Motivation
by Tony Robbins
Stuck between knowing and doing
Most people already know what they'd like to change about their lives. Tony Robbins wrote Awaken the Giant Within about the gap between knowing and doing. His answer starts with the moment you decide, and with what you've linked pain and pleasure to.
Hear a sample · read by Laura
Robbins points out that 'decide' comes from a Latin root meaning 'to cut off'. A real decision rules out the other possibilities. Saying you'd like to get fit is a preference. You know you've decided when you take a new action straight away.
Everything we do, Robbins argues, is to avoid pain or to gain pleasure, and we'll work harder to avoid pain. People change when they link enough pain to staying the same and enough pleasure to changing. He calls his method Neuro-Associative Conditioning.
Robbins gives three steps to lasting change. First raise your standards, so the things you should do become things you must do. Then change the beliefs that say you can't. Then change your strategy, usually by copying someone who already gets the result you want.
Thinking, for Robbins, is mostly asking and answering questions in your head. Ask 'Why does this always happen to me?' and your brain will find reasons. Ask 'What's great about this problem?' and it goes looking for something useful instead.
Decisions
Your life is shaped far more by the decisions you make than by what happens to you.
Standards
Real change comes when you raise what you'll accept from yourself and turn 'should' into 'must'.
Pain and pleasure
Almost everything you do is driven by wanting to avoid pain or to feel pleasure.
Beliefs
What you believe you can do sets the limit on what you'll even try.
Questions
The questions you ask yourself steer your mood. Ask what's good about today and you'll find something.
A story from the book
When Robbins was a boy, one Thanksgiving his family had nothing to eat. Then a stranger knocked with a basket of food. Robbins decided it meant strangers care. Years later he began delivering baskets to families himself. His point is that he chose what the knock at the door meant.
Hot take · true or myth?
Emotions just happen to you, so all you can do is wait them out.
Myth. Robbins treats emotions as signals to act on. He says you can change how you feel by changing what you focus on and how you use your body.
One thing to try
Robbins ends the book with a 10-Day Mental Challenge. For ten days in a row, don't let yourself dwell on an unhelpful thought or feeling. When you catch one, switch to a better question. If you slip, start again at day one the next morning.
Knotd has the key ideas from 250+ non-fiction books, each in a few minutes, in plain words. Awaken the Giant Within comes with a Hot Take round to make it stick.
Get the whole book on KnotdOpen in the appStuck between knowing and doing Most people already know what they'd like to change about their lives. Tony Robbins wrote Awaken the Giant Within about the gap between knowing and doing. His answer starts with the moment you decide, and with what you've linked pain and pleasure to.
A decision cuts off options; Pain and pleasure steer you; Turn shoulds into musts; Ask yourself better questions.
Robbins ends the book with a 10-Day Mental Challenge. For ten days in a row, don't let yourself dwell on an unhelpful thought or feeling. When you catch one, switch to a better question. If you slip, start again at day one the next morning.
Yes. Knotd has the key ideas from Awaken the Giant Within in a few minutes, in plain words, plus a Hot Take round to test them. It's one of 250+ non-fiction books in the app.
