and life you love. And I am so excited I can barely contain myself because today’s guest

is someone that I’ve admired for so long. He’s impacted tens of millions of lives

all around the world and he’s written an incredible new book, which we’re gonna talk

about today.

Tony Robbins is a bestselling author, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. For more than 37 years,

millions of people have enjoyed the warmth, humor, and the transformational power of Mr.

Robbins’ business and personal development events. He’s the nation’s number one life

and business strategist. He’s called upon to consult and coach with some of the world’s

finest athletes, entertainers, Fortune 500 CEOs, and even presidents of nations. Robbins

is a founder of or partner in more than a dozen companies in industries as diverse as

a five star island resort in Fiji to custom 3D printed prosthetic limbs. Through the Anthony

Robbins foundation and his matching funds, Tony feeds four million people per year in

56 countries. He’s also initiated programs in more than 1500 schools, 700 prisons, and

50 thousand service organizations and shelters. He lives in Palm Beach, Florida.

Tony, it is so amazing to have you here. Thank you so much for making the time.

Thanks for having me.

So I think I told you this way back when you interviewed me for the new Money Masters.

You know, I just wanna thank you from the bottom of my heart. When I was in my early

20s I went to Unleash the Power Within…

Yes.

...and you made such an impact on me and it’s influenced everything I’ve done personally

and everything in my business. I just want you to hear, like, who you are, what you do,

how you serve, it makes such a huge difference and it means the world to me to have you here

today.

Oh, that’s so sweet. Thank you.

So…

Thank you for that.

Let’s get started because one of the things I admire so much about you is your energy

and your passion and your stamina. I mean, you’ve been doing this for over 3 decades

and I know everybody watching…

It’s getting closer to 4 now.

Which is awesome. It’s so incredible.

Yeah.

And one of the things that I so admire is I feel like you keep getting better, you keep

doing more, you keep serving on a higher level. And from a personal just stamina standpoint,

tell us a little bit about what you do every day. What are your habits? How do you keep

yourself at this high level of service?

Well, I think there’s the physical side of it, which, you know, I do the equivalent

of an ultra marathon every weekend. You know, I do 52 hours. On the last day I do 26.5 miles,

the previous day is 22 miles. So just the physical side, you have to be in incredible

shape. And I’m in better shape physically today, both my endurance and my muscular strength

and so forth, then when I was 25, which is wonderful. And so I do certain things [inaudible]

but I think I should mention first, what’s even more important is the psychological,

spiritual side of things because I think energy comes first not from your body. It doesn't

come from eating, it doesn't come from sleeping, because I’ve gone without those things for

long periods of time and still been able to deliver. It comes from having a mission. It

comes from something that you’re being pulled by, not something you’re pushing on. There’s

two forms of motivation. You can push yourself to do things, and there’s only so much you

can push yourself to do. But if you’re pulled, if there’s something that you want to serve

that’s greater than yourself, there’s something that excites you, there’s something

that you’re about, there’s something you’re made for, then there’s a level of energy

that most people would never dream of. And we all have that, but most of us don't connect

to it and unleash it. So every day I connect and unleash that. Every single day. I don't

hope it’s gonna be there, even though I know it will be, even though it’s there,

I just… I don't take it for granted. And so I start out my day by a process I do called

priming. What priming is, it’s not a meditation but it has meditative qualities. And what

I do is I sit down, first thing I do in the morning I go and I jump in the hot tub or

a hot water type of experience and then I go to freezing water. All of my homes, fortunately

I have to have multiple homes, that I go… one of them I have a river I get to jump in.

You’ve been there.

Yeah.

There are other places I have these cold plunges. And I do that to train my nervous system to

go from 0 to 60 like that. You know, every muscle, every nerve in your body, every organ

gets when you hit 57 degree water, it hits. And so it’s just my mental discipline. And

the second thing I do is I prime, and priming is I sit down and I do a minimum of 10 minutes

because my mindset is if you don't have 10 minutes, you don't have a life.

Right.

So there’s no excuse. So every day, sit down, and what do I do? I do three and a half

minutes where I do an explosive breathing pattern, a pattern that changes my biochemistry,

and after I’ve done that, 30 of these intense breaths three times, I close my eyes, I’m

in kind of an altered state, and I focus first for 3 and a half minutes on just everything

in my life, at least 3 things, that I’m really truly grateful for. And I don't do

that in a hokey way, I don't do it in a mental way, I step into my body and I feel it. And

I make sure at least one of those things is something really simple: the wind against

my skin, the look on my son’s eyes or daughter’s eyes, something that is just very fundamental,

but I really… I cultivate that feeling of gratitude, of appreciation for those feelings.

I do it for three and a half minutes, then I do 3 and a half minutes where I do this

process of focusing on healing, strengthening, and serving, and I start in a circle starting

with myself and then I go through all the people in my life and associates and I just

send love to them. Again, it may sound corny, but to me it’s… it’s a part of what

I’m here for and it’s part of cultivating that energy, that healing and strength energy,

strengthening my passion, my appreciation, my insights, my… my capacity, my endurance.

And then I do the last three minutes are what I call three to thrive, which is what is it

that I really wanna make happen? And sometimes I do that over what I’m gonna do for the

next 6 months or month, sometimes it’s today. I shake it up. But I’m… I see and feel

and own that those things are done, and that starts, you know, pretty much my day between

those two items. And, you know, then I might work out, some things that I do of that nature.

Yeah. And how about eating wise? Has that changed for you a lot over the years?

It’s… it’s pretty simplistic. You know, I’m very simple. I eat a salad and I have

some protein. I have fish or I’ll have turkey bacon. I don't eat red meat or chicken, but

those are the things that I have usually in the morning. And my afternoon, evening meals

are pretty simple as well. But, you know, before I met my wife, Sage, the greatest gift

in my life, when we first met, she’s a phlebotomist and nutritionist and acupuncturist, so I thought,

“This is gonna be the easiest thing in the world.” And I’ll never forget, we went

out on this date and she had wheatgrass juice and I was like, “Wow, this is gonna be so

easy, man. This is awesome.” And then she ordered a hot fudge sundae and I was like,

“What in the hell are you doing?” and she goes, “Eating, you bastard.” I wish

I could give some term around bastard, that I was like too rules driven. And so she had

this whole thing, you zig and then you zag. So I do that with her now. I do enjoy other

aspects of life, but when I first met her I noticed she zigged a lot more than she zagged,

or the other way around. Which way it was. But it’s been a nice balance in my life.

So I enjoy food and things of that nature, but I use food mostly as fuel because life

gives me so much juice. You know, I’m not looking to get out of food, usually.

And how about, because I know for me my mind can go and I have so much excitement, so much

passion that at night sometimes winding down. Do you have a wind down process?

My wife would say no. I say yes, she would say no. My wife loves sleep.

Yeah.

My wife can sleep 8 hours, it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. To me it’s

like sleep when you die, so that was one of the first things in our relationship that

was a bit challenging. Because I’d wanna get up and just go. I’ll never forget, we

were in Fiji and it was like even there we’re supposed to be on vacation, it’s our home,

I jump up at 6 in the morning and she’s like, “Where the hell are you going?”

“I’ve gotta start my day, run up the mountain, do this.” She goes, “Get in bed, I’ll

show you how to start your day.” Like, ok, now that’s a better way to start my day.

Totally.

But now what I’ve done is I get in bed with her because she’s, you know, she’s a lady.

If you get up in the middle of the night, “Where are you going?” “China. Where

do you think I’m going? It’s three in the morning. I’m going to the bathroom.”

You know? So I’ve learned to get my work done in bed beside her and then she goes to

sleep. But I watch silly movies, I watch things to let my brain disappear. Reading does not

slow me down because then I start incorporating and using it and my mind goes crazy. I’m

underlining everything. But I’ll watch cartoon type movies like Family Guy or something to

knock my brain out quite frankly, or I’ll watch some silly series, you know, I’m thinking

now of the different ones. What is it? Revenge or something of that nature.

Yeah, yeah.

Something that my brain can just truly let go, and that’s how I do it for the most

part.

Awesome. So, I mean, you’ve worked with presidents, you’ve worked with people like

Serena Williams, and, you know, one of the greatest investors in the world, Paul Tudor

Jones. When you’re called in to work with these incredible folks, how do you start to

prepare yourself? Like, what are the questions that you ask to start to go in to serve at

that level?

Well, they’re different for everybody, obviously, but what I try to do if I was trying to look

at it from a universal perspective, I guess what I really wanna know before I get there

as much as I can is everything I can about the person. And I do that because I really

wanna know what do they want? What do they want in their life? What’s their mission?

What are they after? And what do they fear? What are their concerns? Because I believe

life is found in the dance between what you desire most and what you fear most. And if

I know those two edges of a person, I know a lot. And then I dig under and I try to learn

as much as I can from other people about whatever the challenge may be, and then I go prepare

to just learn from the person directly. But I wanna know as much as I can before I go

in there. Then I take all that I think I know and then I see what’s really real when I

meet them. And I’m digging in to discover what… what’s the challenge, what do they

perceive it is. And usually, if I were to grossly generalize, if you’re gonna help

somebody create a breakthrough, you really… it all comes down to 3 areas. Either they’ve

altered their strategy. We all have strategies, a specific way of succeeding. Sometimes we

alter it, whether it be in sports or whether it be in finance or any other area. We just…

we forget something, we lose a little edge, we drop something out, and then it becomes

a bad habit. Or sometimes it’s a change in our beliefs. Like, you know, you may have

done something for decades and been really successful, but now… I know one gentleman,

he’s a good friend of mine, that, you know, had 52 Academy Award nominations and he said

to me one day, he said, “If I make one more frickin’ movie I’ll kill myself.” You

know? He’s just like, “I don't want to make a movie, I don't want an Academy Award,

I don't want to do these things.” You know? And it’s just like he’s satiated. And

so sometimes when people get satiated they lose their hunger, they shift their beliefs.

When you change a belief, you change your biochemistry. When you change your belief,

you change the way you execute. You change everything. And we all develop a story. And

sometimes stories are empowering and sometimes the mental stories are disempowering. So I’m

listening for those, I’m digging for those. And then I also look at their state, because

you can do the same exact action from a place of being pissed off or from a place of playfulness

and the same action is not gonna get you the same result. And so I’m looking for that

quality of what’s going on in them, and then I look and try to find out what it was

like before. So Paul Tudor Jones, I went back and I watched videos of him when he was at

his best and I saw what he… how he used his body and the way he moved and I saw him

now sitting still and kind of slumped over and he’d broken his leg and he talked in

a different tempo. So I look at biochemically what’s happening, physiologically, I look

at psychologically what's going on, and then I look at structurally what they’re doing.

And then I develop a plan to help them get back to where they were and beyond, to a better

performance than they had before.

Incredible. The other thing that I was fascinated for… I wanted to ask you so bad, you’ve

probably accomplished more than most people do in… I can’t even… I don't even know

what time frame. And, of course, you get to talk with people who are at the highest level

of their game. When it comes to productivity, what do the top performers know that a lot

of people just don't? What are we missing?

Well, I think the best performers are focused on outcomes and not activities. If you try

to manage your to do list, in the world we live in today where most of us have multiple