https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSlvtdOqmfQ
I just got back from the Tony Robbins Unleash the Power Within event in Chicago. Although it’d be impossible to give you every life enhancing lesson I learned at the seminar I thought it’d be beneficial for you if we quickly covered a few of the most important things I learned.
The first insight I’d offer you is that reading blog posts and watching free videos online isn’t enough for you to develop yourself at the fastest rate possible.
I say that not because I’m trying to sell you something, but because if you’re financially minimalistic as I am it’s incredibly easy to think that attending live events isn’t worth it. After all, most of the information you’ll get at the events could be found online for free if you were willing to search long enough for it.
However, with that being, you’ll likely save a significant amount of time by attending a live event because most of the crud has already been filtered out and you’l be learning only the most powerful methods of changing your life.
Beyond that, realize that the acquisition of new information often isn’t the most important reason for you to attend an event. If you’ve been an avid reader of my blog the past few years you’d have already “known” more than 90% of the material covered at the Tony Robbins seminar I attended.
If you’re reading this blog post you probably already understand that the internet’s greatest strength is that it allows you to quickly gain an overview of a broad set of ideas. However, this is also the internet’s greatest weakness.
Because it’s so easy for you to read blog posts or watch free videos online it’s incredibly easy to take the information you learn for granted. If you’ve been consuming works of self-development for a few years you probably already understand almost every key concept on an intellectual level. You could probably explain the 80/20 rule, the pain vs pleasure principle, etc, to someone else fairly easily.
Yet, why are so many people able to learn about these things while continuing to stagnate in their life? It’s very simple. If you know what you should be doing in life, but you’re not putting it into action you don’t actually “know” what you are supposed to be doing.
I’m not saying that you lack the knowledge to intellectually understand what needs to be done. Rather, the reason you’re failing to change your behavior is because you lack the emotional anchors necessary to do so.
This is why attending seminars can be extremely beneficial. When you listen to a speaker live you’re going to experience a greater emotional response and thus have the potential to develop a greater emotional anchor to the concepts they’re offering to you vs when you read a blog post they’ve written.
This is partially because you’ve paid for the privilege of attending the event and thus your brain emotionally rationalizes to itself that the information must be worth more than a free blog post.
However, it’s also because you’re in an immersive environment where hundreds or thousands of other people are focused intently on the person speaking on stage. This social proof again reinforces for your brain that the information is extremely important and thus you’re more likely to develop an emotional anchor to the concept and actually apply and embody it.
Of course, the ultimate emotional anchors come from real life experiences. The most powerful learning and behavioral change occurs when you recognize that doing something brought you pleasure or failing to do something brought you pain.
Key Insights From Tony Robbins’ UPW Event
Of course, although simply discussing the value of attending live events could have been a blog post in itself I also think you’d benefit from reading about some of the important concepts I learned this weekend.
Your Beliefs Have Ripple Effects
Whether you think you’re too young to travel, you believe that you’re unable to start a business because you lack an MBA, or you feel that money is evil, everyone has limiting beliefs. Regardless of what limiting beliefs you hold it’s important to make a very important distinction.
Understand that your limiting beliefs don’t hold you back from success only in a specific area of your life. A limiting belief actually causes you to have more difficulty attaining success in every area of your life.
Feeling that money is evil is a rationalization often formed as an excuse not to continually grow and face the larger challenges in life that inevitably accompany generating a larger income. Thus, feeling money is evil not only damages your finances, but it also can limit your ability to pursue personal growth.
In addition, having tight finances can also limit your ability to support your family, friends, charity, etc, and thus reduce your ability to feel as if you’re contributing to the world. This can make you feel less significant. Lacking disposable income can also limit you from purchasing healthy foods which damages your health.
We could go on and on, but the point is that a limiting belief causes damage far beyond what you may expect. You could be upset by this because it means even one significant limiting belief could greatly reduce the quality of your life, but I’d actually encourage you to feel the opposite.
You should feel grateful because now that you’re aware of this concept you’ll have even more leverage to remove your limiting beliefs and replace them with empowering beliefs that can cause an upward spiral in your quality of life.
Physiology & Emotions State Shifts
You probably already aware that your physiology affects your psychology. The way you walk, talk, and move matters because doing these things in different ways causes different brain chemicals to be released. These brain chemicals change how you think and feel and thus change the actions you take and eventually shape the life you create for yourself.
If you sit with poor posture you’re going to feel worse, have less energy, and struggle to produce optimal results. You already know that changing the way you sit would improve your results. What you may not know is just how quickly and dramatically changing your physiology can change the way you feel.
If you’re slouched over watching television, jump up, scream yes five times, bang your chest, and let out the loudest battle cry of your life for 15 seconds.
If you make a genuine attempt at this there’s no way you won’t dramatically improve your emotional state and thus increase the likelihood you’ll feel more able to take positive actions.
Even better is that as you practice changing your physiology to shift your emotional state you’ll become more adept at changing the way you feel.
Changing your physiology isn’t a magic pill solution that’ll allow you to effortlessly coast through life while still attaining massive success, but you’d be surprised at how able you are to instantly change the way you feel.
At first you’ll feel strange beating your chest, and screaming. You may even feel inauthentic and as if you’re trying to be something that you are not.
This is simply your body’s resistance to you changing your physiology because it is so familiar and comfortable with whatever emotional states you currently experience most frequently.
Keep practicing, and changing your physiology soon won’t be so uncomfortable for you and your default emotional state will be of a much higher quality.
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Picture is from the Tony Robbins July 2015 Chicago Unleash the Power Within event.
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