100 lessons from Tony Robbins' Unleash The Power Within (UPW)
Last week, I went along with my wife Rosalie and good friends to Tony Robbins’ Unleash The Power Within in Birmingham, together with 12,000 others for 4 intensive days from 7:45 am till 11 pm.
In this blog, I'm excited to distill those days into 100 invaluable lessons, nuggets of wisdom, and strategies I gleaned. Enjoy, learn, and pass them on by sharing or tagging people in the comments. Let me know which lesson you like most.
1. Life is not about what you get, it’s about who you become.
2. The people you spend the most time with is who you become.
3. Success without fulfillment is one of the biggest failures.
4. What is it that really stops people from getting what they want? It’s fear. The fear of not being enough or the fear of not being loved.
5. Fear has a purpose. To prepare yourself. It’s a call to action for situations when you need it.
6. Dance with your fears instead of fighting or ignoring them. They will be there for the rest of your life.
Just a few seconds before I walked over fire at the first day. Tony tells me: “You are ready. Just fucking run.”
7. The most important thing in life is your energy. Without energy, you can’t do anything.
8. Your energy level influences your decisions.
9. Beyond food, your energy comes from how you use your Physiology (body), Focus and Language.
10. Assumptions and expectations are the mothers of all fuck-ups.
Also read: 100 lessons from Tony Robbins’ Business Mastery
11. It’s not your conditions that control your life. It’s your decisions.
12. The quality of your questions is the quality of your answers. Ask specifically. Poor questions give poor answers.
13. For example, how can I lose weight and enjoy the process? How can I make today one of the best days of my life? Keep questioning yourself. You will find the way or create the way.
14. If things in life must get better, you have to get better.
15. Good is the enemy of great! Always go for the extra 2 millimeters to make life outstanding.
16. Most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in 10 or 20 years.
17. Improve step by step in every field of your life. Know the training effect.
18. The wheel of life. How do you score on a scale from 0-10 for intimate relationships? Health & energy? Friends and family? Time? Finance? Career? Growth? And contribution?
19. In which aspect did you score the highest? How much do you study this aspect? How much time do you spend in this field? How did you come to be so good in this?
20. Now, look at the part of life where you scored the lowest. How much do you study this? How much time do you spend in it? It’s simple. You have to become a student of this part of life to become great in it. Start studying.
21. What part of life are you not great at? What are the (limiting) beliefs you have about it? Is it true or is it bullshit? If you don’t change it, how will your life be in one year? 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? What will it cost you if you don’t change it now?
22. If you can’t, you must.
23. The past does not equal the future. Go to the next level.
24. What really is the truth? The truth will set you free.
25. It’s not “how” it’s “who”. Who are the people that are where you want to be? Study and model this person.
26. You are responsible for how you feel, no matter what happens. Even if life gets very difficult.
27. Life is not about me, it’s about WE. Focus on serving. Contribution. The secret of living is giving.
28. Before you contribute to others, take care of yourself and your energy.
29. Blaming things on others won’t change anything. Focus on where you want to go. Live in a beautiful state.
30. The greatest achievers are often the ones kicked hardest in the face.
31. The decisions you make shape your life. There are three decisions you constantly make:
Which questions do you ask yourself to focus on?
How is your physiology? Is your breathing deep or shallow? Do you look down or up? If you want to feel good, breathe deep, stand up, and look up. When people feel bad, they breathe in a shallow way and look down.
What kind of language do you use to communicate with others and, more importantly, yourself? Poor language or inspiring language? What questions do you ask?
32. Focus equals feeling. That’s the quality of your life. How you feel. Whatever you focus on, you will feel. We respond to what we are focused on. For example, if you visualize yourself biting on a lemon, your body will react immediately.
33. Happiness lies in growing/progressing, learning, and giving.
34. Appreciate and focus on what is great now and you can control life in the future.
35. Your body is your temple, care about it.
36. You can’t manage in business if you don’t measure. Such is life.
37. Leadership: the important thing is to control your life. Leadership is the capacity to influence (emotions, actions). Influence is a really important skill. First, learn how to influence yourself. If you want to influence another, you have to know what already influences them:
The first way to influence is to understand the state that somebody is in.
The second way is to know their blueprint for life. What are their sets of beliefs? Can you change those beliefs? If so, you can create breakthroughs for life.
38. Emotion is motion and whatever we are focusing on.
39. Stress is an achiever’s word for fear. Follow the path that causes the most stress, and you will always find your biggest fears. The fear of not being enough or the fear of not being loved. Find it, breakthrough by changing your limiting belief, and go to the next level.
40. What if you don’t need an excuse to feel good?
41. Most people feel bad without a reason. So why don’t you feel good without a reason?
42. The path with the least resistance is not the path that makes us grow. Growth is what makes us happy. You have to challenge and push through the resistance to grow.
43. Most successful people stay hungry for change, help, growth, contribution, and giving. The successful ones do more for others than they do for themselves.
44. Progress is what makes us feel alive.
45. Learn from the experiences of people who are where you want to be in life. Study and model it. Find out what their success formula is. What are their beliefs and ingredients?
46. Two skills to master in life:
Master the skill and science of achievement.
Master the art of fulfillment (10x more important than number 1)
47. Three forces for creation/achievement:
Where your focus goes energy flows. Create clarity and commitment to your goals.
Take massive action and effective execution. Change till you get there. You will find the way or create the way!
Call it luck, call it grace, or call it god. Whatever it is, feel guided in life.
48. The art of fulfillment is growing to give back.
49. The more we create/achieve in life, the more opportunity we see.
50. Top entrepreneurs and athletes have absolute certainty for no fucking reason.
51. Life is happening for you, not to you. It’s a gift. Your biggest problem is your biggest gift.
52. Life is too short to suffer. Practice gratitude and appreciation. Put your hands on your heart and breath to the beat of it. In 1 minute you will feel much better.
53. Get in your head and you are dead. Move your body. Motion = Emotion.
54. The quality of life lies in its meaning. Meaning of your physiology, focus, and language. The rules you make for this make all the difference. For example, feeling “excited” or “depressive” you have another physiology, focus, and language (also within yourself). It’s a strategy.
55. How fast can you change your emotional state? In a heartbeat. Jumping on a trampoline or jumping rope for a minute can get you into a better and more positive state immediately.
56. Focus on what you want instead of what you fear.
57. What are the rules that make you feel frustrated, ignored, afraid or stressed? Changing the rules will change your emotion. Take chaos, for example. Is that a trigger for stress or can you think, “This is expected. Let’s organize and get it done.”
58. Strategies are just like recipes. Model/copy the strategies of people where you want to be.
Which ingredients do they use when they do what you want to do: We all have 5 senses. Visual. Auditory. Kinesthetic. Olfactory. Gustatory. Do in-depth interviews. What do they say? Feel? See? Hear? Taste? What do they believe? Which questions do they ask themselves? In which sequence?
59. Why do we do what we do? The answer is to fulfill the 6 human needs that we all have. The 6 human needs are:
Certainty
Uncertainty/variety
Significance
Connection/love
Growth
Contribution.
The needs of the spirit are growth and contribution. That’s what fulfillment is.
60. For most people the reason we want to grow is that we want to contribute. We want to give back to others. Progress equals happiness. Focus on progress, not on success. Progress happens in little steps.
61. Leaders are readers.
62. Really listen to your partner. Women want to speak and ventilate. Men want to have compliments instead of getting told what they should do or should improve. Men need to show they’re listening in their presence–without looking at their phones, for example.
Taking my wife Rosalie and very good friends with me was amazing.
63. The “state” from which you started your intimate relationship is the “state” you want to stay in together. Often relationships start with a lot of variety/uncertainty and love/connection. That’s why most people fall in love.
64. Problems with intimate relationships often come about through a shift in the 6 human needs. From uncertainty to certainty (control) and from connection/love to significance (competition/trading/problems first). If you want to solve it, go back to how it was when you first fell in love together.
65. The ultimate success formula:
Know your outcome. Know it with as much detail as possible.
Know the reasons why you want it.
Take massive action. Take the first step in the coming hours.
Know, notice, and measure what you are getting.
Change your approach until you get there.
66. You only fail when you give up and quit. You succeed when you’ve learned something.
67. You don’t need to know how electricity works to put the lights on.
68. Repetition is the mother of all skills.
69. The past does not equal the future. Unless you live there.
70. Three beliefs for lasting change:
It must change now.
I must change it now.
I can change it now.
71. Three steps to lasting change:
Get leverage. Failing to change now equals immediate and unbearable pain.
Interrupt limiting beliefs and patterns.
Create new empowering beliefs and patterns.
72. Change is never a matter of ability. It’s always a matter of motivation.
73. Be your own biggest fan.
74. Ask someone who is where you want to be to help/mentor you. Create value for this person before you ask for value from them.
75. Ask until you get what you want.
76. Raise your standards. That makes the difference between good and outstanding results.
77. We live what we believe we are. Change your beliefs, and you can change your life.
78. Training never stops if you want to be successful. It’s a daily discipline and you must focus on progress.
79. The secret to wealth is to become a team player. Create a team that you love and you’ll do anything for them.
80. A team is much more than just your colleagues. Everybody who is around you belongs to your team. That includes administration, cleaners, servers, customers, suppliers, friends, family etc.
81. If it is too complicated people check out. Complexity is the enemy of execution.
82. People do the best they can with the resources they have.
83. There are no unresourceful people, only unresourceful states. If you feel frustrated, practice appreciation and gratitude. You will come back in a more positive state, which makes it much easier to make the best decisions and find the way.
84. Your life is a direct reflection of the expectations you have for your peers.
85. Love your family. Choose your peer group.
86. Join a peer group who have standards which are much higher than your own right now. They will help you to grow.
87. Proximity is power. Live with people who are where you want to be.
88. People’s lives are a direct reflection of the expectations of your peer group.
89. Find a team, mentor, or company that challenges you, not supports you.
90. The Three Pillars of Progress.
Get laser focus. Make it clear and compelling. What? Why? Know your outcome.
Get the best tools, maps, strategy, and coaching for results.
Take massive action. Focus on progress. Achieve results and celebrate.
91. Small changes will make big changes in time. Focus on Continuous And Never-ending Improvements (CANI).
92. Power moves to those who are really committed to serving.
93. The power of immersion coaching.
Total immersion and a blast of mastery. Focus on one topic for a few days in a row. For example, learn a new language in a week non-stop instead of one hour a week for 50 weeks. You will learn much faster this way. Plan it and more importantly, schedule it.
Get a coach to hold you accountable and who gives you strategic ongoing feedback. Don’t get a friend, get a coach.
Daily prime time and NET time. 10 minutes a day. Read/listen to inspiring transformational content to stay in a positive state and go to the next level. For priming, you can use the 15-minute meditation and visualization from Tony.
94. If you have a business, you have to measure it. The same goes for other parts of your life. Wealth, health, relations, career, time, contribution, growth, etc.
95. Most people do more to avoid pain than to get pleasure.
96. In business. Don’t be an operator. Be an owner. Focus on a raving fan culture and raving fans.
97. The 90 seconds rule. If something happens which frustrates you, don’t give it more than 90 seconds of your time. Come back in a beautiful state by moving (take a walk or sport) and/or changing your focus.
98. Love is the oxygen of the human soul. A baby without will die.
99. All we want is feelings, and all the feelings are already inside of us.
100. Maybe most important, it’s your decision to live as much as possible in a “beautiful state – a positive emotion” Living in a beautiful state is a choice. Everyone strives to live in a beautiful state. And to a large extent, we all already do. The only question is: “How can you live in a beautiful state even more?” Imagine what it takes to get from a score of 8 out of 10 to 8.2 out of 10. What needs to happen to achieve this? For me meditation, sports and yoga are important exercises.
These are the top 100 lessons I learned from Tony Robbins’ Unleash the Power Within event. I hope it inspired you as much as it inspired me.
Let me know which lesson you like most.
Klaas Kroezen
P.s. read also why Tony Robbins visited me in Amsterdam.
