Change your life by Changing the Questions you ask - Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins

Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins | Book Summary and PDF

In the Awaken the Giant Within PDF Summary you will learn:

  1. The right questions to ask ourselves
  2. The most powerful force in human nature and how to develop it
  3. How to change when it seems impossible
  4. The power of decisions
  5. The power of words
  6. Setting the hierarchy of personal values

SUMMARY

1) The Power of Questions

a woman surrounded by question marks

The questions we ask ourselves run our lives.

  • Questions evaluate the quality of our lives.
  • They are the focusing lens through which we are able to evaluate what we’re going to focus on and what we’re not going to focus on.
  • Transform the way we think
  • Determine our thought processes
  • Change the resources that are available to us

Maybe right now you’re asking yourself these questions:

  • Why am I challenged with this situation?
  • Why do I constantly struggle with this situation?
  • Why do I constantly struggle with going to the next step in my business?

These are very disempowering questions because they’re all about why you’re failing, why you’re challenged, and why you’re struggling.

But you will have a completely different set of thought processes if you start changing the questions to…

  • How can I go to the next level in my business?
  • How can I improve my revenue in this business?
  • How can I win in this business?

These questions are no longer about why you’re struggling, but what you can do to make the situation better. You become focused on the solution rather than the problem at hand.

Focus and Energy

Wherever our focus is going, that’s where our energy will be directed.

So if our focus is going on the struggle part of the challenge, the struggle will only continue.

We need to think about the questions we tend to ask ourselves.

EXERCISE:

  1. For the next 3 days, write down all the questions you constantly ask yourself. (You will find that a lot of those questions are very disempowering questions.)
  2. Make a list of 10 empowering questions.

      Examples:

  • What am I thankful for? (This is the most powerful question you can ask yourself on daily basis.
    • Ask what you are proud of in your life today and what you are excited for.
  • How can I go to the next level (in business or in whatever area of life)? 
    • Ask how you can make sure that you give your very best today and how you can enjoy more of your life.

There are a lot more empowering questions out there if you only open your mind to that possibility. So get away from your disempowering questions and instead move to empowering questions and you will see your life transform as a result of it.

2) The Force of Identity

woman smiling at her mirror image

The most powerful force in human nature is the force of identity.

This idea means that we tend to stay consistent with our identity.

As we go through life, we tend to assign ourselves labels:

  • who we are
  • what our self-image is
  • who we identify ourselves as

We then start to act in accordance with that identity or the labeling that we do to ourselves, such as:

  • I am intelligent. / I am not intelligent.
  • I’m smart. / I’m dumb.

Whatever it might be, those labels will identify us.

They also become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whatever we think our identity is, we become it. It’s almost like putting on a mask and becoming that mask.

Arnold Schwarzenegger on Identity

EXAMPLE: In Arnold Schwarzenegger’s autobiography, Total Recall, he talks about the same idea. He says  that before deciding what you want to accomplish in life, you should decide who you want to become.

That’s what he did. He decided he wanted to be Mr. Universe, to be Mr. Olympia, and to be the greatest bodybuilder of all time.

In order to achieve these, he had to take certain actions, and those actions led to certain feelings. Meanwhile, what most people end up doing in their lives is they start with their feelings which lead them to the actions they take. All of these result in their identity.

This means their identity wasn’t constructed beforehand. It just happened to be.

We have to decide who we want to be. Once we can identify with that, we can start to act accordingly.

How to Develop Your Self-Identity:

  1. Identify your current identity/image. Write down all the words you frequently use to identify yourself.
  2. Identify the new identity you want to take. Who do you want to become?
  3. Identify the actions you will need to take in order to become this person.
  4. Identify the people you need to associate with in order to become that person.

The people you associate with will change your identity, whether you know it or not. Therefore, you’ve got to associate with people who are on their way to becoming the kind of person you want to become or who already are the person you want to become. That will be the driving force which will accelerate your progress tremendously.

3) How to Change When It Seems Impossible

man out for a run

2 Fundamental Forces that Drive Our Behavior:

  1. Pain
  2. Pleasure

We might think that we’re making conscious decisions and intellectual choices in our lives, but most of the time it’s either pain or pleasure that drives us.

To make large-scale changes in our behaviors and in our lives so that we can accomplish greatness, the key is to leverage the power of pain and pleasure:

Associate a lot of pain with not changing.

Associate a lot of pleasure with changing.

Think about what it will cost you if you do not make this change now.

    • What will it cost me 5/10/20 years from now?
    • What will I miss out in life on?
    • How is this pain going to pull me down?
    • How is this pain keeping me away from my great greatest dreams?

Understand and write these things down.

The Dickens Pattern

When I was at Unleash the Power Within, the seminar that Tony Robbins does, there was an hour-long exercise he walked us through called the Dickens Pattern. The idea is to amplify how bad life will be if you do not make the change.

Take it to a year from now, 2 years from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years and all the way to your deathbed. How painful will it be if you continue down the trajectory that you’re going down today?

Once you associate massive pain with not changing, what you can do on the other side is to associate massive pleasure with changing.

  • How would life be for the better?
  • How would you have a lot more in life as a result of making the changes?
  • How will you have accomplished your dreams and your goals as a result of making those changes?
  • How will those dreams and goals make you feel 1 year from now, 2 years from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now?
  • How fulfilled will you be if you accomplish those goals and dreams?

These changes will make your life so much better.

4) The Power of Decisions

man deep in thoughts

Every accomplished goal first started as a decision. In order to get to the results you want, take control of the decision-making process through:

  • focus
  • alignment with personal values
  • a plan of action

A Guide to Decision-Making:

  1. “Remember the true power of making decisions.”
  2. “Realize that the hardest step in achieving anything is making a true commitment – a true decision.”
  3. “Make decisions often.”
  4. “Learn from your decisions.”
  5. “Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.”
  6. “Enjoy making decisions.”

One of the most powerful decisions we can make is “constant never-ending improvement” (CANI). When we decide to make even small improvements in our lives each day — whether in business, health, relationships, finances, and other aspects — over time we create momentum and become better versions of ourselves.

“If you truly decide to, you can do almost anything.”

Couple this decision with a vision of a great future for yourself, and in the process of going there–

  • challenge your limits
  • grow your capabilities
  • persist

All the actions you take will move you to that vision.

The more you commit to powerful decisions as this, the easier it becomes for you. You may encounter failures along the way but these should not stop you. Rather, take advantage of them by seeing them as lessons that would make you even better.

5) The Power of Words

The words we frequently use have an impact on our emotional state and on our belief system. Therefore, we can feel better, or worse, through our vocabulary.

The book’s concept of “transformational vocabulary” is about changing our usual words or metaphors into language that can describe situations in better ways.

When we understand this connection between words and emotions, now we can be more deliberate with the words we use if we want to feel less negativity in how we feel and think.

EXAMPLE: When you feel “angry,” replace it with a less intense or an unusual word such as “disenchanted” and notice the difference. You would no longer feel as “angry” as you used to because you have defined the experience in a much lighter way. Doing this can even amuse you and others around you.

Meanwhile, when it comes to positive experiences, choose strong words in order to emphasize the goodness of such experience.

Once you choose your words in a way that benefits you, your thinking and your emotions will be transformed as well.

5) Your Top Values

A clear awareness of our own values gives us a sense of direction. Even better is when we know which of these values are the most important to us. Such awareness helps us determine more easily which particular goals to set.

2 Kinds of Values:

  • “Moving-toward” values – associated with positive states such as love, freedom, success, and comfort
  • “Moving-away” values – associated with negative emotions such as fear, depression, failure, and pain

Be guided by these kinds of values when realigning your own.

The hierarchy of values varies among individuals, but you only have to know and follow your own. This awareness is crucial in your decision-making process for the goals you will set.

Happiness and fulfillment are best felt when we know that the goals we’ve set and attained are aligned with our own values. Take time, therefore, to reflect on your hierarchy of values and be clear with your reasons for them. Moving towards your goals would then be smoother and easier.

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