The School of Greatness - 366 Failure Is Your Friend with Tony Robbins

Episode Date: August 12, 2016

"People don't value what they don't fight for." - Tony Robbins If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at http://lewishowes.com/366

This is 5-Minute Friday! Failure is part of life. I mean, the difference for me, though, is I look at failure as a stepping stone to success. It's a speed bump. I know I'm going to fail, but it's not failure if you learn something. And so, gosh, I've made so many mistakes. I've screwed so many things up. But every time I do, it just becomes a way for me to explain to someone else what it takes.

You know, it's like, here's what I've done. I think I have the ability to influence people because I talk about my failures. I talk about all the things that mess me up. But I show people that I didn't let it stop me, and you don't let it stop you. And I think that's really the secret matter. And if everything you've touched was successful, you kind probably wouldn't be able to relate to people as much. No, you wouldn't be able to relate. And also, it'd be total bullshit, and everyone would know it's bullshit.

And also, you'd be bored silly. I mean, think about it. If you just said, I want this to happen, I want this to happen, you know, people don't value what they don't fight for. You know, it's like you see kids sometimes, you know, your parents will say, you're not going to value this if you don't work for it. And your kid going, I'll value it. Just give it to me. But it's true. You know, the things we've worked the hardest for, we value the most. So I think, you know, the purpose of the goal is not getting it anyway. The purpose of the goal, you know, is who you become, who you become is going to make you happier. It's going to make you sad. So, um sad. So I'm not looking for an effortless approach.

There's no such thing. The most important decision of your life is deciding whether you're truly committed to being happy no matter what. Because life is going to throw all kinds of curveballs at all of us. There's the one thing that's in common in this lifetime is extreme stress. You're going to experience it if you haven't already. And even if you have, you will in the future. I like this positive thinking. But it's just true.

Someone you're going to care about is going to die. Someone's going to take advantage financially if you're not careful. You're going to find yourself in a position the government might change the rules and you can't do what you're doing before. Somebody called, like I've gotten a call saying you've got a tumor in your brain. Those days alter you. And if you decide that you're going to live in a beautiful state of mind, that doesn't just mean happy. It means, uh, people say,

Oh yeah, I'm committed to be happy, but my wife left me. Well, then you're not committed to being happy. You're committed to be happy unless your wife leaves you and you can't control that. You can certainly influence it, but you can't control it. Or I'm going to be happy except my friend died. Your friends are going to die. Your family going to die. So the greatest gift you could give yourself besides making this life about love and making this life about giving, because to give you have to keep growing, is I believe to make that decision and say life is too short to suffer. And most achievers like you and I, we never use the word suffering, but we get stressed, we get pissed, we get overwhelmed.

Some people get sad or depressed. And those are all forms of suffering. And all your entire life you live in one of two states, states of suffering or beautiful states of being. In beautiful states of being, it doesn't matter what happens, you're going to find something to enjoy and appreciate. And, you know, you and I both interviewed people, I'm sure. I'm sure you have that have born with no arms or legs or they've lost their sight and they're happy.

Yes. And then you meet billionaires or people, families, they've got beautiful kids, beautiful husband, beautiful wife, and they get miserable over anything. I really believe you have to make that's the most important decision of your life is that no matter what happens, I'm going to live in that state. And then you have to do the work, which is I got a 90 second rule. They get pissed off or frustrated. Suffering comes up. It always shows up. But what I decided is with a 90 seconds, I kill it because in that suffering state, I'm not going to be there for my wife or my kids.

And that's suffering state. I solve it. I'm going to be miserable even though I solve it. Right. I, um, I realized I would give away my happiness so easily because, look, I got 1,200 employees plus and 18 companies on multiple continents and multiple industries. What are the chances that today somebody is going to screw up something? It's 100%. And so I would be like, oh, I was so happy. And then John did this or this person.

What were they thinking? Or he opened the door in the middle of the interview or whatever. There's always something, right? And so I decided that's the shit that's going to happen. That's part of, you know, having multi-billion dollar companies and lots of industries. So I'm going to enjoy it. And when something doesn't work out, we'll learn from it. We'll grow.

It's all small stuff, right? Don't sweat the small stuff. It's all small stuff. So whatever we have our highest experiences of life, two things are involved. Some form of growth within ourself and some form of contribution beyond ourself. Outro Music