have any muscle.

And right now you don't have any muscle because you're using that as an excuse. The capacity to strength. strengthen and increase your hunger is the one common denominator amongst the most successful people. Richard Branson's a good friend of mine. Richard is as driven today as when he was 16 years old starting. I mean, he's like on fire and he's 65 years old. Warren Buffett is 85 years old.

He's as driven today as when, you know, he began the journey, right? And so people that have that hunger, I believe intelligence, I love people that are wickedly smart. And I work to be wickedly smart. by educating and training myself and so forth and training my brain. But intelligent, there's a lot of intelligent people can't fight their way out of a paper bag, right? Hunger is the ultimate driver. You have to be honest and say, I'm a creator.

And if I don't like what I have, I've gotten here by the decisions that have created that. Focusing on those big decisions is really important in life. But I think most people, they're afraid. And then the second thing is they think they don't have enough information, which is really just fear again. Because, you know, I wrote an entire book where I interviewed 50 of the most incredible financial people in the world. All people started with nothing, it became billionaires.

And one thing I learned over and over again from them is the smartest people usually are terrible investors. Interesting. I said, because the smartest people want to know everything before they decide. And if you wait until you know everything, the opportunity is gone. And that's true, not just in finance. I think that's true in life. Yes. Right?

We wait until we have absolute certainty. There's no absolute certainty in life. The only absolute certainty is faith. You know, it's like, how do you drive down a street with nothing but a yellow line separating you from crazies coming, driving at you at 65 miles an hour and every single day in every country in the world and every city in the world? Someone will cross that line and kill someone because they were drunk because they fall asleep because they're texting. And yet, how do you get out there every day without fear and do it? You use a gift that God gave us. It's called faith.

It's not what you learned faith. I'm not talking about a religion. I'm talking to the capacity to see beyond the present moment and have a sense of certainty. Right? And so why do you do it? Because the alternative is to live in home and do nothing. The whole idea that I have to make the right decision is the wrong way to look at it. My whole view has been not deciding is the worst decision, right? I need to consciously decide it, but I don't want to feel like things are affecting me. If I'm going to shape my world, I make a decision.

And if I'm wrong, I'll find out quicker. A commitment takes it into the future. Decision is the moment, and that moment can change, which is why so many people to make a decision legitimately and don't follow through. That's why you need to take action immediately that commits you to follow through, meaning book the meeting, enroll in the class, you know, call the person and set it up, organize so you can have that conversation you haven't wanted to have, and put it on the calendar so that there's momentum going out of it. But then committing, deciding is really rough. Committing is not that rough. It's just creating enough compelling

reasons to follow through even though it might be tough right now. But there's a third step. And after you decide and commit, there's resolve. When you resolve, you're at peace. Deciding's like a war, right? Committing requires energy, and taking into the future, as you describe, and then resolve, it's amazing, it's like, it's done. It's done in me. It may not be done in the world,

but it's done in me now. I'll find the way or I'll make the way. And there's no uncertainty, there's no fear, there's no anxiety, there's no, it's like, when you get to that psychological emotional place, that's the place in which you get results. Maybe even putting it off because it's inconvenient, you've got lots of stressful things in your life,

or you're not really comfortable. But if you're really committed and you follow through, you decided, committed and followed through, right, resolve, where would you be a year for now? What would your life be like? And I would take a little decision and what action would you take today? Make that decision now.

And then if you're bold, what's a big decision? What's a tough decision? What's a decision you've been putting off? Or you know, and you've got it's right. You know, it might be about a relationship. You know, it might be about how you're dealing with your kids. It might be around your career or your business or your finances. But that's how life gets better.

That's how you start creating life as opposed to being a manager of circumstance. And I think when people are maintaining when they're managing their circumstances, when they're surviving, they're miserable. Like we are made to grow and we're made to give. When we grow, we have more to give. And so I think decision making is the pathway, one of them, certainly, to getting them. Where do you tend to focus more? Your past, your present, your future. We all spend all three.

But where do you spend more of your time? What do you think most people do? Where do you? I guess most people, you're going to you? I guess most people just not the present, perhaps dreams for the future. For me, I would say mostly in the future as well. Yeah. And that's where most achievers live.

We do. I have to discipline myself not to do that because what makes you an achiever is anticipation. You've learned by a long time anticipation is power. As I'm listening, I'm watching you. You're anticipating. You're processing, right? Dopamine's a hell of a drug, yeah. Yes, it does.

And it gives you a sense of control. And also, if you don't anticipate, it's like taking a plan. a video game against the child and you give them a gift let's say of a playing a video game you give him a new video game for christmas or the birthday what's the first thing to oh let come play with me pops come play with me uncle come play no no i don't i don't do those things oh let me show you it so easy boom boom boom boom boom three shots boom they're going great so some part of you find he says i'll show this little bastard something here i'll go ahead and do this thing here all fine get me this thing but you should know you're being set up when the kid says something to you like you'll go first

right and so you go boom boom boom boom boom and you're dead in four seconds right The kid goes, not bad, not bad for the first time, right? And then they take the guy up, ba-da-o-b-da-o-da-o-da-o-b-da-m. 45 minutes later, you get your second turn, right? Now you're really pissed. Maybe you make it two minutes, and the kid goes for another 45. Why does the kid win every time? Is it because they're smarter, faster, younger?

No, it's because they played this game before. They can anticipate the first bad guys here, the second bad guys here. You're in reaction. They're anticipating. So it has tremendous power. So it's addictive when you learn to anticipate. And it's also a great skill set for business, for life, and so forth. I tell people, if you're running a business, you're always running two businesses.

The business you're in and the business you're becoming. If you only focus on the business you're in, someone's going to replace you. If you only focus on what you're going to become, you're going to have the cash flow to be able to get to that place, right? So it's a very similar situation inside of where we are. So for each of us, most of us who are achievers tend to focus on the future, future, but all the joy is in the present, right? You can have some anticipation of the future and be excited about it. Most people's stress comes from either the past or the future. The majority

people spend a lot of time on the past, right? And the problem is you can't change it. And you can use it as a reference. So the contrast of remembering where you were and who you've become is probably a beautiful thing. But if you use it that way, but most people go back and they ruminate about the past or they ruminate about a future that they can't control and the presence there. So the goal is an ideal fuel. An ideal fuel is a combination of the two. And that sounds like just an overwhelming thing, but it's like creating life on your terms,

like deciding what are the immutable. It's like if you want to take the island, you've got to burn your boats. If you have a way to go back, the mind will rationalize and you will go back. But if you really are committed to a greater quality of life, you've got to master the science of achievement and the art of fulfillment. And fulfillment is not like achievement. There's very cool rules for achievement. Like what to do with your body?

Multiple ones, but there's certain fundamentals that are immutable. What to do financially? Certain things that are immutable. Fulfillment? That success without fulfillment's failure. And fulfillment is an art. It's not a science. It's different for you and me and everybody we meet.

And so I tell you one real fast example. I know we've gone over in time. Steve Lynn's a good friend of mine, most of Las Vegas. A brilliant guy. Absolutely, Brett. And one day, Steve calls up. He goes, there's a painting that I have coveted for over a decade. And he goes, I just recently outbilled everybody at Sotheby's, and it just got delivered.

And you got to see it. And I said, okay, I can't see it. I said, but I got to ask a question. How much should set you back? And he goes, $86.9 million. I go, $86.9 million? Okay. I got to see what an $87 million painting looks like.

So I go to his house. He takes me in. Shows me this wall. It's a red square. And look at him and I go, Steve, they miss some spots. And he looks at me and gives me the look, and I start to tease him a little bit. I go, Steve, if you give me $100 with the red paint, you give me 10 minutes. I think I can match this.

I'm just screwing with a little bit. He knows I'm screwing it. He goes, you know, this is a Rothko. I said, I know. He goes, no, but you don't know. You know, he committed suicide. He tells me the whole story, right? And I go, well, that better be blood of his $87 million, right?

But the reason I tell you the story is it's not making fun of Steve, it's making fun of me. He can look at that and he can barely see, and he knows what every stroke means, has meaning for him. He knows what it's about, what it means, what the uniqueness of it, you know, the man's life. I see a red square. He has an experience. The richness of life is when you go deeper and figure out what makes you feel like. feel like it's a red square for someone else, but this is your thing. This is what fulfills you.

I know what fulfills me. Family, love, as you can probably tell, and contribution in a meaningful way, light me up like a Christmas tree and they've made me go for 66 years and it'll keep me going, right? But people got to find what that is for themselves, because if you succeed and you're not fulfilled, what do you got? How many people have taken their life is super successful on the surface that they weren't fulfilled. Some of the people made everybody on earth laugh when they took their life. Some people

did businesses that took their life. You don't want, I don't think most people are going to take their life, but you don't want to live more decades and not really be here, not experiencing fulfillment. So my passion is to help people be fulfilled, not just achieve.