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075 - Awaken the Giant Within

Hello there! Kevin, here!!

Welcome to another episode of the Feel-Good English podcast. The podcast that is hoping you become more fluent in life and more fluent in English while you’re not even trying. Today, I have a very important book for you. This book is by the very well-known speaker, coach, author, life changer; Tony Robbins. And the book is called, Awaken the Giant Within. This book argues that we are all in control of our own lives. And that by changing our habits, our emotions and believing those things we want to believe in, we can make our ideal life a reality.

Now, I’ve talked about this before. These lessons; they’re not going to instantly change you. Things take time. Tony Robbins is very, very good at explaining this. He’s also very good at teaching you things that you can change very quickly. He spent decades trying to figure out why some people take action and others don’t. Why some people can go to a weekend long seminar take action, get the results they were looking for, in other people, probably the majority don’t see much happen. Tony Robbins is a very fast speaker. If you ever seen him on Ted.com or YouTube, he’s very quick when he speaks.

So, I will break this book down to you, make it a little easier for you to understand. However, if you want to search for the audiobook, you can go to my website and you can find out how you can download it for free. Go to www.feelgoodenglish.com/tonyrobins to learn more.

Now let’s get into this episode; Awaken the Giant. So, we can wake up the giant that is in all of us!

Have you ever created a goal? Had something that you really wanted to do or stop doing, but you failed after only a short time? Have you ever heard of a New Year’s resolution where you plan on the whole year you want to do something this year, like lose weight or save money but it doesn’t happen? This happens to all of us, happens to me, but why? Why is it so hard to stick to things? Well, according to Tony Robbins, according to this book. The problem is likely and how you framed your desire to change.

For example, I’m going to stop eating junk food. Instead of saying like that, you should say, I will start eating more healthily. You had to figure out very clear decisions you want to take in your life. I’ll stop eating junk food, but then what will you do instead that leaves an empty space that there. So, saying I will start eating more healthily would be more clear. Then no matter what challenges you face, you have to be able to stick to that decision but very important, you have to also be able to change your technique or your approach when you face obstacles. If you’re listening to this, you’re probably an English learner you probably faced obstacles with your English learning. So, what do you do? You stop you take a break you get tired you’re frustrated you stop learning for a few months, you give up on your plans, instead of what? Instead of trying another approach. Listening to fun podcasts, watching movies online and that’s it. Changing your approach to how you want to learn. Not stopping, not quitting but changing the way we are trying to reach our goal.

And what we do next? How do we do this? Well, you experiment!

You experiment with different approaches, different methods and you see what works actually failing at something doing something that you’re trying to go to the gym five days a week and you failed you weren’t able to do it. Well, what did you learn from that? You learned maybe that going to the gym five days a week isn’t possible.

So, well it’s possible, but not for you. So, go for a run. Two days a week and go to the gym two days a week. Try that. Maybe that would be better. And if that didn’t work, try something else.

So, learn from your failure. Reflect on the obstacles that you’ve faced during the different approaches that you’ve used. If you’re smoker trying to quit smoking. What hasn’t worked in the past for you? Don’t do that again. Don’t try to quit that same way again. Try different way. Learning from what didn’t work, make sense? And here’s another very big idea from Tony Robbins; make new habits by associating unwanted ones with pain and desired ones with pleasure.

Let me explain this.

We’ve seen that to accomplish our goals, we must commit to our decisions, but it’s easier said than done, right? Sometimes this is very difficult. Because everything we do is then service of either getting pleasure or pain. We do things for pleasure or pain. If you’re procrastinating, if you’re trying to get a report done, think about what you’re doing instead of doing that. You’re doing things that are pleasurable; playing a videogame, eating junk food, watching TV.

Those are all pleasurable and you associate writing this report with pain. So, you’ll avoid it. What could you do instead? Well, decide on a rule that whenever you avoid writing the paper or let’s say you’re playing video games and it’s really distracting you and your life.

You’re going to do something that causes pain. One technique I’ve learned, take a rubber band; you know what a rubber band is? It’s that elastic thing that you wrap around a newspaper or something like that. Put it on your wrist. Whenever you think about playing video games, take the rubber band and snap it against your wrist so you associate that thought with pain. Over time, your brain will associate that playing video games means pain subconsciously and I believe this works I’ve seen it happen.

Subconsciously, you will associate playing video games with pain and subsequently decrease those thoughts. But, you can’t just take out the bad habit you have to replace it with something. Replace it with a desirable habit. So, while you’re writing your paper, you have to find a way to make it more pleasurable. Maybe listening to a good music or maybe giving yourself a reward after you finish your paper, eat something, play the videogame after your paper. There you go! Play that after you finished an hour of work on that so, that writing of your paper actually creates pleasure, which is the reward of playing a video game after you’ve gotten the work done.

Next idea here; to change who you are, change your beliefs. Imagine there are two people that are 60 years old. One of them thinks his life is almost over, while the other one thinks his best years are ahead of him; He’s excited, he’s thrilled about what’s in store for him. Why is there such a difference in how they see the rest of their life? Why is there such a difference in their outlook? I can imagine the person that thinks his life is over while stays home and watches TV, and waits till he or she dies. While the other one 60 is not that old, they could still do a lot. Travel, start a business, all different things; learn English. How we see the world in ourselves is shaped by our beliefs.

What exactly is a belief? Well, a belief is an idea that’s supported by evidence. We have a belief, to meet that actually believe that we believe it has to be supported by evidence. Maybe you think you’re excellent at playing the guitar, but that idea that you are good at the guitar, because at that moment it’s only a guitar will only become a belief when other people tell you how great you are. When there is evidence, except if your mom tells you that. Because your mom tells you, “you’re great at everything” so, that’s not enough evidence there. But, if you play out and people say wow you’re great! Then that will become a belief. You say, I am good.

So, what does this have to do with reaching our goals and being successful? Well, in order to change behaviors, in order to change habits, we have to change our beliefs. So, if we feel lazy, if we feel like we’re not doing what we need to be doing, we believe that we aren’t capable of that. Maybe we believe that we are lazy. So, we have to find evidence to show that we are not. An easy way to change a belief is to find somebody or find a group of people that are already living which you believe you want to have and adapt their way of living. So, if you think you’re lazy and just to stay home and play video games, you’re not just going to be able to change your beliefs by sitting at home. Go to the gym, go do something. Surround yourself by people who are not being lazy and then you’ll think yeah, I’m not lazy. It’s a good incentive to be active and to be healthy, as it creates this belief in us that we aren’t lazy.

The next powerful idea; to find the best solution to any problem, Ask the right questions! As you’ve learned, changing your life requires changing the way you think, changing your beliefs. How do we actually do this? What are our beliefs? What is thinking? Well, according to trained in your beliefs, but we actually do this. What are our beliefs what is thinking well, according to Tony Robbins, in basic terms, thoughts are a series of questions and answers. We ask questions in our head, in our brain and we get answers to these questions. So, he says that, “what determines the way we think is our questions,” so, this means we need to really focus on the quality of our questions. What I mean the quality of our questions? When you ask a question, is it a negative question or a positive question? For example, something bad happens in your day in your life and you say why does this always happen to me? Why is it so hard for me to keep having good things happen to me? What happens then? You get into bad mood, and your life becomes enveloped by this negativity.

Therefore, it’s crucial when you face a problem to ask yourself the right questions. So instead of why me? you come up with a question like “what’s good about the situation?” What can I do to enjoy the process of solving this problem? And Tony Robbins suggests coming up with questions before hand. Making it a habit to ask questions like these, having questions that you are ready to ask. And I talked about this in the other episode, the Obstacle is The Way. When something bad happens, it’s how you frame it, how you look at that. Flip the obstacle on its head, say why is this happening to me? Well, there’s a reason for this. So, I can use the situation to learn from failure to find opportunities that weren’t there before, etc. etc. Asking these questions will instantly lift your mood and help you find a solution or find what next step you should take, what your actions should be.

And I got one more lesson from this book on how to awaken the giant within yourself. I will get the lesson right after the quick message from the powerful English-speaking practice tool, italkie!

So, I’m married to my lovely, wonderful, brilliant, amazing, beautiful Brazilian wife. However, she is Brazilian. She’s Latin. I lived in Brazil a long time, I was around a lot of Brazilians have a lot of emotion a lot of energy great very fun I love Brazil, I love being around there. One thing I learned while being there for several years is how to pay more attention to my own emotions. I’m American maybe some people would consider Americans as a little colder, but I also think as we are little bit more reserved and we are little less controlled by our emotions. And I’m not saying this is a good or bad thing. To be honest, I think it’s great to be able to express your feelings when you have them. Tony Robins talks about, in this book that we need to understand what’s behind our emotions and be able to label our emotions in what they are so we can gain control over them.

Sometimes people just get stressed out, frustrated, sad, and it doesn’t matter which emotion is which. They all just grouped together as negative, bad emotions. Well, this doesn’t help you deal with these emotions in a very productive way. We generalize them. For instance, you might be feeling angry about something. But, if you reflect on the true cause of your pain why you’re angry, you might realize there’s something behind that. Maybe you’re just exhausted, maybe you never stepped back and said I’m just really exhausted.

That’s when feeling angry. And again, I’ve referred to this many times at the Feel-Good English podcast; meditation is a great way to start being able to catch your emotions when they come. But, being able to label them in being able to see behind the emotion and why you’re feeling this way. Maybe there’s been some things going on for a while now and you haven’t noticed it, but that’s what’s causing you to feel the way you’re feeling. After you identify the emotion, then what? Then you have to take the next step. Which is the bigger challenge. So, if you’ve identified the anger as exhaustion, then what?

Well you need to figure out how to get more rest. You have to figure out how you can become more rested, so you don’t get angry at stupid things. Just a few messages from this very powerful book and obviously, I can’t share the message with you as well as Tony Robbins can, but go online find the book, find the audiobook on my website or on Amazon or you can probably even find it on YouTube for free and listen to him speaking. It’s very powerful!

Key messages from this book; even small decisions and changes in our behavior can have a huge influence on how we live. Want to change your habits? Want to lose bad habits? Gain good habits?

Well, we have to associate good habits with pleasure and bad habits with pain. Because our decisions are based on either pain or pleasure.

Another thing; find the best solution to your problems by asking the right questions, positive questions, progressive questions. Questions that can move you forward, questions that will help you find lessons in your failures. Also, understand your emotions better. Learn why you have emotions where they come from and how to label them.

This is called emotional intelligence. A very important skill to develop in today’s world.

Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Rrobbins was today’s lesson. Go to www.feelgoodenglish.com/tonyrobins to go deeper into this book, to study more. Tony Robins is a very impactful person. So, don’t just stop with this quick 15-minute podcast episode.

Let me give you one last bit of advice; in whatever you do, give 100% … unless it’s donating blood!

See you in the next lesson!