Why you should listen –
This special episode of Bulletproof Radio showcases an exclusive conversation between Tony Robbins, Peter Diamandis and Joe Polish through Joe’s Genius Network. Tony Robbins is a world-famous motivational speaker, personal finance instructor and self-help author who partnered with Feeding America to provide 100 million meals to families in need. Peter Diamandis is an engineer, physician and entrepreneur best known for being the founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation. The X Prize is a competition in which thinkers from all walks of life work on innovations to improve the world, and it has been integral to the development of commercial space travel. During this episode of Bulletproof Radio, Peter and Tony talk about solving humanity’s challenges, stress and adversity, achieving the impossible, the power of live-work integration and more! Enjoy the show.
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Dave: You’re listening Bulletproof radio. Today’s cool fact of the day is that when you’re booking flights or hotels online, you should enable private browsing, because travel sites quite often track your visits, and they’ll raise the price that they offer you just because you’ve been there before. Speaking of travel sites, if you’re going to be travelling, and you haven’t heard about the new InstaMix, check it out. InstaMix is a mix of brain octane oil and grass-fed butter in a powder, so you can just open up a packet, dump it into your fresh brewed coffee made with Bulletproof upgraded coffee beans. Shake it up in one of the Bulletproof Travel Mugs, and you’ve actually got Bulletproof coffee, fully TSA compliant, travels anywhere, and now you never have to worry about being hungry again. It’s what I do when I travel now.
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Today’s episode is a break from what you are used to hearing. So far I have always interviews people, but this time I’m gonna share a conversation with you that cost me $25,000. I’m a member of Joe Polish’s Genius Network, which is a $25,000 annual fee opportunity to work with Joe who’s one of the marketing geniuses on the planet, and also to spend some quality time with a group of other very experienced entrepreneur so I can learn how to do the Bulletproof thing, so I do even better, so I can help more people. The reason this conversation is pretty amazing is that it’s Joe Polish interviewing not just one, but 2 people who I really, really admire. They are Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis.
Peter wrote a quote for the first Bulletproof book, The Bulletproof Diet, and is a personal friend. Peter Diamandis is the guy behind the XPRIZE. Private space travel is happening now because of him, just an amazing guy who is actively changing the world in some of the biggest ways, spends a lot of time with Elon Musk. Tony Robbins just about needs no introduction. He’s working on feeding a billion people, doing huge amounts of non-profit and charitable work. If you have a chance to actually see the video, the video is even better. Just go to bulletproofexec.com/youtube. You can check out the video, but the audio is just fine. You’re going to hear 2 things about disruption. This is all about how to help yourself. Honestly, this is one of the most inspiring conversations that I’ve had a chance to sit on in the last decade.
Just to see the size of this change will actively upgrade your ability to think really big, to think bold. These are some of the biggest and boldest thinkers out there. This stuff will rub off on you. I’m really grateful to Joe Polish and to Tony Robbins and to Peter Diamandis for being cool with sharing this on Bulletproof Radio. This hasn’t been published before that I’m aware of. I didn’t think I’d ever have a chance to share it. I remember when I sat in a room of about 200 entrepreneurs and watch this just amazing interview go down, I was thinking, “I wish I could share this.” because inspiring yourself is one of the biggest things you can do to just perform better, just to see where you can go, see how big you can be. These guys inspire me regularly, and I hope that they inspire you.
Special thanks to my good friend, Jay Abraham, who is the founder of Entrepreneur Magazine, and some one who mentors me. He is the one who set the wheels in motion to get Joe Polish, and Tony Robbins, and Peter Diamandis all lined up on allowing this to be released. Thanks so much, Jay. Thanks Joe, thanks Tony, thanks Peter. I am in debt to all of you. Enjoy the show. I wish I’d been on stage interviewing these guys, instead of Joe Polish. However, Joe did a fantastic job and you will be blown away by this. It’s a special edition on the next show. You will hear me interviewing our next guest like normal. This is something I’m pleased to be able to bring to you. It cost me $25,000. It’s worth every penny. It’s yours for free. Thanks to the generosity of these guys.
Tony: Gosh, there’s a lot of things I’m involved. I’m very passionate about feeding people. I think you know my story. When I was 11 years old, we had no money, no food, and stuff. A gentleman came and fed my family. He was just a delivery boy, but it changed my life because it made me believe strangers care. My father didn’t respond very well to the situation. He was very angry. He left our family shortly thereafter. For me, it left and indelible mark that people really care. Strangers care about my family. I care about them and maybe want to do something. I promised to myself, somehow I’ll do well enough to feed other people. When I was 17, I fed 2 families, and then 4, and then 8, and then 100,000, and then a million. In 7 years we’ve been 2 million through the foundation, and I’ve matched it with 2 million, so 4 million a year.
I fed 42 million people in my life. Then I started working on this book 4 years ago. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I started working on this book, and I’ve interviewed 50 of the smartest financial people in the planet, people like John Paulson. I’ve done an interview in 10 years, and I’ve got one of the first ones with him, Ray Dalio and people like that. These are all people not form the lucky sperm club. These are people that did it on their own. They built it from scratch. No one gave them a break.
I’m getting all these insights, and I’m watching Congress pass these laws where they change the budget and they cut food stamps, I don’t call it food stamps anymore, but that’s basically what it is, by $18.2 billion, which basically means every person that needs food in this country, who’s not in the position anybody in this room is in, has to go without food 1 week a month for 12 months out of the year, unless the private sector picks it up, which is their hope. Most of the private sector is really stressed. I went to Feeding American, I said, “What if I gave you all the profits of this book, all the money I’m getting, all the money I’ll ever get, how many people can I feed?” They said 10 million people, and I said, “I’m in.” Then I got more excited, and I added a bunch of money to it, so I’d added up to 50 million people. Then I said I’ll do matching funds to 100 million, which also worked out.
Peter: Awesome. Thank you.
Joe: We’re focusing on 3 things. One is the XPRIZE, and Tony has been extraordinarily generous as a philanthropist. A number of you in the room here who are members of Innovation Board. Thank you for those of you who are part of that, some of our trustees in the room here. The story there, again, I think you guys all know this, is my 9 year old dream in myself was wanting to go into space and giving up on NASA being the way I was going to get to go there, and saying “There’s got to be someway, somewhere, somebody can build a spaceship that I can go on to. I organize a $10 million prize.” As my dear friend Dan Sullivan says, “I didn’t have the $10 million at the time, but had every faith that I would. It just took me 6 years to find it.”
That $10 million prize launched a private space flight industry that Richard Branson is now commercializing and a number of their teams are doing. On the heels of that, we said, “This idea of asking the world, what do you want to solve? What is a problem that should be solved, that you think it’s a sin that it’s not solved yet?” realizing that there is so much brilliance around the world, that a kid today has more power than the President of the United States did 20 years ago, in terms of the computational power, or the knowledge they have, and that it used to be only the kings and queens that could solve things in the past. Now it’s any of us can solve something.
What we do is we work with the top philanthropists, and corporations, and in some cases governments, and put up these large prizes, a million or a few million dollars actually. Christian Cotichini who runs HeroX has spin out the smaller prizes were doing these 10 million, $20-30 million prizes and saying, “I don’t care where you went to school, whatever you’ve done before. You solve this and you win.” I’ll just mention one that we did together. It was Tony Robbins, the DeVos family, and Elon Musk that funded a global learning XPRIZE. 250 million kids around the world, nearly 700 million women around the world can’t read, write, or do arithmetic. We put up a prize that said, “If you can build an app that can take a child where there’s nothing, no schools, no adults, nothing, and take that child from illiteracy to basic reading, writing, and numbers in 18 months, you win.”
600 teams entered that competition. We’re down at 200 delivering software that’ll be in Tanzania in about 14 months. With that, and actually John Raymonds, also one of our sponsors in that, will be … That winning software will be open sourced to the world, so that every device becomes a teacher. At XPRIZE, really excited about that, and really focused on mapping the ocean floors. Thank you.
With my dear friend, Eric Anderson, in the back here, co-founded Planetary Resources. The concept here is that we think of things as scarce on earth, and certain things are. The beautiful that we have, we shouldn’t rape and pillage them. We live in a solar system filled with resources. The concept here of Planetary Resources is we’re using the most advanced technology, 3D print, space craft, AI on board, sensors that never flow in orbit before to go out to prospect near-earth asteroids, which are rich in fuels, platinum group metals, construction materials. Those same space craft, when pointed down towards the earth, we’ve just discovered, and we’re really excited about this, can actually map and predict the yield of every acre of crop land on planet earth, and really help us feed the planet much more efficiently.
We just launched our first space craft, next one goes up in the first quarter. The last one, which is I think relevant to all of us, is the idea that we can all live 30 or 40 more healthy years in our life. To Dan’s point earlier about living to 95, but not 95, living to 195, whatever it might be. We’re at a moment in time where we have to realize the software that runs our body, our genome, what happens to you, isn’t happenstance. It isn’t like, “Oh my God. I happen to come down with that.” Your destiny is in your genes. It’s also in the environment and all those kinds of things. This is one of Tony’s one of our investors. We created a company called Human Longevity. Carig Venter, who sequenced the first human genome, and Bob Hariri and I founded it together.
It’s built the world’s largest genome sequencing facility in the planet. We’ve sequenced more human genomes than the rest of the world combined. Not just the genome, your microbiome, a full body MRI, 2,300 chemicals in your blood stream. the most massive data set about you, we mine that data to actually help you understand what is going on. It’s the most complete information data set in the world. We’ve also just … A few of you in the audience here I know are benefiting from this in our Health Nucleus. We’re now actually sequencing cancers to help you know what drugs specifically works for you in your cancer, not just for everybody who happens to have that generic cancer.
That’s the big one. I think that’s something that’s going to impact all of us, is making 100 years old the new 60. You get younger.
Peter: Awesome. What are the biggest trade offs that both of you consider maybe negative in order to do what it is you do? Because you’re both incredibly driven, what I would consider insane schedules, but at the same time you’re making massive contributions to humanity. What are the trade offs that you would consider like, “You know, we work our asses off. We do a lot of stuff, but this is what we have to sacrifice in order to do it.” if you think of it that way?
Tony: I think if you’re thinking of it as a sacrifice, then you’re going to build frustration or resentment. If you think it’s a sacrifice, you shouldn’t do it. I think the challenge is that most people have this illusion about life-work balance. I think that’s … If you’re going to accomplish doing it … People are laughing because is you know it. Right? What’s true is life-work integration. I was just in 7 countries in 21 days, but who’s with me is my family, who’s with my is my friends, and I’ve done well enough to have a plane, and bed rooms, and all that kind of cool stuff that makes it. When I didn’t, we still puffed it together and beginning days it was coach and dragging ourselves around. I thought it was great for my kids to have schooling, but I thought an education was more valuable, and traveling the earth was a part of that.
We’re in a middle of this crazy schedule, but it’s not work. It’s a mission. When it’s work, it’s that. I always ask people. I said, “How would you describe what you do?” People, I say, “Is it work? Is it career? Is it mission?” Most people say it’s work, and that’s exactly what it is. It’s heavy. If it’s your career, it gives you something more. Your mission, it doesn’t wear you out. It brings energy to you. It’s fulfilling. If you can tie your mission in with the people that you love, it’s pretty cool. There’s people in this room, they’re my friends, I see Dean here in the front row here. We’re all along this mission, and we find time to connect and be with each other and have a blast with each other, but we’re sharing about things that matter. I’m not a person to go a party and go in the corner and chit chat. It’s like, “You want to talk something deep? Let’s rock. If you don’t, let me go home and be with my family. Let me go do something fun, something of that nature.”
If you can combine your mission with your family, combine your mission with some of your friends, then you’re going to accomplish a million times more. If you think it’s a sacrifice, don’t do it, because then all you’re doing is you’re going to have resentment later on, and frustration later on. You really aren’t contributing, because you’re trading off. You’re not giving.
Peter: Great.
Joe: I’m a 9 year old kid. Those of you know me know I’m a 9 year old child in my body, pinching myself everyday that I get to do this shit that I get to do. It is extra ordinary. I could not, would not want to be doing anything else. There’s hard work, and it’s like I’m pushing myself more than anybody else, but I love it. I love it. I love it. I cannot imagine doing anything else. That’s the challenge. The question is a lot of people are doing something to get to something else. That’s just wrong.
Tony: I agree.
Joe: It’s a matter of don’t do it because your parents told you, because you heard it on an infomercial, because whatever. Do what is your highest calling in life and love it. I don’t work at all. I really don’t work. Dan has old me to get rid of it, and so I get rid of it.
Peter: This room is filled with some very high achievers. Obviously what I wanted to derive from you guys is some insights, some how-tos, what it is you do to just give them a perspective and stuff. I carefully chose some questions. Your both masters at achieving what most people consider impossible. Really, what you guys do, most people consider absolutely impossible, when something is considered “impossible”, how do you reframe it so it becomes possible in your mind, and how much of that is mindset?
Tony: I think impossible is not a fact, it’s an opinion. When someone tells me it’s impossible, I always just look at them. Anybody around me knows that they can’t do that. That’s part of it. If they did now me, it’s your opinion, and I’ll say no science shows … I’ll say, “How many times a science show something is impossible, now science shows is possible?” Things are impossible until somebody does it. I find that most of you business people, you look at businesses and what does it take to make a business grow. It’s not impossible for a business to grow. Business has been shrinking for a long time, or it’s been stuck. The real problem is always, the choke hold is always the psychology and the skills of the leader, always. 80% of that is psychology and 20% if the mechanics.
If you don’t know how to read your financials and you’re trying to fly the plane of your company, come on. If all you do is go down and you look at profit loss, and you see what it is, and you have a beer, ether way. You either celebrate it or get depressed, something, you’re going to be in trouble. If you have the skill sets, that’s one thing, but you can get any skillset if you have the psychology. Anytime A business is not growing, it is not because it’s impossible. It’s because they are innovating, and they’re not innovating because they believe it’s impossible. If we all know what does it take to transform … Obviously, people takes 3 things to create a breakthrough in anything, in your personal life, in your business, anywhere.
You need a strategy, but that’s not the first place you should look, and it’s the first place all of us look, me too. It’s our inherent thing, you want to lose weight? Well, how do I do it? I want to grow my business. How do I do it? It’s instinctively. You’ve been trained to think that way. The problem is the how-to is usually not that complex. Come one, 70% of America is what? 75% of America now is overweight. Is that because it’s so complex how to be fit and strong? Only the the 1% know the answer. They hide it from you. You have to work you ass off to not hear what it takes. Right?
I remember I went to a TEDMED Center and I watched about 12 doctors, one after another get up and do these stories about how we could just get patients to take their medications and try to figure out the whole thing. I was just looking and going, “You’re all talking about strategy and you’ve forgotten psychology.” Strategy is wonderful. I’m a strategist. I have my whole life thinking out strategies. As we both know, a strategy could save you decade, and a business strategy could make the difference between success and failure. Most people have strategies available, or they could get them, or you could create them. The problem is you got a story. Your story is why it isn’t working. The story is I’ve tried, what? Everything.
If you’ve tried everything, you’d be fit. If you’ve tried everything, you’d be profitable if you’ve tried everything, you’d be there. People said, “I’m big boned.” That’s what I’m used to say. I’m still big boned, but I’m 38 pounds lighter than I was 25 years ago, and I never gained it back. When I was big boned, that was my story. All of the good ones are gone. That’s why I’m in a relationship, or again they are, or again they are, whatever the story is. There’s always a story. What I tell people is, “If you can just divorce the story of your limitation and marry the truth of your unlimited capacity, then the whole game changes.”
It’s hard to do that because when you’re in your story, you don’t even realize it, so you need a third piece for breakthrough, and that’s really what my life is about, which is changing people’s states. In a different state, we’re different people. Can mean people be nice, yes or no? Yes or no? Of course they are, when they’re in a nice state. Can nice people be mean? Sure, to get a mean state. Really learning to train yourself to be in an ideal state where the best of you comes out for yourself, for your family, for your mission, for your world, for your co-workers. To me, that’s one of the most important decisions in my life to make. You just ask me of, out of all the people I’ve met, all things I’ve seen, what creates a magnificent life?
Everybody has goals and dreams that are different. Some people want picket fence. Some want to make a billion dollars. Some want to have this huge breakthrough in technology. Some people want to write poetry. Whatever is right for people is what I want them for themselves I don’t want to be like me or you or anybody else. I want them to have their dream. To have that, you need to 2 skills. You need, number 1, to have the science of achievement. It’s a science, you have to konw how to take your vision and make it real. Most of the people assumed they’ve already figured that out. This guy sure as hell has. You have and I have. Most of us know, and we can all refine our skills in that area, but we know how to take what we dream about to make it real. If you don’t, you can learn from somebody who does.
The simplest thing is get crazily hungry for something. We all know when you get so hungry, so desirous, your brain starts to coming up with answers. Then it’s massive action but effective execution, which is all modeling, which is what I assume what this is about. Find the best example, compress the time. Let someone else take 20 years to figure out, you do it in 2 weeks or 2 months, or whatever period. We should all be standing to shoulders with people around us, instead of reinventing the wheel. Then there’s thing called grace. If you work your ass off, your totally focused, you’re trying to serve something larger than yourself, and you really are executing what works, you need a little grace. You might want to call it luck if you prefer, God, the universe, but it’s there, and we can all achieve.
I think the more important skill, if you ask me, to have an extraordinary life, is the art of fulfillment, and it’s an art. It’s not a science, because there’s a science to making money. I don’t care who you are, if you do certain things, you’re going to have too much financial stress. If you do there things, you’re going to have an abundance. There’s a science to your body. Everyone here is biochemically different, they have a genome, but there are certain fundamental patterns that if you and I follow them, you’re going to have tons of energy in a field that if you break them, you’re going to pay the price and have low energy or disease.
Fulfillment is an art. What’s going to fulfill you is different than the other next to you you’re not going to learn that from anybody else. You got to find it, because success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. I get those phone calls all the time for the multi-billionaire entrepreneur, or politicians, or business person, or a person who just won their academy award, and they’re depressed, and they can’t tell anybody, because they got all their goals, but they’re not fulfilled, because they really don’t have that sense of meaning in their life. They went for something and they got it. They achieved. If you doubt just what I’m saying is relevant to you, or us, or anyone, just thinking about it. About a month ago, we lost what I consider be a national treasure. Robbin Williams.
How many of you loved Robbin Williams? Put your hands up and keep your hands and look. Most of you didn’t know. Anywhere you go in the world, people love Robbin Williams. By the way, was he great at achievement? Oh my God, that guy. He said he want to become a great comedian, he did that. “I want to make the world laugh.” He did it. “I want to make my own TV show.” He did it. “I wanted the number 1 TV show.” He did it. “I want to make movies.” He did it. “I want an Academy Award for not being funny.” not his skillset, drama, and he did it. “I want a beautiful family.” He did it, and then he hung himself.
Make everybody happy, but yourself, not a good plan. If I had a gift to give you, it would be maybe make a different decision. The decision is that no matter what happens in you life, you’re going to live in a beautiful state. That could be happy, that could be grateful, that could be being generous. Those are all beautiful states, aren’t they? It could be curious. It could be fun. It could be playful. You’re not limited to one state, but it’s different than suffering. Most people suffering, and all suffering I’ve ever seen, I traveled 100 countries, I’ve dealt with presidents of countries and presidents of businesses, CEOs, I’ve dealt with people in prison, I’ve dealt with, you name it, average people, suffering always comes because you’re obsessed about something related to you.
You can only be depressed if you’re focusing on yourself. You say, “Oh. I’m depressed because my kids, and they’re not doing well.” No, you’re depressed because you feel you failed your kids. It’s about you. It’s about how you think what should’ve done or shouldn’t have done, or what someone did to you or didn’t do to you in the past or the future, which don’t even exist. I have a simple. My goal is help people make a decision that says, “I don’t know what’s going to happen.” You might get a divorce, even though you don’t think so. You might find then one of your family with cancer. You might have your house get burned down or have a tornado go buy. If you live in the same place, it happens every 2 years and you move back, we should talk, but some people seem to do that for some reason.
You can’t control those things. I can’t control those things. I don’t want those to happen to your or anybody I love, or anybody who’s even a stranger to me, but they’re going to happen. True? Not positive thinking, just the truth. If that’s going to happen, I’d say make a decision now that says, “I’m going to live in a beautiful state, and I’m going to find beauty in whatever life brings me, because life is too short not to.” I see a little buddy over here named Sean. I remember when I got a phone call from the Make A Wish foundation and say, “I have a young man that’s about to die and he wants to meet you.” He came to a seminar and then I took him out after. In time, if he coughed too much, they said, “You can’t grab him.” I said, “I want to take him across the fire.” They said, “Take him across the fire?” They said, “If he coughs he break a rib.” I said, “I’ll be really gently. We’re going to do this thing.”
He did it, and afterwards I sat down, and I said, “Man, I don’t have the answers, but if your body is … You’re just coughing and it’s going to make you break a rib. You body is so acid.” I said, “You should get alkaline. Let me put you together with a doctor.” How many years ago was that?
Sean: I’m From 36, and that was 19
Tony: You were 19 and you’re now 36. I like seeing you here, brother. Give him a hand, this beautiful man. Sean, maybe Sean was in a beautiful state. He could be bitching and complaining and whining. What does he do? His whole life is not about himself. That’s why he’s so happy. He doesn’t live in himself. He lives outside of himself, serving things he loves. He still takes care of himself, and he’s funny. He like to seduce women and things like I can’t talk about right now.
Sean: I’m married now.
Tony: Oh you’re married now. Okay. Well, that’s good. I’m glad to hear. It’s about freaking time, right Sean? It’s good to see you grew up now. The bottom line is this young man over here now is in a different stage of life, he’s always been … I think he lived because he lived for more than himself. I’m sure it’s all pain, but we only suffer when we think about what’s being done to us, or what people are going to think, or what they should’ve done and haven’t done. You can’t control that stuff anyway. Why be pissed when people are going to do … Are people going to be mean, yes or no? Are people going to be unfair and unjust, yes or no? Are people going to be beautiful and generous, yes or no?
You just never know when that’s going to happen, so might as well enjoy yourself along the way? I suggest today, if you want, if there’s any gift I came by to give you, it’s to tell you what you know already, but get you to make a decision about it, to actually decide, “I’m going to live in a beautiful state.” That doesn’t mean I don’t get angry or tired. Suffering arises, and you end it the moment you go, “I’m thinking about me. If I do this, I’ll always be suffering.” The human mind is always looking for what’s wrong. The human brain is not designed to make you happy. It’s designed to make you survive. Happiness, that’s your job. You only get it if you draw a line in the sand. That’s how it’s going to be.
I can tell you, the few people who do it. I know a few people that have done it. They have magnificent lives. When you’re in a beautiful state, the best idea is coming. This man was in a beautiful state every time I talk to him. I love seeing Peter. Peter is just always on fire about something. Notice, he’s doing unbelievably well. There’s nothing wrong with that. Almost everything he’s doing is about more than himself. That’s why he feel so alive. He’s not suffering an ounce. He’s in ecstasy. He’s not lucky. He’s living life a certain way. It’s a beautiful way. I’m honored to have you as a friend.
Joe: Thank you, brother.
Tony: how many met this man before and he was in a wonderful state? Show your hands. I don’t I’ve ever seen not a wonderful state. I’ve seen him have some painful challenging places, but he doesn’t stay there. Look what he’s able to create because of it. He is a 9 year old boy who’s on fire. He’s on fire to light the world on fire with what’s possible. It’s beautiful thing, and I honor you.
Joe: The contribution I’ll make … Thank you, Tony. I think it was about impossible in mindset and so forth. The reality is there is very little that’s impossible, period. It just is. Your mindset, as soon as you say something is impossible, then you shutdown every possibility for solving it. We all know this. The challenge is that it’s really hard not to be in that state because we get thrown stuff all the time. What I want to share with is an experiment which is to say, “Okay. Not only how do I make it possible, but how do I actually go 10 times bigger?” You’ve heard me speak about this, moon shot thinking, bold thinking, whatever the case, whatever terminology you want to give it.
Most of us in our life are trying to make a 10% improvement, and we know this. This is, “I’m trying to increase my revenues by 10%. I’m trying to increase my sales by 10%, save 10% more of the lands out there.” Whatever it truly is, we all have this beating into us by life and by the rest of universe that you can make the small incremental improvements. The fact of the matter is that there are those in the world that go 10 times bigger. Everyone of us can be that. As soon as you say, “I want to not only solve this thing, but go 10 times bigger in my work, in the things.” Can I say this? In something that you’re truly passionate about, not just about burning a little bit more money, it really should be in something that you care truly about, that is bigger than yourself, that impacting the world.
As soon as you try and go 10 times bigger, 3 magical things happen. Number 1, even if you have no idea how to solve it, not idea how to get there, you’ll be amazed at what you come up with. What’s interesting is our legacy, our past anchors us to where we are today. You have to let go of that. You truly have to let go of all the stuff in your past, what you thought you’ve done, all of the infrastructure that you built to let yourself go. When Elon Musk build Tesla, the reason Tesla was such an amazingly better car is he didn’t have 100 years of Detroit to hold on to. He started with a clean sheet of paper and imagine what it could be.
The second thing is when you try and go 10 times bigger versus 10% bigger, it’s 100 times the value proposition, and it’s never 100 times more expensive or 100 times harder. You get this increased capability. The third thing is when you try and go 10 times bigger to solve a problem 10 times bigger, you got to reinvent stuff. You have to actually go and figure out, “Okay. I have no idea how I’m going to solve it.” You’re going to start to reinvent things. When Eric and I were working on asteroid mining, we had to reinvent. We had to have so much computational power onboard the spacecraft. We had to come up with brand new sensors and hyperspectral and mid-wave IR that didn’t exist. It never been licensed, because these spacecrafts we’re going to operating at 200 million miles away, and it forced us to come up with new kinds of capabilities that were not currently possible. You’ll be amazed with those capabilities that you create in your business, in your life, enable you to do.
There’s this massive benefit, this pay off, the dividend that comes from expanding your mind and not being anchored to the past. I think that there are very few things that are truly impossible. I think that impossible is a state of mind. I’ll say one other thing. The people in your life are part of that anchoring. How do you anchor yourself with a new set of people? I’m looking at my dear friend, Nadine Jane, here with whom we’ve opened up XPRIZE India and are really working on solving women’s and girls’ issues in India, and providing a bunch of drinking water in India. How do you surround yourself with amazing people who live in the state of anything is possible? I’m blessed at XPRIZE, at Singularity University, at HLI, and PRI. I live out constantly. How do you do that? Where are you doing that? What is your nothing is impossible community?
It is truly here. That’s really critically important. Once you get into that mindset, then you start freeing yourself from the other … Then you tell yourself and people tell you, because we are living in a world where constant amazing miracles happen. The other thing, because I put my commercial into this, stop watching the news, stop watching the news. You could not pay me enough to have the crisis news network with the constant negative news work, whatever you call CNN, pollute my mind. Really, I have social networks. I have Google Filters and so forth. I was just telling Arianna about this, and hopefully she’ll do this. I want on the front page of Huffington Post. I said, “I want a slider where I can control the percentage of positive news stories.” How do you like that?
Right now it’s 10 to 1 negative to positive. It’s true. It’s like, “Why would you possibly invest in the world and into life and all these things, if the world is falling apart. If the crisis news network is showing you airplane x into airplane X and airplane x. The problem is that the news networks never tell you, “There was no school shooting today at this school.” or “This airplane actually flew LA to New York and actually made it. Everybody survived.” That’s not news. We get this disproportionate view. Our minds are constantly .. The mindset you have when you watch the negative news is awful. It’s not going on. It’s not that there’s this amazing hardship and lives that are on the precipice of hunger and death around the world, but the world is getting better at an extraordinary rate. You can make a difference in it. There is no problem. There is no problem we cannot solve, period, end of statement.
Peter: Awesome. All right. Since both of you are 2 of the greatest achievers and the biggest thinkers, at least that I know.
Tony: In the history of humanity.
Peter: Well, honest to God … You know what? No. In a very serious way. It’s funny. I can’t imagine there will every be another Tony Robbins. You are a freaking freak of nature-
Tony: That’s true.
Peter: A force of nature. One of the most amazing things when I went to Date with Destiny. He’ll ask, “How many of you came here, you’re thinking about committing suicide?” Literally, I don’t know, anywhere from 6 to 12 or whatever, I don’t know the amount, stand up, and you literally take that shit on. I don’t know another human being that could … It’s mind boggling and you flip it. You take a person in a horrible hopeless state and they’re coming to your seminar maybe as the last-ditch effort, but there’s that hope, and you just channel it, but then you share that with freaking thousands of people live on the spot. That’s just one of hundreds of things that you do that are mind boggling.
Joe: Everyone there’s thinking there’s no way he can do this. There’s now way you can … How can you possibly … Boom. It’s done. You do it. It is truly a blessing to have you on the planet
Tony: It’s a blessing.
Peter: Were you born this way? That’s a stupid question. I’m saying it for other people. You built yourself to Tony Robbins.
Joe: Probably it’s your gene sequence.
Tony: I was a kid from a Azusas who had no certainty. We had no food and have to be in charge because my mother was a little crazy. I promised to myself that my future family would never go through this, and so I decided I hated suffering as I experienced it, and I wanted to end it. I read some of her books in the area of human development, psychology, and physiology when I was still 17, 18, 19 to 21, 22 years old. I was saying I was going to read a book a day. I didn’t do that, but I am still immersed. I went to every event. I listened to everything. I got immersed. When it comes to people. I’ve been doing now, I’ve been doing this for 38 years and I’ve been with 50 million people and 100 countries, so there’s nothing I haven’t seen at this point if somebody stands up.
It’s beautiful. It happens different every time, and it comes through me. I really believe in grace. I really believe it’s there, but prepared at a level most people never dream of. I also know that there’s … Whatever human beings feel, we are not our feelings. We are not our patterns. Those are things we might identify with but we’re not that. When I see a pattern that doesn’t work. I don’t think the person is broken. I don’t think anybody is broken. I’m not here to fix people, but I am here to break the patterns that don’t work. I’ve never lost a suicide, knock on wood, and thousands for 38 years, and we follow up 2 years later, 3 years. They’re making a documentary right now.
Peter: How do you both deal with, or think about, or even channel extreme levels of stress, adverse the criticism, public opinion, or failure? Both of you had things that just flat out didn’t work, but you’re quite … You’re public figures. How do you handle it, or deal with it, or think about it?
Joe: I really let go of criticism really fast. I might process it in the moment to try and figure out, is there something that I truly learn from their feedback, but I let go of it really fast. If I’m in a fight, a personal fight or whatever, time is so precious. Time is so precious. Failure, God, I’ve had a wonderful series of failures. I built the launch FICO company that we won this huge contract and couldn’t finance it, and had to close it down. I built a multitude of companies. Luckily, a third have been great, a third have been okay, and the third have been life lessons. I have to believe that what I’m doing in my heart of hearts is the right thing to do. If I’m doing the very best I can, and I believe it is something … I take a dollar from somebody as a donation, or as an investment, those of you who are in the room here who have support in me or invested in me know that.
It’s me. It’s like you got my cell phone number, and I care, and I am so committed to delivering. I would do everything I possible can. I need to know that for myself. I can sleep at night if something fails, but I know I gave it everything I can possibly could. There’s also those times where shit has hit, it’s like nose dive. I will stop everything else I’m doing and I’ll go laser light on that. 100%, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I will do everything humanly possible, and it takes that a lot of times. It absolutely takes that a lot of times. That’s for me.
Peter: Awesome. Thank you.
Tony: I would say I love to light people. Since I was this little kid, I love to light people up. Early on I want to make everybody happy all the time. I come in this package. I was 5’1″ and next thing you know I’m 6’7″ I grew 10 inches in a year because I had a tumor in my brain, and I don’t even know it. I grow, so I’m big. I’m quiet, and assuming I have a hard time expressing my true feelings, so it makes it difficult for people understand what I’m really like. I’m pretty loud and intense, and what happened for me in the beginning as I was just trying to make everybody happy all the time, and then just realized nobody wants to be happy.
Gradually, I began to realize opinions are dime a dozen, but impact is all that matters to me. You know when you’ve had the impact. You don’t need everybody else to tell you, and you don’t need to somebody else to acknowledge you, put stars in you chart. You do what’s right, you know it, you know it. No one could take that from you. They can take away anything you have, but they can’t take away who you become. You become something unique when you find a way to grow and you find a way to give. You do that consistently. It creates an extraordinary life. So I’d be lying to say: I don’t want people to hate me or dislike me, but it wouldn’t be accurate to say I don’t care, but I don’t care enough to change what I’m doing if what I’m doing is valuable.
I think that as far as failure is concern, oh my god, there’s just so many failures. I just don’t hold it that that way, and it’s not a technique or being positive. It’s just being intelligent. Failure is education, if you use it. If you learn something, it’s not a failure. If you didn’t learn anything, then it’s failure, but if you learn something … How many of you have you had something up in life that was horrific, you hated it, you’d never want to go through it again, you’d never want somebody you care about go through it? Looking back on it 5, 10 years later you say, “I’m so glad I went through that because it made me so much stronger or so much smarter, or maybe care so much more.” Who can relate? I’m curious.
If that’s true, then why not adopt the philosophy that life is not happening to me, it’s happening for me? Everything is happening for me, even what I thought was failure and now my job is to figure out where is the benefit and use it, use it for greater good. I could probably list unlimited failures, but I would be insincere because I don’t really look at them as failure, and that’s not because I’m positive I work my ass off to figure out what can I learn from that, how can I use that. I’d like to make people happy, but I’ve also learn in business. I fire customers. I don’t need them. It’s a privilege to do business with us, because we will more than delivery times 10, and so I teach my team. It’s so rare we have to do it anymore.
We fire customer and you say, “Listen, we’re not going to be able to meet your needs.” clearly because there are other people out there that no matter what you do, they’re going to be unhappy. Yes or no? Why are you doing business with them and taking the life energy of your organization from it. I get rid of them so fast, and then they always want back in, and I never let them back, never. Then they become a public hanging and other people go, “This is how you play here.” In the world of the internet, we’ve lost any form of kindness. People say things that are the most harsh, horrific thing. The stuff people write … All it is is people who feel insignificant who would never have the guts to say something to your face, but we’ve creating an environment where it’s tolerated.
I think reversing that is really important. You have to define your environment, your business, your world, your family, because we all get what we tolerate. I won’t tolerate it. I’ll give my soul to a stranger, but I won’t tolerate somebody being abusive to any member of my team, or to people, my audience, or to me, certainly not to my family. You get what you tolerate, you got to decide. You also get what you tolerate in yourself. I think if you can look at what you tolerate in yourself and say, “I’m not going to tolerate any more in myself.” then it’s easier to lead other people. If you just tell other people you won’t tolerate, they’ll look at you and go “Yeah. You don’t tolerate, but look how you are.”
You don’t want to be perfect, but people see how … You don’t have to know who I am, you don’t have to watch my lips move. You can see how my feet have moved for 38 years, that’s Tony Robbins. That’s probably the best signature you can give, that’s the brand that you put out there. That’s the way you live.
Peter: The thing you said, the line which I love, “Life is not happening to me. It’s happening for me.” Is it part of that tricky plan yourself, or do you truly believe everything you are able to take that as ingredients of “This is all happening for me. This most most horrible, most horrendous thing from diseases to suffering”? That’s an important line, and I like to-
Tony: It’s not just a line. There’s a woman that I just saw, that I’ve met 15 years ago. She just showed at my seminar, and she was suicidal because one of her daughters had gotten sick, and she brought her to the hospital, and the doctors said she brought you home and the child died. She was going to kill herself, and she had 3 other kids. I really truly had to work with her. I remember working with her back then. I looked it up, because we have all stuff I’ve ever done on film.
I asked her, I said, “What are your spiritual beliefs?” She said, “I believe everything happens for a reason.” So I say so you’re going to abandon what you believe spiritually because life didn’t turn out the way you want right now.” She said, “No, no, no.” I said, “If it’s the truth, it’ll be the truth when it’s painful, it’ll be the truth when it’s pleasurable. I would lie to you to say I jumped up and go, “Oh, this is happening for me right now.” I don’t do that. I think, “What the hell is happening?” Then I catch myself and I go, “There’s some good in this.”
My core belief, my real core belief underneath that is everything I’ve ever been able to help people is because I faced unfortunate. If I have to face a divorce, I decided I needed to go through a divorce, I didn’t want to. No one wants to after picking your partner after 14 years, it was most terrific thing in the world. I thought if I can figure out how to do this elegantly, intelligently, lovingly, no matter what the other party is like, then I can help anybody else. I’ve had several businesses over the decades that were near the verge of bankruptcy out of resort in Fiji,and there was a coup, it’s kind inconvenient, and I’m losing a million dollars a month, and I didn’t have a million dollars a month to be losing it that time, because I wanted to create this great place for people.
In the midst of all those elements, I’d come back and say, “If I can figure this out, I can help any other business.” Almost all my skill have come because of something I had to solve in me or help someone else of. My view is if I can figure it out for me, I can help millions of people. That makes the problem inspiring, as opposed to the problem being, “Why did it happen to me?” because we’re all going to experience problems. The only thing that we all have in common is everyone is going to experience severe pain. I don’t care how rich you are, money is not going to create immunity to pain.
Suffering, you can get immunity from from the decision I told you about. We’re all going to have problems, we’re all going to have challenges. The only difference is what the hell are you going to do with them? If we just deal with our own problems, they get really boring, and some people need problems to have drama in their life, to cover the fact they’re not doing anything. I think it’s much more interesting to solve it and move on, and help other people do the same, because you’ve actually done it, not because you’ve talked about it.
Peter: Yeah. Got you. What I love is … Robin Sharma, who we did a call with, he’s in the room. He has this thing, The 5 am Club, a guy named Hal Elrod have wrote a book of Miracle Morning. You do priming in the morning. I love to hear what you guys feel are your best rituals or what it is that you are doing that just massively impacts you to be as effective as both of you are, if there’s something simple or something that you just do that makes your life work, starting be the morning ritual or anything that people here might-
Joe: Does watching cartoons with my kids at 7 am count?
Peter: Maybe that could.
Joe: For me it’s anchored in my desire to make the impossible stuff I set out happen. It’s anchored in this infinity challenge. I’m never bored. These problems I’ve taken on with an amazing group of people are infinite, and there’s no getting there. For me, they are my guiding stars. It’s like, “Okay. What am I going to do right now to move the game forward this day?” I wish I could say I was a great meditator of yoga person and so forth. That will come, but not right now. For me, it’s dedication to the child inside me and what I care deeply about, which is making these succeed. Ultimately, it’s trying to be clear about what I’m enjoying doing. It’s surfing the stuff I love, versus, “This is work. I’m probably not good at this work. Who else can I find that can do it, and doing this stuff that I truly love better, and doing more of that?” There’s nothing sophisticated there. Tony, what do you got?
Tony: I think anyone who succeeds has something that they aspire to. There’s a mission, there’s a direction, there’s a desire, and they bring it up regularly. You do that, even though you say you don’t do it in a sophisticated way, attacking human genome and figuring out how to get meteors to feed you what you need is a fairly large vision, somewhat sophisticated. Mine is really simple. Mine is simple. I believe that the body is the place that drives the minds the fastest. You can inside your head all day long, trying to resolve things, and make excuses or freak out. I learned early on in my life that in order to make myself do things, I have to trigger this body to feel strength and to know that when I say something I mean it.
I have a simple ritual, but it’s actually enjoyable. It may not sound enjoyable, but it is now, which I get up every morning, and I’m privileged to have multiple homes. If I’m in those homes … One of the homes I have a river, the rest of them I have cold plunges. I go into a 56 degree temperature just for about 60 seconds. I jump straight in, or I was just in Sun River and the river is 38 degrees, a little big cooler. I took my nephew instead, “you’re about to learn how to start your day.” I bring all my friends when they come. They all have to do this. Every cell, every nerve in your body explodes, and it’s phenomenal for your limp systems, phenomenal for your health, but it also is just a simple discipline that says, “I say it, it happens. I’m going to do this, I do it.”
I’ve had it so much. It’s there, and it’s invigorating. I do, as you said, something I call priming. You wake up and you’re 22 hours off your normal time zone, and you’ve got to get up and take care of 2,000 of people for 3 days and nights for 14 to 15 hours. You don’t always wake up feeling, “Wow. This is the coolest thing in the world.” Sometimes I wake up and go, “What universe is my body in?” I do my physical ritual, but then I also do this priming. Priming for me is just I don’t hope that I’m going to show up at my best. I create a state for it. Most of you know probably the principle of priming. They’re proven it in so many scientific studies. We all think we make our decisions consciously when much of our decisions making that we think is conscious is being made by contextual environmental manipulation that we’re not even thinking about.
On one study, they took some people and they hired actors that would go to 100 people. They’d walk up to you. You’re trained to do the exact same look, same expression, and they’d say, “Would you hold this?” They hand you a coffee cup and they reach in their pocket, and grabbed their phone, put them back and say “Thank you very much.” They just kind of assume the action. They would do the same way, same facial expression. 100 people one way, 100 people other. What was the only difference? Cold iced coffee versus hot coffee. An hour later, they come back with some different people who got little caps on, they’re saying, “Listen, we’ll give you $10 if you’ll give us 2 minutes if you read this 3 paragraph story and give us 2 questions and answers.”
They read this little story. Everyone reads the same story. At the end, they asked them, “How would you describe the main character? What are they like as a person?” 80% of the people that got warm coffee said they’re warm, their generous, their loving. Warm is always one of the language patterns. 80% like clockwork of people got the iced coffee, same story, say that they’re very cold. The language like being obsessed or being about themselves, selfish, things of this nature. I’d give you dozens of examples. What I do each morning is do a breathing pattern. It’s an explosive breathing pattern that I learned in India. Breathing, breath in and exploding it out, from the gut out the nose. I do that 3 sets of 10, pause, 3 sets of 10, pause, 3 sets of 10.
It alters my state, and I just do 3 things for 10 minutes, because have this deal with myself. If you don’t have 10 minutes for yourself, you don’t have a life. Who’s with me on this? I said, “You know what? I don’t need to have 20-minute, 30-minute, 40-minute meditations. I want 10 minutes, and I don’t need to meditate. I don’t know if I’m going to meditate. To not think, I don’t know if too many people can do that. I don’t even know if I want to not freaking think. I thought, “What I want to do is I want to focus on the emotions that will cause me to be the better me.” The 2 emotions that most people are messed up by are anger and fear. When you’re grateful, you can’t be angry. Try to be grateful and angry simultaneously. It’ll never work. You can’t be fearful when you’re grateful.
When I look at people, almost always, they’re reacting out of fear, or they’re reacting out of anger, some version of those 2. Gratitude to me is the antidote. I spend 3 minutes, just 3 minutes, and I think of 3 things that I’m grateful for, 3 people, 3 situations 3 people, but I step into it. I don’t remember the roller coaster over there riding it. I put myself from the front seat going over the edge, so I feel the moment. I make sure 1 of the 3 things I’m grateful for is something really simple, like the wind on my face, or something beautiful like my child’s smile. The reason I do that is because I remember interviewing some of the astronauts, Buzz Aldrin and these guys that most of you probably know.
You can imagine, to be an astronaut, this man knows, to aspire to do that, and then go to the thousands of people and be picked, and then to actually go to the moon and stand on the moon and look back to and see that picture we’ve all seen, that blue green earth. Imagine, then you come home, and what happens? There’s a ticker tape parade, and you shake the president’s hand, and now what the hell are you? You’re 32. What the hell do you do for the rest of your life? You know what? If you know the story of many of these astronauts, most of them have some major emotional challenges, right? Some have used alcohol, some drugs, and they had a really rough time because they forgot to find adventure and a smile. They thought the only way was to the moon.
I train myself to make sure not just the big beautiful things that are a part of my life, but the little things. I feel that for 3 minutes, then I do 3 minutes of a blessing, as corny as it may sound. I imagine life, God, energy, coming into my body, healing every muscle, every nerve in my body, strengthening everything as he strengthen the best of me, my passion, my love, my generosity, my creativity, my humor, my love. Then I see any problem that needs to be solved just being solved, because otherwise, I had to think I got to do it all. Then once I feel that fully, the energy comes through me and back through me multiple times, and then I do a circle of my intimate family, my kids and my wife, my friends.
This little character over here is on my list, and I just circle out all the way out to my clients. I send that same energy to them. Then I imagine, as corny as it sounds, they’re being healed, they’re getting what they need energy-wise, they’re having the life that they deserve. So I do that for 3 minutes. In the last 3 minutes are my 3 to thrive. I think of 3 specific outcomes that mattered to me, and I don’t think about achieving them. I see, feel, and experience them as done, and I see the impact that it has. I see people’s lives touched. I see the joy. I feel it as done, and I feel grateful. It’s 10 minutes, but honestly, it usually goes 15 or 20, because I’m having a damn good time.
By having a 10-minute lock, there’s no excuse not do it, and I do it everyday, and I don’t hope I’m going to feel good. Then what happens is you’re primed. Literally, you see things in through a different set of filters. You make decisions, some of the filters. Also, think of it, most people are wired for stress, they’re wired for frustration, they’re wired for feeling lonely. They got the highway to pissed off, and they’ve got dirt roads to happiness. I decided I’m going to wire myself to happening. I’m not even born that way. My view is I have to change the whole earth to be happy. Today, that’s different for me. Now I can just wake up and be happy, because I’ve wired myself in a different way, neurologically. Then I show other people how to do this as well.
Peter: You guys are awesome. I really, really appreciate you both coming to this. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you guys.
