Tony Robbins: Take Control of Your Mindset

Tony Robbins: Take Control

Tony Robbins urges us to consider the importance of priming, and how we can overcome the negative thought patterns of our 2 million-year-old brains to create happiness.

Transcript:

This is not like positive thinking bullshit, it's about what actually changes biochemistry, and what will get you to why you're on fire. A new set of patterns that are more elegant, more rewarding, more impactful than the ones that society will continue you to do if you let it. I'll give another example. You know, in America, many of you are [inaudible 00:00:20] countries here, but in America a lot of people see individuals that come from Asia as being superior in Science and Math. And there's a different mindset in those countries about Science and Math, and when those people come here they work incredibly hard and incredibly focused. They believe, and the belief structure is they do really well if you're Asian.

Now in our culture in the past, many times people have been focused on the fact that if you are a man you do well with Math and Science, but if you're a woman it just not your cup of tea, you're not quite as strong in it. There's no basis for that whatsoever, but it's a cultural anchor that people have begun to believe in. So here's what's interesting, they took the Math part of the SAT test and they took a group of women at Harvard, and all they did to change the test is change the first question of the test. On half the test, they said "What's your gender?" On the other half of the test, they said, "What is your nationality?" All right, "What's your ethnicity?" Well, interesting, when they're asked what their sex was, and they're all women, they performed 11% lower, and if they're asked "What is your ethnicity?" And they said Asian, they were 11% higher. A 22% difference between the two, and the only difference was the first questions asked. Because it primed you either for your higher level of skill based on your conditioning, or a lower level of skill based on social conditioning.

That is the power of priming, so my point is really simple. If you're going to get the results that you deserve and that you want, you want to prime yourself a success. Prime yourself with love. Prime yourself with courage, rather than hope that you show up that way based on the triggers of your environment. When you get in your head, what does that really mean? It means you're believing the most limiting thoughts. And you have to remember we all have a two million year old brain. And it's not designed to make you happy, it's designed to make you survive. So it's always looking for what's wrong. Whatever you're looking for is seek and ye shall want? Fine. And one of the biggest thing it messes is up is expectation. Trade your expectations for appreciation, and your whole life changes. Because when you're expecting things and it doesn't happen, you get upset.

What if you lived your life and you made a decision, and the decision was, life is too short to suffer. It's too short to be stressed, pissed off, fearful, worried. But our minds, our survival software, is always looking for a [inaudible 00:02:53]. Our job is to great [inaudible 00:02:56] and the only way to do that is to draw a line in the sand and say, "I'm not going to suffer. I'm going to be honest. I start to feel that stress, I'm going to breathe and I'm going to realize we're the only creatures on the planet that can think of thought and become angry." Think of thought, and become playful. Think of thought and be worried. Think of thought and feel well. So when you get clear what you want, and you see this done and feel it and create it in your mind and your heart, and you celebrate it, there's a sense of [inaudible 00:03:25] your body, but you have to take control and train this brain. If you don't train this brain, it'll use you instead of you using it.