Book Summary: Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins
MAXIMS FROM THIS BOOK
- To make a change in your life, associate bad behaviors with pain and good behaviors with pleasure. This works in any situation.
- Set goals every year in these categories: personal, career, financial, adventure, and contribution. Brainstorm for 5 minutes for each category, put a time limit on each, and write something about the most important goal.
BOOK NOTES
Ask yourself, “What can I do today to make a difference?”
It’s not the conditions that control your life, it’s the decisions.
Four step formula for success
- Decide what you are truly committed to
- Take massive action
- Notice what works and what doesn’t
- Adjust your actions
The more decisions you make, the better you’ll get at decision-making.
Neuro-association—to force a change in your life, change the linkages between good actions with pain, and bad actions with pleasure. Start associating bad actions with pain, and good actions with pleasure.
Beliefs are biochemically self-fulfilling. If you believe something about yourself, it will become the truth.
Three decisions that matter the most:
- What to focus on
- What it means
- What to do about it
If anyone is more successful in life, it’s because they answer these questions differently.
Become conscious of the consequences of your beliefs that you want to change.
In life, you get what you focus on.
Change in your life is instantaneous, it’s preparing to change that takes time. Ask yourself what you want to change, and what is stopping you from making that change.
Start to associate massive pain with bad behavior and massive pleasure with good behavior. Disrupt the limiting or damaging patterns in your life.
Take a negative event in your life that’s bringing you down and turn it into a movie in your head. Turn it into a cartoon, change the colors change the characters, and put it to music. This will disassociate it from reality. It sounds crazy, but this may help disrupt the negative pattern.
When setting goals, be a kid again. Decide what you want and commit to it. Brainstorm for 5 minutes for each category, then decide when you will accomplish each goal. Then pick the most important goal and write a paragraph envisioning the positive changes it will make in your life, and the consequences of not achieving it.
Five goal categories:
- Personal goals
- Career goals
- Financial goals
- Adventure goals
- Contribution goals
My Thoughts
Incredibly simple. That’s what I loved and appreciated about this book. A lot of the advice in Awaken the Giant Within may sound vague and obvious, but if you actually take the time to apply it to your life, you can massively impact your life. Self-improvement may not be easy, but it is not complex. A lot of books in this genre try to make it sound very complicated. I really liked the “Occam’s Razor” approach that Tony Robbins takes in this book.
Review: 83/100
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