Awaken the Giant Within

Anthony Robbins
Chapter 1- Dreams of Destiny
Three steps to effect change
1. Raise your standards
-make a list of all the things in life you will not tolerate
-make a list of all the things in life you want
2. Change your limiting beliefs
-if you dont change your beliefs, you can raise your standards all you want, but
you will lack the conviction to follow through.
-believe you can
3. Change your strategy
-The best way is to find someone who is already doing what you want. That way
you dont have to reinvent the wheel.
The five areas of life that impact us the most
1. Emotional Mastery
2. Physical Mastery
3. Relationship Mastery
4. Financial Mastery
5. Time Mastery
Chapter 2- Decisions: The Pathway to Power
-How am I going to live the next ten years of my life? How am I going to live today
in order to create the tomorrow Im committed to? What am I going to stand for
from now on?
-Different actions produce different results. If we want to take control of our lives,
we must take control of our consistent actions.
-This begins with the power of DECISION.
-I believe that its in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.
-Commit to what you want to have and be in your life.
-Set a baseline standard for what youll accept in your life (your own behaviors
and the behaviors of those you surround yourself with).
-Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision.
-Making a true decision means committing to achieving a result and then cutting
yourself off from any other possibility.
-A lot of people have weak decision making abilities. This is akin to having a weak
muscle. To strengthen it, simply use it. The way to make better decisions is to make
more of them.
-The three decisions that control your destiny:
1. Your decisions about what to focus on.
2. Your decisions about what things mean to you.
3. Your decisions about what to do to create the results you desire.
-I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to
elevate his life by a conscious endeavor Henry David Thoreau
-Set a course for where you really want to go, and have a plan or map so you can
make quality decisions along the way.
-Do not be afraid of making the wrong decisions.
-Success truly is the result of good judgment. Good judgment is the result of

experience, and experience is often the result of bad judgment.

-I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step
forward Thomas Edison.
-Commit to learning from your mistakes.
-There are no failures in life. Only results. If you didnt get the results you wanted,
learn from the experience so you have references about how to make better
decisions in the future.
-Theres nothing you cant accomplish if: 1) You clearly decide what it is that youre
absolutely committed to achieving, 2) You are willing to take massive action, 3) You
notice whats working or not, and 4) You continue to change your approach until you
achieve what you want, using whatever life gives you along the way.
-Sometimes it may look like its not working out in the short term. In order to
succeed, you must have a long term focus.
-Often, what seems impossible in the short term becomes very possible in the
long term, if you persist.
-Six keys:
1. Remember the power of making decisions. A real decision is measured by the
fact that youve taken new action.
2. Realize the hardest step in achieving anything is making a true commitment- a
true decision. Never leave the scene of a decision without first taking a specific
action towards its
realization.
3. Make decisions often. The more you make them the better youll get at it.
4. Learn from your decisions.
5. Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.
6. Enjoy making decisions.
-Life is either a daring adventure or nothing Helen Keller.
-Exercise
-Make two decisions now
-one thats easy
-one thats a bit harder
Chapter 3- The Force That Shapes Your Life
-Humans are not random creatures. Everything we do is done for a reason.
-The driving forces that controls us are pain and pleasure.
-Everything you and I do, we do either out fo need to avoid pain or our desire to
gain pleasure.
-On procrastination
-Why dont you do the things you know will benefit you?
-Even though you know the action would benefit you, you fail to act simply
because in that moment you associate more pain to doing whats necessary than
missing the opportunity.
-For most people, the fear of loss is much greater than the desire for gain.
-Emotional Threshold
-The point where you hit a level of pain that you arent willing to settle for
anymore.
-This is GREAT. The pain will now drive us to take new action and produce new
results.
-The desire to remove pain from your life.
-We learn in life, what creates pain and what creates pleasure.
-This is highly subjective.
-What you link pain to and what you link pleasure to shapes your destiny.

-If we link massive pain to any behavior or emotional pattern, we will avoid
indulging in it at all costs. We can use this understanding to harness the force of
pain and pleasure to change virtually anything in our lives.
-If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself
but to you own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any
moment Marcus Aurelius.
-What drives our behavior is instinctive reaction to pain and pleasure, not
intellectual calculation.
-We are not driven so much by what we know intellectually, but rather by what
weve learned to link pain and pleasure to in our nervous systems.
-Although wed like to believe its our intellect that really drives us, in most cases
our emotions are what truly drive us.
-In order for change to last, we must link pain to our old behavior and pleasure to
our new behavior.
-We can learn to condition our minds, bodies, and emotions to link pain or pleasure
to whatever we choose. By changing what we link pain and pleasure to, we will
instantly change our behaviors.
-Any time were in an intense emotional state, when were feeling strong sensations
of pain or pleasure, anything unique that occurs consistently will become
neurologically linked.
-Ex. Pavlovs dogs.
-Be aware of the power that pleasure and pain have over every decision you make.
-I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence,
and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures Michel De
Montaigne.
-Most of us base what we do off of our short term views rather than our long term
views.
-Its not actual pain that drives us, but our fear of something will lead to pain. And
its not actual pleasure that drives us, but our belief that somehow taking a certain
action will lead
to
pleasure.
-We are not driven by reality, but by our perception of reality.
-Remember anything you want thats valuable requires that you break through
some short term pain in order to gain long term pleasure. Any type of discipline
requires breaking through pain.
-Why do people persist in an unsatisfying relationship, unwilling to work toward
solutions or end it and move on? Its because they know changing will lead to the
unknown, and most people believe that the unknown will be much more painful
than what theyre already experiencing.
-Most of the things that are valuable in our lives require us to go against the basic
conditioning of our nervous systems.
-Exercises
-Write down four actions that you need to take that youve been putting off.
-Under each action, write down the answer to the following question:
-Why havent I taken action?
-In the past, what pain have I linked to taking this action?
-Write down all the pleasure youve had in the past by indulging in this negative
pattern
-Write down what it will cost you if you dont change. (Use pain as your friend).
-Write down all the pleasure youll receive by taking each of these actions right
now.
-Carpe Diem!

Chapter 4- Belief Systems: The Power to Create and The Power to Destroy
-Its not the events of our lives that shape us, but our beliefs as to what those
events mean.
-Its never the environment; its never the events of our lives, but the MEANING we
attach to the events- how we interprest them- that shapes who we are today and
who well become tomorrow.
-What are our beliefs for?
-They are the guiding force that telss us what will lead to pain and what will lead to
pleasure
-Anytime something happens in life, the brain asks two questions
1. Will this mean pain or pleasure?
2. What must I do now to avoid pain/ gain pleasure?
-The answer to these two questions are based on our beliefs, which are our
generalizations that weve learned about what may lead to pleasure or pain.
-Generalizations are just identifications of similar patterns.
-Generalizations create a sense of certainty for us
-Generalizations can be bad if they create limiting beliefs.
-Remember that most of our beliefs are generalizations about our past, based on
our interpretations of painful and pleasurable experiences. This brings about 3
challenges:
1. Most of us do not consciously decide what were going to believe.
2. Often our beliefs are based on misinterpretation of past experiences
3. Once we adopt a belief, we forget its merely an interpretation.
-We have the ability to take any experience and create an empowering belief about
it
-For example, Victor Frankl, a holocaust survivor noted that those who survived
shared one thing in common- they were able to endure and transform their
experience by finding an empowering meaning
for their pain.
-Our beliefs are so strong they can literally change us physically
-Once accepted, our beliefs become unquestioned commands o our nervous
systems, and they have the power to expand or destroy the possibilities of our
present and future.
-What is a belief?
-A feeling of certainty about something.
-Ideas are the building blocks of beliefs.
-But, ideas are not as certain as beliefs.
-Ideas need references to support them.
-Life experiences are what make your ideas into beliefs.
-References
-Come in the form of personal experience, information, and imagination.
-Their strength depends on the amount of emotion attached to them and the
number of similar reference experiences.
-They do not necessarily have to be accurate.
-But they do become accepted as real, regardless.
-With enough emotional intensity and repitition, our nervous systems
experience something as real, even if it hasnt occurred yet.
-Every great achiever Ive ever interviewed has had the ability to get themselves
to feel certain they could succeed, even though no one before them had ever
accomplished it.

-Limiting beliefs
-People believe that because they havent succeeded in the past they wont be
able to succeed in the future.
-If youre going to make an error in life, err on the side of overestimating your
abilities.
-When attempting to learn a new skill, there are two ways people look at it.
-Pessimists will be realistic about how they did.
-Optimists see their behavior as being more effective than it actually was.
-The optimists will be the ones to learn the new skill.
-This is due to the fact that they dont see the failures. There references are faith
references.
-This attitude combined with persistence is the key to learning a new skill.
-If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then
you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, even those things that other
people are certain are impossible.
-How to deal with and interpret failures.
-Learned helplessness
-The belief that no matter what you do you are doomed to fail.
-This belief must never be indulged in.
-Achievers rarely see a problem as permanent.
-Never see a problem as ruining your whole life.
-View it as a minor challenge.
-View a problem as impersonal. It is not a direct reflection of yourself.
-How to change a belief
-The most effective way is to get your brain to associate massive pain to the old
belief.
-Also associate tremendous pleasure with developing a new empowering belief.
-Create doubt about the old belief.
-New experiences trigger change only if they cause us to question our beliefs.
-Remember when we believe something, we no longer question it.
-If you question anything enough, eventually youll begin to doubt it.
-Three categories of beliefs
1. Opinion- something we are relatively certain about. Can be easily changed.
2. Belief- much stronger because it has more references and emotional
attachment.
3. Conviction- eclipses a belief due to emotional attachment. Identity is based on
convictions. To give up a conviction would be to lose your identity.
-Often the best thing you can do to create mastery in any area of your life is to raise
a belief to a conviction. This will drive you to action and push you through
obstacles.
-How to create a conviction
1. Start with a basic belief.
2. Reinforce your belief by adding new and more powerful references.
3. Find or create a triggering event.
-Ask yourself, what will it cost me if I dont.
4. Take action.
-Modeling the beliefs of winners
-The way to expand our lives is to model the lives of those people who are already
succeeding.
-CANI
-Constant and never ending improvement
-We may be faced by insecurities such as losing our job or wife or health

-The only true security in life comes from knowing that every single day you are
improving yourself in some way.
-Small improvement are believable and therefore achievable
-Remember, the key to success is developing a sense of certainty, the kind of
belief that allows you to expand as a person and take the necessary action to make
yourlife and the lives of those around you
even greater.
-Take ten minutes to brainstorm all the beliefs you have. Both empowering and
disempowering.
-When youre done, circle the three most empowering beliefs on your list
-Circle your two most devastating disempowering beliefs.
-Rmember if you begin to doubt these beliefs and begin to question their
validity, you can shake their references so they no longer hold power over you.
-How is this belief ridiculous or absurd?
-What will it ultimately cost me if I dont give up this belief?
-Become fully associated to what these beliefs have been costing you and the real
costs in you future if you do not change.
-Link such intense pain that youll want to rid yourself of them forever.
-Decide to do so NOW.
-Write down replacements for the two limiting beliefs youve just eliminated.
-If youre not getting the results you want out of life, ask yourself What would I
have to believe in order to succeed here?
-If you change the meaning of any event in your mind, you will immediately
changehow you feel and what you do, which will lead you to change your actions
and thus transform you destiny.
-Remember, nothing in life has any meaning except the meaning you give
it.
-Make sure you consciously choose the meanings that are most in alignment with
the destiny youve chosen for yourself.
-Leadership and the power of belief
-Leaders are those individuals who live by empowering beliefs and teach others to
tap their full capabilities by shifting the beliefs that have been limiting them.
-When two people meet, whoever has made a real decision- whoever is committed
at the deepest level will eventually influence the other person, if there is rapport.