Awaken The Giant Within By Tony Robbins. What I Learned From Rereading This Book.

Awaken The Giant Within is about change. Tony draws on his learning and experience as a global coach and shares all his secrets. It helps you to quit the habits that are holding you back, and adopt the ones that allow you to achieve your dreams. Here are 6 tools to improve the quality of your life.

1: Decisions

Everything starts with a decision. Everything is created twice. Once in your head and once in the real world. The 3 most important decisions. 

• Decide what I want to focus on. 
• Decide that I always have a choice. 
• Decide what I want to do next.

it’s your decisions about what to focus on, what things mean to you, and what you’re going to do about them that will determine your ultimate destiny.

2: Pain and pleasure

The concept that determines our lives. We do it passively. The challenge, doing it intentionally. 

Associate a lot of pain with inaction (What will it cost me if I do nothing?) and a lot of pleasure with action (Imagine yourself having achieved the goal. What do you feel, hear, see?)

Understanding and utilizing the forces of pain and pleasure will allow you once and for all to create the lasting changes and improvements you desire for yourself and those you care about. 

3: Question your beliefs

Revisit what our brain has generalized.

” I’m not good because” and reprogram that part. 

By creating a table of new beliefs (feet to support the belief). ‘I’m good because”. 

And associate pain to keep this old thought in mind (what will it cost me if I continue to think like this?) and pleasure with the new belief. (How do I feel when I’m good at…)

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

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4: How to change in an instant?

The NAC system ( Neuro Associative Conditioning)

1. Decide
2. Associate pain with inaction and pleasure with action.
3. Interrupt the negative pattern through humor. Recreate the scene mentally and turn it into comedy. Exaggerate a scene, add color. Use humor, craziness, to shock your brain and break the pattern of bad thoughts.
4. Create intentional options. Go running and not eating when you feel bad. 
5. Condition it. (“The Pavlov method). Celebrate. And give yourself small gifts. Eg, I connect with 10 prospects, I eat a small piece of chocolate. 
6. Test it. Adjust, improve.

5: What tools can I use?

• Questions. The quality of your questions determines the quality of your focus and therefore of your life.
• Vocabulary. Manage the positive or negative intensity. Am I furious or just annoyed?
  When you succeed to do that, the intensity of your emotions changes. 
• Metaphors. Make them intentional, choose the ones that support your vision of life. Life is a game Vs. Life is a war.
• Emotions. They send us a message, understand, analyze and use them to grow.
• The objectives: they give us a direction. 

6: How to return to a constructive state of mind? The field of intervention

• My state: Always get in the right frame of mind before deciding. Go from fear to enthusiasm.
• The questions. Focus on the right ones. What’s interesting about this situation?
• Values: those I want to avoid (pain), those I want to focus on ( pleasure)
• My beliefs: Check that they are intentional and not undergone.
• My references: They are built passively. Choose them intentionally. Those that serve me

Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong. — Unknown

Awaken The Giant Within analyses in depth how to grow, and how to change. And gives you practical keys. 

Most of the time, for long-term actions, we are more motivated to avoid pain than to aim for pleasure. 

Tony clearly explains how to use this concept of pain and pleasure with intention. 

I highly recommend this book. 

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Your 3 most important decisions.

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