Date With Destiny Tony Robbins.docx

DATE WITH DESTINY Last week I traveled to Palm Springs, CA for SIX long-ass days with Tony Robbins for Date With Destiny – a seminar he holds only once a year in the US. After UPW (read about my experience at his Unleash the Power Withinseminar), I was pretty excited to learn even more about tearing down limiting beliefs and re-evaluating values to live the life I desire. I read his book, Awaken the Giant Within, and I have to be honest and say that this seminar essentially goes over the same key elements that are in the book. I did gain some other insights and burned about 5000 calories jumping around like a crazy person, but if you want to save yourself $5k (yes, that is the price of this thing), just pick up the book and do the exercises yourself. With that being said, here are some of the main things I took away after 6 days of watching Tony Robbins scream and getting way less then my much needed 7 hours of sleep (since the days went anywhere from midnight to 2am. Seriously). 1. Who’s love did you crave as a child and what needs did that result in? This was a key lesson early in the seminar – did you value your father or your mothers love? What kind of person did you have to be to get the love and approval of that person? If you had to be very strong and supportive for your depressed mother, or never talk back and get perfect grades for your militant father – you are likely still living the pattern of having to be that kind of person. You also created “needs” you met with certain behaviors that resulted in you feeling good. Tony breaks these needs down as follows:

Myself, like many other people, valued certainty and significance at the highest level. When these are your main driving forces, you likely seek situations where you can control things and where you can feel important or special. Most of my decision making and behavior had the motive of gaining these two things in my life – so even though we may say that the target we are after is more money, losing weight or an amazing relationship – these are all just vehicles that we use to meet our real needs. That’s why you can have all the money in the world or the perfect body and still be miserable, because what you’re really after isn’t being met (which for all of us is ultimately to feel loved). Tony teaches that although valuing these needs the most may have served us up until this point in certain areas of our lives, they could also be holding us back. Therefore, he asks the question “what do your top two needs have to be now for your life to transform for the better, and if you made this change, what would transform in your life?” For me, putting love and connection in the place of significance and replacing certainty with growth was what would help build the life I most desire. 2. What is your primary question in life? This was a very valuable activity for me. What is your primary focus in life? What do you find yourself consistently focusing on? You believe that if you live by this question that you’re fulfilling the purpose of your life. You believe that your question

leads you to ultimate opportunity or success. If you don’t live by this question, you believe that you will be in massive pain, because you believe that your identity is tied to the question. My OLD primary question was “How can I prove that I am capable and worthy?” I felt that if I did not make something big of my life, or if I wasn’t hugely successful that my life would have been wasted. I felt that I would never feel accomplished or respected. The upside of this question is that it has kept me driven, and keeps my standards for myself at a high level. The downside is that putting so much pressure on myself runs the risk of never quite being enough. This question, as you can see, was driven by my aforementioned needs of certainty and significance. My NEW primary question is “How can I appreciate myself even more in this moment, and how can I appreciate God (or The Universe’s) guidance even more right now?” The new question helps to put me in a better state, reduces anxiety, and gives me the feeling of calmness that comes with knowing that I am being guided in the right direction, and how far I’ve come in life is proof that I am in fact capable – and I need to appreciate that even more when I start to get into a negative head space. 3. I AM… whatever you attach after the end of this statement is what you’ll become Tony had us do incantations – a phrase or language pattern that is said out loud and with an engaged physiology – generally after jumping around and always while standing tall. He believes that these are the most powerful tools available for conditioning new beliefs because they are an active use of neurology and physiology. He says that just knowing better will not make you better – you must SPEAK what you wish to become, and with so much emotional intensity that you truly believe in

what you are saying. We screamed our incantations repetitively and were encouraged to scream them out during a run, before going to bed or when you wake up. While examples he gave were long and rhymed, I simply chose “I AM CONFIDENT – I AM COURAGEOUS – I AM DETERMINED”, because these are all of the things that I will need to possess in order to live the life that I want for myself. I’ve been trying to do them aloud as often as possible, which is generally when I remember and when I am obviously not in public. 4. Reordering your values To figure out your values, you can ask yourself the simple question, “What is most important to you in life?” It is going to end up being what you value most – the emotional state that you most desire. You may answer “family, love, money…” but love is really the end value you’re pursuing, where family and money are just the means to trigger that emotional state you desire (for example, love, security, respect, happiness). The lesson here is that often people are so busy pursuing means values like money that they don’t achieve their true desires (end values). Personally, my highest values were security, connection and independence. This is very evident in how I live my life. I am very careful with my money, so that I have financial security, and it also allows me independence. BUT these same values could be holding me back in other aspects of my life. For example, I don’t take risks with my money or in business which holds me back from opportunity. Also, my strong need for independence could hinder me because I need to be able to accept assistance and not be so prideful. I won’t even get into how this has messed with my personal relationships. The question, then, is what values need to be highest on your list in order to create the life that you desire? What values do you need to move down on your list or add? For me, I removed security and replaced it with growth. I kept connection and added

playfulness (because I could use more fun in my life) as well as courage (to take risks). I removed independence completely and also added passion. Tony makes an important observation, and that is that anytime you have a difficult time making an important decision, you can be sure that it’s the result of being unclear about your values. Reordering values was very important for me to get a clear understanding of what I need to be more open to in my life and the habits and patterns that I need to release. Easier said than done, but having the opportunity to acknowledge things like this are the first step in being able to make changes. 5. What are your rules? After figuring out our values, Tony explained that we all have created “rules” – which are beliefs about what has to happen in order for us to feel as though our top values are met and we feel good. For example, for someone to feel loved by another person, one person’s rules may be, “we must be able to have intimate conversations, there must be plenty of affection, and they must tell me they love me at least 5 times a day.” While another person’s may be “caring for and appreciating one another.” Which of these two people will feel loved more often? Are your rules perhaps stopping you from experiencing feelings of happiness, love, or success more frequently? When you structure your life in a way where your happiness is dependent on things you can’t control, you’re bound to experience pain. With this in mind, Tony had us recreate our rules to make these positive emotions easier to experience every day. For example, “I will feel connection anytime I communicate openly with others OR anytime I notice the warmth and good in others.” Most of us have created so many ways to feel bad and only a few ways to truly feel good – so you could be living a very successful life and feel like you’re a failure if your using impossible rules for yourself. The point here is that if you want to

start feeling more positive, healthy emotions – change what needs to happen for you to feel good so that it’s not so damn hard to be happy. There were many more aspects to this seminar, but these were my main takeaways. He did a full day on relationships, a bunch of interventions and people cried pretty much all day long. I’m not even kidding – people opened up and got extremely emotional. At the end of it, we all made a pretty board with our life mission, our new values, primary question and incantation. This was mine:

So there you have it. I’ll leave you with some quotes and messages from the seminar that I thought were pretty important: > The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the level of uncertainty that you can comfortably live with.

> If you have pain in any area of your life, it is a call to grow. > It’s hard to love yourself when you’re not being yourself. > Success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. > You cant be fearful and grateful simultaneously. UNLEASH THE POWER WITHIN So this past weekend I travelled to Chicago to spend four days with Tony Robbins for his “Unleash the Power Within” seminar. I dragged my boyfriend with me, and we didn’t really know what to expect. Well, it was four days of jumping around, hugging strangers, screaming YES! and walking across hot coals …and I came out of it with some incredible insights that I wanted to share. 1. FEAR is what stops us from moving forward in life. We all experience fear in our lives that keeps us from really going after our goals and what we want in life. Over-achievers call it “stress”, but whether it be fear of failure, fear of being alone, fear of rejection…the two primary fears that we all share are the fear that we’re not enough, and therefore the fear that we won’t be loved. This is what it always comes down to, no matter what your fears may be. The trick is learning how to use this fear to break free of your limiting thoughts and beliefs instead of allowing it to drag you through a miserable life. We did an activity where we write down our greatest fear, and answer the questions “what benefit has this fear given you in the past?” and “why be free of this fear now?” Fear is there to serve us to change, but it can also imprison us if we’re not careful.

2. You control your emotions, and therefore the quality of your life When something horrible happens, are you someone who thinks “what did I do to deserve this?” or “this is a challenge, and therefore a gift.”? The way that you perceive experiences will affect the quality of your life, because it reflects the pattern that you’ve chosen to create for yourself. We all know those people who seem happy all the time, and then others who are always sad and complaining – it really just depends on what you’ve chosen to focus on. If you focus on how awful everything is, and all of the things that you DON’T want in your life, then that’s what you’re going to continue to attract. Instead, focus on all you have to be grateful for and all that you’ve accomplished. Focus instead on all that you DO want in your life, and you’ll begin to find ways to make things happen – it’s just how our brains work. Tony is also big on the idea that MOTION leads EMOTION. The reason we jumped around and hugged each other so much is because it puts you in a “peak state” – a physiological state where you feel confident and empowered. The simple shift of

pulling your shoulders back and your chest up can really change your entire mood, and smiling can actually make you feel happier – give it a try. 3. The Dickens Process: Getting rid of your limiting beliefs For me, this was the most powerful activity we did all weekend. First we identified the limiting belief that has been producing unwanted or negative consequences in our lives. Tony then led all 5,000 of us through a visualization where we look 5 and 10 years into the future, and feel the pain that this belief has continued to cause us. It’s important to truly feel the effects of these simple little beliefs that have caused huge setbacks in your life, and will continue to do so if you don’t get rid of them now. He helped us to realize that the truth is usually the exact opposite of your belief – and therefore whatever you’ve been telling yourself is bullshit. You then take the time to replace it with a new empowering belief and go through the same process of visualizing the future now that you’ve gotten rid of your limitations. The point here is to associate massive pain to not changing and massive pleasure to making that shift. He explains that in order to interupt limiting patterns, you have to send the message to your brain that huge pain will come as a result of this pattern. I cried my eyes out during this activity, so it was definitely effective. I was actually also able to use this technique to stop my nasty nail biting habit – which I’ve had for pretty much my whole life. Once I was able to interrupt the pattern, the neural connection was weakened and eventually died. That’s how breaking patterns works – it’s pretty amazing.

4. Raise your standards Good is the enemy of great. If you want a better quality of life, then you need to raise your standards for yourself. So many of us settle into a comfortable life, a comfortable job, a comfortable relationship – but there is no growth in comfort. We live who we believe we are – so it’s important to not only write down all that you aspire to become, but surround yourself with others who have the high standards that you are working towards. One of Tony’s big lessons is that there are no failures, only outcomes – therefore you always succeed since you have now learned how to do things better, and opportunity has arisen. You cannot be afraid to go after greatness – put real emotion behind attaining your goals and know without a doubt that you are capable of achieving anything that you truly want and believe you deserve.

It was a little bit crazy, but I would definitely recommend this seminar to anyone who feels like change is needed in some area of your life. Whether it be in your relationships, your career or your body, he really addresses all aspects of your life and the beliefs that could be keeping you from greatness. I know he’s going to be in New Jersey next – but check outwww.tonyrobbins.com for more info. I’m all signed up for his “Date with Destiny” seminar in December – I’m drinking the TR kool-aid and loving it.