Dat ons brein een biologische computer is, weten we al langer. Dat het brein vooral goed is in analyseren, meten en kiezen tussen dit of dat, ook. Dat het brein vooral loopt op scripts, verhalen en beelden is ook bekend. Dat het brein bepalend is voor hoe we ons voelen en voor de (rationele) keuzes in ons leven mag ook bekend zijn.
Succesvolle mensen
Dat succesvolle mensen hun keuzes baseren op het biologische deel van hun lichaam is voor sommigen wellicht nog (te) nieuw. Steeds meer mensen komen er achter dat de juiste keuzes, de voor hen correcte keuzes, gemaakt diene te worden op basis van gevoel, gut feeling, intuïtie, instincten, etc. Zeker bij succesvolle zakenmensen en politici is dat het geval. Bij talentvolle, creative en artistieke mensen was dat natuurlijk al lang het geval. Die hoefden daar niet over na te denken. Die wisten diep van binnen dat alle werkelijk belangrijke beslissingen in het leven – partner, huis, baan, carrière, echte vrienden – niet door het brein ingegeven mogen worden.
Tony Robbins
Neemt niet weg dat ons brein ons behoorlijk in de weg kan zitten voor en gelukkig en angst-vrij leven. Met scripts, verhalen en beelden die ons danig in de weg zitten. Tony Robbins heeft er zijn levenswerk van gemaakt om daar eens grondig naar te kijken en ons handzame tips te geven om daar verandering in aan te brengen.
Tony’s vermogen om ons brein opnieuw te bedraden – het zijn Tony’s eigen woorden en ideeën – is groots. Wellicht dat deze tips ook voor jou iets kunnen betekenen zodat je je beter kunt gaan voelen. In Tony’s eigen woorden:
1. “Nothing in life has any meaning except the meaning we give it.”
This quote is the best way to reprogram your brain forever. It’s more than a reframe; it’s a transformational thought that will set you free.
Your brain gives meaning to every thought you have. That’s right: you decide the meaning of everything in life. Someone can tell you their opinion but you decide if you are going to accept it or not.
- Your failures can have an empowering meaning.
- Your near-misses can mean you’re almost there.
- Your periods of stagnation can mean you’re preparing.
- Your lack of luck could mean your lack of trying.
What meaning are you going to assign to everything that happens going forward?
2. “We can change our lives. We can do, have, and be exactly what we wish.”
There are things you daydream about all the time. Your mind can tell you that these fantasies can be real. That you can be anything you want. You can dream something up out of nowhere and then use your daily actions to manifest it into the physical world. The key concept here is that we are responsible for our actions.
- We decide on the changes.
- We commit to the changes.
- And we respect the changes with our actions.
People always tell you what you can’t do but rarely what you can do. That’s why you’ve got to give yourself permission to do exactly as you wish. Don’t wait for outside validation because you may not ever get it.
3. “Every man dies. Not every man lives.”
You’ve met that man or woman who is dead inside already. They show up every day at a job they hate, to pay for a house they don’t like and don’t need, to buy stuff they think will make them happy, and the entire time they treat most people badly. Their excessive debt weighs them down. They don’t know why they do what they do. They don’t care about anything in particular. Life is a race to survive and making it through is ‘good enough’. There’s no point in being alive unless you actually live. What does living look like?
- Showing up with energy
- Taking care of your health and wealth
- Finding ways to be helpful to others
- Smiling for the heck of it
- Enjoying the small events
- Taking on crazy projects
- Not being afraid to fail
- Loving people for no good reason
- Spending time being creative
- Taking time off without stressing about money
You rewire your brain when you refuse to do anything less than living your life to the fullest.
4. “A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.”
There are times where we sit around and realize that we haven’t taken the actions we committed to. Understanding why that is can be challenging. This quote holds the answer. A lack of action means you’re still unsure about the right decision for you. Don’t blame yourself or think that you’re lazy; go back and understand whether the decision you made was the right one. It’s easy to make the wrong decision — and even easier to go back and change your decision so you can remove the barrier to the actions you know you must take in your life.
5. “If you talk about it, it’s a dream, if you envision it, it’s possible, but if you schedule it, it’s real.”
This one quote can completely change the way how you can take action. If the old days used to involve you thinking like you wanted to take action or saying “I’ll do it tomorrow.” It was a subtle problem that didn’t look like it was the root cause of any failed dreams.
The shift in your mind can be simple after hearing this quote. The moment you think of an action you need to take, either take action right then, or if that’s not possible, schedule that action in your calendar. Do you remember wanting to sign up to the gym and always putting it off? After hearing this quote, you probably will look up a few gyms at 9 PM one night. To make the action real you might leave your contact details on three gym’s websites. Even though it was too late to call and sign up with the gym, this next best action forced the goal to become a reality.
Sure enough, the next day, all three gyms will call you to book an appointment. It might be too hard to back out so you make the appointments. Shortly after, you are a member at a local gym and now feel like you have to get value out of your membership. Eventually, you begin to enjoy going to the gym and it changed your health for the better.
Schedule your actions the moment you think of them.
6. “The only thing that’s keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself.”
When you talk to people that have unmet goals that they’ve never started, you might see something odd: they have a story about why. It’s not just any story either. They can tell their story about what they never got started with, with pinpoint precision. They can blame the results they’ve never got on a divorce, their kids, a job they hate, or toxic friends. The story you tell yourself about why you can’t have that thing is the barrier. Stories are an enabler of your excuses. Stories are how you explain your broken dreams to people you’ve just met.
Check in on your stories. In a single day, write down all the stories you tell yourself and other people. Here are a few examples:
- You can’t change careers right now because the economy is bad;
- Your writing results have gone backward because of the pandemic;
- You’ve stopped posting so much on LinkedIn because you’re scared;
- Having that cancer-check postponed is because of Covid-19;
- Your work colleague doesn’t answer your calls because they think your sales results suck;
These are some common stories. Write down some of yours and notice how they limit your thinking and may be your potential. Then drop the stories and write over the top of your old stories with new ones that empower you to take action.
7. “Focus on where you want to go, not on what you fear.”
Your life can be dominated by fear. Your thought patterns sound like this: “What if….happens and it ruins everything?” You find yourself thinking about the downside rather than focusing on the upside and getting where you want to go. Fears don’t motivate you. No one wants to come face to face with their demons, unless they’re a navy seal on $200K per year.
Think about where you’re trying to head. What would life look like if it made sense? What direction have you always wanted to go and never gone?
8. “I’ve found that 20 percent of any change is knowing how, but 80 percent is knowing why. ”
Why you do what you do, is crucial. If you don’t know why you’re listening to my stories or why you are bored or unmotivated, the ‘how’ becomes irrelevant. I’ve spoken to many people over the years who always want to know from me how they can do something. They look up to me as having some form of wisdom they don’t have which is truly false. It was only that you don’t realize what is missing: it’s the why. If you have the why, you can Google the how. The “why” is the hardest bit. It takes a lot of time to understand your motivations and decide on why you do what you do. Your ‘why’ is to be helpful and can inspire others through personal development and entrepreneurship.
What is your why? If you don’t know, what would you give as your answer if you had a gun to your head?
9. “At any moment, the decision you make can change the course of your life forever.”
This one makes many tear up. You never know which decision you make, will change your life forever. The decision you make to go to one of my events can change the course of your life forever. The decision helped many to defeat mental illness, it changed careers, it brought love into many people’s lifes. It allowed many to start writing and reach tens of millions of people online. I caused a lot of people to drop their selfish tendencies, and it made them go from existing to real living.
The decision didn’t start out as life-changing though. You probably didn’t want to go to one of my events because you were afraid to fly. When you got there, it felt like complete rah-rah nonsense and you were ready to leave in the first hour. It made you uncomfortable and opened up many old wounds. Every part of the event can be scary. While the decision to stay, and listen, seemed small and insignificant at the time, it led to all the results that followed.
Bevrijd van brainwaves
Als er één quote is die jou kan afhelpen, kan bevrijden van jouw angsten, jouw valse scrips, jouw giftige denkwijze en jou ook kan wijzen op de zinloosheid van jouw gedachtes, dan heeft deze opsomming van Tony Robbins tips z’n nut gehad en z’n werk gedaan.
Ben je los, bevrijd van de jou beperkende brainwaves, en kun je er unattached en neutraal naar kijken, dan kun je overgaan naar de meer humaine manieren om de voor jou juiste, grote beslissingen te nemen. Beslissingen die jou correct laten navigeren in de reële wereld, de krankzinnige turbulentie van de gedachten-wereld achter latend.
