The Resilient Mind - The Art of Resilience: Building Strength Through Struggle - Tony Robbins

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Tony Robbins is a world-renowned life coach, author, and motivational speaker, celebrated for his dynamic seminars and life-transforming strategies. His approach combines high-energy presentations with practical tools for overcoming fears, breaking negative patterns, and achieving unprecedented personal and professional success. Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to The Art of Resilience, Building Strength Through Struggle, with Tony Robbins. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. Most of us think we have a problem in our life unless we have something that's a bigger problem to contrast it with. And when you see this story and you walk through their exact life experience of the course of these two years, the year that we work with them is 30 days. but you see the course of what's happened to them by finding out what's happened a year later you begin to understand that it doesn't matter what happens in your life you were more

than any moment there's no challenge you can't face and overcome are the events of our lives don't control our lives our decisions do and so I figured if we could take a couple that has faced this bigger challenge and be able to break through then you could look whatever's in your life and make it happen it's kind of like if I wanted to show you that if you could face your biggest fear, your smaller fears kind of drop aside. It's like what's your biggest fear? Today, one of the biggest fears, so many people in North America and around the world, the Western world are facing, is losing their job. It's a horrific possibility. It has impact on your family, your psychology, your emotion, so many things,

your choices. But the truth of the matter is, what's a problem? Losing your job is a massive problem until you find yourself in a position where you lose all your savings, what it took you maybe 10 years of working to get, then what's a problem after losing your savings? That's not a problem anymore when all of a sudden you lose your leg or an arm or something horrific happens to one of your children. That's not a problem when someone tells you all of a sudden that you have terminal cancer. I've had those moments where somebody says you've got that tumor in your brain and we don't know what it means. Those moments take your other problems and make them disappear. And

you know what's interesting? When you ask most people in North America, what's the greatest thing that could ever happen to you? Give them 10 seconds. It's been done over and over again. First 10 seconds, what comes your mind? What's the best thing you've ever happened in your life? The majority of people in North America say what, can you guess? Winning the lottery. And many of them say winning a hundred million dollar lottery, 200 million dollar lottery. That's what's going to make their quality of life extraordinary. But when you do the studies, And there have been many done over the last 15 or 20 years. And people that win these giant lotteries, what are their lives like two years later,

three years later, five years later? Is the quality of their life extraordinary, rarely if ever? Because what's happened is they haven't grown. Life gives us these events, these, quote, horrific events, because there's an area of our life that has to grow. If you were to ask me, Tony, out of all the millions of people you've worked with, if someone really wants to feel alive, they want joy, they want happiness, They don't just want money or things or just even respect.

They want to feel a sense that life is meaningful and alive. What does it take? I tell you one word, progress. When you're making progress in your life, it doesn't matter where it is, you're going to feel more alive. If you're overweight, but you get yourself today and you say, you know what, I'm stepping into gear. I'm just putting these darn shoes on.

I'm not waiting for the perfect, you know, person to come by and coach me. I'll get that too. But right now, I'm just going for a walk, or I'm going to go for a jog, or I'm going to go lift some weight. I'm gonna do something right now. And you get yourself into gear, and you do that for a few days in a row, even if you haven't lost the 10, 20, or 30 pounds yet,

you're gonna start feeling better immediately because you have the power of momentum and you're making progress. Progress equals growth. Growth equals feeling alive. We grow or we die. So what's the worst thing that could ever happen in your life? Same survey, ask the people in North America,

10 seconds to come up with the answer. Number one answer, to become a quadriplegic. That's why I made this show. Because the idea that I could be in a position where I'd be alive, but I couldn't physically feed myself, take care of myself, that I'd be completely immobilized. For most people, that's the scariest thought of all. To them, that's the worst possible fear. So by going through this journey with Frank and Kristen and experiencing their emotions and seeing and feeling that in 30 days they could go from trapped in their home where there is no possibility

of a future, no idea of intimacy, no idea of children to world travelers who are doing things they weren't doing before when he was, quote, supposedly able-bodied, happier and stronger and closer in their love than ever before, and you know it's real and you see the results a year later as we do the follow-ups and you haven't seen the follow-ups, be sure to see see that and hear about the story of what's happened with them, when you get that experience, it affects you. Because it isn't somebody verbally telling you a story. It's something you kind of went through. So the idea here is, I'm sure you have some other fears outside the one that we just came up with. Whatever you're afraid of, the job, the loss of relationship, trust me, it's small.

If you'll face a bigger fear, that little fear will start to be handled pretty easily. That's why when all of us go through in our lives extreme stress, we're all going to go through it. You're going to have a homeburn town. Or something's going to happen to somebody you love. Or someone's going to pass before you're prepared for it, which is almost always. Or you're going to find yourself in a financial situation that feels like you can't turn it around. Or you might feel like personal character assassination. Or maybe you get mugged or maybe you get a terminal disease.

We all will face multiple times in our life. extreme stress. The difference in people's lives is not what we face, it's what we do with what we face. You can take yourself from a place where in the face of absolute total tragedy, you triumph. But it requires making some new decisions, taking some new actions, and mastering a part of yourself that can unleash all of your power and abilities of human being. That human spirit, as corny as it sounds, can be channeled in a very specific way. And if you do, the game of life changes. So I'll give you another. example outside Frank and Kristen, a friend of mine who just passed recently. He's always

been a deep inspiration in me. His name is Art Berg. And Art's a guy that was a young man, good-looking, strong athletic. He lived in Utah. And he fell in love with his absolute sweetheart. She was, you know, the most popular girl, the most attractive girl. She met all the criteria of a college boy. And his buddy and he are driving across the state to go to where he's going to get married. And he falls asleep in the back seat while his best friend is driving. and his best friend falls asleep in the middle of the night as they're driving. My friend Art Berg woke up rather intensely on the desert floor, the car upside down, his legs trapped beneath it, and unable to feel anything.

He became a quadriplegic in an instant. His friend actually was beat up but actually survived. Now, what do you do in a situation like that? Well, the first thing most people do is they want to curse God or they want to curse their friend. It's not their fault. Most of what happens in our lives is not our fault, but what we do with it is going to determine the quality of our lives. Sometimes it is our fault, let's be honest. But lots of times, events happen.

Stuff happens or whatever word you want to play stuff with. You know what I'm talking about. But was different about this man as he made a different set of decisions. On that day, he said to himself, you know what? I got two choices. I can live here in the dirt and live and suffer the rest of my life when I've lost, or I can figure out how to maximize what I have. He developed this mindset.

His mindset was, before the accident, there were about probably 10,000 things I could do. After the accident, he said, I could probably do 9,000 things. Before the accident, I was probably not even doing 500 of those things. I'm going to do more while I am now. And he did. He became an entrepreneur, started his own bookstore, and became very successful. He married the same childhood sweetheart because this man was so inspirational to be around. It didn't matter what he was in a chair.

She loved him. two children, one of the greatest gifts of life. And he did all kinds of crazy things. He'd scuba dive. His friends would put him in a suit and tie a set of weights to him. He dropped to the bottom. They drag him a lot of them along the bottom. That was his idea of scuba diving. He was an incredible human being and he lived in incredibly full life filled with joy. The worst thing ever happened to you would be a quadriplegic. The best thing win a lottery and feel like everybody wants something from you and you didn't earn it. And there's no sense of joy and everything's about trying to hang on to what you got,

what is the best thing that could happen to you? What is the worst? The worst is not to take control of the force that controls your life. And that force is human emotion. I mean, I want you to think about this and answer a question for me, if you would. What really changed Frank and Kristen's quality of life? What changed them?

You can see the change. You can see it even more a year later, that it's continued to happen. What made the change possible? Did you get it? Did you see it? The answer is simple. We changed the emotional pattern that was controlling their life.

And you and I have emotional patterns that are controlling us right now. Whether we're aware of it consciously or not, doesn't matter. It's the force that is shaping you. It's shaping your relationship. It's shaping your finances. It's shaping your career. It's shaping the amount of joy or unhappiness or suffering or excitement you have right now in this moment.

But it's an invisible force most of us never take a look at. You might want to take a look at it right now through the eyes of what we did with Frank and Kristen. Now, what was the emotional pattern that was dominating them at the beginning of the show? You could feel it, couldn't you? And there was this feeling of death that there was no future, probably the most common belief system in people in North America and now in Europe. Sixty percent of Americans now believe that the future is going to be worse than the past

for themselves and for their kids. Seventy percent of Germans and Europeans, I think it's 80 percent, according to Pew study recently in France. the world, we're starting to believe that circumstances control who we are. Don't get me wrong. Circumstances play a huge impact. Events play a huge impact on your life, but they're not the ultimate determining factor. The force of human spirit or emotion is it. With the right emotion you can unleash things you could never dream of. And I know you know this is true. So take a look. Let's analyze. Where do these two live after the accident? Well, where would you live if you were Kristen?

I mean, you've lost your future, supposedly. There's no intimacy. There's no chance of children. You've become the full-time nurse to your husband, who you love, but now you're changing his catheter every few hours. You're afraid to leave the house because you're afraid what if he falls over? He may stop breathing. I mean, there's no life.

So she goes to the emotions of feeling depressed for the life she's lost to feeling angry. I call it a crazy eight. We get tired of feeling sad, and then we'll get angry for a while, And then we beat ourselves up for being angry at ourselves or God or our partner and then we get all depressed again. It's a common pattern. You don't have to have something like their event happened in your life to get stuck in a crazy eight. But interestingly enough, she's living in that place. And now what's Frank doing?

Frank wants to help his wife. But he's got a limitation. We've got a breakthrough. He's got a belief. All breakthroughs start with a change in your beliefs. Because once you believe how something is, that means you're certain that's how it is. If you're certain it can't change, you're right, it can't. I can't convince you.

No one else can convince you. And Frank's thinking, I'm helpless and I've harmed my wife. And he's living with the emotions of guilt and sadness and depression. And when he's tired of that, he gets completely overwhelmed because he says, if I just would have not jumped in, or if I would have jumped in a different spot, or a million of the things that they were different than I wouldn't have destroyed my wife's life. Instead of saying, my wife needs me right now, and I don't give a damn if I'm trapped physically, this chair, my soul, my spirit's going to reach her. That's my assignment to get him to

remember that power, to not again remember it, but to get him to use it and shift his wife. And that's what we did through this process. How? Well, the process really was giving him a series of experiences that would change his entire belief about who he is. I could try to tell him, oh, here's what you can do. Yeah, I'm six foot seven and I obviously have use of all my appendages. Easy for me, right? But if I get him to have to have some, some experiences, like I bring him to Fiji and I show him and get out of the house, more than get a house, become a world traveler and go through all the challenges that are part of that, that if you watch our little section of the story behind the story, you'll hear some things

that weren't in the show about that, by the way. But I give him to travel of Fiji, and the first thing I got to do with him is I got to get him to experience, not no intellectually, but experience. He can make a difference for his wife. He is not helpless. She needs him, and he can transform her. He can take her from crying, sad, out of control, angry, to laugh and giggling and feeling love that fast. It's a beautiful moment in the show if you watched. And all of this is something called presence. Something if you're not clear about, do some home or follow up with us or someone else.

Figure out how to create that because that's what changes relationships. Presence. It works. And Frank starts to understand, not verbally, but by his own experience, hey, you know, I don't have to live in that sadness or that feeling of being unworthy or that feeling of being overwhelmed. I can matter. I can matter to her. I don't have to be the person she just takes care of.

There was a huge shift in the experience. And I'm giving you Frank's example, because it relates to yours. Maybe you have different emotions, but don't we all get to points where we feel like we don't matter, we can't change something. We're stuck, and it's our belief. Great way to break that belief. Get yourself another experience. That's what I do with people in seminars.

That's what I do in any coaching process. Change it. What do we do after that? We take him through the experience of facing his fears, and we get him to do the skydive together with his lady. And he feels total freedom for the first time since the accident. You get freedom when you face your fear. Not just face it, but you push through it. I get him to face separation from his lady for 10 days.

Get him to be in a room with Olympic athletes who couldn't move across the room. He couldn't move across the room. But now they're incredible and he feels like he's not enough and he has to push through that. Show him how to get back his dream. Drive his truck. Get in that thing and drive 100 miles an hour. Even though all you got is your elbows to drive the darn thing and I'm on the other seat. Pretty cool thing.

So it was a stacking of these experiences that got Frank to own himself in a new way, to build a new identity, a new set of emotional patterns. So here are the steps, and this is what you want to do. What do I do with him? I did four things. That's all I really did at its core. Number one, for both of them, for Frank and Kristen to transform, identified where do they live emotionally.

That's what you've got to do. Where do they live emotionally? Well, we just decided. We just described where they live. depression, anger on one side, feeling guilty, feeling overwhelmed, feeling sad on the other. There's no way that can change your life with that is the emotional fuel to get you to take action. You're not going to take action. There's not enough intensity to get you to get through the obstacles or the tragedies or the challenges. Once you see what the pattern is and you tell

yourself the truth, this is where I'm living. Step two I did with them is identified what's the antidote. So if fear is what's controlling things right now, we're going to be. We're an antidote called courage. Now courage doesn't mean that you're not scared. Courage just simply means that you're scared to death but you do it anyway. It's an emotional muscle. It doesn't feel good, you just exercise it. That's what courage is. I mean, everybody you know has different emotional patterns. And it may be hard to see it in yourself, but I bet you know in other people. I mean, come on, don't you know somebody who lives every day and they're angry all the time where they're pissed off or they're frustrated or they're worried all the time.

I mean, haven't you met people at different times who, don't you know somebody that's always kind of playful or crazy or cracking jokes? Better yet, do you know somebody who's not really funny but they think they are? And they tell a stupid joke and everything else. It's not even funny, but they crack themselves up so much that you find yourself cracking up, right? I mean, people have patterns. The question is, what's yours? See, if you can identify the patterns, And other people, you can start to see them in yourself as well. And you know what we all do? We all find a way to try to get what I call home.

Home is, I noticed after 9-11, I'm with 2,000-plus people from, I think it was 45 countries. That was in Hawaii. The accidents happened, the tragedy happened, you know, the attacks happened. And we got the information at 3 o'clock in the morning in Hawaii. And we had, you know, 100 plus people, 200 people that were from New York, many of which worked and had offices and friends in the towers and all their friends died that their whole company disappeared. And I had to bring these people in from all these countries with different religions,

different backgrounds, different belief systems. Some people were celebrating. Other people were crying and saying it was the end times. It was unbelievable. I noticed all this emotion around me. And the biggest thing to put them all together is I had to say, what's really going on here? And I noticed angry people got angry. Sad people got sad.

Guilty people, a nurse, she was guilty, she wasn't there helping people, but she's always guilty. The angry lady is always angry. We all have a home. Many of the people didn't live in the United States, didn't know anyone in New York City, and they were yet angry, guilty, or sad. Why? They weren't angry, guilty, or sad about the 3,000 people a day that die of cancer and heart

disease. They're all mothers, fathers, children. I pointed out that day. You can't be convenient with your compassion, and yet most of us are. We're unaware that we use events as a trigger to get home back to the patterns we know, even if it's uncomfortable. So if you identify where you live, emotionally, the patterns are limiting you. The second piece is find the antidote.

Courage can replace fear. If you're feeling this unbelievable feeling of overwhelm, you need love or support. And not just go get it, go give it. See, finding that antidote starts to change the game. And then after you identify it, you find the antidote. Number three is you've got to practice that emotion. I know that sounds weird. I'll explain what I mean in the moment.

But you got to do that emotion enough consciously that you can go from frustrated or depressed to determined. And you know how to shift that gear. And it's not fake. It's not some pump up. It's real. And it changes your life when you can do that like that. And it's a biochemical change. It's not some, I'm happy, I'm happy, positive thinking BS.

That's not what I teach. I'm not here to tell you. Go to your garden and chant. There's no weeds. I'm going to say, there's the weed. go pull it out but you're not going to pull it out without determination without passion without commitment am I making sense so if you know the pattern if you find the antidote if you practice it enough and then the final step you condition it you

practice enough that you can just automatically go into it that's when your life changes so what are you going to do is your assignment for this week to take this little 10 minute you know rant I'm giving you and convert it into a massive measurable increase in the quality of your life I can't do that for you You can do it for yourself if you do what I tell you. Here's what you're going to do. Step one, and those will be on the web as well. Step one, you've got to identify where you live.

So where do you live? Where do you live emotionally? You personally, just like we do with Frank and Kristen, there are thousands of emotions. There's 4,000 words in the English language, I should say, for different individual emotions. I did the research on it years ago. I'm having to take out a piece of paper, pen, take out your notebook computer, get a a page on one side, one column, write all the emotions that you experience at least once a week that empower you in some way.

Love, passion, excitement, creativity, whatever it is, peace, determine. I don't know. What are yours? I want you to write the emotions, though, you don't experience once in a while, the ones you experience at least once a week in a powerful way and really feel it. Not an emotion you feel once every blue moon. On the other side of that page, or if you do it on our little application or wherever we put it here, the other side I want you write all the negative emotions or to be more

fair, all emotions can be positive if you use them, all the disempowering emotions, the ones that tend to put you a state where you don't follow through. And I want you on that side to write all of them and do it simultaneously, just keep making your list. What are the emotions I go into that mess me up, like feeling frustrated or overwhelmed or lost or alone or depressed or pissed off and rageful? Whatever it is you go, And again, not emotions you experience once in a while, the ones you experience at least once a week. So make a list of all the emotions experience at least once a week. One's that empower you, one's disempower you on the list.

That's step one. That's identifying where you live. And circle the top two out of the whole list that you experience most often that are empowering and the top two experience most often that are disempowering. That'll be step one. Now, if you're, I'm trying to explain it to you here. It will be right in front of you as well. So if you forget what I'm saying, it's going to be on the little checklist.

But I want you know what I mean. Step two. Let's identify the solution. So you look at your list and you see on the disappearing list, I got sadness and depression, or I got feeling lonely, or I've got feeling rage and anger, or I got feeling fear. What emotional state would you like to feel in that situation that would change your life? If it's fear, maybe it's courage. Again, courage doesn't mean it's easy.

It doesn't mean you feel confident. It just means you're going to do it anyway. Maybe it's determination. Maybe instead of feeling alone, you feel loving and you go give to somebody else. What's the antidote? What's an emotional pattern that if you live that, it would change the game? Is it faith? Is it passion?

Is it courage? Is it playfulness? You're taking things just too damn seriously. You've forgotten perspective. Go watch the show again. See if you really have a problem. See if your problems are as challenging as the people you just saw who transformed their tragedy into something tremendous.

something beautiful something magnificent something meaningful something that can even help other people that are watching that's the beauty so that's the second step what's the antidote come up with your antidote emotion step three is you got to practice that emotion I know that sounds silly stupid kind of weird but if you came to a seminar with me you'd see you know 3,000 10,000 people and we do this and we condition that a new emotion till you can shift gears if you ever heard about the firewalk it's not about the firewalk I do skydiving all kinds of crazy stuff it's a metaphor for

or how do I go from afraid, the fire's metaphor for whatever you don't follow through in on your life, whatever holds you back, to snapping and go into a state of mind where I just move through. It's not this big mind over matter thing, it's mind over emotion. It's shifting.

And when you learn how to go from scared to determine an action, what can't you do in your life? So we show you how to do that. But for right now, I'll give you just a quick example. Understand that emotion is really created by motion, by the motion, by the way you use your body.

So quick example, real quick. Imagine a time when you know someone who's depressed or you were depressed. You ever felt that way, I'm sure you have it sometime. And think about what you do with your body. When somebody's depressed, they get all excited, talk faster, or just, no. Everything kind of slows down, doesn't it? What happens your shoulders? They drop.

Where's your head when you're depressed? Drops. Because you're breathing, full or shallow? You know it becomes shallow. You talk loud and fast. or slow and quiet slow and quiet more hesitant now emotion is created by motion we can try and think yourself and I'm happy I'm happy but if you're I'm happy I'm happy and your body's like this nothing's gonna change we can

change our biochemistry by eating by taking a drug by smoking a cigarette because then you take a different breath you eat food you like you fill up your tummy and you start to breathe nice your whole mental emotional state changes doesn't it so what I'm saying is you don't need the cigarette You don't actually need the food. You can just physically learn to say, this is what I do when I'm depressed. This is what I do when I'm most determined.

There's this gesture I made. I remember one time when I was a kid or one time I got pissed off and I just, what do they do? I made a gesture. I stood taller. I looked the person in the eye. I spoke with more authority. Now, my idea of passion determination may be a little over the top for you

and I get it. I'm a crazy mofo and I'm a passionate human being. But you can do your version. What do you do when you're really feeling something like determined. What do you do when you were passionate with your face, with your voice, with your body? Just practice

and make a contrast. Here's what I do when I'm sad. Here's what I do when I feel loved. Here's what I do when I'm worried. Here's what I do when I'm determined. That's what I mean by practice. And I'd love to have you an event, but I'm trying to give this to you so you can do it right now and you can.

And maybe this would be helpful to do with friends so they can give you feedback and say, here's what you do. I see you do this when you're really strong. I see you do that when you're kind of weak. That's the third step. Practice. Now, what's the assignment? Figure out your emotions.

Where do you live, positive, negative. What are the big primary one antidotes? What emotions do you need? Practice the emotions you need so you can go into them a few times. Sounds little weird, but if you do it, you'll see it's actually quite fun. Feels powerful. Maybe do it with a friend. That's the easy way to do it.

And condition it. And that means take the next three days, do this three times. Figure out the difference and shift from, From not sure, worried to determined. From overwhelmed, I don't know what to do, to focused. And you just deliberately, physically make the change from one to the other. Three times for three days, if you're bold, do it for seven. But if you do this three or four times a day for three to seven days,

I'll start to get a pattern in your body. And the pattern in your body, a new pattern means a new life. Our life's a reflection of our emotional patterns. If you live in sadness and depression, you can have a billion dollars and your life is called sad and depressed. If you're living, feeling grateful, feeling alive, feeling passionate, your life is filled with gratitude and passion. It doesn't matter what's happening anywhere else. And you can face any challenge from those emotions and you can overcome. Does this make sense?

This is how you can take what you watch in that show and convert it into some actions that will change you. Very simple approach. Or come see me or get some coaching. I've got all kinds of resources. But this is something you can do right now. You don't need anybody else to make happen. You just need a little ability to take action. Make sense?

And if you haven't seen the show, for God's sakes, go on Hulu and watch the show, or all this will just sound like a bunch of words. If you've had the experience, you know what I'm talking about, and you've witnessed it, it'll be real in you right now, and you'll get a sense of what you can do to move forward. And if you can't find on Hulu, once again, send us a little email, and we'll make sure we find a way for you to be able to observe or experience the show directly. And last thing I say to you is, the best way to keep something in your body is share it with somebody else. The whole philosophy of my life has been, if your life's going to be meaningful, you can't just be about me, you've got to be about we.

So if you can, if you feel like it, if your spirit's touched by this, help us pay it forward. Share this with your friends. You can share the clip of our show. You can share this little section. We all kinds of ways, just take the clip and send it. And we have a way you can push a button once again and send it virally to everybody. everybody who's on your email list. We'd love it if that works for you.

If you don't, we're totally respectful of that. But in the end, I can promise you one thing. If you will do this, if you'll discover your current emotional pattern and you'll change it through a little bit of practice over and over again, you will change the quality of your life no matter what you're facing. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.